The Last Social Contract, Chapter 1: Anarchy

The Last Social Contract, Chapter 1: Anarchy

"It is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known".

Thomas Hobbes, "The Leviathan"

I : Social Contract Theory

Traditionally, political philosophers have dedicated a great deal of attention to the formation of the first republics, and what existed before that. Some have tried to provide a historical account of the phenomenon, while others have dedicated themselves to mere suppositions. Many names have been used to describe the situation that existed before the first republics were created. Thomas Hobbes, the father of modern political philosophy and the first social contract theorist, has used the name “state of nature” to describe a world without republics or laws. John Rawls, the most influential political philosopher of the last century, has preferred to use the term “original position” to describe a state previous to the creation of the laws in a community.

The reason why many influential political philosophers keep going back to “the state of nature” is because most of them believe that is essential, for the construction of a political theory, to start from the very beginning, that is, the moment where the republics came into existence. Hobbes, in particular, decided to provide a description of the “state of nature” in order to illustrate the fact that a world without laws, far from being a utopia, would be a nightmare. His thesis was that, because the “state of nature” was such an undesirable situation, than any form of organized state, any republic, would be preferable. I believe that he was right on that matter. However, Hobbes, like many authors after him, made important mistakes when he described the passage from the “state of nature” to the state of laws. In this paper, I aim at correcting that account by providing one that is more accurate. I agree, nevertheless, with Hobbes on the opinion that a world of total anarchy is not desirable, and that it is paramount, in order to improve our conditions of life, for men to adopt laws and create republics. I agree with Hobbes when he states that a state of anarchy is not desirable, and that the only way to guarantee our safety, is by agreeing to create an artificial political construction, even if that means losing some of our freedoms.
In the next section, I will present a historical account of the political evolution of men which, despite not corresponding exactly to Hobbes’ theory of the social contract, nevertheless gathers the most crucial elements which are present in Hobbes’ explanation of the creation of republics.

II : Theory and Practice
 
In the dawn of mankind certainly there was a time when people lived without laws and republics, and had no organizations more complex than families. But the vulnerability of any single man, living in a similar world, is enough to explain why soon men decided to create republics. At first they weren’t more than clans and tribes, groups that lived together in order to protect themselves against powerful predators and to hunt big animals. The necessity to survive in a wild world would be enough to convince anyone to become more sociable and less solitary. A single man in a world full of predators, and potentially hostile groups of other men, would probably not survive for a long time. Especially if a man was to take a wife and to have children, the need to protect them would certainly persuade him to find the protection of a bigger group of people.

Numbers are not only important for protection, but are also convenient for other reasons. A group of people can do many things that a single individual cannot do. They can hunt big animals; they can build big and strong shelters, as well as bridges and other important works that one man alone could not; and they can make sure that one’s family is taken care of even after one’s death. These reasons were probably behind the creation of the first communities, and thus that state of perfect anarchy, the original position, was forever abandoned.

Thus, the humankind has reached a stage where men, for the most part, lived in small communities, mostly for protection and the gathering of food. In the early stages, these communities were made of hunters-gatherers, until they could master the skill of agriculture. With the constant birth of new members, the assimilation of outsiders, and the merging of different communities, it is not hard to imagine how great communities started to be formed, giving birth to the first real republics.

Even the smallest groups often feel the need to elect a leader, and the bigger the group, the greater the need for a government. In other words, at some point it is common for any group to feel the urge to establish specific functions for its members. Even a small group of hunter-gatherers would feel the need to assign its members to different tasks, such as hunting, gathering, childcare, cooking and building.

The more complex and more numerous a group is, the highest is the level of organization it needs. Probably even small communities of hunter-gatherers would develop a system of leadership. This would happen naturally, as the group’s most influential personalities asserted their innate influence over the others. Even a small group, when alone and surrounded by a potentially hostile world, needs to develop some kind of system of decision-making in order to survive. Often the natural cohesion of small groups is enough to prevent great conflicts between its members, but it is not enough to deal with the making of important decisions in an efficient way. This is why, even in small communities, it is common for one or a small number of members to be in charge of making the decisions in the name of the entire group. As communities grow in size, leadership tends to be institutionalized. And hence the first kings of men are crowned, and the first monarchies are created.

When the first sedentary agricultural communities were settled, the first cities emerged, and around them republics were built. These communities were infinitely more complex than the small hunter-gatherer communities, and thus required a much higher degree of organization. Complex societies need written laws, because of the great number of people that composed them. One cannot imagine how, in any big city, people could ever live without having written laws and courts of justice. Laws are necessary for many reasons, which derive from the cohabitation of a great number of people in the same community. Laws are necessary in order to determine who owns what, and by what right. If they did not exist, no one could be certain of what they owned, and if that were the case any type of business would become impossible to manage. If people were not granted exclusive rights to their properties, what would prevent other people from taking them away from them? And if thieves were not punished, then what would prevent people from assaulting other people in the street in order to take their possessions? Laws were created because they were, and still are, absolutely indispensable for any large community. Without rules there can be only chaos, and the greater the complexity of a Republic, the greater is the need for a set of written rules and the establishment of courts of law. The first communities were small and did not have the need for written laws and established courts of justice since, because of its small number of components, it would be unlikely for them to attack and steal from each other. In larger communities however, this is inevitable, and therefore the consequences of a lack of written laws are infinitely worse in these societies than the consequences of their absence in the primitive communities. For these reasons, the worst type of anarchy is the one that comes from the disruption of authority and laws in a republic where both once existed. This is what people experience when they have the misfortune of inhabiting the territory of a republic that, for some reason, ceases to be guided by one authority or whose laws cease to be applied. In those cases—which are usually brought about by civil wars—man becomes the wolf of man, a process which can only be reversed when authority is re-established.

III : International Anarchy, are we still in the State of Nature?

We live in a world which is divided in Republics. Each of those Republics is guided by a central leadership, and has a set of written rules. Therefore, when living inside of one of those republics, one can affirm that he lives in a state of order. And this is true as long as he doesn’t look at the world around him, outside the borders of his republic. Because if he did, he would see that he still lived in a state of anarchy, albeit of another kind. Men exist in a state of anarchy because there is no leadership common to all, and there isn’t a single republic, but many. There is no set of rules that apply to all men, but only sets of rules that apply to specific republics. Amongst republics, there is no law except for the law of the strongest. There is no judge capable of settling the conflicts between countries; these are only settled by the clash of armies. If a strong republic decides to invade a weak Republic, to steal its land, its goods, or to enslave its people, then it does and it is not punished for what it has done. The citizens of a republic can only be safe if they have a powerful army protecting them, and even then, there is no guarantee of success against any invasion or attack since it has happened many times in history that a number of republics have joined forces to destroy an otherwise stronger enemy.

So is anyone safe in the world we live in? The twentieth century has demonstrated that the Anarchy of Nations can be as dangerous as any other kind of anarchy. The First World War was responsible for millions of deaths, and an incredible level of destruction in the European Continent. That war has devastated the European Continent from 1914 to 1918. It was then followed by an even worst conflict, the Second World War, which lasted from 1939 to 1945 and was responsible for the greatest atrocities ever committed by men against men in our history. The Second World War generated six years of incommensurable destruction in Europe, Africa and Asia, also dragging into the conflict nations from America and Oceania. It was followed by the Cold War, an arms race between the world’s two superpowers, and only by miracle did not evolve into a world-wide nuclear war. With more and more nations acquiring nuclear capability, the rise of communist China, and the revival of Russia, is there much hope that we will not see a global nuclear war happening in this century or the next?

It is not my intention to incite fear into the readers of this text but to assert the thesis that there are several kinds of anarchy, and that none of them is optimal. Throughout history we managed to greatly reduce the degree of anarchy in the world, and by doing so we have been able to acquire comfort, progress, wealth and safety. In return, we had to sacrifice certain freedoms. However, we have not yet achieved a state where we can say that the Human Race has left the stage of political anarchy. We are still confined to the Anarchy of Nations, which is a threat to our very survival as a race, as we make quick and substantial advances in military technology, particularly in the department of weapons of mass destruction. It is therefore convenient to find a solution that allows us to abandon the dangerous state of anarchy we find ourselves in, and thus complete our political evolution from a state of anarchy to a state of order. Our very survival depends on it.