Thomas Hobbes, sometime tutor to Charles II of England, published his book, the Leviathan, in 1651. In this book, he gave a striking exposition of the theory of Social Contract.
Hobbes had no mind to give the theory of the origin of the State. He wrote, while the memory of the Civil War of 1642, and the King’s (Charles I) execution was still vivid, to justify the rule of the Stuarts and believed, that England could be saved only by absolute monarchy. His object was to defend the absolute power of the monarch and he used the doctrine of the Social Contract to support it.
Some critics of Hobbes have stigmatised him as a “pensioner” of the Stuarts. This is an exaggeration. Yet, it remains true that Hobbes supported and defended Stuart despotism when there was an irresistible opposition against such a power.
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He was convinced that nothing could be too high a price to pay for the preservation of order and that the best security for this was to be found in the unlimited authority of the King.
The State of Nature:
Hobbes began his thesis with the state of nature, which he characterised as the pre-social phase of human nature. The state of nature, as Hobbes described it, was a condition of unmitigated selfishness and rapacity. Men had no sense of right and wrong and they fell upon each other with savage ferocity.
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There was a perpetual and restless desire with them to satisfy their appetites and desires with a craving for gain and glory which came to an end only with their death.
Natural rights which men enjoyed in the state of nature were nothing short of might and natural liberty was nothing more than “the liberty that each man hath to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature.” They did not know pity and compassion and if ever anyone did a good act it was the result of his “love of power and delight in the exercise of it.”
From this analysis of the state of nature, Hobbes concluded that man was not at all social; indeed he found “nothing but grief in the company of his fellows”—all being almost equally selfish, self-seeking, cunning, egoistic, brutal, covetous and aggressive.
The state of nature was, thus, a condition of perpetual war “where every man is enemy to every man” and where the rule of life was “only that to be every man’s that he can get; and for so long as he can keep it.” When men in the state of nature were like hungry wolves, each ready to devour the other, their lives were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
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The Contract:
These conditions were really intolerable and could not be left to continue indefinitely Men yearned for peace and security of life and property and in a bid to escape from the misery and horrors of their natural condition, they covenanted among themselves to form a civil society or “Commonwealth” which would give to each individual person security of life and property.
They, accordingly, agreed to surrender their natural rights into the hands of a common superior and to obey his commands. The covenant was of each with all and of all with each. Each man said to every man:
“I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence.”
In this way, individuals surrendered their natural rights to some particular man or assembly of men. The person or assembly of persons to whom they surrendered their natural rights became sovereign and the covenanting individuals who agreed to submit to the authority of the sovereign became his subjects. The sovereign was not a party to the contract.
Others had made a covenant to obey him; he had made no covenant to obey them. Consequently, the sovereign did not subject himself to conditions. Hobbes maintained that only a contract binding each and all too unquestioning obedience to a sovereign could really establish a stable commonwealth.
Any introduction of ‘condition,’ in his opinion, was likely to create uncertainty and indefiniteness leading, again, to disputes incapable of a decisive settlement, and so to anarchy.
The sovereign, thus, profited from the contract without being a party to it. For the future, however arbitrary that rule might be, the people retained no ultimate right to rise against the sovereign authority. The authority of the sovereign was final and irrevocable.
Here are the highlights of Hobbes’ Social Contract:
1. It is a social contract and not a governmental contract. The sovereign is not a party to the contract, as he is the creation of the contract or, as Dunning puts it, “A superior, or sovereign, exists only by virtue of the pact, not prior to it.”
Individuals living in the state of nature, all equal, agreed with one another to give up their natural rights of doing anything that pleased them, and to possess anything that they could take and hold, to a common authority, and this common authority became by that fact their superior.
2. As the sovereign is not a party to the contract, he did not subject himself to any conditions; his authority is absolute and unlimited. All his subjects must obey him, otherwise there would be conflict, war, and a return to the wretchedness of the state of nature.
“The only way,” Hobbes said, “to erect such a common power is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of men that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voice, unto one will.”
3. The contract becomes irrevocably binding on the whole community as a perpetual social bond, for the individuals keep no rights to themselves, except the right to self- preservation. If the sovereign lost his power and conquered by another and he submitted to his authority, the subjects become the subjects of the conqueror.
“But, if he be held prisoner or have not the liberty of his body, he is not understood to have given away the right of sovereignty; and therefore his subjects are obliged to yield obedience to the magistrates formerly placed, governing not in their own name, but in his.”
4. Hobbes denied to the people the right to revolt against the authority of the sovereign. There can happen no breach to the covenant, even if his authority becomes arbitrary and despotic. In fact, the sovereign can never be wrong and his actions cannot be unjust. He cannot be justly accused by the subjects and “Whatsoever the sovereign doth is unpunishable by the subject.”
5. Law is command of the sovereign and he is the sole source of law. “Civil, law is to every subject those rules which the commonwealth hath commanded him by word, writing or other sufficient sign of the will to make use for the distinction of right and wrong.” The laws of the sovereign can never be unjust or immoral, “for the law is all the right reason we have, and is the infallible rule of moral goodness.”
6. Liberty is the gift of the sovereign in whom the will of the whole community is unified. The sovereign has “the whole power of prescribing the rules, whereby every man may know, what goods he may enjoy, and what actions he may do, without being molested by any of his fellow-subjects.”
In short, the liberty of the subjects can properly be thought of only in relation to the laws of the commonwealth. Liberty, according to Hobbes, consisted in:
(i) Whatever the sovereign has not forbidden; and
(ii) What could not, by the nature of the original pact, be given up, that is, the right of self-preservation, which cannot be surrendered. “Without injustice, therefore, the individual may, in disobedience to the sovereign’s command, refuse to kill himself, resist assault, refuse to accuse himself of an offence that would jeopardise his life, and with certain qualifications refuse to serve in the army.”
The liberty of the subjects, thus, consisted in:
(i) What the sovereign permitted; and (ii) Right of self-preservation which is retained by the people.
This is how Hobbes gave to his sovereign absolute, inalienable, indivisible and unlimited authority. Hobbes’ sovereign, so defined, need not necessarily be one man. Sovereignty may be located in an individual man and his successors (monarchy), or a group of men (aristocracy or democracy, according to the size of the group).
But his preference for monarchy is an admitted fact. Monarchy, in the opinion of Hobbes, is not the legitimate form of government, but it is the best form.
As a man, the king will be selfish like all men, but the self-indulgence of one is cheaper, he claimed, than the self- indulgence of many. “In a monarchy the private interest was the same with the public.” A king cannot be rich, glorious or secure, if his people are poor, contemptible or weak.
Since he had got at the top, all his ambition lay in strengthening the State whereas members of a democratic or aristocratic assembly are liable to be swayed by ambition to intrigue against the State in the hope of seizing power.
Their designs are a source of great danger to the community. Hobbes’ conclusion was that, “other governments were compacted by the artifice of men out of the ashes of monarchy after it had been ruined by seditions.”