Why do you think this social contract persists to this day, or if it ever did? Locke and Rousseau were theorisers. Do you really think governments, least of all the UK government, is founded on the ideas of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Even those which claim to be in some way like the US seem to be doing nothing toward these principles. So I think GP's point stands. What relevance does this social contract have when we see it is violated all the time?
>act to secure the natural rights of society.
This is obviously not the case, as evidenced by the fact that governments act against securing rights we previously held, for example censorship and invasion of privacy.
>See natural right #2 - the right to liberty
Natural rights are a funny thing - everyone claims they exist yet I see no evidence that they do (or even should), they change depending on who you ask, and various countries have their own ideas of what they mean. What you call "legitimate" is wholly based on your own opinion of it. Proudhon (whom you must be familiar with) particularly took issue with the right of property in the French republican constitution of his day. He noted that it is unlike the rights of equality and justice, too.
I'm all for theorising and implementing policy based on our philosophical investigation, but it's not clear to me that the investigation is valid, and that it has been implemented to a sufficient degree. To say our governments are based on the ideas of freedom put forth by Locke is as farcical as saying the Soviet Union was based on the ideas put forward on Socialism by Marx in his criticism of political economy.
> What relevance does this social contract have when we see it is violated all the time?
You cannot understand the notion of natural rights without understanding why they are fundamentally theologically based rights.
That doesn't necessarily mean religious theology - which is where it was rooted from ("that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" etc.). In an atheistic context, these rights can also be made unalienable by a firm societal devotion to humanism, or even just belief in the liberating power of free markets.
> What you call "legitimate" is wholly based on your own opinion of it.
Not by my opinion, but by my beliefs, and by the common beliefs of the rest of the society of which I am a part. Opinion and faith are different concepts. To have an opinion is to make a subjective judgement; to have faith is to optimistically take a risk on a productive course of action in the absence of evidence or guarantee.
What relevance does the social contract have? Society's collective faith defines our common ethics. The social contract does not only bind our government in its treatment of us; it binds us in how we treat each other, because our culture is not narrowly limited to our political beliefs but rather defines how we treat each other. Yes, it is rather laissez-faire, but it still firmly binds us to treat each other with mutual respect for our lives, our freedom, and the fruits of our labor. To reject the social contract is to be an anarchist.
> "Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind...
... after these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.
... We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.
... General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
... As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom."
>these rights can also be made unalienable by a firm societal devotion to humanism
This seems fair enough, I can understand this, but only from the point of view that if you want rights at all then you need to start somewhere, and there is no position I can see that does not involve some kind of hand wavy "that's just the way that it is", not that I am faulting you on that, but it's how I see the idea, anyway.
>the liberating power of free markets.
Heh, I needed a good laugh today :)
"We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger." -- Peter Kropotkin in The Conquest of Bread.
>The social contract does not only bind our government in its treatment of us; it binds us in how we treat each other, because our culture is not narrowly limited to our political beliefs but rather defines how we treat each other.
I'd rather have the social contract detached from government; if it must be attached then I view it as illegitimate, as illegitimate as I view the state which does not seek consent of the governed. It is material conditions that give rise to new concepts of rights, morality, justice and freedom. As Marx said, the Communist views the current bourgeois institutions of rights and morality as a facade, and behind those lurk even more bourgeois prejudices.
>To reject the social contract is to be an anarchist.
I would say, it is to be a certain kind of anarchist. The contracts we have today carry the threat of force to legitimise them; however there are contracts between friends which do not. This kind of contract is in my opinion possible at a larger scale in a stateless anarchist (non-proprietarian) society.
>Yes, it is rather laissez-faire, but it still firmly binds us to treat each other with mutual respect for our lives, our freedom, and the fruits of our labor.
Kropotkin wrote that this is exactly not the case, lamenting how the worker must surrender one third to the capitalist and middleman and one third to the state in the form of tax. The material conditions that influence the creation of these social contracts will also influence the creation of our interactions between each other.
I am no defender of the Soviet Union, but to me it is entirely possible for the USSR's conception of rights and freedoms to be just as valid as those of the US. The wall was a short sighted and silly idea in my opinion. And yet I feel as though behind Raegan lurked his own prejudices as to what rights should prevail, even if his intentions may be noble and in desire of freedom (which I don't believe so much).
It is interesting to me to see the difference between what is moral, what should be legislated, and indeed whether there is any morality and legislation at all (i.e Stirnerist egoism),
>act to secure the natural rights of society.
This is obviously not the case, as evidenced by the fact that governments act against securing rights we previously held, for example censorship and invasion of privacy.
>See natural right #2 - the right to liberty
Natural rights are a funny thing - everyone claims they exist yet I see no evidence that they do (or even should), they change depending on who you ask, and various countries have their own ideas of what they mean. What you call "legitimate" is wholly based on your own opinion of it. Proudhon (whom you must be familiar with) particularly took issue with the right of property in the French republican constitution of his day. He noted that it is unlike the rights of equality and justice, too.
I'm all for theorising and implementing policy based on our philosophical investigation, but it's not clear to me that the investigation is valid, and that it has been implemented to a sufficient degree. To say our governments are based on the ideas of freedom put forth by Locke is as farcical as saying the Soviet Union was based on the ideas put forward on Socialism by Marx in his criticism of political economy.