The Social Contract

1 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Thomas Hobbes lived from 1588 to 1679, and John Locke lived from 1632 to 1704. Both were English and lived primarily in England, but both also left England and lived in exile for certain periods of time fearing the pos- sible repercussions of their political ideas and associations. According to Ramon Lemos, Hobbes was ‘the first postrenaissance philosopher to present an original and comprehensive system of political philosophy’ (1978: 3). This was a theory of the social contract, a theory of rational individuals creating a rational government, a government not based on class. Hobbes’s social contract theory became very important, but its impor- tance was soon eclipsed by the later social contract theory of John Locke. Locke’s version of the theory was influenced by Hobbes but was different in crucial ways, and Locke’s version was much more amenable to the Europe of his time. As a result, in the words of Peter Laslett, he helped ‘to change the philosophical and political assumptions of humanity’ (1960: 16). As John Dunn has observed, Locke’s career ‘ended in an extra- ordinary eminence’. It left him in his own lifetime as one of the luminaries of the European intel- lectual scene and, after his death, as the symbolic forerunner and philosophical foundation of the Enlightenment and of what has become fashionable to call the Age of the Democratic Revolution. (1969, 11) Locke built on Hobbes to create a political vision, a vision of individualist government. And both Hobbes and Locke assumed in their theories an image of wilderness America; a place of ‘natural’ individuals (Indians) and thus of new beginnings. Hobbes began and Locke defined the basic individualist conception, and this conception always included the idea of a wilderness frontier. Agrarian civil society The basic individualist idea was that rational individuals would compete for private property in a context of equal laws. A limited, democratic The Social Contract 19 government would enforce those laws and protect private contracts, the basis for market exchange. Government would otherwise remain minimal and passive, with no dominant power to enforce sacred rules, tradition, or morality. Social order would be based on market relations, and this would be a civil, not a sacred, social order. No sacred tradition or morality would be necessary because the market laws of supply and demand would create a good society, a society of freedom and equality. This was the vision of the early individualists, a vision from within European feudal agriculture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Essentially this was a vision of letting everyone own land and work that land, a vision of owner-workers, independent agrarians. Neither Locke nor Smith foresaw the rise of industry, although their individualist ideas soon led to the rise of industry. They thought market relations would lead to a good society, a civil society, but only if all individuals could own and work their own private property, their own land. In the later eighteenth century, Smith began to see a rising group of ‘merchants and manufacturers’, in his words, as opposed to independent farmers. This would mean a structural division between owners and workers, and this, Smith thought, would undermine any possibility of a civil, just market. He assumed, that is, along with Locke and Jefferson, that the market could only be civil in a context of agrarian owner- workers. He also assumed, as Jefferson clearly states, that all individuals can only be agrarian owner-workers as long as there is free wilderness land. In 1787, Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison: I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in America. When they get piled up upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. (1903: 392) Jefferson lived from 1743 to 1826. He saw the early beginnings of industry, and he thought an urban structure of owners and workers could not be compatible with civility. This perspective was also shared by other founding Americans, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and George Washington. Civil society, in their view, required agrarian owner- workers, and this required endless free land. As a consequence, many proposals were made in early America to restrict the amount of land an individual could own so all individuals would always have a chance to own and work land. This was the original individualist idea of equal opportunity – the equal opportunity to become an owner of property, specifically land. If everyone can be an owner of property, then everyone will be equal. Everyone can be an owner-worker, and no one will have to be only a worker. In this book I will call this real equal opportunity, the original idea of equal opportunity. This idea of equal opportunity requires endless free land, an open frontier. In our modern industrial society there is no longer an equal opportunity for all individuals to claim and own real property, such as land. Today we tend to understand equal opportunity as the equal 20 The Wild West opportunity to get a job, that is, to become a worker. This is a necessary industrial adjustment of the legitimating market idea of equal opportunity, but it is not the idea of the early individualists. For them, market relations could only be civil and just in a context of real equal opportunity, a context of endless free land. In a context of real equal opportunity, such as an agrarian frontier, everyone can be an owner-worker, which means everyone can be structurally equal. In an urban, industrial context owners and workers are structurally unequal. Workers must work for owners – sell their labor – in order to live, so owners have far more structural power than workers, who are structurally dependent. Owners can make money from their property (land, factories, patents, minerals, etc.), while workers can only make money from their labor. Further, the labor of the workers helps make the owners richer, while the workers generally have little chance to get rich. In an industrial city a class of owners can essentially monopolize all the productive property, all the factories, machines, railroads, etc. Everyone, then, who is not an owner must be a worker. Industry creates class monopolies and thus a structural inequality between owners and workers. The frontier, however, prevents class monopolies. If free wilderness land is available to everyone, no class monopolies of property can exist. No matter how rich some people get, all other people always have a chance to claim and own productive property (land). This is why Jefferson saw free western land as necessary for civil society, and why the cowboy myth sees the western frontier as the basis for justice and decency. The early individualists argued for legal equality, where everyone has an equal legal right to own private property – equal legal opportunity. They argued for this equality to end the legal class inequality of feudal society, where aristocrats had exclusive legal rights to own land. But the early individualists also assumed that the legal equality of private property would also imply structural equality, a context of agrarian owner-workers. That is, they also assumed endless free land where no class monopolies could exist. They thought legal equality with private property (equal opportunity) would create civil society because all individuals could become structurally equal. Their market institutions, however, including legal equality, soon led to urban industry and structural inequality – owners and workers. In our modern industrial market, then, we have legal equality with structural inequality, and this contradicts the original individualist vision. The implicit image of an endless agrarian frontier – real equal opportunity – was essentially an individualist fantasy, a civil market hope. This theoretical fantasy, however, justified individualist ideas and market relations. It also generated a legitimating individualist myth, a myth of market origin, the myth of the Wild West. The individualists did not argue for economic equality – equal individual wealth – as Karl Marx would, for example, in the nineteenth century. Some could be richer than others, in their view, because some would be The Social Contract 21 better, or luckier, at market competition. They did think, however, that everyone should have an equal opportunity to claim and own productive property, such as land. They worried about class monopolies and structural inequality, issues of feudalism and the cities. The legitimating individualist vision, then, the vision of civil society, was always a frontier fantasy, and this vision created urban industry. This is what the cowboy myth portrays through its imagery of the West and the East. The frontier West can be civil and just if greedy, corrupt villains, usually from the East, can be defeated. The West offers real equal opportunity while the urban East does not. This implicit frontier fantasy is clear in the myth, and market culture in general, particularly American culture, has generally romanticized agrarian life. Small family farms and rural communities are typically seen as more humane and fulfilling than industrial cities and corporate factories. This romantic, pastoral image is inherent in individualism, as Jefferson remarks and the cowboy remembers. Heroes Individualism is essentially the assertion that all individuals are ‘naturally’ equal. If all individuals are ‘naturally’ rational, in a rational uni- verse, then they are also ‘naturally’ equal. They are ‘naturally’ equal, that is, in the sense that no ‘natural’ reasons exist – no reasons derived from Nature – to justify traditional class privilege. All rational individuals should have equal opportunity – legal equality.

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