Social Contract Theories and their Critics: Pateman and Mills
Carole Pateman and Charles Mills: Critiques of the Social Contract
Introduction to Social Contract Critiques
Core Focus: Terrell Carver's chapter introduces major critiques of the social contract theory by Carole Pateman (b. 1940) and Charles W. Mills (b. 1951-d. 2021).
Origin of Critiques: Their theorizations arose from political movements associated with identity politics (gender, race) within postcolonial and decolonizing frameworks.
Chapter Outline: The chapter will:
Explain basic contractualism.
Briefly review classical political theorists (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau).
Demonstrate how Pateman and Mills hold liberal egalitarianism accountable to its own ideals.
The Social Contract: Foundations and Historical Context
Emergence: Social contract theory as a political force developed in revolutionary circumstances in north-west Europe during the $17^{th}$ and $18^{th}$ centuries.
Context: These theories were often considered treasonous and punishable by death, leading to repression and exile for many authors.
Major Theorists: Thomas Hobbes (Chapter 5), John Locke (Chapter 7), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chapter 9).
Key Concept: Contract:
A mutual, binding agreement between two or more parties for an action or inaction, incurring mutual obligations.
Can be explicit or implicit.
Commercial Sense: Refers to agreements for goods/services (e.g., between employees/employers, sellers/buyers) for value, with legal enforcement for non-fulfillment.
Social Contract Sense: Explains how individuals legitimately generate sovereignty and legality where formal legal enforcement is absent.
Purpose: Legality and sovereignty arise to enable and protect commercial relations of ownership and exchange.
Foundational Historical Events for Classical Theorists:
The English Civil War (1642–1649).
The Glorious Revolution (1688–1689).
The American Revolution (1776–1783).
These liberalizing processes continued through other revolutionary wars, anti-colonial struggles, national liberation wars, nation-building civil wars, and the establishment of post-Soviet states.
These processes are overwhelmingly violent, with anti-authoritarian liberalization often accompanied by considerable violence (Hampsher-Monk, 2006; James, 2001).
Peaceful Agreements and Equal Individuals
Presumption of Agreement: The social contract assumes individuals can make formal agreements (promises) and understand their resulting obligations.
Agreement is a social activity requiring autonomous declarations and full performance of obligations.
Involves a transfer of a right and a consequent imposition of a duty.
Fragility of Contracts: Individual failure to fulfill obligations can lead to punitive consequences.
Widespread non-compliance can collapse the institution of agreement-making, rendering terms like 'I agree' meaningless (Taylor, 1976).
Contracts are fragile as damaged parties must resort to coercion or authorize others to act on their behalf.
These interactions (agreeing, contracting, promising) constitute contractualism.
Power Differentials: Contractualism overtly or covertly acknowledges significant power differentials (physical, intellectual, psychological, socio-economic advantage/disadvantage, luck, or contractual success/failure) among individuals (Nozick, 2013).
Abstract Equality: The asserted equality of contracting parties is an abstract one, defined by each individual's capability to enter a contractual agreement.
This abstraction stems from concrete historical practices of contract-making and performance, formalized gradually post-Roman times with commercial trading.
Monetary validity in these practices is a social artifact of promising and agreeing (Hont, 2015).
Opposition to Commercialism: Not all individuals align their identity and values with commercialism (Scanlon, 2000).
Important human relationships (trust, honor, loyalty, love, kinship, charity) are often defined in opposition to it.
Key Concept: Commercialism:
An attitude valuing trading activities (buying/selling merchandise through contractual transactions, typically monetary and mutually advantageous).
Excludes or devalues other behaviors by linking utility to objects, objects to wealth, and wealth to security.
Philosophically, it implies a materialism of desires fulfilled by objects and pain avoidance by securing future supply.
Invokes a utilitarian psychology and moral framework, a mechanical model of transactional accumulation, reinforcing bodily individualism, competitive urges, and a fearful view of others.
Idealized vs. Reality: The abstract theories of contractualism mirror an idealized world of commercial stability (Macpherson, 2010), but this ideal arose alongside widespread political intimidation and violence.
Governing Body: Unlike commercial contracts for exchange, a social contract institutes a governing body, legitimately empowered to maintain order and defense with force.
Contractors are obliged to aid designated enforcers or be enforcers themselves.
Political Obligation: A consequence of the social contract; acts of the sovereign law-maker must be obeyed, with disobedience leading to punishment.
Citizen-contractors obey governments whose legitimacy comes from their own actions in making and fulfilling the social contract.
Paradox: Many societies have authoritative rules/adjudication, leading to stability. The unique need for social contract theory and its revolutionary nature lies in legitimating non-absolutist governments and resolving civil war/anarchy through institutionalized law-making and enforcement.
The People and the State
Overthrowing Absolutisms: Social contract theory helped rationalize and legitimate constitutional landscapes created by the overthrow of monarchical absolutisms based on divine right in early modern north-west Europe.
Key Concept: Sovereignty:
Supreme power of a ruler or monarch (physical individual).
In republican/constitutional arrangements, sovereignty refers to the power of the state, inheriting monarchical sovereignty and claiming supreme authority within a bounded territory.
Legitimation: Through popular ratification or continuing consent.
Illegitimacy: Due to usurpation or tyranny (absolute power detrimental to public good).
Social Contract as a Device: Solved two problems:
Legitimating non-absolutist government (rejecting/limiting monarchy, sharing power).
Resolving civil war and anarchy through sovereign authority, institutionalized law, and an obligated citizenry authorized by individuals.
**Problems with