Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014

Social contract, existence of the
Section A. Philosophy/political theory

Obviously, the social contract is a metaphor, but it is relied upon with disturbing regularity as obviously being something which exists and binds all members of a society. That view is a bad one, and wrong; however, there may be other ways of arguing for a social contract which stand up to more scrutiny. Be careful, however, to establish what exactly it is that this ’contract’ might sign us up for; many social contract arguments only aim to legitimate any kind of state, not a specific set of government policies.

Pros

[1] Without a state to govern us, we would all live in a ’state of nature’, which would be violent, unco-operative and unproductive — ultimately not beneficial for anyone. Thus, if we were to be in such a state of nature, we would all agree to sign up to a state, because it would definitely be in our interests to do so.

[2] Humans did in the past consent to live in states. Not everyone alive today consents to the state, but that is because it is totally impractical to have a new consensual state-building process every time a new person enters the world. Rather, we are bound by the consent of our ancestors; that is what made the state legitimate in the first place.

[3] Citizens, in fact, consent to their states on a daily basis. They pay taxes, vote in elections, and use the state’s services. All of these choices amount to consent to the state, because they provide it with the means to operate.

[4] Citizens do not leave their states; this amounts to ’tacit consent’. There are many places around the world that closely resemble a state of nature (conflict zones, or places like Somalia where the state has collapsed almost completely). If the state is so terrible, anarchists are welcome to go and live there, but they choose not to.

Cons

[1] Even if all of this were true, it is unclear what work the idea of a ’contract’ is doing. No one actually agreed to anything; it is simply argued that they would have done, because certain goods and interests are protected by the existence of a state that would not be protected otherwise. But in that case, there is no need to appeal to the idea of consent; we can just argue for the state on the basis of those goods directly. Indeed, the attempt to smuggle in a consent argument aims to give the state an air of legitimacy that it does not deserve.

[2] This is simply an absurd historical fiction. States came about because powerful people wished to own land and exert violence in support of that landowning; there was no ’contractual moment’ in the history of our states. In any case, if there were, why should it bind us today? The point of the social contract argument is about consent; that presumably requires our consent, rather than somebody else’s.

[3] Voting does not represent consent to the state for two reasons: first, because we might think the state was totally illegitimate while desiring some control over how it is run; second, because many people vote for the losing side, so how do they ’consent’? Similarly, use of public services is, in many cases, something out of which we cannot opt (clean air, national defence); and in other cases (such as healthcare), we may still want it, even if we wish it were not provided for us by the state.

[4] Not leaving a coercive force does not amount to accepting it. First, for many people, the cost of emigration is simply prohibitively expensive, and the demand that is made on them by asking them to leave their states is an unreasonable one, because they have families and lives built up there. Second, the world is covered entirely in sovereign states; even the worst examples have notional governments with police forces and law courts to enforce them. We can only hop from state to state, but we cannot go and live somewhere without one, which is the option that would be required to establish tacit consent.

Possible motions

This House believes that there is no such thing as a social contract.

This House did not sign the social contract, and has no plans to do so.

Related topics

National service, (re)introduction of

Jury trials, abolition of

Voting, compulsory

Inheritance tax at100 per cent