Social Contract

[PigmerikanMao]

Does theory of the social contract fit in with communist revolution, being that national governments faceing a peoples war have not done the job of protecting the people from exploitation, or is it bull crap?

[spartan]

I suppose it is something that we can use in our propaganda where we can say that the politicians who swore to represent us blah blah have failed and thus must be overthrown etc.

[JazzRemington]

We studied social contract in a political science class I had. Worst. Theory. Ever.

[RGacky3]

its a theory trying to explain a historical phenominon, but trying to explain it philisophically, which is rediculous because historically power and authority did'nt come about that way, it came through force, it never came about through a mutual understanding, and also the so called 'State of Nature' Historically was never the way the Social Contract was described. The Social Contract is like trying to use apriori philosophy to explain where my car keys are :P, it does'nt work.

[MarxSchmarx]

it is something that we can use in our propaganda

Indeed. The Anglo-American philosopher Michael Otsuka (http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio/) probably comes closest to articulating a social-contract based classless/stateless society.Actually one of these days I had hoped to start a thread about this guy.


However, as an idea, the social contract theory is just so divorced from reality I can't see what good it really does us, again apart from propaganda in some circles.