I. Introduction
In a society where every man is his own representative, a question we must ask is what gives the state power, and whether that power is truly justified. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argued that the power given to the Sovereign, the highest organizer of the human society, is not only justified, but also necessary and imperative. In this paper, I intend to make Hobbes’ social contract theory in Leviathan stronger and more complete by proposing three negative consequences (the inevitable tyranny, majority rules, and irreversibility of joining the Commonwealth) that are inevitably derived from the current theory, and then fixing them with slight and specific modifications of the theory. I will start by filling the readers in with the context of Hobbes’ social contract theory, and then proceed to my arguments.
II. Context
To see what type of social contract there needs to be, there are three components that have to be analyzed, namingly subjective conditions (what the contractors are like), objective conditions (what the surroundings of the contractors are like), and the reasoning processes (how the contractors would reason under these circumstances). In Leviathan, Hobbes clearly elaborated these three components. He claimed that the subjective condition is that men are psychological egoists, the reasoning process is just a simple desire to maximize their own interest. The objective condition is what is called “moderate scarcity”, meaning that the supply of necessities is neither too scarce, nor abundant. That is a very reasonable assumption, because in extreme scarcity a society would not be functioning, and in abundance no society is needed, because there will be no competition or debate among people, and hence no protection or ruler of justice is needed.
Let us assume Hobbes has accurately described the subjective and objective conditions. He then proceeded to define a Sovereign, which is a person or body of persons who:
has been given the right of governing through the social contract. (Lev. ch. 17, par. 13).
has the three “marks” of sovereignty, namely, control of the military, ability to raise money, and control of religious doctrines. (Lev. ch. 18, par. 16).
Hobbes claims that such a Sovereign may justly make decisions for each contractor that enters into the contract, and that the command of the Sovereign may not be refused unless it is for the self-preservation purpose of the contractors.
If we accept the social contract theory as it is right now, there follows three undesirable consequences. I will list all of them and offer fixes accordingly in the next section.
III. Consequences and Fixes
The first negative consequence for accepting the current social contract theory is that there is no way people could prevent the Sovereign from becoming tyranny.
According to Hobbes, “it is annexed to the sovereignty to be judge of what opinions and doctrines are averse, and what conducing to peace” (Hobbes 13), and he also used the example of a sovereign prince who put to death an innocent subject, Uriah. He claimed that it was not an injury to Uriah, but to God, because the right to do what he pleased was given to him by Uriah himself. With the current theory, that seems like the correct analysis, except how could the contract had been made in such a way that it does not prevent the Sovereign from committing an act such as killing the innocent? With Hobbes’ assumption about subjective condition, it is natural to think of the Sovereign, whether he stands for Commonwealth by acquisition (“as when a man maketh his children to submit themselves… or by war subdueth his enemies to his will…”, Hobbes), or Commonwealth by Institution (“when men agree amongst the,selves to submit to some man”, Hobbes), as a psychological egoist that uses his power to exploit the people. Since by Hobbes definition, Sovereign also has “control of the military, ability to raise money, and control of religious doctrines”, having a Sovereign as it is now can be disastrous, as there would be no way to stop the tyranny. Admittedly, men could put in the contract explicitly that tyranny is not allowed, but that is a vacuous fix, since it is quite obvious that no one enters the contract thinking that tyranny is acceptable, and the Sovereign also knows that contractors expect no tyranny. There is still nothing contractors can do if Sovereign decided to commit the act of tyranny in the name of justice.
One of the fixes for this is to always add into the social contract that changes are allowed, in the way that people are always able to decide on a different enforcer than the Sovereign, and the military should always stand behind the people. This allowance for changes has no influence on the current formation of the social contract theory, except that it makes the act of the sovereign more virtue-based, because he knows that even from a psychological egoist point of view, it is more in his self-interest to benefit the people and strive for peace, otherwise he will lose the powerful position. Note that we are not explicitly adding the concept of “revolution” into the reasoning process of contractors or objective condition, the difference between the change that we made and preach of revolution is that people need not know that they are capable of replacing the Sovereign. The condition we added limits merely the Sovereign, as it steers his own benefits into being a good ruler.
The second potential consequence from the current way of selecting such a sovereign is that majorities will inevitably rule over minorities. Adolf Hitler, the head of not only military power but also incarnation of believes, was pushed onto the top as the Sovereign. He was not only a selected leader but a spiritual Sovereign, in the sense that he brainwashed so many contractors into committing atrocious acts against the minority. If such inhuman part of history could had been avoided, assuming that each Nazi, being a psychological egoist, was to be anti-Semitic no matter how educated they were, the only possibility is that the Jewish population was large and powerful enough to resist, and as we discussed in the last paragraph, gain the position of a new Sovereign. However, the way the “political commonwealth” (Hobbes, Chapter XVII) comes to existence deprives us of this only possibility. The same reasoning applies to countless other wrongful rulers in the human history. How should we fix that from an entirely theoretical viewpoint, not speaking of parliament or Congress?
I think the fix exists in the way the sovereign is selected and preserved. Majority rules does not work, because it results in the irreversibility of a wrongful enforcer. Even with the assumption we had from the last section that revolutions are allowed and encouraged to happen in such situation, majority-rules deprives the very possibility of any revolution. Instead, a sovereign should be a body of men, each one selected from one group of men with a specific but different viewpoint, no matter how many people they each stand for. And every man in the body of Sovereign is to be granted equal power. This fix modified the definition of Sovereign in the social contract theory from “a man or a body of men”, to only “a body of men”. This fixes the current situation of majority rule, because voices from the minorities will be heard and equally represented.
The first objection I expect from my reader is that just because majority rule “does not work”, it does not mean it is not justified, since it is tempting to think that achieving the goal of the majority is a more desirable outcome. The justification for abolishing the majority rules exists in purpose of having a Sovereign from the first place. Imagine a scenario of moderate scarcity and two groups of psychological egoists of different size, the reasonable thing to do, with the military power and religious doctrine clearly inclined to the side with more men, is to get rid of the other side and enjoy all their resources. And that would inevitable bring a state of war that is indefinitely long, since majority-rules always stands, and majority always exist with respect to minority. Hence if stability and peace is regarded as the ultimate goal, not only in a utilitarian sense but also in the recognition that it the most humanitarian goal to have, we need the minority to equally powerful and equally heard as the majority.
Another potential objection is that Hobbes assumed that everybody was equal, and hence the concept of majority and minority is not valid. The caveat here is that majority and minority is not an objective concept. A big group of people can be arbitrarily formed for the sake of taking resources, hence called “majority”, and the rest of men minority. Just because everybody is equal, it is not implied that majority cannot exist. Once it exists, a state of war will inevitably happen without our fix that specifies the necessity of equal representation in the Sovereign.
The last possible negative consequence I propose concerns the liberty [1]of the contractors. The last consequence is that under Hobbes’ Sovereign, no one has the liberty to leave the Sovereign’s authority. Hobbes only considered why one would and what happens after one enters the contract, but not what happens if a man wants to leave the contract, or is born into a society where the contract has already been formed. All over the world, once a party has gained power, it has power over the education of its people. Brainwashing inevitably happens for the stability of its ruling. When a person’s intrinsic value is the opposite of what is being preached, the man should be able to leave the Sovereign, hence he is not only no longer ruled, but also no longer protected. Such option, though may not be the most ideal, is necessary to be on the social contract. The fix for this is to add into the social contract a right to declare the departure from the Sovereign, in such departure incorporated nothing more than a gain of absolute freedom[2] and a loss of protection.
Now we should examine this option with the assumption of Hobbes, which is that every man is a psychological egoist. There are certainly consequences for quitting the system, because there is no longer protection over his head or his property, but he then gains the liberty again, meaning that there is no obstacle to anything he does, and he has right to everything. This would not harm the stability of the Sovereign that is still functioning, because one person cannot bring the state of war, and peace and conservation of people in the state still holds. The Sovereign, no longer protecting the person who left the state, may declare war on him and only him if he harms the state in anyway. But this declaration of war is not a punishment, but a self-protection, since the state no longer has power over him. This fix has therefore taken care of the unwillingness of the contractor with the current social contract theory.
IV. Significance and conclusion
In short, we can see that the social contract theory becomes stronger if we add a moderate amount of emphasize on the power of the replaceable nature of the Sovereign which weakens its power by a great factor, a slight change of formation of the Sovereign and a clear rule that one may quit the Sovereign. Even though in this paper, we have taken psychological egoism and moderate scarcity for assumptions, this social contract model we strengthened may also apply to the real world very well, because the logic does not change --- if we need an enforcer, a Sovereign, a state, it should have its right to control only based on the consent of people, and that people may willingly form group, but each group should be equally represented.
For future research, the question that needs to be asked promptly is whether the social contract model is inevitably the only solution for human to leave the state of war. Even if we are to assume psychological egoism, it seems that there is still a possibility of stability in men each with equal power. It is open to future investigation why the social contract model is irreplaceable.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my friend Justin Kurr for the help he offered and the objections he held after he read my paper. I would also like to thank my instructor Amelia and Professor Gray for all the thought provoking discussion about liberty and Hobbes. Without them I could not have had the insight to complete this paper.
Reference
Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679. (1968). Leviathan. Baltimore :Penguin Books,
[1] I adopt Hobbes’ definition of liberty, which is a lack of impediment of motion.
[2] Freedom defines a state in which one is capable of doing according to his or her own wishes without any external obligations.
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