Is government the problem or the solution: Rousseau v Hobbes.

There is an ongoing dispute in political theory between the followers of Jean Jacques Rousseau and those of Thomas Hobbes.    

Rousseau begins The Social Contract with “Man  is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”  He argued that  in the state of nature man has liberty and equality. But private property, social hierarchies, inequality, and cultural institutions have lead to the moral degradation of humanity.  Life in the state of nature was ideal, where each man took care of himself, but man has been corrupted and enslaved by civilization. Governments should respond not to elitists, but to common people, who are closer to the state of nature and therefore better able to discern the “general will.”

During the French Revolution common people followed that “general will” and used guillotines  to decapitate the nobles.  Within five years the same guillotines were decapitating the leaders of the revolution themselves.  So much for the wisdom of the common people.

Thomas Hobbes, in contrast, saw life in the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Men institute governments to protect themselves from the baser violence of some of their number, each giving up the freedom to coerce others for the freedom from coercion by others. Government and civilization are good things.

I resolved the dispute based on a short trip I took back to the state of nature.

We were on a family photo safari half way across the Serengeti: me, my wife, my four kids, my brother and sister in law, my four nieces and nephews, twelve in all, with three African guides in three Land Rovers. We had stopped for lunch.  I had walked to our perimeter.  And I looked out onto the wild, foreboding terrain. “What would I do,” I asked, “If our guides drove off in our Land Rovers and left us in this state of nature?”

You can take a moment to think about it — but my answer was immediate and obvious: find a weapon — a stick, a stone, a bone, anything to defend myself and my family against the night. And then, just as quickly, my next thought:  we must get organized. We have a better chance to survive if we all work together — if we form a government! Separately we will all die, working together we have a chance.

I’m with Hobbes. I prefer government and civilization over the state of nature with each man on his own.