Locke’s Theory of Property and the Limits of the State’s Fiduciary Powers a Critical Appraisal of the Second Treatise on Government

The paper addresses Locke’s political implications in the theory of fiduciary powers presented in the Second Treatise on Government. I proceed by analysing Locke’s conception of natural rights in the state of nature as well as his conception of property in accordance with its different articulations (particularly the idea of the private ownership of an acquired object). I reconstruct the logic of the social contract theory and the foundation of the modern bourgeois (liberal) state. The paper concludes by showing the limits of Locke’s minimalist conception of the state. It argues that the original placing of the civil society in the state of nature prevents the recognition of a conflictual and dynamical composition of class interests whose mediation is the proper task of politics at the parliamentary level