Political Theory

Re: Social Contract Theory

ToxicAssets — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:30:49 GMT

For these tribes the notion of social contract may be a more or less reasonable concept.

Everyone understand the rules and one's part given the common goal which is to get the tribe to survive.

But there's one caveat. Such social "contract" was not something clearly established at some point, but a cultural process that gradually emerges from biological cooperation instincts, with no distinct origin.

It was not a product of deliberate design but a result of a selective survival process.

What escaped Hobbes and Locke was this notion of spontaneous order. That was better understood later on, by the scottish thinkers like Ferguson, Hume and Smith, and on the context of biology, by Charles Darwin's natural selection theory of Evolution.

This process might have started with intertribe domination and persistent warfare. Some tribes might discover that if they don't destroy the weaker tribes they know, but instead keep them weak and periodically steal what they produce or enslave some of their elements, they might be better off. They don't need to sow anymore, they can be the reapers.

And eventually some of these domineering tribes acquire control of larger empires of vassal tribes over extensive territories.

And some empires develop into lesser degrees of oppression towards dominated peoples, since this relaxation can sometimes payoff as the vassals get more productive, increasing accordingly the amount that can be taken. Like some primitive form of supply side economics policy.

And they might start providing active protection and other services to their most productive vassal tribes, since they are constantly harassed by marauding barbarians and foreign empires.

The interactions between these tribes lead to the formation of larger cultures and civilizations.

Gradually what started as pure domination becomes more similar to an assented cooperation, a contract establishing a mutualistic relationship between a social class of rulers forming the state and its subjects.

But such a contract was never really established.

It is the non intentional result of the settlement of many circumstantial trade-offs between local organizations, and the conservation of a status quo through tradition.

It's important to understand that these trade-offs more often than not involved a considerate amount of bloodshed and agony.

No one envisioned some ruled social relationship between castes in the beginning, they just carried on doing what they've always done, perhaps making little adjustments as circumstances changed, and this relationship eventually emerged.

What is interesting is that at some point during this whole process, the collectivist survivalist tribes absorbed by larger empires start contracting into family kernels or even independent individuals.

They leave cultural bonds behind them, but the codependent social structure of a community has gone.

There's no more well defined society, as a close-knit group striving together to survive against some hostile nature.

What you have is a very large and mostly incomprehensible social process with several interconnected agents, but with no discernible common goal to achieve as a group.

Societies and their general norms and cultural traditions become the environment rather then the agent.

We are still very used to the ancient group mentality. We like to think in terms of national or civilizational or even global goals to achieve.

That's why people can be easily convinced by religious or ideological conceptions, that give some artificial but comforting meaning to the ultimately incomprehensible black seas of infinity were we briefly navigate.

Re: Social Contract Theory

ToxicAssets — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 22:43:45 GMT

National Acrobat:

ToxicAssets:

Any theory you want.

I'm denouncing any notion of a contract envolving society as whole as nonsense.

Well, Locke's and Hobbes' theories, for instance, build from individuals in a state of nature. So what specifically do you find troublesome with their conceptions of the social contract.

Probably one of the oldest philosophical problems is the origin, nature and perhaps purpose of social order.

And both Hobbes and Locke made significant contributions to the understanding of this very complex and old problem.

But a lot of knowledge about related topics was accumulated since their writings. And now the problematic aspects of their programs are more or less evident to any modern student of this ancient problem.

Of course, to presume that this was due to some particular naiveté or lack of intelligence by them is completely absurd. They did what they could with the limited tools available. Like everyone else.

So, what's their core program?

As you've said, both consider an hypothetical natural state of atomized individualistic men.

Hobbes says there was an original state of war of all against each other. Men were not bounded by morals. This situation being unsatisfactory for everyone, a contractual agreement was reached and a state was formed to regulate these violent instincts.

Locke says there were righteous men, and there were evil men that exploited the righteous men. That situation being unsatisfactory, the righteous men organized themselves for protection against the wicked, forming thus an alliance and a state.

And what's problematic?

Their understanding of the original state of nature is quite inaccurate.

Actually, mankind descend from other social animals, and patterns of social cooperation have existed between lifeforms for millions of years. These co-operative strategies vary from simple sexual dimorphism to complex hives of eusocial beings.

It's likely that our social order has been somehow inherited from our ancestors, which were probably organized in clans and tribes of hunter-gatherers, with instinctive but highly complex cooperative notions of kinship affection, tribal pecking order and social division of labor.

These groups were not atomized individuals, but had some sort of collective identity and survivalship goal.

If any Hobbesian war of all against all ever happened, it was between very primitive lifeforms, not anything resembling modern man.

But the notion apparently applies to the relationship of these isolated small groups towards one another, on their occasional encounters.

Continue...

Re: Social Contract Theory

Torsten — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 19:38:22 GMT

Republican constitutions have historically been described as formalized proxies to the abstract idea of a "social contract".

But would only be for grown up citizens entering into it voluntarily, right? Not a default contract for anyone hence.

Re: Social Contract Theory

National Acrobat — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 23:45:06 GMT

ToxicAssets:

Any theory you want.

I'm denouncing any notion of a contract envolving society as whole as nonsense.

Well, Locke's and Hobbes' theories, for instance, build from individuals in a state of nature. So what specifically do you find troublesome with their conceptions of the social contract.

Re: Social Contract Theory

National Acrobat — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 23:06:43 GMT

Autolykos:

Still waiting for a response from you here, National Acrobat. What are you afraid of?

Strange post. I don't know what you're waiting for. I supported my contention. It's time for you agree to the conditions I laid out.

Re: Social Contract Theory

Autolykos — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:34:05 GMT

Still waiting for a response from you here, National Acrobat. What are you afraid of?

Re: Social Contract Theory

ToxicAssets — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:48:00 GMT

A constitutional letter is a formal document declaring the general principles and/or the specific operational framework of an organization.

In the case of the Constitution of the United States and many other based on it, it seeks to specify the operation of the republican (state-like) apparatus at the federal level.

Republican constitutions have historically been described as formalized proxies to the abstract idea of a "social contract".

However, this view is quite misleading.

"Society" does not take an active part in the set up of any Constitution.

And that's because society is not an active part of anything. Society doesn't act in any way, shape or form.

Such a constitution can be viewed as settling contract, but not between a "Society" and a "State", or even a self-contract by the "Society" acting as part and counter-part, as it is commonly discribed. Such a widespread misconception is the byproduct of the operation of propaganda machines within the academia, but that's not the point here.

It is actually a contract between the well defined political organizations existing at the time of it's inception, and maintained, altered or repealed by their extant political heirs.

If you want to understand the workings of a constitution and the manifold goals it seeks to accomplish you have to identify and characterize these players and their specific agendas.

Re: Social Contract Theory

Anenome — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 03:47:59 GMT

A free society would take social contracts to new heights of reliance. But it would be voluntary and between individuals and confer no 'governmental' rights.

It would just be market contracts to establish human organization.

In that sense, it's a small tweak from what we have now where we have one mandatory and theoretically assented contract: the Constitution (or w/e you are), and all are subject to this and cannot secede from it and remain in place.

A free society would be one where multiple social contracts could exist and overlap, non having monopoly, all being based entirely on voluntary join and leave, and dealing with small or large aspects of life.

They would be merely larger and more comprehensive versions of usage agreements. Essentially private law.

And for that reason, I've come to the view that we ultimately don't need to decide what the character of libertarian law would look like in a free society, because it will be produced by exchange among members, to a base equilibrium.

What will be useful is a deep understanding of libertarian principle to create versions of useful basic agreements, which would establish the underlying principles of a legal system. But you wouldn't need to get it right on the first go, just get it reasonably close, because if it's not right others will break away in time and form a better version, and foot-voting will take care of the rest.

Which means that, as time progresses, law in a free society should become progressively more perfect and more libertarian, naturally and without effort, instead of the current situation of the American Jenga legal system, where distortions become pervasive until the system topples by internal contradictions only possible because of conclusions and rules being forced on everyone.

Re: Social Contract Theory

ToxicAssets — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 11:52:36 GMT

Torsten:

Is this rejection about the scope or the idea of a kind of default contract?

Scope. Any contract whose scope is some society taken "as a whole" has no useful meaning attached to it. It can hardly be used as a conceptual tool to enhance understanding, however it may work as the rhetorical device of a political talking point.

On the other hand, "default contracts" that are assumed between two or more recognizable acting parts are meaningful things in many contexts and need not be rejected.

It's fair to assume that most real-life relationships between human beings are coordinated by default contracts, whose terms may be somewhat clear given the specific cultural context of each relationship and the perceived signs of mutual understanding that were exchanged.

One example is the default assumption of monogamous romantic relationship that seems to govern the behavior of most western culture heterossexual couples once they start living together. While "polyamorous" open relationships may occur, they are usually not assumed "par default".

This practice however may be changing, specially whithin cities commonly characterized as "forward", "progressive" and "cosmopolite", where it is more and more frequent for heterossexual couples to specify exactly the mutal expectations of sexual exclusiviness, in order to avoid missunderstandings.

And this need not be the default contract in a muslim culture, where a man can take many wives, or among homossexual subcultures in western cultures, since the default stance between gay-roommates seems to be of an "open relationship", monogamy being a "customization option" and regarded by many of them as a foreign notion.

The point is that you cannot jumble arbitrarely all these "default contracts" together in order to make sense of some collective social contract that has no specific subject nor terms.

Re: Social Contract Theory

Torsten — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:42:14 GMT

It's a rejection of anything falsely called a "contract" which involves aggression. The two are mutually exclusive. Contracts are voluntary. The "social contract" as commonly explained is not voluntary, regardless of its various forms.

That's just sweeping statements. I also don't think one should necessary connect the state to social contract theory in general.

But let's assume there is a country club. They got premises and they got membership. They also got rules for their premises and relating to their members. Those rules can be formulated or tacit (i.e. common practices in the club). Would you agree to any or both of the following?

a) If you become a member, you are bound to the rules?

b) If you are on their premises, you are bound to the rules?

Re: Social Contract Theory

shackleford — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 01:26:03 GMT

I never signed a damn thing.

Re: Social Contract Theory

NonAntiAnarchist — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 13:29:28 GMT

No gov't rules by some kind of contract with its people. It rules by simply proclaiming to own land it has no legitimate claim to.

Re: Social Contract Theory

Torsten — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 13:12:00 GMT

Is this rejection about the scope or the idea of a kind of default contract?

Re: Social Contract Theory

ToxicAssets — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 13:57:53 GMT

Any theory you want.

I'm denouncing any notion of a contract envolving society as whole as nonsense.

Re: Social Contract Theory

National Acrobat — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 18:33:56 GMT

ToxicAssets:

Of course "signing a contract" is just a metonym for the establishment of a ruled relationship.

No one needs to sign a piece of paper, but the point is that the parts of the relationship must exist and they must understand the terms and they must accept the terms, whether they have been expressed in paper documents or not.

The thing with the "social contract" is that these parts do not really exist as entities able to perform such decisions, so any notion of contract, be it formal or informal, written or verbal, explicit or tacit, do not apply.

Which social contract theory are you talking about?