Summary: "During the nineteenth century, the Lockean radicals-Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, John Bray, and Henry George-picked up the loose ends of Locke's property theory and wove them into two competing strands. Each strand addressed problems of liberty and equality that were emerging with industrial capitalism, but each did so in a different way. In one camp, Hodgskin and Spooner-the libertarian radicals-argued that the world of resources is common to all people only in the negative sense of being originally unowned by anyone. According to them, there are no just grounds for state redistribution except to correct past injustices, and governments are typically little more than thieving and oppressive gangs. In the other camp, Bray and George-the egalitarian radicals-held that all people have a positive claim to share equally in the world's resources. According to them, states should insure, through redistributive taxation and other progressive policies, that our institutions respect this common right. Locke Among the Radicals tells the forgotten story of the Lockean radicals and the role they played in addressing problems latent in Locke's theory. In addition, it argues that some of the radicals' insights can provide a blueprint for a form liberal distributive justice that is applicable today"-- Provided by publisher

Includes bibliographical references and index.