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Abstract
Marxian Liberalism is a theory of justice that results from combining the liberal belief that people have a natural right to be free from unwanted coercion, with the Marxian belief that property is coercive. This combination implies that property must be consented to by all people who do or will exist-and thus such consent must be theoretical. Theoretical consent occurs in a Marxian-liberal original position among parties whose knowledge includes Marxian and liberal beliefs. The parties find it rational to consent to a state that protects liberty, and to a system of property governed by the difference principle interpreted according to a moral version of the labor theory of value.

InGod, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought, Jeremy Waldron argues that Locke's defense of human moral equality is inextricably tied to a theological doctrine: "Locke's equality claims are not separable from the theological content that shapes and organizes them." Moreover, Waldron suspects that this points to a more general truth, namely, that an adequate secular defense of human equality is not possible. He writes, "I actually don't think it is clear that we—now—canshape and defend an adequate conception of basic human equality apart from some religious foundation" (GLE, p. 13). If Waldron's claim of the inseparability of equality and theology in Locke's theory is taken as a claim about what Locke himself thought he was doing, I shall not dispute it, though, as I shall argue below, I do not think that Waldron's argument for this claim is satisfactory. If Waldron's claim is rather about the theory that Locke created, which I take to be a system of propositions whose implications and significance are not necessarily fully known to its author, then I disagree. I think that there is, in Locke's theory, a separable secular defense of moral equality intertwined with the theological defense, but I shall not try to prove that Locke intended this to be a separate defense or even thought (as I do) that it could stand on its own.