2006
Social Contracts
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by Thomas E. Brewton
Since the 1930s, most Americans have come to believe in a fairy tale that has no happy ending. Democrats' victories in the recent elections have revived the fairy tale.
Washington Post staff writer Dan Balz, in a November 13, 2006, article explores the unresolved questions and internal debates remaining after the recent congressional elections.
One of those questions, as he sees it, is:
Equally important is the question of which party can adequately address the twin problems of keeping the United States competitive in a global economy and restoring the social contract that has helped provide economic security to workers and that has been shattered as a result of the corporate restructuring that globalization has brought about.
Mr. Balz is working under a false assumption: the expectation that the Federal government controls business, as well as the idea that it is possible to have a "social contract" under which government can effectively provide economic security to workers.
That assumption originates in the religion of socialism, which presumes that councils of intellectual planners, backed by technocratic administrators, are capable of managing businesses better than businessmen. Intellectuals and technocrats theoretically are motivated solely by the common good, not by private greed for profit. Businesses therefore, in theory, will be more efficient and be able to support full employment at all times when under government control.
In practice, this hasn't worked well, a typical example being the collapse of the socialistic EU's technocratically-managed AirBus and the resurgence of Boeing.
The term "social contract" was most famously used by John Locke in 1689 and by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762. Locke's conception, not Rousseau's, was the basis of our War of Independence in 1776.
Locke erected a theoretical framework for a government of inherently limited powers. Even the king is subject to God's higher law of morality, which embraces the natural-law rights of individuals. Individuals, when they entered a social contract to create political society, retained inalienable rights to life, liberty, and private property. Hence our 1776 slogan, "No taxation without representation."
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