Hobbes is a unique figure in liberal philosophy. His greatest work Leviathan (which contains Hobbes's social contract theory), is described by Lessnoff as being,"politically ... highly unusual in that it used contract theory to defend and uphold the authority of rulers, indeed a (nearly) absolute authority."
It would be easy to dismiss Hobbes as a proto-totalitarian but also misleading. Lessnoff is correct to point out that, for Hobbes, the "establishment of an unchallengeable sovereign is the imperative function of the original contract ... only this can create a stable ... social structure ..."
This desire for civil peace is at the heart of Hobbes's philosophy; this is made clear through his descriptions of pre-political society (the famous "state of Nature") and the position of man within it, i.e. "... it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war: and such a war, as is of every man against every man." Hobbes is quick to point out that "... WAR consists not in battle only or the act of fighting ... but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary."
It is also necessary to understand what Hobbes meant by rights in order to appreciate his concept of a contract. Since for Hobbes "the condition of man ... is a condition of war of every one against every one ... it follows that in such a condition every man has a right to everything" and therefore, "as long as this natural Right of every man to every thing endures there can be no security to any man."
Hobbes's solution to this problem was a contract whereby all agreed to give up their rights in return for civil peace, or as Gauthier puts it, "a rational bargain in which each accepts certain constraints on his freedom of action so that all may avoid ... war." This quote from Gauthier is interesting as it indicates how twentieth century philosophers view contract theory. As he goes on to say, "Hobbes's theory as our own (i.e. Gauthier's theory), introduces morals by agreement."
As Hobbes is considered to be the most important contract theorist, it is important to try and apply his theory to Britain today. This is in fact what the post-liberal John Gray attempts to do, arguing that "Hobbes's thought is supremely relevant to us" and also, "there is an arresting contemporaneity about many of Hobbes's insights that we can well profit from."
Gray's argument, basically, is that the state does not fulfil the contract as proposed by Hobbes (i.e. protect men from the state of nature) because the state itself has become a new state of nature, the endless war now being "a legal and political war of all against all" where rival groups fight for power and the redistribution of society's resources or, as Gray puts it, "the modern state has recreated in a political form that very state of nature which it is the task of the state to deliver us." Is this an accurate description of society today though? We need to consider Gray's argument in further depth. Gray states that the Hobbesian state is a "paradox" because whilst it has (practically) unlimited authority it's duty is minimal - "the maintenance of civil peace". The difficulty for us is deciding what social institutions are involved in this process - do the free market, the welfare state, the parliamentary system of representation (central tenets of liberal society) help to maintain civil peace? We have demonstrations, riots and rising crime in our society but not (as yet) street warfare - is civil peace still intact therefore? Hobbes's concept of a sovereign authority that would be neutral and detached is clearly a fantasy as most people (the governed) who have seen the police break up industrial pickets and demonstrations or the armed forces scab will already realise. The Hobbesian notion that we agree to the contract in return for benefits for ourselves, still holds true (at least for the moment) - we endure taxation on the assumption it is used for our benefit, i.e. the N.H.S., education, public transport etc. but the continual erosion of these services coupled with increasing state centralization/dominance (which according to Gray is anti-Hobbesian) may well be regarded as an erosion of the contract, in which case we would probably switch from the Hobbesian concept of contract to that of Locke. Gray's chapter on Hobbes is well worth reading if only to appreciate Gray's own perspective of what liberalism should be - his attitude is summed up well in the following quote; "Hobbes's state has in common with the minimum state of classical liberalism ... the crucial attribute that, since it has no assets of its own, it is not in the business of distributing resources to its subjects.", which would suggest to me that Gray thinks society would be better off if the state adopted a extreme form of laissez-faire and let the free-market get on with it, although I think many people would suggest that it is the free-market rather than society that is the new state of nature.
As I stated earlier, although not part of the social contract tradition, it is possible to argue from a Marxist perspective that the idea of a contract between government and governed is false and what actually exists is a system of exploitation.
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle." The fact that Marx wrote those words is a clear indication that to him, the idea of ruler and ruled living together in peace through a contract was nonsense. There is not enough room to give a detailed account of Marx's theories of class struggle and history but one or two extracts are instructive;"The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general." If we take this in conjunction with Marx's famous phrase, "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas; i.e. the class which is the prevailing material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.", then it can be argued that those in power merely use the means at their disposal (notably the education system and the mass media) to perpetrate the myth of a contract between themselves and those they oppress. Phrases such as means/forces/relations of production, bourgeois/proletariat,
base/superstructure sound far removed from ordinary day-to-day society, so is there any merit to the Marxist argument?
A brief look at society might suggest that there is - a government that continues to increase taxation whilst systematically eroding public services, that continues to impose legislation against those it considers a threat (either real or imagined) e.g. Trade Unions, students, New-Age Travellers, that can close coal pits and hospitals despite massive public outrage and then uses the police to silence this protest - does this honestly sound like a contractual relationship?
I think in conclusion I would support a mixture of the three theories - Hobbes is right in that we need authority to create stable government and also that in return for accepting authority we get something out of it, be it protection or services, but Gray is right in that the state now fails to do this because the state has become a tool with which a powerful minority take what they want from society. Ultimately though, I agree with Marx - there is no contract. It is an ideological tool used by a ruling elite who use the works of Hobbes and Locke to their own advantage - hopefully the governed will eventually realise this and destroy this new Leviathan.
Bibliography
A.Callinicos, The revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx.
(Bookmarks, London, 1983).
D.Gauthier, Morals By Agreement.
(Oxford University Press, New York, 1986).
J.Gray, Post-liberalism:Studies in Political thought.
(Routledge, Great Britain, 1993).
M.Lessnoff, Social Contract.
(Macmillan Education Ltd., Hampshire, 1986).
M.Lessnoff (Ed.), Social Contract Theory.
(Basil Blackwell Ltd., Oxford, 1990).
P.Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy.
(Harvard University Press, U.S.A., 1982).
