Hobbesian Anarchy

I do not know what greater contribution human industry could have made to human happiness. For if the patterns of human action were known with the same certainty as the relations of magnitude in figures, then ambition and greed, whose power rests on the false opinions of the common people about right and wrong, would be disarmed, and the human race would enjoy such secure peace that (apart from conflicts over space as the population grew) it seems unlikely that it would ever have to fight again.

Thomas Hobbes, 2013¹

In Hobbes’... [Leviathan], each individual in the state of nature can behave peacefully or in a war-like fashion. “Peace” is like... [“cooperate”] because when everyone behaves in this manner it is much better than when they all choose “war” (“confess”)... However, bellicosity is the best response to both those who are peaceful (because you can extract wealth and privilege by bullying those who choose peace) and those who are bellicose (because might can only be stopped by might). In short, “war” is the strictly dominant strategy and the population is caught in a Prisoner’s Dilemma where war prevails and life is “nasty, brutish and short.”

Shaun Hargreaves Heap and Yanis Varoufakis, 2004²

Game theory seemed aptly suited to warfare because it assumes that without threat of coercive sanctions, no agreement, consensual arrangement, or voluntary obligation is sacrosanct. The Prisoner’s Dilemma, accordingly, seemed to capture the essence of the nuclear security dilemma. International relations theorist Alexander Wendt describes this most tense security dilemma in terms of the

¹ Thomas Hobbes, from his “Epistle Dedicatory,” quoted in Richard Tuck’s introduction to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. by Richard Tuck, revised student edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xxvi.

² Shaun Hargreaves Heap and Yanis Varoufakis, Game Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004), 174.

153 “logic of Hobbesian anarchy,” which is well known: “the ‘war of all against all’ in which actors operate on the principle of sauve qui peut and kill or be killed.”^[366] Wendt explains that Hobbes’s anarchy “is the true ‘self-help’ system..., where actors cannot count on each other for help or even to observe basic self-restraint.”^[367] In this case, survival depends on military power, and when actor A increases security, those gains reduce B’s security because B is unsure of whether A’s inten­tions are defensive. Harkening back to the nuclear security dilemma, and the condition of uncertainty, which is only enhanced when actors deploy weapons with offensive value, Wendt concludes that “security is a deeply competitive, zero­sum affair, and security dilemmas are particularly acute... because of the inten­tions attributed to others.”^[368]

Notwithstanding the numerous differences between nation-state actors and individual human actors, theorists routinely apply Hobbes’s argument about the achievement of social order from anarchy to cases across domestic and international relations.^[369] That is because, for many rational choice theorists, there is a direct parallel structure between the concerns of individual security and national security. In the words of David Gauthier, “war is the consequence of national insecurity, and the natural desire to preserve oneself.”^[370] According to Gauthier, “the natural condition of mankind is inherently unstable”; the com­petition for increased security through increasing power necessarily makes all actors increasingly insecure. Gauthier directly compares individuals’ and states’ pursuit of security: “Just as two nations seeking to strengthen themselves to prevent conflict with the other, find themselves locked in an arms race which tends to bring on that conflict, so men, seeking to strengthen themselves to prevent being overcome, find themselves locked in a race which ensures that most are overcome.”^[371] Gauthier reaches the glum conclusion that actors must pursue power as a condition of their survival, but that this “perpetual and restless desire of power after power” entails “impotence... [and] death.” Gauthier’s conclusion resonates with neoliberal political philosophy, which concurs that the challenge of achieving order under a social contract ultimately comes down to solving the Prisoner’s Dilemma game.

Rational choice theorists now regularly suggest that Hobbes’s state of nature is a Prisoner’s Dilemma in which each individual at all times seeks to take advantage of others.^{[373] [374]} The solution, accordingly, is Prisoner’s Dilemma govern­ance, or govermentality, if the target meaning refers to how techniques of governing and subject’s rationales for action are inseparably developed: the strong state is introduced to keep everyone in line with the law.11 This Prisoner’s Dilemma logic is extended to the idea that individuals only follow through with agreements because of the threat of third-party enforcement. This rational choice reading of Hobbes suggests that coercive force is a necessary and suffi­cient condition to achieve the rule of law. As with deterrence theory, the question of legitimacy, or consent to mutual self-restraint granting to each the right to exist, is superfluous.

Comparing a traditional reading of Hobbes with a contemporary game theo­retic reading reveals multiple clear differences between these two approaches spanning almost four centuries. It is simple to observe that Hobbes did not view the exercise of leaving the state of nature in terms consistent with the Prisoner’s Dilemma game because he clearly asserted the overwhelming mutual benefit derived from living in a commonwealth. Thus, if one were forced to rely on a game theoretic model to make this point, exiting the state of nature is better regarded as an Assurance Game or possibly an Assurance Dilemma because the upside of achieving a state of mutual cooperation is fantastic. However, Hobbes further argues that not only is it difficult for men to reach sound conclusions of judgment in logic and cause-effect relations in a civil society, but that the state of nature is characterized by fundamental uncertainty and unpredictability stem­ming from its configuration and actors’ inability to have systematic knowledge.

The rational choice interpretation of Hobbes’s Leviathan pushes past its classical liberal roots to reach the neoliberal conclusion that a maximum security state with invasive monitoring and surveillance powers will be neces­sary to prevent all citizens from acting on their overriding prerogative to defect from cooperation whenever the opportunity presents itself without penalty. Hobbes’s three fundamental laws, resting on analytic consistency, are irrelevant to the neoliberal Hobbes. These state that actors must seek peace as a condition of their self-preservation, that this demands relinquishing the right to every form of impulse or desire satisfaction available, and requires following through on agreements made. The pages ahead present the contemporary reading of Hobbes in game theoretic terms, introduce the classical liberal Hobbes, and discuss how the former celebrates Hobbes’s notorious Foole while the latter holds this character in contempt.¹³ The chapter concludes by exploring how a society populated by strategic rational actors may be best exemplified by the example of Hobbes’s Foole, who, as the logic of the Prisoner’s Dilemma recommends, each defect even after his partner in exchange pursuing the fruits of collaboration has cooperated.