The Myth of the Social Contract

Chapter 7 from The Ten Myths of Progress

August is a slow month for the news. It’s the perfect time to delve into something deeper than the ebbs and flows of sensationalism in our news cycle. In this, my 7th chapter of my soon-to-be finished book, The Ten Myths of Progress, we’ll unpack one of the core beliefs of the Western social order. Below you’ll find a substantial preview, and the full chapter for paid subscribers.

Contract Law 101

I grew up in a household where the law was an ever-present theme. My father was a constitutional law scholar, a man who believed deeply in the principles of justice, the architecture of rights, and the ideal of democratic order. Our conversations while on drives of various lengths were often a seminar in constitutional interpretation.

I was schooled on philosophers like Hobbes and Locke, and their notion of a social contract. I learned how that related to the creation of a written constitution after the revolution in the Thirteen Colonies.

Years later, I thought about pursuing a career in law. Unsure if a commitment to three years of law was really what I wanted, I gave being a paralegal a go as a day job. In my legal education program, we studied the basics of contract law. As I studied the fundamental elements of a contract, I reflected back on the social contract and realized it was no contract at all.

You see, a real contract is where two parties come to the table, each with free will, each offering something of value, and both agreeing to the terms. The pillars of a valid contract are offer, acceptance, mutual consent, consideration, and capacity.

When I thought back on the social contract, it became clear these elements were missing. Who offered? Who accepted? What consideration was exchanged? What happens when one party—say, the government—unilaterally changes the terms? And what if large portions of the population were coerced, colonized, enslaved, or excluded from the bargaining table altogether? Can we really call that a contract?

I admit I was a bit naive. Now it seems abundantly clear the entire schema is a fraud. The contract, if it exists at all, is plainly not mutual. It’s a story the powerful tell to pacify the rest of us.

From an early age, we’re trained to believe the law protects us. That obedience is safety. That good citizens follow rules and bad ones get what they deserve. But as I studied the very system I was taught to revere, I began to see the truth.

The social contract isn’t a sacred agreement. It’s a mask worn by the state to make control look like consent. A contract where one side gets surveillance, wage theft, and police brutality, and the other side gets tax havens, land titles, and legal impunity.

Defining the Myth

“The Agreement No One Signed”

The social contract is one of the most powerful myths of modern political life. It tells us that we, as individuals, agreed to cede certain freedoms in exchange for security, order, and shared prosperity. In this story, government is not a dominator but a steward. Laws are not impositions but promises. And society isn’t enforced, it’s chosen!

In early chapters it has been repeatedly mentioned that these ideas of progress find their roots in Enlightenment philosophy. The social contract is no different. In Thomas Hobbes’ vision, life in a “state of nature” was “nasty, brutish, and short.”¹ To escape that chaos, individuals supposedly consented to the Leviathan… a sovereign with the power to maintain peace through force. The sovereign would lay claim on a monopoly of coercive force. This is why the conventional thought of almost all modern narratives in the media I see is that extra-governmental violence is always wrong, no matter how just the cause might be.

John Locke added the idea of property rights and limited government, offering at least a vision for how the contract could become more even handed.² Rousseau imagined a “general will” that could guide society toward freedom through collective governance.³

Of course here’s the problem: the contract was a thought experiment, not a historical event. No one signed it. No meeting was held. No consensus was reached. The contract was constructed retroactively, a political justification for state legitimacy and class dominance. It was never about mutual agreement. Rather, it was solely about consolidating power and disguising coercion as consent.

The social contract works the same way today. It asks us to believe we are free because we vote, because we have laws, because we’re told we’re represented. But voting in a rigged game doesn’t mean you agreed to the rules. Being born under a system and punished for dissent isn’t consent… it’s captivity.

And even if we accepted the idea in theory, the practice fails the test. A contract requires good faith, mutuality, and enforceability. Yet the law is enforced unequally. Rights are applied conditionally. And dissent is often met not with dialogue, but with riot shields and surveillance drones.

The myth endures because it flatters our sense of order and legitimacy. But behind the noble rhetoric lies a deeper truth. Power didn’t ask for your consent… it assumed it. The social contract is not a deal we made. It’s a narrative used to bind us to a system most of us never chose.

The Historical Reality – Contract by Coercion

It’s easy to talk about the social contract when you’re the one who benefits from it. But for vast swaths of humanity, there was no offer, no negotiation, and no escape. The so-called contract was introduced at the barrel of a gun, written in the language of conquest, and enforced through centuries of genocide, slavery, and enclosure.