The tension between private property, freedom and order in social contract theories

Download

index.pdf

Date

2020

Author

Kanatlı, Mehmet

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

349
views

338
downloads

The main aim of this thesis is basically to examine how and why the tension stemmed from economic inequalities and dependence arising from private ownership of the means of production are alleviated and legitimized by social contract theoreticians from the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the twentieth century. In this respect, the study chiefly concentrates on two important points. The first one is to evaluate the modern-term social contract theories developed by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau by linking them to the emergence process of the capitalist mode of production. The second one is to argue that the economic inequalities and dependence that appeared as a result of the emergence of the capitalist mode of production respectfully in England and France are not only still continuing in the present capitalist societies in different aspects but also still are being concealed under the mask of formal equality and formal freedom put forward by John Rawls in the twentieth century. More importantly, the study applies a methodological approach which underlines material and social conditions of a given period in which contractarian philosophers have lived in terms of analyzing the history of political ideas and political philosophy disciplines. As a result of this approach, the main hypothesis of this study suggests that positive or negative portrayal of freedom by the social contractarians will not prevent the continuing social tension stemmed from the dependence and economic inequalities caused by private ownership over means of production in any political or economic order which legalizes the private ownership of the means of production.

Subject Keywords

Social contract., Social Contract Theories, Private Property, Freedom, Order

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12625275/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/45130

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Rescaling of social relations towards subnational regional space : an investigation of Turkish case Gündoğdu, İbrahim; Şengül, Hüseyin Tarık; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2006) In the last thirty years, capitalist social relation on the one hand, created a world that is interconnected in the means of economic and political; on the other hand, produced differentiated and fragmented uneven spaces. In this context, social theory has interested in space and spatial differences, and inserted space into analysis of social relations for some time. In this thesis, the current issue of the construction of subnational regional space is explored through a conceptual approach in which space i...
The Possibility of grounding contemporary social contract theory by theory of games: the cases of Rawls, Gauthier and Buchanan / Karavelioğlu, Velihan; Okyayuz, Mehmet; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2014) This thesis analyzes the concepts of social cooperation of two traditions, the social contract theory and the theory of games. Three main characteristics of social cooperation understanding of the game theory will be offered, and it will be compared with the understanding of the social cooperation of the social contract theory. The Classical Social Contract Theory does not offer any calculation of the utility. On the other side, The Contemporary Social Contract Theory provides the measurement of utility. Th...
The impact of military spending and income inequality on economic growth in Turkey Tongur, Unal; Elveren, Adem Yavuz (Informa UK Limited, 2016-05-03) An extensive literature on the effect of military expenditures on economic growth yields conflicting results. However, a crucial issue that has not been investigated in this context is the possible effect of inequality. The impact of military expenditures on economic growth in Turkey has also received substantial attention. Yet, the majority of these studies are not constructed based on a structural model, but rather examine the causality between the variables in question. Considering these two shortcomings...
The political discourse of extreme right in western europe in the light of "classical" fascism: the case of the front national in france Usta, Utku; Tanrısever, Oktay Fırat; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2007) The prime objective of this thesis is to grasp the terms of continuity and discontinuity between classical fascism and the contemporary extreme right in Western Europe. With respect to a hypothetical ideal type of fascism, the study will exclusively focus on French Front National case and try to unveil its historical and ideological linkages to the fascist rules in Italy and Germany during the inter-war years. While doing this, the transformation (if any) which certain elements of the extreme right rhetoric...
The role of carbon pricing in the Paris agreement Arı, İzzet; Sarı, Ramazan (Routledge, 2019-09-01)

Citation Formats

M. Kanatlı, “The tension between private property, freedom and order in social contract theories,” Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Graduate School of Social Sciences. Political Science and Public Administration., Middle East Technical University, 2020.