The global social contract

The Leviathan symbolises the world, a state or a society. It is a Goliath, a monster difficult to control, which makes it frightening. The world being inherently dynamic, not static, the process of change causes conflict. That is the dialectic – a Leviathan. Thus when it morphs, it goes into destructive convulsions and changes form and character before it stabilises again. That is when a new global social contract is forged. If there were no global social contract, man would fall upon man and ‘Might is Right’ would come out naked.

The pursuit of power for hegemony and supremacy are inherent in man’s nature, which leads to violations of the social contract. When the violations make the social contract untenable, the Leviathan starts convulsing and morphing again. After considerable destruction, another global social contract is forged. Power shifts to new poles.

Every social contract is informed by another instinct of man – survival. While seeking hegemony and supremacy, man also balks at the same time at unfettered cruelty after a certain threshold has been crossed, for it can threaten his survival. These survival and humane instincts and man’s inherent will to be free foster institutions that check man’s inherent inequity and cruelty instinct, such as human rights charters, conventions of war, limitations on WMD, religions, international courts, the UN, Bretton Woods’ institutions, trade and environment protection protocols etc. A tenuous balance is forged. Enough power always being with several state and non-state groups also gives man’s cruelty pause. There is a love-hate relationship between the supremacy and survival instincts – supremacy for survival yet the blind pursuit of supremacy can threaten man’s survival. There has to be a balance. But when the irrational pursuit for supremacy overcomes the survival instinct the balance is lost. It unleashes destructive inequity and cruelty. To survive, the Leviathan starts morphing again.

The world also changed before distinct global social contracts, like when huge landmasses broke away to join other landmasses or become islands or continents. Man crossed land bridges long gone to settle uninhabited lands. There were huge invasions and settlements by ‘Aryan Man’ from Central Asia and the Caucuses. Mongol races crossed over the northern land bridge into Alaska and down south throughout the Americas. Millennia later, ‘European Man’ mastered the waves and set forth to conquer and settle new territories, called the ‘New World’. The Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Africa were ‘discovered’. Some went there to escape persecution at home, others in pursuit of riches, or both. Since there were no morality institutions then and clerics and churches had reduced faith to religion, there was nothing to stop conquerors from decimating the natives and placing the few left over into zoos called ‘reservations’ and the like. Persecution of the poor and innocent at home epitomised man’s inherent inequity and cruelty. Little has changed except the trappings – what was naked then is clothed in morality today that is more applicable to the persecuted than to the persecutor. The powerful still “have the word and the use of it”.

With relevant modern education, particularly in the sciences, came better and faster ships and advanced weaponry that made conventional weapons redundant. With it came mercantilism and the formation of the corporations like the East India Company. That was the advent of the second stage of European colonisation – from ‘New World’ to occupation.

By the beginning of the 20th century, most of Africa and Asia had been directly colonised and fallen under the total sway of Europe – followed plunder on a monumental scale. That was the new global social contract. Europe became industrialised and urban. India’s GDP was some 25 percent of the world GDP when Britain colonised it. When it left it had fallen to about one percent, such was the scale of the plunder. European development led to electoral democracy, pluralism, liberalism and emphasis on modern scientific education. America followed with its own unique electoral democratic system after wresting its right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It celebrated economic success by declaring that “what is good for business is good for America” – or words to that effect. It encouraged its private sector to invest in high quality university education and made the military-industrial complex the fulcrum of its industry. It established independent think tanks and cut their umbilical cords from their sponsors after they had been endowed, thus letting “a hundred flowers bloom…a hundred schools of thought contend”. Most importantly, the West separated the cleric from the state while allowing the morality of faith to inform its laws and regulations. This is the church-state compact called ‘secularism’. It thus stepped firmly onto the road to economic and intellectual progress while the rest festered in their glorious pasts.

Early in the 20th century came World War I, driven by Germany’s own hegemonic and expansionist desires. Though Germany lost, its adversaries suffered great losses too, which they made up with more plunder. The Leviathan convulsed and morphed again. A new Europe was born. New countries were made, or their seeds sown: Balfour’s Palestinian Mandate, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq… Earlier, Russia had adopted communism after the Bolshevik Revolution and became the USSR with its own empire in Central Asia and east Europe. The Leviathan had morphed. The world had changed again.

Europe realised that direct colonisation would end one day. The new post-World War I social contract was camouflaged as ‘white man’s burden’ – infrastructure building primarily to help its plunder along with “divide and rule”. Followed the imposition of European systems, cultures and languages and the creation of a class of natives as intermediaries between coloniser and colonised – “English in every respect except for the colour of their skins.” They ruled through these intermediaries before ‘independence’ and after ‘independence’. Future native leaders were encouraged to study in the colonisers’ schools and universities to become steeped in their political, social and legal constructs. Not surprisingly, they all studied law! When the time came, native leaders negotiated with their colonisers ‘constitutionally.’ European blood didn’t flow. Native blood flowed as native fell upon native. ‘Divide and rule’ paid dividends.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The post-World War I social contract continued until Germany re-emerged under fascism, followed by Italy and Japan. Fascism is, classically, the use of the most progressive and nationalistic and sometimes religious rhetoric to achieve the most retrogressive ends. Fascism started conquering European and African countries. But when it overreached by trying to subjugate Britain and the Soviet Union, and Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, America, Britain and the USSR joined battle against it. Came World War II and the world changed again. The new social contract that emerged led to “withdrawal from empire.” More next week.

The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at [email protected]