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Classical political thought started from the position that a good state required virtuous citizens. Medieval thought built on this adding a religious element to traditional ideas. Modern thought starts from a different basis./1
Machiavelli, in the 16th century, presented us with a pragmatic, historically based, argument for both the republic and the nation-state. What followed him took a different turn./2
That’s to say a new concept, the social contract, founded upon an imagined anthropology, and intended to justify political order. The underlying question is why do we need government & the state./3
Three major thinkers, in the 17h & 18th centuries, gave us three very different views of the social contract & the needs it satisfies. Each of them based on a conception of humanity. This starts with Thomas Hobbes./4
Hobbes conceived of humanity as beginning in isolation & in complete & unfettered freedom. In such a condition, not only can we not trust each o, we are in active danger from each other because we are infinitely acquisitive./5
If we see another with something that we desire we will seek to take that from them, & none of us is immune from the threat of death at another’s hand./6
In such a condition there can be no industry, no agriculture, no commerce, & no culture. “& the state of man solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” As rational beings we cannot abide this & seek a way to trust & order./7
We achieve this by transferring our fundamental power of life and death to a new entity, the state, which on behalf of all of us uses our combined power to punish us with death, and all lesser punishments, on behalf of ourselves./8
This unspoken agreement, the social contract, means that we must submit ourselves to the power of the state or we will return to the state of nature, a war of each against all./9
To avoid this we contract to submit to the state in whatever form it takes — monarchy, oligarchy, republic — and make no changes in it lest by revolution or civil war we return to the state of nature. This we don’t want./10
So we must obey whatever laws or commandments are laid on us by the law. But when the law is silent we are free to make such choices as we may wish. The key thing being dutiful submission to law, which is our power regulating us./11
Hobbes gives us, then, a bleak understanding of humanity. John Locke, a generation later, has a more optimistic view. He begins from the declaration that “in the beginning all the world was America,” there for the taking by anyone./12
Nature is abundant, but, if we take a piece of land & make it our property we can make it more productive than mere nature. The problem is that, once claims to property are made we have no way to adjudicate disputes./13
Each of us is judge, jury, and executioner of our own cause. We recognize that this is untenable, and so agree to form a state that will protect our life, liberty, & possessions, al of these constituting our property./14
The state may make such laws, & engage in such actions, as protect & and enhance our property rights. This provides safety & order. The state, however, may become tyrannical, threatening our property both in land and in our persons./15
In such a case we have the right to “appeal to Heaven” and rise in revolt. If Heaven favors us, our uprising will be successful & we will have achieved revolution, whereupon we may constitute such government as we may wish./16
Always providing that the new government protects life, liberty, & possessions, that is our property. This we may do by right. The American Declaration of Independence is a literal appeal to Heaven to support revolution./17
The Genevese philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau has a very different take on the matter. For him the ideal condition was settled & independent living without superior authority. This he called the Golden Age./18
This, however, cannot last & we are forced, by differences in power, to submit to an oppressive contract bearing a resemblance to Hobbes’s. This is not acceptable & there must be a way out of it./19
This is a compact to surrender our powers to a state governed by the General Will, that is the sum of the wills of the contracting parties as & when directed to public matters. He distinguishes between the General Will/20
& the collective will directed to non-public matters, the will of all. The General Will is never wrong. Government by the General Will forces us to be free. That is, we get to govern ourselves on our own behalf./21
Subject always to the proviso that our actions are determined by the General Will. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man & of the Citizen explicitly declares that the law is the expression of the General Will./22
What we have, in practical terms, is two different views of the republic. Locke’s, that the republic exists to protect our property, & Rousseau’s that it exists to protect our freedom./23
Hobbes, of course, wants us to protect ourselves from ourselves & is indifferent (though he preferred monarchy) as to the type of state, as long as we submit to it & do not change it./24
We are reminded of Hobbes when we see the societal breakdown subsequent to state collapse. Such events as the Taliban’s tyranny over Afghanistan are explained by the people reacting to state collapse by accepting/25
whatever government they can get, no matter how dictatorial, because they have been exposed to the alternative & deeply,,& sincerely, do not want it. The restoration of stability & order in such a case is worth the price/26
of tyrannical, oppressive, & abusive government because of fear that we will be plunged into a Hobbesian state of nature. That we most assuredly do not want. Each version of the social contract, therefore, answers different needs./27
Order, property, & freedom. I incline towards Rousseau’s version because it, more than the others, is a vision of equal citizenship & participation in government. You may have other preferences./end