Persons educated in political science refer to the “social contract” as an agreement between those who govern and those whom are governed. Moreover, the social contract tries to explain why people form governments and why those whom are governed agree to abide by laws and pay taxes to a government enacted by those that govern. Where does government come from? What gives leaders the authority to impose laws and collect taxes from the people? Philosophers have been trying to answer both questions for centuries.
John Locke, Thomas Hobbs, Jean-Jacques Rousseau are probably the best known philosophers that tried to explain the existence of governments and why people submit to their authority. I like to add Karl Marx and Charles Darwin to the list for some philosophic diversity.
Darwin had a fairly simple answer: survival of the fittest. That is too simplistic and may explain survival of most of earth’s inhabitance but not that of mankind. Humans are a little more complicated than the animals with which we share the planet. Marx focused on achieving resource equity amongst the human population and believed government should ensure that everyone in their society received roughly equal bounty. Locke, Hobbs and Rousseau all started with the idea that mankind exists in a “state of nature,” though they differed somewhat defining the state of nature.
Hobbs believed the state of nature was war; Locke and Rousseau believed that the state of nature was freedom, equality and morality. Though this is an overly simplistic statement of their philosophies, it is not that relevant since they all drew nearly the same conclusions as to the outcome.
I am going to digress here to look briefly at the history of governments. I consider the Magna Carta is the beginning of modern government. The United States Constitution incorporated many of the ideas from the Magna Carta and the writings of Hobbs, Locke and Rousseau to give us our Constitution and the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights). Prior to the Magna Carta many governments existed, some for long periods of time. Ancient Greece and ancient Egypt go back 5000 years, some say much longer than that. Ancient Rome goes back 2500 years. Each had well documented and established governments. During the same time periods many other civilizations existed and established governments. It is not documented when or how governments started though I have never seen evidence of a successful society based on anarchy, but I am not sure what conclusion to draw from that.
So governments have been around for most of known history. That brings us back to the two questions we started with. Where does government come from? And what gives leaders the authority to impose laws and collect taxes from the people? To answer both we need to begin with the state of nature as defined by Hobbs, Locke and Rousseau.
Although they began defining the state of nature in a completely opposite manner they are in agreement the end goal was to create a safe environment for each person to pursue life, liberty and property. They agree the only way to accomplish that is for people to collectively cede their natural rights to a sovereign authority in exchange for safety. The establishment of a sovereign, his authority and his responsibilities to the persons in his jurisdiction, whether the jurisdiction is a city, country other or defined territory, is the social contract.
Ideally, the sovereign is an elected person in a democracy and is the executive of the defined territory, though early philosophers would say that it can be a monarchy, aristocracy or other leadership type as long as the laws and taxes are created and enforced for the benefit of the life, liberty and property of the governed. The sovereign(s) is also responsible for the safety of the persons residing in their jurisdictions, including external threats from other nations and internal threats from nefarious actors. The population should establish a legislative body made up of persons living in the territory that would have some authority to equal to the sovereign. Locke gives the sovereign the responsibility of settling legal disputes rather than establish a system of judges and courts and legislative body greater authority than the sovereign.
Much of this should sound familiar to any American. Executive, legislative and judicial is our system of government. And if we are honest with ourselves about it, it has worked pretty well. In 250 years we have become the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and militarily. We do have room for improvement however, and we should ever strive to improve the rights of life, liberty and property for everyone living on our soil. That is what the social contract is all about.
Where America needs improvement most is in equity of resource distribution. It is impossible to justify the economic differences between the richest and poorest members of our society. How did such a great disparity in the distribution of wealth come about? Rousseau was an advocate of direct democracy but not representative democracy. He believed that representative democracy would invite corruption. Rousseau was right. That is how the grossly unequal distribution of resources became the norm in our country. Our elected leaders have failed to uphold the social contract for the vast majority of Americans.
The social contract allows for the removal of the sovereign or even to end the social contract if the leadership fails to uphold and enforce, in good faith, the agreement. Theoretically, all persons are in the social contract voluntarily, therefore we can decide to not participate. Of course, this is really not possible, our institutions are too entrenched. Besides is a dumb idea, we are living in a great nation. We have the ability to change the nation and to bring more fairness to income and resource distribution. All we have to do is vote and vote for the right people.
I have long held the opinion that most of the inequity in America is of our own making. We complain about a lot of things the government does, but every two years we go back to polling booths and reelect the same people. I do not believe in term limits at least not through the legislative process. Term limits already exist. They are called elections. We need to quit reelecting the same people. I propose that senators be voted out of office after no more than two terms (12 years) and representatives no more than four terms (8 years); the presidency is already constitutionally limited to two terms. It should become part of our culture that elected persons should not try to over stay their welcome.
There is too much power and money in government for most ambitious people to resist. Leaving elected officials in any position for too long is inviting trouble. After a number of years they learn how to get rich and powerful as our representatives. We need to vote them out before they become too powerful. Voters have the responsibility of keeping elected officials from becoming entrenched. We need to keep fresh ideas in our government. We do that by voting responsibly. There are two parties to the social contract, those that govern and those that are governed. As the governed we also have responsibility to keep our leadership fresh and accountable to us.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (John Dalberg-Acton: 1887)
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