Racial

Chapter 20 How Can the State Be Justified? and Mills’s The Racial Contract

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Positions

 The state is justified because we need it for a good life and noble actions.

 The state is justified because everyone wants to be protected by the sovereign.

 The state is justified by the social contract, which guarantees equality.

 The state is justified because it ensures the greatest aggregate happiness.

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The State of Nature

 No political authority

 No one to make and enforce laws

 No laws against stealing, cheating, threatening

 People have to rely on their own judgments and powers

 A war of all against all (Hobbes)

 People cannot live together peacefully

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The Social Contract

 Justification of political authority

 Need to show that we all have reasons to accept a common political authority

 Argument

 We all desire peace because we all desire happiness.

 In the state of nature, there can be no peace.

 A sovereign can keep the peace.

 So we all have good reasons to accept the authority of the state.

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Anarchist Arguments

 Hobbes overstates the dangers in the state of nature.

 People are capable of cooperation in a stateless society.

 A political authority imposes greater dangers than a state of nature.

 So not everyone has good reasons to accept the authority of the state.

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Varieties of Anarchism

 Marx

 The state is needed to serve the interests of the dominant social class.

 Utilitarian

 Justification of the state needs to be in terms of total human happiness.

 Not in terms of everyone having a good reason

 Natural rights

 The state automatically violates our rights.

 We have to actually agree to "hire" the political authority.

 Not enough to say that we each have good reasons to do so

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Limited Authority

 Argument

 We do need political authorities.

 We also need to prevent them from abusing their power.

 We have no good reasons to accept unlimited political authority

 So we need political institutions as well as authority.

 Constitution, separation of powers, and so on

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.

The Racial Contract: Summary

 MiMills argues that racism is the most important political system of recent global history.

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.

What is the Racial Contract?

 "White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today."

 Racial Contract

 Not a social contract between all the people, but instead only between "the people who really are people ('we the white people')"

 Racial Contract vs. ideal social contract

 The Racial Contract is "more revealing of the real character of the world we are living in."

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.

White Supremacy

 Who benefits from the Racial Contract?

 "All whites are beneficiaries of the Contract, though some whites are not signatories to it."

 "The Racial Contract establishes a racial polity, a racial state, and a racial judicial system, where the status of whites and nonwhites is clearly demarcated, whether by law or by custom."

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Discussion Questions

 What do you think life would be like in the state of nature? Do you agree with Hobbes? Why or why not?

 What is the purpose of the state? Do you agree with Aristotle, Hobbes, or Locke? Why or why not?

 What kinds of rights do you think ought to be protected by the state? Would your answer be different if you grew up in a different country?

© 2018 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.