What can governments justly do?
self-interest is similar, and so individual interest can be aggregated into collective interest, which will be the basis of law. Here we can see the first pillar for the argument for the special rights of a state, as the tacit consent of individuals provides the state with the authority to act in their name to collect taxes or draft militaries. The case is not true for private entities, who cannot claim to act legitimately in the name of a population, as the people have not given consent to it. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau justified the state from the similar basis of the state of nature, and that the state existed to protect property. However, according to Locke, the state of nature was not a state of war. To him the state existed to resolve disputes, and this is the authority that it possesses. People received rights from God which were immutable, and inviolable, these can be seen as the forerunners to modern Human Rights, which govern our ability to act today. Since these rights were equally distributed to everyone, property is gained through labour, and is the ‘ consent of all mankind to make [the commons] his ’ . 4 The emphasis he places on the state is subtly different to Hobbes, as it is placed upon protection of property, rather than the continuation of peace. To Locke, rebellion is a legitimate action, if ‘the state’ is not fulfilling its obligations to ‘the peo ple ’ , as the state of nature is preferable to tyranny. To continue this argument, since the state is reliant on the consent of individuals and is ultimately beholden to them due to the right to rebellion, it can be thought of as being owned by them. This is not the case with a private entity, as the intrinsic nature of a private entity, is that it is owned by a limited group. Rousseau places the legitimacy of a state in its ability to convince citizens to identify their own interests with those of the state, forming a collective will. Without such will, justification for laws, or any action, does not exist. Governments had the right to turn individual rights into civil liberties. Like Locke he believed that citizens had a right to rebellion if the state became tyrannical. However, in contrast to later utilitarian arguments, Rousseau did not argue for the actions of the state to be governed by the general will, as he thought that it would lead people to greed, and wanting to improve the material aspects of their life. Rousseau believed that society had corrupted humans, but had become a necessary evil to protect us from ourselves, and this was the role of the social contract. In the same vein as Locke, a private entity cannot fulfil the obligations that are required for a state to be legitimate. In considering the nascent social contract, it is evident that justification stems from the negative repercussions of the absence of a state, rather than arguing the positive consequences of its existence. We must now consider to what extent a state has the legitimacy to demand the cooperation of its people, and the positive reasons for its existence, compared to the arguments against its absence, along with moral arguments, such as its duty to those towards the bottom of society. Morality is most evident in John Rawls’ work, with the introduction of the ‘veil of ignorance’ . By focusing on the individual, the social contract is depoliticized, and justice is placed at its centre. The significance of the veil of ignorance is that it attempts to remove the ingrained bias that stalks every individual. No-one is willing to suggest a measure that would harm their own position. However, if you are unaware of your standing in society, you are forced to make provision for both the positive and the negative. Through this Rawls attempts to unearth a just society. An important concept is that good is a subjective term, and people cannot be expected to have a similar concept of it. 5 The expectation, which previous ideas had built upon, that everyone had the same, self-interested, conceptions of good, cannot
4 Locke (1689). 5 Rawls (1996).
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