Community Conversations

The Social Contract

A Paper by Dr. Deland S. Anderson Based on the Pratt Museum’s Community Conversation of 17 November 2006

The topic of the Social Contract brought out a talkative and diverse group of about 25 people. Young and old, visitors, newcomers, and long-timers shared their perspectives on the concept of community. The setting was the new Homer Public Library’s cozy reading lounge and the occasion was the recent elections.

The current political climate shows significant signs of change. On the local level, new faces were chosen over incumbent city council members amidst heated power struggles and ethics complaints. On the state level, Alaskans chose a new governor to replace incumbent Frank Murkowski. On the national level, the balance of power in the House and Senate shifted, leaving the Democratic Party in control. Finally, with regard to international relations, important changes are afoot with the resignations of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the replacement of Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Bolton. These changes signal that the populace is ready to renegotiate the Social Contract.

The idea of a social contract is a mainstay in the political philosophy of Western democratic societies. Though it has been expressed in numerous forms over the past 250 years with varying political consequences, at its core it is a very simple concept: society is an agreement among the individuals who make it up. The 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is credited with presenting the idea first. His most famous words are on this score: Life in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. In order to avoid such a bleak existence, Hobbes maintains, people band together to form governments. These governments are designed to protect the rights of individuals so that they may pursue their own interests in a safe environment. But there is a trade-off. In order for this government to be effective according to Hobbes, it must have absolute authority. Thus to avoid the social ills of anarchy, individuals cede their freedom to a tyrant. But since the tyrant’s power only comes through the wealth generated by the people as they pursue their self-interest, there is a resulting balance. It is this basic concept that underlies the constitutions of Western democracies today.

The 18th century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau furthered the philosophical dialogue on the social contract, but he conceived of the balance of power between the individual and the government in quite a different way. His emphasis was less on the individual and more on the community. The government did not reside in the authority of an absolute monarch, but in the general will of the people. The work of the individuals was not primarily to serve their self-interest, but to form a society. While government was a necessary evil in the crass philosophy of Hobbes, in Rousseau’s idealistic way of thinking, government is the greatest good achievable by humans. His basic notion of community is evident in the spirit of socialism in Western democracies today.

This difference of philosophical positions mirrors the political divide in the town of Homer, and so it provides a dynamic for discourse on community. On one extreme, some use Homer as a source of goods and services, but otherwise live as hermits away from other people. On the other extreme, many in Homer owe their livelihood to the government. If you draw a salary or a pension from a governmental body, or if you receive contracts, grants, loans, or subsidies, or if you receive government services under welfare programs, or if you are a student in a publicly funded school—you in a very real sense work for the government. One participant in the Community Conversation made this point persuasively when she said that government is not about “us” and “them”. Rather “we” are the government. But another person countered that the best community is one without government, without written social contracts, without coerced membership. She suggested that though we are in principle free within the structure of our government, we are not free to be without governance. Indeed the federal government, though founded on the principals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has the very authority to take one’s life. In so doing, the government has of course also rescinded the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The American Revolution was fought on this ground, when the people rose up against the tyranny of King George the Third. But so was the Civil War, when the people fought to extend those rights to all. The suffragist movement, the civil rights struggle, and the protest of the war in Vietnam were each actions of the people against the government over misinterpretations or misrepresentations of the social contract.

Another person brought up the notion that governments are corporate bodies—they are like living organisms that sometimes act to protect themselves. And as we all know, they can be voracious and prolific. When governments act in their own self-interest to the detriment of the people, the people become alienated and often attempt to secede. In most cases, this is a silent, covert secession. People simply don’t vote, they evade taxes, they drop out. In this context, one person raised the provocative question of whether it is possible to live in a state of nature. To live in a state of nature is to live outside the government. And though there is technically nowhere on the earth that one can go to live without belonging even unwillingly to a government of some sort, there are attempts made all the time. This is especially true in a “frontier” such as Alaska. Some people come here to live the primitive life, to live off the land, to live off the grid. Others come here as Outside contractors to extract wealth without being a part of our society. So, too, tourists come to have a look without considering that they are a part of what they are looking at. Finally, criminals live here to live beyond the reach of the law. But of course none of these attempts succeed. No one is likely to live apart even in our midst. Even the homeless use the library sometimes.

One person remarked that the U. S. Constitution is modeled on an indigenous form of government. Known sometimes as the Algonquian Confederacy of Nations, this form of government was indeed practiced in America long before the arrival of Europeans. This model of government, much admired by our founding fathers, vested the authority to rule in a council of elders made up of men and women from various culturally related nations. This provided for a balance of power and for an effective way of forming and enforcing law. It also proved itself in defending the confederacy against foreign invaders. Perhaps the single greatest difference between the Algonquian form of government and that of our federal government is that the power of the United States rests in a written document, the Constitution. Indeed, as one participant remarked, the prime directive of the Executive branch of the government is to protect the Constitution. Not to interpret it, but to preserve it from external and internal threats. But things being what they are, sometimes the Constitution is overlooked, or even misused for the gain of a few at the expense of us all. As one young man remarked, sometimes it seems that the government is set up for the protection of pirates. In the name of defending the Constitution, the “interests of America” are served. This often involves major corporations pursuing their self-interest abroad at the expense of taxpayer dollars and American lives. And the cost to other countries that are invaded, destroyed, and stripped of their resources, and robbed of their citizens’ lives is incalculable. This topic led one person to reflect that corporations don’t play by the same rules as individuals, but they have the same rights. Indeed in the U.S., corporations enjoy all of the rights granted to individuals save the right to vote and the right to marry (though of course they may merge and multiply.) Someone remarked that since so many foreign wars are fought for the benefit for major corporations, perhaps there should be a corporate draft of sorts whereby the cost of war and reconstruction be born not by individual taxpayers but by the corporate world itself. Aside from gain and profit, there is the matter of political ideology. One person wondered whether the spread of democracy around the world is a clause in our social contract.

One young man at the conversation led the group through a short primer on the levels of government and their proper rank. First, he said, comes the people, then municipal government, then state, and finally federal. The last, he remarked, is of the least importance. This gave rise to an interesting suggestion. Hypothetically, if the federal government decided to abandon Alaska, what rights, if any, would Alaskans have if they wanted back in? Clearly our one U.S. Representative and our two U.S. Senators would be of no help if a decision to abandon Alaska had already been made. And, as the U.S. Constitution has no provision for rebellion against the government (as New Hampshire does in its state constitution), we could only have relations with the federal government if we were a sovereign nation. We could then enter into treaties and trade agreements with the U.S., form alliances with other foreign nations, and look to the United Nations for help in enforcing them. So in addition to the layers of government noted above, there is need to recognize social contracts on the international and even the global level.

One of the old timers prompted the group to envision the social contract in Homer in the year 2056. Ideas flew fast and furious. Among them was much improved care for the elderly. This reflects a strong tradition to respect and reward the native people and the homesteaders who have been indispensable in forming the society enjoyed by all Alaskans today. It was an especially pointed vision given former Governor Frank Murkowski’s elimination of the longevity bonus and the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s legislation designed to eliminate the senior property tax exemption. Someone spoke up for universal health care by 2056. Another wanted to see a much better treatment of the environment in the social contract of the future. Someone spoke in favor of a rural priority for subsistence, another perennial topic of concern to Alaskans. Another person broadened that to include oil and gas. In the year 2056, Alaskans should have first priority for access to local deposits of oil and gas, etc. rather than letting these resources be taken out of the state and sold down south or to foreign markets. In the year 2056, another old timer remarked that he wants to see a list of universal human rights, to include water, reliable food supply, education, health care, and a clean environment.

As this conversation shows, the notion of a social contract is of vital interest to communities. It also shows that the concept is extremely variable. As one participant quipped, “There are extremes on both ends.” And, one might add, there is a continuum in the middle. When Homer first formed as a homestead community several decades ago, there was no government save the U.S. Territorial government and that was not much in attendance. Prospective homesteaders had explicit written documents spelling out their rights and responsibilities to the government in order to make good on their claims. And that was about it. There weren’t even inspections. You just had a witness verify that you had fulfilled the homestead contract, and it was a done deal. Yet there were well-established social codes which formed the substance of the social contract among the local residents. People had to help each other. They had to be hard working. They could not prey on one another. They had to be fair. They had to be honest. They were allowed to keep their secrets, but not to live in isolation. If individuals did not share this vision, in most cases they were quietly ostracized, but in some cases they were exiled. Things are very different now. Many layers of government overlay the community. A great number of the citizens work for those governmental agencies. Additionally, numerous churches, social groups, and non-profit service organizations add to the fabric of this community.

But Homer is just one community among others in the area and they are certainly not all alike. The social contracts governing the communities of Fritz Creek, Kachemak City, Halibut Cove, and Anchor Point are relatively similar, as these are all originally homestead communities. Certainly the political flavor of these places varies quite a lot, but in the end the similarities outweigh the differences. Consider the differences, however, between the homestead towns and the company towns. Port Graham, Nanwalek, Seldovia, and Ninilchik, for instance, share this trait—at one point they were all company towns settled under the Russian Imperial presence in Alaska. Of course they existed as Native settlements prior to the Russian period. And pre-Russian cultural differences are still discernible in these villages today, but the influence of the Russian fur trade was so extensive here, that each community bears the clear stamp of that forced social contract. Finally, certain communities have formed in the area under charters for religious expression. The Barefooters Society from the late 1950s established a community at the head of the bay under a social contract that was very well defined, quite restrictive, and wildly different from any other community in the area. Yet this unique community, now lost to time, shared something important with other communities in the area, namely the Russian Old Believer villages.

The Russian Old Believer village of Nikolaevsk was, like the Barefooters, a planned community dedicated to religious expression. These people, having fled the Soviet Union and its suppression of religion, formed together to practice their faith under the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. In the past decades they have revised and revisited their social contract that was formed under the influence of the Russian Orthodox religion. Significant differences have emerged. The original community has split. Other communities have been formed to serve the same original need, but with different interpretations of the social contract. There is a spectrum. Generally speaking, the farther from Nikolaevsk, the more conservative and restrictive is the interpretation of the social contract. The remote villages of Dolina (now abandoned), Kachemak Selo, Razdolna, and Voznesenka, all adhere more closely to the original religious and cultural values of their contract than does the more centrally located Nikolaevsk.

Some of the Barefooters settled in Homer after their commune met its end. Former Barefooter Brother Asaiah Bates became a fixture of local government and a pillar of civic responsibility. His mission was to remind us that government must have a heart, a spirit, or it leaves the people in need. After his passing his legacy lives on, not in a single extraordinary individual such as he himself was, but in the many individuals who knew him and who now work for the good of this community. Additionally there is in this community a plethora of worship groups distributed over an extremely broad range of belief, yet one never hears of theological or sectarian struggles. This remarkable degree of religious tolerance must in some measure be credited to Brother Asaiah.

It is intriguing to speculate who and what will follow the example of Brother Asaiah and become civic leaders. Multiple cultural perspectives will surely add to the complexity of the social contract of this town. But the Social Contract is not a document, or a monument. It is a process. Its future lies in talking about it, in interpreting it, in amending it if necessary.