Well, Locke’s and Hobbes’ theories, for instance, build from individuals in a state of nature. So what specifically do you find troublesome with their conceptions of the social contract.
Republican constitutions have historically been described as formalized proxies to the abstract idea of a “social contract”.
But would only be for grown up citizens entering into it voluntarily, right? Not a default contract for anyone hence.
Probably one of the oldest philosophical problems is the origin, nature and perhaps purpose of social order.
And both Hobbes and Locke made significant contributions to the understanding of this very complex and old problem.
But a lot of knowledge about related topics was accumulated since their writings. And now the problematic aspects of their programs are more or less evident to any modern student of this ancient problem.
Of course, to presume that this was due to some particular naiveté or lack of intelligence by them is completely absurd. They did what they could with the limited tools available. Like everyone else.
So, what’s their core program?
As you’ve said, both consider an hypothetical natural state of atomized individualistic men.
Hobbes says there was an original state of war of all against each other. Men were not bounded by morals. This situation being unsatisfactory for everyone, a contractual agreement was reached and a state was formed to regulate these violent instincts.
Locke says there were righteous men, and there were evil men that exploited the righteous men. That situation being unsatisfactory, the righteous men organized themselves for protection against the wicked, forming thus an alliance and a state.
And what’s problematic?
Their understanding of the original state of nature is quite inaccurate.
Actually, mankind descend from other social animals, and patterns of social cooperation have existed between lifeforms for millions of years. These co-operative strategies vary from simple sexual dimorphism to complex hives of eusocial beings.
It’s likely that our social order has been somehow inherited from our ancestors, which were probably organized in clans and tribes of hunter-gatherers, with instinctive but highly complex cooperative notions of kinship affection, tribal pecking order and social division of labor.
These groups were not atomized individuals, but had some sort of collective identity and survivalship goal.
If any Hobbesian war of all against all ever happened, it was between very primitive lifeforms, not anything resembling modern man.
But the notion apparently applies to the relationship of these isolated small groups towards one another, on their occasional encounters.
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For these tribes the notion of social contract may be a more or less reasonable concept.
Everyone understand the rules and one’s part given the common goal which is to get the tribe to survive.
But there’s one caveat. Such social “contract” was not something clearly established at some point, but a cultural process that gradually emerges from biological cooperation instincts, with no distinct origin.
It was not a product of deliberate design but a result of a selective survival process.
What escaped Hobbes and Locke was this notion of spontaneous order. That was better understood later on, by the scottish thinkers like Ferguson, Hume and Smith, and on the context of biology, by Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory of Evolution.
This process might have started with intertribe domination and persistent warfare. Some tribes might discover that if they don’t destroy the weaker tribes they know, but instead keep them weak and periodically steal what they produce or enslave some of their elements, they might be better off. They don’t need to sow anymore, they can be the reapers.
And eventually some of these domineering tribes acquire control of larger empires of vassal tribes over extensive territories.
And some empires develop into lesser degrees of oppression towards dominated peoples, since this relaxation can sometimes payoff as the vassals get more productive, increasing accordingly the amount that can be taken. Like some primitive form of supply side economics policy.
And they might start providing active protection and other services to their most productive vassal tribes, since they are constantly harassed by marauding barbarians and foreign empires.
The interactions between these tribes lead to the formation of larger cultures and civilizations.
Gradually what started as pure domination becomes more similar to an assented cooperation, a contract establishing a mutualistic relationship between a social class of rulers forming the state and its subjects.
But such a contract was never really established.
It is the non intentional result of the settlement of many circumstantial trade-offs between local organizations, and the conservation of a status quo through tradition.
It’s important to understand that these trade-offs more often than not involved a considerate amount of bloodshed and agony.
No one envisioned some ruled social relationship between castes in the beginning, they just carried on doing what they’ve always done, perhaps making little adjustments as circumstances changed, and this relationship eventually emerged.
What is interesting is that at some point during this whole process, the collectivist survivalist tribes absorbed by larger empires start contracting into family kernels or even independent individuals.
They leave cultural bonds behind them, but the codependent social structure of a community has gone.
There’s no more well defined society, as a close-knit group striving together to survive against some hostile nature.
What you have is a very large and mostly incomprehensible social process with several interconnected agents, but with no discernible common goal to achieve as a group.
Societies and their general norms and cultural traditions become the environment rather then the agent.
We are still very used to the ancient group mentality. We like to think in terms of national or civilizational or even global goals to achieve.
That’s why people can be easily convinced by religious or ideological conceptions, that give some artificial but comforting meaning to the ultimately incomprehensible black seas of infinity were we briefly navigate.