Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“Rather than continuing to pretend that we’re in an agreement or mutually beneficial relationship with a predatory ruling class, we could start to put facts ahead of abstractions and thought experiments. We could reimagine the social contract in Proudhonian terms, as working from the bottom-up, first relationships of equality and solidarity between individuals, then between their cooperative bodies, and outward from there in federations and agreements as may be needed for specific times and purposes. This is precisely the reverse of Rawlsian social contract philosophy in that it does not take the state as a given: it begins with contract where it can be found as a social fact and insists that any social arrangement must harmonize with genuine contract. But I don’t want to suggest that this reversal of Rawls is in method only.” (11/20/25)