Consent Instead of Command
The liberal state rests on consent. Authority is legitimate because citizens would have agreed to it.
| Thinker | State of nature | The contract yields | Right of resistance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobbes | War of all against all | An absolute sovereign | None |
| Locke | Governed by natural law | Limited government in trust | Yes, if trust is broken |
| Rousseau | Free, corrupted by society | Sovereignty of general will | People remain sovereign |
Every contract is hypothetical. Nobody signed anything. It serves as a test of institutions, not a historical event.
Liberalism vs Democracy
This distinction is often collapsed. Liberalism constrains power. Democracy distributes it.
The nineteenth-century liberal state restricted the franchise to propertied men. In Britain before 1832, the electorate was under 5% of adults. Even after the Second Reform Act of 1867, it included no women.
The Sexual Contract
Carole Pateman argued that classic theorists did not simply forget women. Instead, the social contract required a prior domestic agreement.
The contracting individuals were male household heads. Women were subjects of the settlement rather than parties to it.
- Theorists placed the family explicitly outside the contract.
- The theoretical individual was defined by property and independence.
- The exclusion was structural rather than incidental.
Common pitfall: treating early exclusions as simple oversights. The public-private division remains load-bearing within the theory.