It highlights, for example, the intensely political quality of life in Locke's state of nature before property is introduced. In this early condition, as Locke tells the story in the Second Treatise, we are not mere self-preservationists, but responsible for discerning, judging, and executing the law of nature on behalf of the common. Before the social contract, we have in our own hands, and as part of our moral obligation to God and one another, the powers of executing and enforcing natural law in the name of communal justice and preservation. These markedly political powers and this markedly political orientation are what we will eventually confer to political institutions when we enter the social contract. Of course, this primordial politicalness in Locke's state of nature is dampened by the intensification of individual interest that property introduces into that state. However, this politicalness never fades completely from the project of making the social contract or from its purpose and legitimacy.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 187