Social Contract Theory

I wrote this for debate, and figured I'd post it up here for you guys to read since I haven't done much lately. This is the third to last day of school, though! =D
Thomas Hobbes:
Hobbes was the most pessimistic of the social contract theorists. He held that man was selfish and wicked in the state of nature, and that governments are created by general agreement due to the fact that the selfish people wanted protection against the selfishness of others. To Hobbes, a government was created when people agreed to allow another person, or an assembly of them, the right to act for them; this person or assembly is the sovereign. Since all the actions the sovereign are the actions of the subjects, the sovereign cannot break the covenant, and thus people cannot free themselves from the covenant due to the actions of the sovereign; since all the subjects are responsible for the actions of the sovereign, it is impossible for the sovereign to injure them or commit injustice against them (injustice is defined as a breach of the covenant). The sovereign has the right to control freedom of speech and freedom of the press, to make laws, to act as judge, to choose counselors, ministers, etc., to control faith and doctrine, to tax (though taxation is to be equal for all in debt to the government, and should partially provide support for those subjects that are unable to work), to wage war or make peace, to reward and punish subjects, to decide succession to power, and to establish a way to measure the worth of subjects based on honor.

In Hobbesian thought, there are three types of government; monarchy, where the power is in the hands of one; aristocracy, where the power is in the hands of the few; and democracy, where the power is in the hands of all. He believes that centralization of the power in a monarchy is best, because of his belief that a king has the closest link between his private interests and the interests of the public; that a king can’t have riches without rich subjects.

John Locke:
Locke’s opinion was that in the state of nature, men had one law, reason, though they didn’t always obey reason, and often misinterpreted it, since they lacked a judge who both had power and impartiality to make judgements on interpretations of reason. This makes the state of nature almost as warlike as Hobbes’s version, but in Locke’s state of nature, unlike Hobbes’s, failure to enforce the law of nature does not release individuals from the responsibility to follow it. Because of this, and the dangers involved in the state of nature, men decide to band together and form governments by common agreement to protect what Locke calls their private property: the rights of life, liberty, and estate. Since the purpose of the government is to protect one’s property, it can’t be the originator of the property. Because of this, Locke provides a theory on how property could arise outside of government: First, a person owns their own body. Thus, they also own their own labor, so that they aren’t slaves. If someone picks a naturally growing grape, it’s theirs. Because of this, he can deny others of the right to use it, and eat it. Locke’s reasoning behind the ability of people to take from the common store of Nature is that the state of nature is a state of plenty; as long as you leave food that’s just as much and as good for others, and don’t take so much that it spoils before you use it, you can take from nature without infringing on anyone else’s property, that is, the right to life (because one has to eat to live). He has an obvious hole in his logic here; there are times, such as during drought or overpopulation, that there isn’t enough food to go around. Since you must leave just as much and just as good, and you can’t let it spoil, there’s an upper limit on property. However, he says, gold and silver do not spoil. Thus, via gold and silver, one has no upper limit on property, and a full economic system can develop outside of government.

His view on government is that a legitimate contract can exist between the common people and a monarchy, a democracy, or an oligarchy. Also, he said the citizens had the right to revolution if the government overstepped its bounds.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that in the state of nature, people had what he thought of as pure, uncorrupted morals. However, this isn’t moral in the sense we think of it today; it’s more like an animal, which is “good” only in the sense that it isn’t evil. As we understand it today, however, morality cannot develop outside of civilization. Rousseau believed that society is a negative influence on man, creating envy, inequality, and other bad things. This is because the self-preservation instinct and reason are transformed into pride and vanity. He also held that arts and sciences corrupted people. The only way to counteract all this, which Rousseau blamed on progress, was to help create a sense of duty and civic morality by using reason. Rousseau held that therefore we needed a new social contract, one which was equal to all (the current one wasn’t equal because the rich tricked everyone else into an uneven contract), that could avoid the corrupting influences of society. He said that the new social contract would have everyone surrender their rights and submit to the general will of the people, since this prevents slavery to others, which he believes will arise from any other system. While he argues that the power to make laws, which he calls sovereignty, should be in the hands of the people, he separates this from government. In a monarchy, the sovereign is still the law. He was opposed to a republican government except in the city-state fashion.

Conclusion

My personal opinion is that the state of nature does not, in any meaningful way, exist; as long as people are together, there will be something resembling a government, and when people are apart, they can’t survive anyway. I believe the purpose of governments is because people seek some sort of somewhat fair decision-making process when in a group, which eventually becomes formalized into primitive government; the primitive government develops from there into a government. Of course, once people had heard about governments, it would always be possible to skip the primitive government stage. Anyway, since the state of nature, in my opinion, does not exist, and the government is developed from decision-making processes, none of the social contract theories would be right.