Marx against the social contract

Abstract

The classical age of social contract theory had drawn to a close half a century before Marx embarked on his career as a social theorist. From Salomonio in the early sixteenth century to Kant at the end of the eighteenth century, it had served as a justificatory foundation for liberal theory. Although the bulk of Marx’s theoretical critiques were directed against liberal political economy rather than liberal political theory, it is evident that his whole approach to social theory was incompatible with the assumptions of the social contract theorists. A closer comparison of their opposed assumptions is revealing in two important respects. First, it poses some fundamental criticisms of the contractarian tradition which go beyond those raised within the liberal tradition. Second, it reveals the self-imposed limitations of Marx’s political theory which flowed from his eschewal of the normative approach associated with the contractarians. It leaves us to ponder whether his unwillingness to give careful consideration to the principles of political association in future socialist societies constitutes a serious hiatus in his emancipatory project.