With the application of relentless logic Macpherson illustrates, and in some cases shores up, the postulates of Hobbes, Harrington, the Levellers, and Locke. Primarily he shows that their epistemological basis is overgeneralised, and that they really only hold for the type of system they elaborate, thus begging the question somewhat.
He ends by noting that whilst the Liberalism of Hobbes and Locke et al. did hold for the most part at the time they conceived it, and indeed up until quite recently, once the voting franchise was allowed to those without sufficient means to support themselves without recourse to the alienation of their labour then Liberalism becomes self-contradictory. The class divided society that is an inevitable result of Liberalism can only support the type of government necessary for the maintenance of a possessive individualist market society as long as the franchise is limited to that (owning) class who have sufficient class cohesion and common cause in its continuance.
He also got Leo Strauss’s back up.
It’s all good.