Locke's Thoughts Of Limited Government Analysis

John Locke was one of the most famous British enlightenment thinkers of the modern times, his thoughts had a great influence on the development of modern and contemporary western political and legal theories. Two Treatises of Government is his representative works on political and legal thoughts. Beginning from the natural state, he analyzed the origin of the political society and he thought that governmental power was from the authority of people and the purpose of government was to protect the property of people. He also thought that legislation power, the supreme power, should be set a limit to and all countries should be ruled by law. He systematically analyzed the theory of limited government. His thoughts had a great influence in the history of the capitalist political and legal thoughts, his idea was adopted by the constitutions of many countries such as the Great Britain, France, America and so on ,and his thoughts had a great influence on the establishment and running of modern and contemporary of western countries.The author of this article thinks that our country is anxiously calling for the idea of limited government as the development of the socialist market economy and the reform of political system. Locke, as the first political and legal thinker who analyzed the theory of limited government systematically, his thoughts had great theoretical and practical value to establish the idea of limited government with Chinese characteristic. Seen from the standpoint of Marxism, it is of great significance to recognize the theory of limited government of western countries and discard what is useless in it and to seek for the approaches of realizing limited government and system which can guarantee limited governmental power.This article is made up of four parts as follows:1. The economic, political and cultural background of the...