Breached Contract

The invocation in the public space of a sphere of mass protest, not organized in the streets, but expressive at the polls, echoes inside Portuguese homes and in a diminished way in party headquarters, where experts should have invoked the heart of popular discontent, not in congested sectors, not in fragile public policies or low wages, but rather in the organic essence of the Social Order, in a Social Contract continually violated by its pursuer, the State.

Today, no matter how abstract the integration of the Social Contract into the public and political debate may seem, due to its existential illiquidity, restricted to palpable fragments in the Constitution, its explanatory and illustrative capacity for the current political situation is undeniable, as is the vehemence with which it should be discussed in rooms and amphitheaters open to apolitical citizens.

In a bold act of recapitulation, we recall the birth of this concept with Hobbes, in a dynamic of awarding freedoms to the Leviathan, a sovereign authority, which will administer Order and Security.

As a conceptual successor, we find the most influential and recognized theorization, that of John Locke, with the constitution of a limited government, whose purpose is the protection of natural rights, where the legitimacy of political power is based on the consent of the governed.

The list of conceptualizations could be extended, due to its recurrent development by various authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Rawls, Robert Nozick or Jürgen Habermas, with an essential vision for the contemporary debate.

From this secular evolution of theorizing about the Social Contract, fundamental considerations arise about the reality of societies, about the elements that mobilize people, about the values ​​that ensure pacification and public stabilization, the vectors of adjudication of self-control based on an entity that assumes responsibility for these domains and vectors, thus raising multiple illustrative dimensions of discontent.

Today, there is a primary and evident element, the failure of the State to comply with its fundamental responsibilities of the contemporary Social Contract, with particular clarity in the areas of Health, Education, Housing and, across the board, throughout all Public Services, sectors that assume dimensions in contemporary times, not enshrined in Lockean theorizing, perhaps due to secular prudence or foresight of an overload in the arteries of the State.

Non-compliance and its measurement are increasingly notorious, however, we are not restricted to a localized phenomenon, in many ways, a “transnational manifesto” of unfulfilled expectations is emerging in the European context with the gradual degradation of public services, with a distinctive nuance: the protest that was once union protest has become the election of ambassadors of contractual non-compliance, with destructive dynamics that are difficult to repair in the social and political sphere.

The extent of the breach of the Social Contract oscillates between Nations and Peoples, between predispositions and ambitions, between satisfaction and contentment, all of these dimensions of profound subjectivity and volatility, where individualism and the increased role of the algorithm in the formulation of principles, values ​​and desires, nullify the capacity for systemic analysis of non-compliance and possible political solutions.

However, regarding the contemporary Social Contract, much more complex and dense than the contract that John Locke introduced us to, I believe it is relevant to indicate a dimension that the primary sphere of the Executive Power forgot, greatly developed by Jürgen Habermas in Between Facts and Norms (1992), the sphere of citizen participation.

It is curious and contradictory, in a society where there are initiatives for civic participation, financed by public money, that the main political decision-makers of the Regime do not regularly seek to hear and consult citizens.

The breaking of the Social Contract would be a topic absent from the sphere of discussion if it were not susceptible to transformations with little participation, in fact, if temporary decision-makers did not assume themselves as a force of confluence of unknown wills, organized and presented as the General Will.

It is, therefore, essential to “unionize” those who are well-intentioned, in a consensus that is more than just silent, one that is transformative and constructive, with well-aligned and structured ideas for the future in a direction that is guided by the pursuer of the Social Contract, the State, in fulfilling its obligations.

I believe, with profound disbelief, that there is an opening for negotiation between different social sectors in a model of concertation of discontent and identified failures, this would be utopian and unsustainable.

I believe, with profound certainty, that there are institutional structures, from political parties to social agents, with an interest and growing recognition of the widespread consideration of non-compliance with the Social Contract, as such, I appeal to them to seek – structure by structure – to listen to the General Will, in its most realistic manifestation, in a full auditorium.

Having reached this point, it is pertinent to invoke the comedy of one of the few solutions for social pacification, one that contradicts the stereotype of the great political decision-maker, an urgent pilgrimage through the real Portugal, where the voices of the people are valued, in order to value the political system and to construct responses that are vital to the maintenance of the Social Order as we know it.