Philosophers, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Karl Marx, each expressed various perspectives on how governments should be formed and how societies should be governed. The social contract each quote represents are different in many ways. Hobbes believed that governments should be powerful, Locke advocated for natural rights, while Marx felt that the power should be held by the workers rather than by business owners. Hobbes’ idea of a social contract was when a group of people agreed to sacrifice some freedom in order to have an organized society. He felt that people were “naturally cruel, greedy, and selfish” and that they needed to be kept under strict laws and be controlled. In the Hobbes quote taken from Leviathan, he calls for all power to be strictly controlled, with power placed upon one person similar to that of an absolute monarchy to keep control and obedience.
Locke, however, believed that people deserved natural rights, the right to life, liberty, and property. He believed that government should protect the rights of the people.
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He believed that in modern times the proletariate would rise up and take control from the bourgeoisie. As the quote illustrates, “Then the world will be for the common people, and the sounds of happiness will reach the deepest springs.” He believed and called upon the working people to rise up and setup a classless, communist based society, where wealth and power would be shared equally by all. “Ah! Come! People of every land, how can you not be roused.” This philosophy flourished in a number of countries, like the former Soviet Union, throughout the 1900’s, but has lost favor over nationalism and free-market