Trump and The Social Contract in the Western World

        The Trump Presidency has made me, for one, an ordinary citizen in the far end of the world (not so far if you count the social network) very concerned about what is happening in the (dis) United States of America. With all the news and 'fake news' that has been going about, I have been having a dialogue with some good friends about what democracy and the Social Contract means to me, the ordinary citizen. We do not learn this in class but we experience it in daily life through experiences and from what we have experienced living in a democracy or a socialist democracy.

         I watched videos on Stephen Bannon, who explained through his his town meetings with the Tea Party (centre right) groups, is alarmed that the US is on the path to a sorry end, and what, if they (Trump and his team) were elected, they would do. He mentioned the phrase Crito Contract, which led me to reading up on it. Its available on the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

        

          In the early days of the Greek democracy some 2000 odd years ago, Socrates argued that Crito, a Greek citizen, who had committed a crime and was sentenced to death, had to serve out that crime as he was a domicile, hence a resident of Greece, hence he had to accept the laws of Greece rather than to escape and flee, thereby breaking the contract.            

         The theory is of the view that a person's moral and political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement (this is never formally discussed, you just assimilate into it, by virtue of your birth into that society) among them to form the society in which they live.  In the social contract, a  person living in a society has to obey laws in exchange for others in the same society to obey these laws. So just and equal men and women subject themselves to the convention of justice and the power (the state or the monarch) will dispense justice to those who break the law. 

          Thomas Hobbes, a latter day thinker, lived during the period of the English Civil War, from 1642 - 1648. The Monarchists then, preferred living under the authority of a monarch clashed with the Parliamentarians led by Oliver Cromwell. The present day USA is a breakaway faction of those Parliamentarians who fled to seek life anew in the New World. Hobbes rejects the early democratic view, that power ought to be shared between Parliament and the King.He also rejects Robert Filmer's view that the king's power and authority was invested in him by God (Judeo Christian) and such authority was absolute, no one could ever question the decision of the king. 

        The basis of political obligation lay in our obligation to obey God absolutely and through His divine investment in the King and / or Queen of the day. Then, according to this view, this political obligation is subsumed under religious obligation.

         That obligation has in the last several centuries had a major paradigm shift  with the numerous revolutions, the French Revolution being the most celebrated. While living under a sovereign (in the past) can be harsh, with the sovereign having the authority for the execution of the contract to be successful, it was better than anarchy and having people follow the universal laws of human nature. This State of Nature states that human beings are selfish and motivated their better our own situations and satisfy as many of their own (family and tribal groups) individually considered desires  as possible. So self interest (at the expense of others) is the main driving factor of each human individual. As these will ultimately result in conflict (living in close proximity as in society), a human being living in a society will have to give up or subjugate some of his desires as with other individuals in that society for safety and fairness, in short, justice for all.

       A good example of the State of Nature is exemplified in the hit TV series "the Walking Dead" where rival groups of human beings survive the nuclear holocaust and have to make "rules" and fight against other groups in a sordid post apocalyptic world with 'zombies' as backdrops. 

       Thomas Hobbes believed that the State of Nature would be very brutal and given the nature of man to be first and foremost naturally and exclusively self interested, man is more or less equal to one another. Given the limited resources each person has or accumulates in a group, there is no power able to force men (and women) to cooperate. However, as men (and women) have the ability to reason, empathise and rationalise, a reasonable conclusion is that over time, man has decided to submit himself to a higher, political, authority who would oversee the state of society.   

      

Houses of Parliament and the Thames River

     So what does President Trump want to do ? According to his chief strategist Dr. Stephen Bannon, the Crito Contract has been changed in the last few decades for the American peoples. I disagree. It has nothing to do with the Crito contract. In essence, it should be redressing the economic imbalance between the haves and the have-nots in society to create a fairer, more just a society.