Mondays with Murray: Rothbard on the "Social Contract"

December 23, 2013 Jason Grimley

Advocates of state intervention have a few tools in their rhetorical arsenal that they will often toss out when faced with a common dilemma: their inability to logically refute liberty and free market arguments often made by libertarians. Once they hit the logical wall, it's time for the next best thing: straw men and logical fallacies! A few common slams heard by the libertarian include "Why don't you just move to Somalia then??" and "Did you cash your check from the Koch Brothers yet?".And then, of course, comes the favorite. The be-all-end-all, no-way-those-pesky-libertarians-can-refute-this-one argument: "The Social Contract!" This refers to some sort of unspoken pact that all humankind shares, despite having never agreed to such a pact, that binds all of humanity together and can justify any sort of collective violence and trampling of individual rights that a Card Carrying Statist can dream up.As anyone who's happened upon this weekly column might imagine, Murray Rothbard was none too impressed with the "Social Contract" argument. He addresses this in his classic, must-read essay, Anatomy of the State:

The State has never been created by a "social contract"; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute. [6] One method of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: in the hills of southern "Ruritania," a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself "King of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania"; and, if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a new State has joined the "family of nations," and the former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm.

The social contract is illogical on many levels. Firstly, it completely flies in the face of the definition of a "contract" i.e. a voluntary agreement of terms between individuals or groups of individuals. Does anyone else remember signing this social contract?Even in the case where there is a loose "contract" of sorts, say in the case of the U.S. Constitution, this "contract" was only signed by 40 individuals. How could a contract such as this bind millions of people of that day, let alone hundreds of millions of future people that weren't even alive at the time?We can extend this almost all laws passed by the State. Politicians are elected by only a small portion of "the people", after being culled down to a small group of establishment-approved candidates in one of two "opposing" parties. These people "represent" us by passing laws that trump individual rights in the name of the collective, i.e. the State. These laws apply everyone within the jurisdiction of the United States, including future humans not yet born!All of this rhetoric - the "social contract", "political representation", "getting out the vote" serves one purpose: to drive home the point that "the people" - the individuals that make up a society - are the government. If the people and the government are one and the same, then the government can do anything. After all, if "the people" demand something, they are only demanding it of themselves, and for themselves!Again, Rothbard doesn't buy this line of thinking. In fact, he's been quite clear:We are not the government; and the government isn't us!