In order to answer this question I first intend to establish Locke's reasoning regarding property, and then show how this is central to his description of civil society. To achieve this I will follow his reasoning regarding property and then investigate how Locke links this to his need for a civil society and indeed whether the very notion of property is central to this need. To achieve this I will show that the basis for Locke's civil society is the need for an individual to protect their own property, and that this forms the central idea upon which his need for a civil society is built.
Early in the Locke's Second Treatise on Government he addresses the state of nature to define political power. He describes the state of nature as a state of equilibrium in which no one person has any kind of power over another, and that everybody is free to determine their own actions. Locke makes it clear that this freedom does not extend to a license to abuse the freedom of others. Everybody in what he has described as a state of nature has the power to execute laws of nature, simply that the punishment fit the crime. A person in the state of nature can seek penance for a crime committed against him in order to discourage the perpetrator repeating the crime. Locke also notes that everybody is in a state of nature until an agreement between them makes them members of a political society.
Locke begins his chapter on property by stating that the Earth can be considered to be the property of the people to use for their own benefit and survival by reason or the word of God. He follows this statement with a key question; if the Earth belongs to humankind, how can individual property be justified. Locke argues that for ind ...