Social contract criticisms

I’m not enough of a scholar to really illustrate the history and details of other peoples social contract theories, but I sketch out some notes below. 

Hobbes' idea amounts to a metaphorical social contract that justifies anything the state does. Any situation that we consider bad because of the depredations of the state can be made worse by imagining a mob carrying out the same depredations but adding new victims in the form of those who for whatever reason would have been safe from the state. No one can amend the social contract and the state faces no limit. It is purely pragmatic, based on no principle more lofty than “might makes right” or “as bad as this is, it could be worse.” This version of the social contract justifies anything done by the state, including genocide.

Locke had the idea that rights precede the social contract. The social contract merely provides a means to enforce those pre-existing rights.

Rousseau wrote about the general will and direct democracy on a small scale. 

The social contract means government authority consists of the consent of the governed. Citizens consent to pay taxes and obey laws, and the state promises to protect the rights of citizens. Both the citizens and the state accept obligations as parties to a contract. Agents of the state may coerce citizens because the citizens have agreed in advance and because the state organization fulfills its obligations. But if they have not agreed, or if the state fails to fulfill its bargain, then the social contract fails to justify political authority.

Huemer gives several criticisms of the social contract. The social contract as described by Locke (or any of the others) is not historically accurate (as pointed out by Hume). Citizens cannot be viewed as giving passive or tacit consent, because consent is not voluntary if 

• Consent was obtained under duress, if one must obey or be forced to sacrifice something to which one has a right,
• explicit dissent has been expressed, which overrules implicit consent,
• explicit refusal to consent would not change anything (the contractual counterpart will do the same thing regardlesss of consent), or
• the counterpart reneges on its contractual obligations, or in fact has none.

Huemer argues that these exceptions describe all existing states to some extent, so that none truly can claim authority on the basis of the consent of the governed. We have a right to free association, including a right to our jobs, our friends and families, and property rights to our land. If we cannot opt out of state authority without emigrating and sacrificing all these, the first condition applies. If anarchists are subjected to the same laws and taxes as superpatriots, then the second and third conditions apply. Huemer cites several court cases that conclude that the US “federal” government owes no specific obligation to any specific person, but only a general duty to the citizens as a group. Hence, if the social contract obligates the state at all, it has failed to fulfill those obligations. Huemer says, “One cannot maintain that the individual owes duties to the state but that the state owes nothing to the individual.” He concludes that social contract theory does not apply to the USA or any other modern state.

Huemer has a separate chapter dealing with the hypothetical social contract of John Rawls. Read Huemer's book if you are interested, I’m not prepared to give a serious summary of that argument.. 

Andrew Kern has a series of blog posts criticizing conventional social contract 

Conventional approaches to social contract seek to justify existing states by weakening the meaning of consent. The bottom line is, if we regard the social contract as an actual contract requiring actual informed consent, existing states cannot use the social contract to justify their activities. But what if we used a strong concept of consent and seriously applied the idea that legitimate authority flows from the consent of those affected? I want to answer that question next.

[This is part of my project on the purely voluntary society]