POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
How to produce a community of cooperators out
of selfish egoists.
THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL COOPERATION
For society to flourish, individual citizens must
be willing to cooperate on projects that promote
the general interest. Often, such cooperation
requires a sacrifice in individual interests. This
creates a temptation to live as a free-rider or
parasite.
 If a rational agent is one who maximizes
individual utility, how is it rational to promote
the greater good at the expense of personal
interest?

PRISONER’S DILEMMA
B
Stays silent
B
Confesses
A
Stays silent
1,1
10,0
0,10
9,9
A
Confesses
SOLUTIONS TO THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA

Political Solutions:
Use of external
constraints (threat of
punishment) to
change the payoff
structure. If the
penalty is sufficiently
severe, it is no longer
in the self interest of a
rational agent to
deviate from the
cooperative strategy.
Moral Solutions:
Cultivate internal
(moral) constraints to
change the
dispositions of the
agents. The desire to
promote the general
interest is identified
with each individual’s
interests.

MORAL MOTIVATION
Self interest theories (Plato, Aristotle) Virtue is
its own reward.
 Deontological theories: Each individual is
motivated by a sense of duty to all social
responsibilities that reason recognizes as
universally required.
 Utilitarian theories: Each is motivated by an
impartial desire to perform those actions that
will promote the utility of everyone.

THOMAS HOBBES (1588- 1679)


The human condition:
Subjective
circumstances- humans
are: acquisitive, they
desire to accumulate
without limit;
competitive, vying for
limited quantities of
goods; vainglorious, they
enjoy dominating
others; diffident, fearful
of others; anxious, worry
about their prospects.
STATE OF NATURE

Objective
circumstances:
relative equality of
strength and ability
(produces mutual
vulnerability); relative
scarcity of goods
(creates competition
for limited resources).

The state of nature- a
hypothetical situation
where we imagine
human beings living
without any sort of
government. Given
the subjective and
objective conditions of
human life, our
natural condition in
the state of nature is a
state of war.
THE WAR OF ALL AGAINST ALL
In the state of nature,
the life of human
beings is solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish,
and short.
 Morality and justice
do not exist.
Cooperation for
mutual benefit is
impossible


A powerful sovereign
is required to enforce
covenants. The threat
of punishment, an
external constraint to
ensure that covenants
are upheld. Valid
covenants exist when
each citizen submits
his private will to the
sovereign will.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)


Man is born free and
everywhere he is in
chains.
External constraints are
a kind of tyranny since
might does not make
right. Internal
constraints, whose value
can be confirmed by any
rational citizen, reduce
the need for government
to a minimum.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
A citizen’s rights are not natural, but created by
a social convention (or contract).
 Since no man has a natural authority over his
fellow man, and since force does not give rise to
any right, conventions remain the basis of all
legitimate authority among men.
 The transition from the state of nature to the
civil state: substitutes justice for instinct; duty
replaces inclination; right replaces appetite.

TRADING NATURAL LIBERTY FOR MORAL
LIBERTY
His faculties are developed, his ideas are
broadened, his feeling ennobled, his entire soul is
elevated…he ought to bless the moment that
transformed him from a stupid, limited animal to
an intelligent being and a man.
 To participate in the social contract, we give up
our natural liberty to gain civil and moral liberty.
 To be driven by appetite is slavery, and obedience
to a law one has prescribed for oneself is liberty.
 However unequal in force or intelligence they may
be, men all become equal by convention and by
right.

KARL MARX (1818-1883)

Historical materialism:
historical change is due
not to the choices of
humans, but to the
evolution of technology.
As productive forces
(technological
innovations for
transforming nature
into useful products)
develop, the structure of
society changes.
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
 When
the old structure begins to impede
(fetter) the development of technology, it
is replaced by a new structure, that
enhances the growth of the productive
forces. This is why feudalism was
replaced by capitalism. As capitalism
continues to “fetter” the development of
the productive forces, it will give way to
communism. The societal changes are the
result of class struggle.
ORTHODOX MARXISM



Compatibility thesis: a
given economic system is
compatible with only a
certain level of
development of productive
forces.
Development thesis:
productive forces tend to
develop.
Contradiction thesis: the
development of these
forces generates a
‘structural instability’
between productive forces
and productive relations.


Transformation thesis:
productive relations (of
control over the forces and
other persons) are
transformed to become
compatible with the
productive forces.
Optimality thesis: the
productive relations that
result are those that are
optimal for the ongoing
development of the
productive forces.
ALIENATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
Workers (the proletariat) are alienated (from
themselves and their work) in a capitalist
system. The worker is a commodity, a means to
the end of increasing the wealth of the capitalist
owners. The work is external to the worker, it is
not a part of his nature, consequently, he does not
fulfill himself in his work…does not develop his
physical and mental energies…. It is not his own
work, but work for someone else.
 Labor should be an expression of the workers
essential humanity. Consciousness of
exploitation causes the proletariat class to revolt.

JOHN RAWLS (1921- 2002)
A Theory of Justice,
1971.
 What I have attempted
to do is to generalize
and carry to a higher
order of abstraction
the traditional theory
of the social contract
as represented by
Locke, Rousseau, and
Kant.

JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS
To discover the basic principles of justice,
(according to which benefits- rights, goods- and
burdens- obligations- are distributed) consider
the principles that would be chosen by an
assembly of free, rational, mutually disinterested
agents (concerned to promote their individual
interests) behind a veil of ignorance.
 The veil of ignorance prevents a person from
knowing his social status, class, gender, talents,
life-goals, etc.

THE ORIGINAL POSITION
In the original
position (behind the
veil of ignorance) an
assembly would select
the following
principles:
 (1) Principle of
liberty: Each person
has an equal right to
the most extensive
liberty compatible
with a like liberty of
all.

(2) Principle of
difference:
Inequalities are
arbitrary unless it is
reasonable to expect
that they will work
out for everyone’s
advantage and unless
the offices to which
they attach… are open
to all.
 Autonomy, selfrealization.
