[lbo-talk] blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress

[Chuck Grimes]

> Myself, without thinking it through all that seriously, I would probably 
> see Hobbes as a primitive but necessary stage in the development of Social 
> Contract theory, corresponding to the primitive movement of the 
> parliamentary forces in the Civil War. As Cromwell tended to lean on 
> dictatorship where the social basis of his republicanism was too weak, so 
> too Hobbes tended to a rather underdeveloped version of social contract 
> theory (comparable to Machiavelli's) where agency is found in the 
> Sovereign - modelled on the Lord Protector Cromwell in Hobbes' case, as it 
> was on some Italian Prince in Machiavelli's.

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Thanks that helps a lot. I was having a hell of time trying to figure out 
Hobbes
relationship to Cromwell.

CG