Critiques of Social Contract Theory: Pateman and Mills
Carole Pateman and Charles Mills: Critiques of the Social Contract
10.1 Introduction
Carole Pateman (1940-) and Charles W. Mills (1951-2021) have developed significant critiques of the social contract theory, a pivotal concept in modern political thought.
Their theories originated from political movements focused on gender and race identity politics, viewed through postcolonial and decolonizing lenses.
This chapter will explain contractualism, briefly review classical social contract theorists, and demonstrate how Pateman and Mills evaluate liberal egalitarianism against its stated ideals.
10.2 The Social Contract
Emergence: Social contract theory gained political prominence during the revolutionary periods of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in north-west Europe.
These theories were revolutionary, considered treasonous, and punishable by death.
Major theorists like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau faced repression or exile.
Key Concept: Contract
A contract is a mutual, binding agreement between two or more parties for an action to be done or not done.
It can be explicit or implicit, incurring mutual obligations.
In a commercial sense, it's an agreement for goods or services in exchange for value, with legal enforcement for non-fulfillment.
For the social contract, where legal enforcement is absent, it explains how individuals legitimately generate sovereignty and legality.
Legality and sovereignty arise from such contracts to enable and protect commercial relations of ownership and exchange.
Foundational Events: Classical theorists were influenced by the English Civil War (1642-1649), the Glorious Revolution (1688-1689), and the American Revolution (1776-1783).
These liberalizing processes extended through revolutionary wars in Europe, the Middle East, Caribbean, and anti-colonial struggles in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
Anti-authoritarian liberalization is often accompanied by considerable violence.
10.2.1 Peaceful Agreements and Equal Individuals
Premise: The social contract assumes that individuals are capable of making formal agreements, promises, and understanding incurred obligations.
Agreement-making is a social activity where individuals make autonomous declarations and fulfill obligations, involving a transfer of rights and imposition of duties.
Individual failure to fulfill obligations leads to punitive consequences; widespread non-compliance can collapse the institution of agreement-making itself.
Contracts are inherently fragile, as enforcement relies on individual coercion or authorized third parties.
These acts of agreeing, contracting, and promising define contractualism.
Power Differentials: Contractualism acknowledges significant power differences among individuals (physical, intellectual, psychological, socio-economic advantage/disadvantage, luck).
The equality presumed in contracting is abstract: the capacity to enter a contractual agreement.
Historical Context of Contracts: The practice of contract-making dates back to the third millennium BCE, formalizing gradually after the Roman Empire with commercial trading.
Monetary validity in these practices is a social construct of promising and agreeing.
Key Concept: Commercialism
Definition: A mindset that values and validates trading activities (buying/selling merchandise through contractual, monetary exchange for mutual advantage).
Exclusionary Nature: As a dominant value, it often devalues other human relationships (trust, honor, loyalty, love, kinship, charity) by linking utility to objects, objects to wealth, and wealth to security.
Philosophical Basis: It references a materialism of desires, avoidance of pain, utilitarian psychology, and a mechanical model of transactional accumulation.
Social Impact: Reinforces bodily individualism, abstracts from societal relationships, presumes competitive economic urges, and a fearful view of others.
Idealism vs. Reality: Contractualism's abstract theories reflect an idealized world of commercial stability, despite arising from widespread political intimidation and violence.
Purpose of Social Contract: Unlike commercial contracts, a social contract institutes a governing body, empowering it to maintain internal order and external defense.
Contractors are obliged to aid designated enforcers or become enforcers themselves if capable.
Political Obligation: This is a direct consequence; sovereign laws must be obeyed, and disobedience leads to punishment.
Citizen-contractors obey governments whose legitimacy stems from their own agreement to the social contract, preventing societal collapse.
Paradox: Most human societies have authoritative rules or adjudications; why then was social contract theory needed and revolutionary?
10.2.2 The People and the State
Revolutionary Context: In early modern north-west Europe, social contract theory provided a rationalization for overthrowing monarchical absolutisms (divine right of kings) and establishing constitutional governments, legitimating new institutions.
Key Concept: Sovereignty
Definition: Supreme power held by a ruler, monarch, or (in republican/constitutional systems) the state.
Legitimation: Sovereign power can be legitimated by popular ratification or consent, or deemed illegitimate through usurpation or tyranny.
Problems Solved by Social Contract:
Legitimating non-absolutist government: Justified limiting monarchy and sharing power.
Solving civil war/anarchy: Established sovereign authority through institutionalized law-making and enforcement, supported by an obligated citizenry.
**Challenges of