hey guys this is a part one video looking at the claim of the legitimacy of the social contract which is supposedly an implicit agreement among members of society for social benefits for example giving up some individual liberties for state protection is that legitimate is there such a thing as a real social contract and did we all agree to it did we all sign our names to it so this is part one let me know what you think at the end of the video and let me know if you want me to do a part two [Music] so [Music] nothing is more useful to the state than the notion that its rule is justified as governments cannot forever rule by force alone it's expedient for them if their subject sense an era of legitimacy about the prevailing political authority prudent governments and their champion intellectuals tell a story of how those in power acquired the right to coerce and how subjects inherited a duty to submit for centuries in the west this story was the divine right of kings god had personally sanctioned the dominion of the monarch and made him unquestionable by subjects of any class this story was eventually supplanted with the more secular origin story of the social contract though originally conceived as a defensive english royal rule with the disposal of autocratic kings versions of this theory have become the prevailing justification for democratic and republican governments because acceptance of this story is so prevalent it must be investigated first whether it ever occurred and second if this is a proper justification for a government's monopoly on the legitimate use of violent force the story starts with a state of nature a time prior to the conception of political authority and one of total freedom thomas hobbs famously characterized life in this time as solitary poor nasty brutish and short due to each man's tendency to quarrel and competition over resources to secure his survival and for prideful glory it is a state of war of every man against every man strangely enough hobbes came to this conclusion watching men who never lived in a state of nature killing each other to control an already established political machinery during the events of the english civil war the irony was lost on him as individuals become dissatisfied with this constant warring in nature they seek to contract with one another in order that they may secure their persons and their property and to quote confer all their power and strength upon one man this contract is made by covenant of every man with every man each explicitly surrendering his rights to one man or group of men and voila legitimate political authority has been born john locke on the other hand imagined the state of nature differently instead of being a time of endless quarrel and misery it was actually one governed by reason and without subordination or subjection just as hobbes does though locke explains that eventually all individuals wish to abandon the absolute liberty of the state of nature for the security of civil society the only way this liberty can be surrendered by any individual quote is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable safe and peaceable living amongst one another under the political authority of the majority in both hobbs and locke's stories the sovereign whether it be a single man or a group of men can only become legitimate by consent not of the sovereign to be which does not yet have authority to say otherwise is to beg the question but of each individual who is to be party to the contract consider how unlikely it must be in the lineage of any government that there was a transitional moment where all men living in a state entirely absent of political authority agreed to forsake their natural liberty and equality with no dissenting voices and no forced agreement to terms while some point to hobbes and loch as originators of methodological individualism where phenomenon are explained by how they result from the actions of individual agents the two actually take a holistic approach only occasionally disguised in individualistic language the fact that no hypothetical individuals are ever mentioned in the story as acting in any way other than the way each other individual is acting suggests that men act uniformly and as a whole how strange it is particularly for hobbs that there was only consensus and unanimity over the social contract among the men who are so naturally quarrelsome and trifling in every other aspect of their lives one of the first skeptics of the story of the social contract was david hume who questioned its historical accuracy consent of the governed would be a just birth of political authority he argued but this is not how existing governments had been born if hobbes and locke looked at the world they would meet with nothing that in the least corresponds to their ideas indeed most states as far as we can trace have been founded originally either on usurpation or conquest or both without any pretense of a fair consent or voluntary subjection of the people franz oppenheimer described the state arising from economically productive agrarian societies being raided by tribes of hunters or herders these tribes were originally concerned only with occasional looting but it begins to dawn on the consciousness of the wild herdsmen that a murdered peasant can no longer plow and that a fruit tree hacked down will no longer bear fruit in his own interest then whenever it's possible he lets the peasant live in the tree stand when the raiders learn that conquest is more productive than simple total looting the state is born and it begins to collect the agricultural surplus as tribute countless examples vikings huns tartars turks mongols can be provided of invading tribes amassing economic and eventually political power through dominion over stationary societies both hobbes and locke however failed to give a single sufficient example of men voluntarily exiting the state of nature to join a political society locke offers to us stories of the foundation of venice and rome where several men free and independent of one another amongst whom there was no natural superiority or subjection came together to form a new political structure but these cases are not particularly telling since they involve not the foundation of a state by people who till then had no experience of the political but the foundation of a new state by exiles from an old one maybe unaware of the feebleness of the argument that political order was established instantaneously from a state of nature block also gives a gradualist anthropological account that does not rely on absurd historical pretensions but even this is without historical reference because both hobbs and loch failed to place their fingers on a single instance in which humans lived in a state of nature the historical credibility of social contracts is dubious at best and likely to be outright false even if the theory of the social contract properly justifies governments that arise contractually from the state of nature it is most certainly the case that none of the nation states today were born this way as cody wilson put it when he interrupted a tame documentary about the technology of 3d printing to inject his usual potent political bulimic every king is a despot every sovereignty every asserted power every superstructure and political structure ever was built on a fundamental crime and for us to say like well we all came together at some point in the past and we all kind of consented and agreed and this is the way it is no everything is built on these unjustifiable acts and usurpations of power and we initially obscure that to ourselves to pretend well it's a system and we're all participating no that's a slave morality you're just trying to justify why you live in an unjust world guys this is just part one if you want to hear more about this social contract leave your thoughts in the comments section below and stay tuned for part two i'll see you guys in the next video if you want to take a look at how the theory of the social contract is possibly answered by the fact of mass psychosis take a look at this video right here i did a couple months ago called mass psychosis one thing is for sure no people will tamely surrender their liberties nor can any be easily subdued when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved on the contrary when people are universally ignorant and debauched in their manners they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders thanks for watching this video if you haven't done so already subscribe to this channel hit the bell notification icon give it a thumbs up and share it with everybody you know i'll see you guys in the next video [Music] you