In political philosophy, the right to revolution (or "right of rebellion") is a right articulated by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government as part of his social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate; he wrote that under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens and replace the government with another government in the interests of the citizens. The right of rebellion thus essentially acted as a safeguard against tyranny.

The right to revolution formed a philosophical defense of the Glorious Revolution, when Parliament deposed James II of England in 1688 and replaced him with William III of Orange-Nassau. Later, the right to revolution would be cited in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, which echoed many of the ideas on the right to revolution:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Although many declarations of independence seek legitimacy by appealing to the right of revolution, far fewer constitutions mention this right or guarantee this right to citizens because of the destabilizing effect such a guarantee would likely produce. In the United States, for example, out of fifty state constitutions and one national constitution, only New Hampshire's guarantees its citizens the right to rebellion, in Article 10 of the constitution's bill of rights:

Whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

Supportive Quotes in History

• "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure"

• Thomas Jefferson, letter (November 13, 1787)

• "A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government."

• Goethe, Conversations With Goethe (1824)

• "If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system."

• Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson (1763)

• "When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right."

• Victor Hugo

• "All oppressed people are authorized, wherever they can, to rise and break their fetters."

• Henry Clay, Speech, U.S. House of Representatives (March 24, 1818)

• "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

• Abraham Lincoln

• "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

• John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, (1962)

• "When the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself"

• John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Section 220, (1690)

• "Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community..."

• John Barclay, contra Monarchom. 1. iii. c. 8.

• "If therefore any future prince should endeavour to subvert the constitution by breaking the original contract between king and people, should violate the fundamental laws, and should withdraw himself out of the kingdom; we are now authorized to declare that this conjunction of circumstances would amount to an abdication, and the throne would be thereby vacant."

• William Blackstone, Blackstone's Commentaries on The Law (1765)

• "Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one sentence, It is right to rebel! For thousands of years it has been said that it was right to oppress, it was right to exploit and it was wrong to rebel. This old verdict was only reversed with the appearance of Marxism. And from this truth there follows resistance, struggle, the fight for socialism."

• Mao Zedong

External links

• Locke and the Social Order
• The right of revolution, rightly understood — and the bar
• Right of Revolution
• What is the Right of Revolution?

Political philosophy | Rights | Philosophical terminology | Enlightenment philosophy