Liberty and Industry: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and the Economic Foundations of Political Membership

Abstract

Recent scholarship on liberal exclusion focuses on ways in which liberal norms and standards of rationality disqualify certain persons from the rights of civic membership. Few works, however, move beyond philosophical anthropology in considering the basis of such exclusions. This article examines the economic concerns that frame citizenship and political membership in two strands of modern liberal thought: the work of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. I argue that both thinkers collapse requirements of economic and political membership, excluding the so-called “non-industrious” and economically dependent from the full rights and benefits of political membership, and creating a spectrum of partial citizenships. What begins as a concern for the value of labor in Locke’s writings extends through Mill’s work, creating a tension between democratic participation and the exclusion of the non-industrious. Although both thinkers include provisions for aiding the poor, a vision of economic membership – of inclusion in a community of the industrious – precedes political membership in these liberal frameworks.