Historical, philosophical, and social foundations

The English political theorist Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a classic representative of the school of English empiricism. He built a comprehensive political science system based on the basic thesis that in the real world there are only individual material bodies. With this view, Hobbes began a war against the prejudices of medieval realism, for which concepts were the true reality while things were merely derived from them.

Hobbes believed that there were three types of individual bodies: 1) Natural bodies (i.e. bodies of nature that do not depend on man and his activities); 2) Man (both a body of nature and the creator of an artificial /unnatural, body); and 3) The State (an artificial body as a product of man’s activities).

Hobbes elaborates his philosophical views on the third body, the State, in Leviathan (1651) [Leviathan or the matter, form and authority of government] in the context of the time in which he lived and witnessed. He elaborated on the view that the natural state of life of the human race is a war of all against all (bellum omnium contra omnes). This is followed by a natural law that leads to the overcoming of such a state and the creation of the State (political organization) through a social contract between citizens and the government, a contract that finally recognizes the indivisible and unlimited power of the sovereign (king) in the polity (State) for the protection of citizens and their rights.

Citizens voluntarily give up a (large) part of their natural freedom to the State to protect themselves from external and internal enemies. This political form of voluntary and contractual “escape from freedom” was masterfully deciphered by the German philosopher Erich Fromm (1900–1980) in his eponymous work Escape from Freedom (1941), using the example of German society during the era of National Socialism.

The social and historical foundations of Hobbes’s political thought were the frequent civil wars in England, in which King Charles I Stuart (1625–1649) lost both his crown and his head, the emergence of two political currents in the British Parliament that later became the Tories (conservatives) and the Whigs (liberals), and the proclamation of the Commonwealth (a republic, 1649–1660) but with the dictator Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), who from 1653 bore the title of “Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland”. At that time, English capitalist and even colonial-imperialist development required protection from an extremely strong and all-powerful monarchy (royal absolutist power).

Hobbes did not criticize the socio-political system, but tried to consolidate it and strengthen it so that the State with its citizens could function as efficiently as possible, for the benefit of all citizens who first enter into a contract on bilateral relations among themselves and then with the State. From a European perspective (civil wars between Protestants and Catholics), given that an atmosphere of fear and personal insecurity prevailed throughout Western Europe, Hobbes desired peace, security, and the protection of private property; to this end he became a pronounced statist, i.e., a supporter of the strongest possible State power over individual citizens.

In the late European Renaissance-early modern period, the strengthening of monarchical power (despotism) expressed the need for social and State unity and harmony to avoid medieval political anarchy and powerlessness. At the core was not the illusion of the divine rights of the ruler, but the practical conviction that strong political unity can only be achieved within the framework of enlightened absolutist monarchism. Otherwise, centripetal forces would lead to the disintegration of the social community and the dissolution of the State.

Leviathan (1651) - political system of the contractual state

The starting point of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy is the same as that of all representatives of the so-called “natural law and social contract” school. Hobbes, like others from the same school, reduces the individual man to the order in nature, and the civil state to the state of a contract between citizens and the State, but which is formed by subjects who, by the very contract with the State (monarch), should become citizens, thus freeing themselves from the position and role of medieval lawless subjects (who had only obligations to the government but no rights vis-à-vis the same government) at least according to the liberal political philosophy.

For Hobbes, the basis of human nature is egoism and not altruism, as well as the need for communal life, not communal life of wild animals that live in packs, but a need out of purely egoistic interest. Thus, organized political society in the form of a State arises as a result of the fear of some individuals of others, and not as a result of some natural inclination of some individuals towards others.

The State is an imposed socio-political organization as a product of a rational view of life, i.e., survival of the human community to preserve individual interests, including bare lives. Hobbes denied happiness and pleasure as elements of the natural order. For him, the natural state is dangerous for human existence because it is animalistically cruel and murderous: a state in which everyone wars against everyone. In a natural order that operates according to the (animal) laws of nature (the right of the stronger), the basis of inter-living relations is war based on force and deception.

Another important characteristic of the natural order is the absence of ownership of things and possessions (absence of a clear demarcation of what is whose). Everything belongs to everyone, and what is whose depends, at least for a while, on force, robbery, and coercion over others.

Since humans strive to achieve power or dominance over others, a war of all against all inevitably occurs, and human life becomes unbearable. The stronger strive to become even stronger and more influential, and the weaker strive to find protection from the stronger in order to survive. For Hobbes, this is the dictate of the instinct for self-preservation (freedom + dominance). The human race has the same drive for all things, and therefore, all people want the same things and are a constant source of danger, insecurity, and fear for others in the brutal drive for survival. Therefore, human existence is reduced to a war of all against all (man is a wolf to man).

For Hobbes, the fundamental natural law therefore is the law of egoism, which directs the individual to preserve himself with minimal losses and maximum gains at the expense of others. Natural law (ius naturale) is the instinct for self-preservation and the search for security. Therefore, only interest, and not altruism (the inclination of man to man), is the fundamental natural motive in the search for a way out of the state of nature because it is becoming unbearable. Natural freedom is an increasingly heavy burden on human shoulders that must be endured.

Hobbes opposed the teachings of Aristotle and Grotius that man has an urge to associate, a social instinct. Contrary to both, Hobbes believes that man is originally a completely egoistic being and possesses only one urge – for self-preservation. This urge drives man to realize his needs, to seize as much as possible from what nature itself puts at his disposal and, accordingly, to expand the sphere of his individual power as much and as far as possible.

By the very logic of things, man encounters resistance from other people who are guided by the same natural (innate) urge (aspirations), and thus competition, struggle, and war arise between members of the human race, which threaten their physical existence. In a state of nature, man is confronted with the reality of the war of all against all, caused by the need and strength of the individual and a war in which the eventual lack of physical strength (superiority) is replaced by cunning and deception according to the principle that the end justifies the means.

Hobbes acknowledges that human nature is such that Man is always in conflict with various passions and drives, among which the desire for power is predominant. However, by using reason, man realizes the basic aspiration for peace. Thus people conclude a socially beneficial contract among themselves.

On the basis of such a contract, people within the same community in the same living space unite to form a stronger community on the basis of general harmony, which ultimately turns into a form of statehood that would ensure peace and security for them. Political organization has two basic functions: the defense of the community from external enemies and the preservation of order, peace, and security within the community. A State (Greek polis) is created on the basis of a contract, and politics is the art of running a State for the purpose of effectively realizing its two basic functions.

Thomas Hobbes believed that natural laws are moral laws. A basic moral principle is that one should not do to others what one does not want done to oneself. Moral laws are eternal and unchangeable and universal for all members of a community, so all individuals strive to harmonize their behavior towards others in accordance with such laws. In the state of nature, these moral laws are powerless since they do not oblige people to behave in accordance with them.

Transition from state of nature to contractual statehood

According to Hobbes, law appears by leaving the state of nature and moving to the contractual state of statehood. Statehood is the institution that enables the creation of private property between members of the community (mine/yours). The State is obliged to respect the property of others.

Hobbes now moves to the main point of his political philosophy: that individuals should retain neither will nor right for themselves, because all power should pass to the State as a general and superior institution. Hobbes demands that individuals be subjects of the State and not citizens. The subjects must obey the laws of the State because only then can they distinguish good from evil. This transfer of all individual rights and powers to State bodies leads to the formation of (state) sovereignty (suma potestas/sumum imperium).

Thus, according to Hobbes, individuals are connected by a double contract:

1) A contract according to which individuals associate with each other; and

2) A contract by which, as a social collective they connect themselves with a State authority to which they surrender all power with an absolute and unconditional obligation and practice of submission to it (in Hobbes’s time, this meant absolutist royal authority).

This State or royal absolutist authority that has support in the church, is the Leviathan. It is a biblical monster or mortal God who, in Hobbes’s illustration, holds a bishop’s crosier in one hand and a sword in the other – attributes of spiritual and worldly power. For Hobbes, the State is neither a divine nor supernatural creation. Man is the rational and most sublime work of nature, and the State Leviathan is the most powerful human creation. The soul of the State is the supreme authority, its joints are the judicial and executive organs, the nerves are rewards and punishments, memory is the counselors, the mind is justice and laws, health is civil peace, illness is rebellion, and death is civil war.

Government and its forms

Hobbes believed that his theoretical system of government could be applied to all forms of State power. There were three forms of State power in their pure form: Monarchy (which he preferred); Aristocracy; and Democracy. He allowed the establishment of parliament, but under the condition of a strong and unlimited monarch’s power. He believed that the monarch’s supreme power must be sovereign - it should not be subordinated to any external authority (domination), subject to any law outside the law of the monarchy, whether natural or ecclesiastical.

But in the final analysis, monarchical power, at least theoretically, was not unlimited, since the right to exist was for him the only right that allowed for a limitation of supreme power, i.e., obligatory submission to the sovereign. This is because the foundation of State power in any form rested on existential survival and self-preservation. This form can in principle be monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic, but not mixed, i.e., the division of power between individual organs. Power must be exclusively in the hands of the organ to which it is handed over. Hobbes denies the basic principle of modern democratic power, which is the division of power into legislative (parliament), executive (government), and judicial (judicial organs).

Hobbes was a bitter opponent of revolution, believing that crafts and trade, and rising capitalist production would flourish under an all-powerful state administration in which all disagreements and political struggles would be eliminated. He believed that everything that contributes to the common life of people is good, and everything that helps to maintain a strong state organization should be supported.

The object of the State administration (absolute monarchy) must be the wealth of the subjects created by the products of the land and water (sea), as well as work and thrift. The duty of the state is to ensure the well-being of the people. The interests of the monarch should be identified with the interests of his subjects for the State to function optimally.

Synthetic remarks

Hobbes’s doctrine of the omnipotent power of the enlightened absolutist monarch is a product of a time when there was a strong need to organize a centralized and absolutist State (centripetal) that could successfully resist Papal universalism and serve the development of capitalism and the limitation of feudal (centrifugal) elements. The absolutist monarchy at that time and in the following century corresponded to the interests of the capitalist bourgeoisie and its efforts to create a large internal economic market without regional-feudal taxes and sales taxes. In this way, national unity would automatically be created as a guarantor of the functioning of the economy within a single State.

For Hobbes, the conclusion of a State contract is of historical importance because it separates pre-history from History. The transition from the state of the jungle (anti-civilization) to the state of statehood is the transition to civilizational development and history. Hobbes correctly understood the nature of the original state of nature, but he could not explain the emergence of the State outside the framework of the social contract.

Hobbes believed in absolute monarchy as the only form of state administration that fully corresponds to the intentions of the social contract. Absolute monarchy has other advantages over other forms of political organization that make it the best form of government. For example, in an absolute monarchy, power can be abused by only one person, in an aristocracy by several families, and in a democracy by many. Further, in an absolute monarchy, party struggles are more easily neutralized, and in the ideal case of total despotism, party and political struggles do not exist because there is a complete unity of society, state, and politics under the rule of one person. State secrets are also easier to keep in absolute monarchies.

An absolute monarch must have absolute power in all political-legal and moral relations in the state. The king has the first and the last word in all ecclesiastical, religious, and moral matters. Hobbes was a great opponent of religious tolerance within the same political organization. For him, it is an unacceptable revolutionary act for someone to oppose the only permitted religion based on private religious convictions, because this called into question the very survival of the state and its normal functioning. Moral conscience consists in obedience to the monarch.

Later however, Thomas Hobbes allowed for limitations on royal absolutism, and held that every power was just if it served the people, and that this could ultimately be even a republic (Commonwealth), but headed by an absolutist figure (e.g., Oliver Cromwell). Hobbes’s theory of statehood turned from the medieval theological to the anthropological interpretation of the origin and foundations of the State. His teaching on the emergence of State organization based on contracts and the understanding that life would be better and safer in the State was contrary to medieval theological interpretations of the state, which identified the goals of the feudal class of large landowners with divine goals. Many philosophers have seen Hobbes’ theory of the State as the doctrine of the modern totalitarian state. However, Hobbes’s political philosophy is essentially individualistic and rationalistic.