Contractual Power

A social contract binds individuals in an agreement that presumably serves the greater good. The greater good, however, is seldom evenly distributed. Cap­italist development destabilized the power of a feudal aristocracy, forcing renegotiation of the rules of state.⁶¹ It also destabilized the power of patriarchal households, weakening the power of fathers over sons and daughters.

Liberal political theorists sought to design property rights that could harness the individual pursuit of self-interest to the welfare of the common­wealth. But the property rights they prescribed applied only to white men engaged in production for exchange. Later liberal theorists would bring slaves and women into the picture, insisting that they should be treated just like white men. The boundaries of acceptable self-interest reflected the boundaries of political power: but they were also shaped by a problem that Poulain de la Barre and Mary Astell (as well as Clark and Tawney) worried about—the limits of the market. The most important product of women's labor was labor itself. Women could be brought into the market, but the market itself could not reward the tasks of family care unless children could be bought and sold.