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Third, although goods are scarce in man’s natural state,
this situation is rectifiable. However, nature is not generous.
Men must work, indeed work in cooperation with
others, to increase the supply of wealth at our disposal.
Unfortunately, a shortcut to wealth is available; we can
simply take what others have produced through their labor,
rather than laboring ourselves. This ability to gain at the
expense of others, not innate aggression, sets the stage for
conflict between men.
Fourth, we are capable of love, at least in a limited way.
Hobbes is widely thought to have espoused egoism, in that
the only things we desire are those that conduce to our private
good. Yet Hobbes is aware that love unites families,
despite our having little general affection for strangers. In a
contest between self and strangers, people are prone to act
selfishly.
Finally, we are not naturally moral. Hobbes argued that,
in the absence of moral or affectional restraint, opportunities
to gain by violence will often prevail. At the same time,
people will move to defend themselves, including engaging
in preemptive warfare. No one trusts anyone, cooperative
activity is impossible, and there is “continual fear, and the
life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The method by which men extricate themselves from
this terrible state is morality. Hobbes provided a list of laws
of nature, laws based exclusively on the use of our reasoning
from our general interests and not on intuition or
religion. The first and most fundamental law of morality
requires us to confine ourselves to peaceful interchange with
others except when attacked; at that point, we may defend
ourselves. This moral law leads to several others, among
them that we may claim only as much, but no more liberty,
for ourselves as we are willing to grant others, and that we
honor our agreements.
These laws of nature, Hobbes maintained, are “eternal
and immutable.” If so, why, then, is there a need for the
State to enforce these laws? Hobbes argued that these laws
of nature are weak and cannot be relied on to enforce themselves.
One should refrain from making war on others, but
only if they do not engage in warfare first. However, if one
can gain from aggressive action of this sort, there is really
nothing to stop us. Contracts, Hobbes noted, are “mere
words” and “of no strength to bind a man.” What man
needs is security, without which we remain in the most
awful of worlds, the state of nature. This security can only
be obtained, Hobbes concluded, through the creation of a
State, to which each of us concedes our power.
It is here that Hobbes blunders and blunders badly. First,
there are many devices that might conduce to the security
necessary to peaceful coexistence, not the least being
parental training of the young. In addition, there are peer
pressure, reputation, and the formation of voluntary defensive
agencies such as security companies. Second, the idea
of government by general consent was, on Hobbes’s own
assumptions, impossible. Consent is signified by words. If
words do not bind, the agreement to create government is
impossible, and we are stuck in the state of nature.
This problem gives rise to the most pervasive dispute
among libertarians—whether it is in our interests to have a
state, albeit limited in its extent, or market anarchism. The
statist thinks the state is necessary to prevent chaos, but its
activities can and should be confined to a narrow range—
the minimal state (minarchism). Market anarchists argue
that the free market is capable of doing everything, including
protecting the free market. Nevertheless, both schools
agree that Hobbes’s political conclusions are wrong. Indeed,
if he were right, all governments, including the worst in history—Stalin,
Hitler, Nero—are legitimate because, however
bad they are, they are better than the state of nature.
Hobbes’s singular contribution to the development of political
theory is the clarity of his discussion of the general
nature of morality, in which he shows what a proper state,
if there can be any such, would do: namely, forbid interpersonal
aggression and nothing else. Hobbes saw that peace,
prosperity, and the possibility of each of us living the best
life as we each understand it lies solely in the prevention of
violence. Thus, he deserves pride of place as the founder of
liberalism.
JN and DT
See also Coercion; Contractarianism/Social Contract; English Civil
Wars; Liberalism, Classical; Locke, John; Natural Law;
Revolution, Right of
Further Readings
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Richard Tuck, ed. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Locke, John. “Second Treatise on Government.” Two Treatises on
Government. Peter Laslett, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Oakeshott, Michael. Hobbes on Civil Association. Indianapolis, IN:
Liberty Fund, 1975.
HODGSKIN, THOMAS (1787–1869)
Thomas Hodgskin was one of the most original libertarian
theorists in Victorian England. His first major work was
Travels in the North of Germany (1820). This two-volume
travelogue, which is interspersed with political commentary
on “the much governed countries of Germany,”
frequently discusses the inefficiency and waste of governmental
projects. Hodgskin even suggests that police functions
should be placed in private hands. In 1825, Hodgskin
published Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital,
a tract cited repeatedly by Karl Marx and later to cause