Social Contract: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau

Why Do We Need the State?

The theory of the social contract answers a question that seems childish, but is actually fundamental: why should I obey the state? The state forces me to pay taxes, serve in the army, live by laws I did not choose. On what grounds?

The answer of contractualism: the state is legitimate because it is rational to consent to it. Three great contractualists—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau—gave different answers to the questions of what the “natural” person is before the state and under what terms it is reasonable to agree to political authority.

Thomas Hobbes: War of All Against All

Hobbes in “Leviathan” (1651) describes the “state of nature”—life without the state—as a war “of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). Man is a creature driven by fear of death and desire for power. Without coercion, no one keeps agreements. Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

From this state, rational people emerge through the social contract: each transfers their natural rights to a sovereign (the state) in exchange for security. The sovereign receives absolute power—he is not bound by the contract, because he is not a party to it. The sovereign can do anything except one thing: threaten the life of a subject (for security is the sole basis of the contract).

Hobbes creates a theoretical foundation for authoritarianism: if the choice is between anarchy and tyranny, a rational person chooses tyranny.

John Locke: Limited Government and Rights

Locke in “Two Treatises of Government” (1689) constructs an entirely different concept. His state of nature is not war, but peace (on the whole): people are guided by natural law, which forbids murder, theft, infringement of natural rights. The problem of the state of nature is not the absence of moral norms, but the lack of an impartial judge to resolve disputes.

Locke’s natural rights: life, liberty, property. They precede the state and limit it. The state is created to protect these rights—and is legitimate only so long as it fulfills this function. If the government violates the rights of citizens, the people have the right to revolution.

This is the theoretical basis of liberal democracy and the American Declaration of Independence (“life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”—a paraphrase of Locke). The government is an agent of the people, not a sovereign over them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: General Will and Popular Sovereignty

Rousseau in “The Social Contract” (1762) begins famously: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” The problem is not in human nature (which is good), but in social institutions, which distort it.

Rousseau’s key concept is the general will (volonté générale): the will of the whole community, directed towards the common good. This is not simply the sum of private wills (which Rousseau calls the “will of all”). General will is what anyone would want if he abstracted from private interests and thought as a citizen.

A paradoxical consequence: “Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be compelled to do so by the whole society; this means only that he will be forced to be free.” This sounds threatening—and indeed, tomorrow it became the ideological basis for the Jacobin terror. Rousseau created democratic idealism that can easily turn into totalitarian practice.