Introduction

In this section, a brief summary of how the relationship between private property, freedom, and order has been handled since the time of Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle through those of the modern period, including Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls. This part elucidates how modern contractarian theoreticians’ approaches to the subject, especially when compared to pre-modern period theoreticians, have changed in line with capitalist relations that emerged in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More importantly, I underline Rawls’s significance in analyzing the subject in line with the main similarities between Rawls and his contractarian predecessors in this section, which enable me to develop the main hypothesis of the book: Modern contract theories work as ideological mechanisms put forward under the guise of formal equality and formal freedom for the sake of maintaining a capitalist exploitative order.