Riots, the State of Nature and the Social Contract

The scenes of rioting in the UK over the last few days have been pretty awful, involving, as they have, widespread destruction of property and of some people's homes. The responses to the riots have had problems of their own, resting largely, as they have, on appeals for repressive state measures and ritual incantations of the need for re-moralising society. Amidst this fevered hubbub it has become apparent that the reflex responses of members of the public, as well as of the leading politicians in the country, are basically punitive in nature. 


To an extent these responses are understandable since it is true that threats to livelihoods, homes and basic physical security, do tend to panic people. And I am far from wanting to engage in extended responses here concerning the question of what drives people to engage in behaviour that puts such things at risk, though not because I think such discussion is otiose. Rather it is because, in the first instance, what strikes me as important here is to reflect on the question of what philosophically there is to say about what these riots reveal to us about social order and social cohesion.


In the first instance, what comes to mind is the way that these riots reveal the need for discussion of the notion of the "state of nature". This notion has been misunderstood as either a historical one or as being something that is only at the edges of political theory, something preliminary, as it were, to its real business. What disturbances of the sort we have witnessed have revealed, however, is how central to the task of political philosophy the discussion of the state of nature really is. It is not only that the riots reveal well how a state of nature can be re-created in advanced societies, even if only in a few streets and for a short time. It is, even more, that the problems that the social contract is meant to resolve, problems of assurance and the overcoming of isolation, are not conclusively solved in any of the societies in which we live which is why they remain beset by recurrences of reversion to the state of nature.


Hence it is not only false to think that the state of nature is an historically closed episode, it is also wrong to think that it is not of continuous relevance in the comprehension of the bases of social order. A state of nature is constituted whenever it is the case that there exists in a situation no conclusively established and reliably applicable authority. In this sense our societies, whilst based on social contracts for the most part, are riven with exceptions that place us either as individuals or members of groups, back into the state of nature. Once placed there we have the basic problems revealed again that require recourse to the social contract. In this sense the need for social order is much more basic than the ritual incantations of politicians, commentators and social theorists, suggest.


It is not merely a problem of appealing for 'parents to parent' or for measures that alleviate problems of poverty and neglect, it is also a problem of articulating both within the spaces governed by the social contract and those apertures through which authority disappears, the need for a regulation of behaviour that enables the formation and re-formation of ordered connections such that something like cohesion can be said to exist. The ritual noises that we hear on such occasions point to formations that allegedly threaten such order, whether what is meant here are loose morals or chasms of inequality. Such factors are not without interest in the overall understanding of social order but the basis of it is elsewhere. It is in the simple view that there is an interest in order existing and being maintained in a manner that supersedes that which can tie together a band of robbers. This case is far from simple and cannot be regarded as conclusively established  but that it requires to be made and re-made is the basic philosophical lesson that emerges from these disturbances, a lesson that is of more lasting interest and importance than either the disturbances themselves or the ritual denunciations that are made when they take place.

Related articles

• Rawls and Political Economy (kantinternational.blogspot.com)

Rawls and Political Economy

The fifth chapter of A Theory of Justice is entitled 'Distributive Shares' and, just as the fourth chapter focused on the first principle of justice, so this chapter looks at the second principle. The point of the opening two sections of Chapter V is to look at the sense in which the principles of justice serve as part of the doctrine of political economy and it is these sections I'll look at in this posting.


The first of these sections, section 41, describes the general role principles of justice have in the assessment of political economy intending to show only that doctrines of political economy have to include a notion of the public good which ensures that there has to be a role within them for principles of justice. Since the 'basic structure' is the key notion of Rawls' conception of justice it follows that political economy is seen by him as part of what creates and fashions wants for all. Hence political economy is not viewed as a self-standing discipline but as part of the consideration of moral and political matters.


In making this point Rawls considers the objection that political economy is concerned only with existing wants whereas the contract view describes an ideal conception, an argument which understands the two to be in necessary opposition to each other. However, such a stark way of presenting the relationship between the contract view and political economy is understood by Rawls to rest upon seeing the contract view as incorporating perfectionist constraints. By contrast, Rawls' own view of the contract position involves only a commitment to primary social goods albeit in so doing does make anthropological commitments of a certain sort. But the point of the theory of primary goods is that they are meant only to apply to the most general rational wants and not to include specifics that are contentiously ideal in form. So the "theory of the good" assumed within the contract view is not taken by Rawls to define an ideal of the person.


In some respects this point is, however, odd given the conclusion of the previous chapter which described a 'Kantian interpretation' of 'justice as fairness'. Taking this interpretation to require viewing the original position as incorporating conditions of autonomy does seem to require an ideal view of the contracting parties. It is likely to be Rawls' contention that this view involves no substantive commitment to the sense of the 'good' of these parties and thus to include no more than the formal constraints of right. But it is still the case that the view of autonomy that structures the original position is one that not all would accept as an ideal in the initial situation so is a move 'from' the initial situation. Precisely the move between the initial situation and the original position was, indeed, a central part (on my interpretation at least) of the argument of Chapter III.


Rawls articulates in this section further reasons for taking the notion of 'stability' very seriously as it is a prime source of the way that the formal constraints of right are manifested. This does lead Rawls to admit that the principles of justice do define at least 'a partial ideal of the person' and that this ideal is one that social and economic arrangements have to be bound by. Indeed, it is part of the point of this to resist the other pole of the stark contrast between political economy and the contract doctrine. Just as Rawls wishes to mitigate this contrast from one side by down-playing to a certain extent the ideal character of the contract view by denying that it is perfectionist so also he has to prevent the contract view merely being seen to submit (as utilitarianism is often thought to) to existing wants. It is the ideal of the person that is involved in the contract view that prevents it from simply accepting existing wants.


It is due to this ideal of the person that the contract view represents that it requires certain institutional forms to be embedded in its conception of justice. In this respect, as Rawls himself argues, there is a clear sense in which 'justice as fairness' is in alliance with perfectionism against utilitarianism. Whilst utilitarianism does not have to meekly accept existing wants either, given its commitment to optimific states of affairs, it is still the case, on Rawls' view, that its choice of ideals depends importantly upon how existing desires continue into the future. Another way of putting this is that utilitarianism does not include an ideal of the person in its first principle and in this respect is quite unlike both 'justice as fairness' and perfectionism.


The two principles of justice are not intended to be dependent upon the contingencies of existing desires but, unlike perfectionism, it is also not the case that these principles are supposed to arise a priori. The point is only that the principles are meant to arise from the construction of the original position but this construction is not one in which all conceptions would have equal chances given the way that the construction is constrained by the forms of right. 


One of the oddities of how Rawls reflects back on the achievements of Chapter III at the beginning of Chapter V is that he now presents the methodology of the original position, in apparent accord with the idea of the 'Kantian interpretation' as, in an important sense, arising from a certain kind of individualism. The individualism in question is theoretical in the sense that the rationality of the contracting parties is modelled on the sense of what any one given reasoner would take to be rationally mandated. It is therefore meant to lead to a valuation of communal conditions but is not first framed in terms of how these conditions are meant to proceed. In presenting the issue in this way, Rawls may well mis-characterise his procedure since it rather appears that the appeal in the 'Kantian interpretation' to autonomy requires a sense of the mutuality of respect, something that cannot be modelled simply on the reasoning of one party.


In section 42 Rawls turns next to the question of distinct economic systems. However, as always, such systems are not considered from within economics but only from the principles of justice. Political economy is understood by Rawls to be concerned importantly with the public sector and with the regulation of property, taxation and the structure of markets. In presenting this view of political economy Rawls distinguishes between different elements of the public sector. The first element of it he considers concerns the ownership of the means of production. The classic distinction between socialistic and private-property arrangements concerns precisely this with the former viewing the public sector as the main or sole place in which ownership of the means of production takes place. By contrast, an ideally pictured private property system would appear to give the public sector a much smaller role in the ownership of means of production and perhaps circumscribe such public ownership only to generally agreed public goods such as apply to utilities and certain forms of transport.


If the ownership of the means of production is one element of the public sector the other that Rawls differentiates from it is the proportion of social resources devoted to public goods. In turning to this second element of the public sector Rawls concentrates on how such public goods have distinguishing characteristics that separates them from private goods properly considered. The characteristics in question are that public goods are indivisible in nature and they are public in quality. Indivisibility applies to the need that all elements of the public have to their supply. Since the need for them is thus general they cannot easily be parcelled into separable units of consumption.


Public goods can, on this conception of indivisibility, be understood to be have more or less of the characteristic of resistance to private consumption. In the case that is at the extreme end of the spectrum a public good has to be made completely and equally available to all. This would be 'full indivisibility' for the good over the society. The example Rawls provides of this is national defence against attack from outside. No part of the society can be denied provision of this good so it has the extreme characteristic of 'full indivisibility'.  Since public goods have, to varying degrees, this characteristic of indivisibility, they are not provided by means of market arrangements but require provision by means of politics. In the extreme case of 'full indivisibility' the distribution of the public good is also not something that is considered in the sense that it is supplied to all.


However the characteristics that are specific to public goods carry with them certain special problems. One is the problem of 'free-riders' that afflicts taxation. Essentially if a good is made generally available then the calculations of some is that it matters not if they pay for its up-keep since provision will not be affected thereby. It is precisely due to this problem that coercive force is required to ensure that payments for indivisible public goods is provided. This does, however, also point to the need for such coercion to be built into the social contract. It is interesting and instructive that it is only at this stage of his theory that Rawls arrives at the requirement for coercion whereas Kant, by contrast, explicated authorisation to use coercion as the second step in his theory of right immediately after the statement of the universal principle of right. This was done even before such questions as provision of public goods was considered. Rawls' own example of national defence shows that authorisation of use of coercion in the articulation of right must be foundational for a society to be said to exist at all and so its late arrival in Rawls' theory does have the peculiar consequence of almost leading to be overlooked something that is key to political theory.


If the response to the 'free-rider' problem is expressed by Rawls by appeal to the coercive need that arises from provision of indivisible public goods the next point he raises concerning them is the notion of externality. Indivisible goods have wide effects and even if the financial basis of their provision was limited within a society its formation could be a matter of indifference to no one. Such public harms as effect the environment also have to be understood as part of the costs of the provision of the public good that produces this effect. Indeed, market mechanisms are alone incapable of responding to such externalities which is why governments have to attend to them.


Rawls' reference to the 'state of nature' is also made in this context, a notion otherwise rarely referred to in his theory and which some commentators argue has been banished from it in favour of the construction of the original position. In truth the original position cannot be seen to have simply replaced the reference to the 'state of nature'. Consideration of externalities of harm is essentially calculation of what 'naturally' arises and has to be regulated. Part of the case for the contract is made through the regulation in question. In this sense Rawls' contractarianism is far from having dispensed with the reference to the 'state of nature'. 


Modern theories of rationality in terms of games theories replicate the problems of the 'state of nature' as Rawls' original accounting of the prisoner's dilemma testifies. In this situation the parties have been artificially isolated from each other and the problem is precisely how to ensure contractarian formations that promote the public good are to arise and this is nothing other than a restatement of the problem of the state of nature. Rawls terms this an 'isolation' problem and he distinguishes it from an 'assurance' one in which the latter is formulated through the question of how to effectively eliminate the free-rider question. Free-riders in a general sense are partaking of the 'benefits' of natural positioning whilst dependent upon social protection and the diminishment of the possibility of the former is required by others if they are to be assured of the point of their cooperation. But this is nothing other than the case for a sovereign power restated as an 'assurance' problem. What the distinction between 'isolation' and 'assurance' does point to is that the case for the contractual agreement is not equivalent to the case for the sovereign as the authority executive in relation to it and in this respect Rawls has added something at this point to the consideration of state of nature theory.


Having separated out the two elements of the public sector it becomes clear that the proportion of resources devoted to public goods is an analytically separable question from the ownership of the means of production. A private-property economy could allocate more or less resources to the purposes of public goods as could a socialist one. Further, the provision of public goods is not itself necessarily one that requires public providers. These are questions that Rawls leaves to 'political sociology' however and he does not consider them therefore foundational for the theory of justice.


This does not mean that Rawls has little to say about the role of market mechanisms. Rather, Rawls assumes that all regimes will use the market to ration out consumption goods since any other mechanism would be unnecessarily cumbersome. The difference between a market economy and a socialist one is not taken by him to reside there. Rather, in the free market the output of commodities is understood to be guided by 'kind and quantity' according to household preferences.  By contrast the 'kind and quantity' of such output would be guided, in a socialist economy, by either 'collective decisions' or the preferences of planners.


Rawls thus concedes to 'market socialists' the view that a market economy could be utilised in important respects within a socialist system, not least due to the greater efficiency of the market in allocation of resources. However, the failures of markets are also well noted by Rawls, not least with regard to the provision of public goods. However, market systems are consistent with equal liberties and fair equality of opportunity and do not require forced direction of labour. Further, they decentralise how economic power is manifested. 


The case for the 'consistency' of market arrangements with socialist institutions is made through a distinction between two separable functions of markets considered as operative in the determination of price. Price is taken by Rawls to have two functions. One is allocative and this he relates to economic efficiency. The other is distributive and Rawls connects this with how income is received by individuals. The allocative function of prices could be maintained through artificial rent attaching to the use of resources by state institutions and this is required if there is to be any efficiency in their use. But this function of pricing does not require distribution of the price charged to any owners. Distributive pricing is thus restricted under socialism but not allocative pricing.

Related articles

• The Kantian Interpretation of 'Justice As Fairness' (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Rawls on Toleration and Equal Liberty (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Rawls on the Rule of Law and the Priority of Liberty (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• The Two Principles of Justice and the Original Position (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Rawls' Principles for Individuals (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Rawls, Classical Utilitarianism and Benevolence (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• From the Initial Situation to the Original Position (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Rawls on Liberty and Constitutions (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Rawls and "average utility" (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Constructing the Original Position (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• The Difference Principle and Fair Equality of Opportunity (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
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Ripstein and International Right

I've been reading Arthur Ripstein's recently published book Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy. The work is a commentary on Kant's Doctrine of Right though it is written in a style that is broadly reconstructive rather than being textually focused. This has advantages and disadvantages in the responses to particular topics and I'll be reviewing it elsewhere at a later date. However, for the purposes of this blog, I thought I would set out some thoughts on Ripstein's brief discussion of international right, which occurs toward the end of Chapter 7 of his book.


In this discussion Ripstein confronts the question of why the examination of the state of nature between states structurally differs from the state of nature between individuals. This difference is most apparent in Kant's failure to argue for a world state. The key element in Ripstein's assessment of Kant's failure to argue for a world state is a rejection of the view that this failure is grounded on some kind of empirical consideration. Rather than this being the case, suggests Ripstein, it is instead the case that Kant rejects the world state on normative grounds.


The state of nature between states parallels that between individuals in the sense that there is a need for some authority to determine the resolution of disputes. However, whereas Ripstein identifies three distinct arguments in the case of the state of nature between individuals aiming to show the need to leave the state of nature, he only identifies one argument in relation to the state of nature between states. The difference that emerges due to the paucity of argument in relation to the state of nature between states results, Ripstein points out, in the absence of discussion of legislative and executive international bodies. Only one kind of international body emerges, the one that is structurally parallel to the court at the national level.


To unpack Ripstein's account of international right requires, however, not merely reading his view of the Doctrine of Right, but, also, his account of Perpetual Peace. At Ak. 8: 356, during the discussion of the 2nd definitive article of perpetual peace, Kant argues for a pacific league. In arguing for this idea Kant makes clear that the pacific league only aims at "preserving and securing" the freedom of a state and of the states in league with it. What Kant rules out here  is "public laws and coercion" as part of this league. In ruling out "public laws and coercion" Kant clearly does prevent the pacific league from having a legislature and the disbarring of coercion also prevents the creation of the league being seen as parallel to the creation of the state of right itself. However, Kant next adds to this point the view that the focal point for the creation of the pacific league will be the formation of republics which will tend to band  together, thus indicating that this view of the pacific league is of a piece with a "republican peace" hypothesis. See also my earlier posting for reflections on the peculiar structure of the argument of the 2nd definitive article.


Ripstein points to two differences between the state and private persons. The first difference is that the state does not have external objects of choice or, otherwise put, it does not "acquire" its territory. It is, in some sense, necessarily in possession of it or its territory is an analogue to the body of the person. Due to this point the need to establish the ground of property, required to establish the state of right, does not apply to the pacific league. This is used by Ripstein to rule out part of the requirement for public laws and coercion under them.


The second difference between the state and the situation of private persons, according to Ripstein, is that the state is a public rightful condition. It can only act in a public way so the basis of conflict between states can only be defensive whilst private persons can act in private ways and hence in ways towards each other that could be aggressive. This second argument is not provided by Kant in an explicit form and is meant to show the specific rationale for why the pacific league needs no coercive power.


At this point Ripstein's analysis articulates the point of the republican peace hypothesis as an a priori claim about the form of republican governance as the ideal of public right itself. The problem is that the imperfect realisation of this in existent states, an imperfect realisation that ensures that all states are at best partially despotic and at worst barbaric, ensures that in relations between states there are grounds for fearing actions of others. This point mitigates against the assurance of peace that would attach to republican states were such completely realised.


Ripstein's analysis, like the one I presented sometime ago, shows that the 2nd definitive article effectively dissolves into the 1st. After treating the 2nd definitive article, Ripstein moves to the discussion of the "congress of states" argued for in the Doctrine of Right. The "congress" is specifically related to a public right of nations and the resolution of disputes between states carried out by it is explicitly described by Kant as akin to a court. This model fits Ripstein's general assessment of international right and rules out a sovereign authority. However, one of the texts Ripstein does not consider is the piece on theory and practice where Kant provided a model of international right that is less congenial to Ripstein's account. In this earlier text Kant referred to "a right of nations, based on public laws accompanied by power to which each state would have to submit" (Ak. 8: 312) with the explicit analogy to the state of nature between individuals invoked as a basis. In this text, at least at this point, Kant considers a model of international right that does not fit Ripstein's model but which suggests instead a need for public laws and coercion. The earlier text perhaps corresponds better to a situation in which the model of republics is not perfectly realised and hence the overcoming of the international state of nature is envisaged as requiring their supersession. This also suggests that it is perhaps less evident than Ripstein thinks that Kant has a clear normative argument against the world state.

Cosmopolitanism, Coercion and Immigration

As I mentioned in yesterday's posting there has recently appeared a response from Tim Waligore to an earlier posting on this blog. Yesterday I tackled one aspect of Tim's response which concerned the reference I made earlier to the notion of the "social contract" and whether I could simply move from the general account of coercion in the "Introduction" to the Doctrine of Right to the discussion of the social contract that is specifically discussed under the heading of Public Right. However, the more important point Tim raised against my earlier published position concerned a cosmopolitan objection to the reasoning I gave when prescinding from the detail of an argument concerning immigration controls in the journal Political Theory.


First it's necessary to place this discussion back in context. The argument in Political Theory to which I was responding concerned the question of whether immigration controls are coercive. One of the parties to the debate argued that they are coercive whilst the other suggested that they are not but merely acts of "prevention". Basically the distinction is that some acts are ones that you can be prevented from doing without it following that you have been coerced. So if I refuse someone's request to marry me I haven't coerced them but I have prevented them from carrying something out. Similarly it may be that preventing someone from coming to a country by erecting an immigration barrier does stop them from carrying out their purpose without it following that this means that they have been coerced. Now, the reason I proceeded to prescind from the specifics of the debate was because it struck me that both parties to it effectively subscribed to a view of politics that was broadly informed by the views of Robert Nozick. On those views acts of coercion require some special justification as the nature of "right" is not defined in terms of coercion but rather more loosely by reference to something understood as "autonomy" where this notion appears to have some vague connection to the Kantian term but which Kant does not use in political philosophy. In response I was suggesting that a Kantian view is quite different since, on this view, right and authorization to use coercion are intimately connected, Kant even writing at one point that they "mean one and the same thing" (Ak. 6: 232). So my decision to prescind from the detail of the argument concerning immigration controls was based on an attempt to reach a more fundamental question of political philosophy.


However Tim's reply to my earlier posting raises a question which suggests that the response I made to the debate in Political Theory concealed a problem, a problem that, effectively prevents my being able, as easily as I thought in any case, from being able to prescind from the debate over immigration controls. There are two strands to Tim's challenge. The first concerns the way the "social contract" is referred to when Kant mentions it in his discussion of Private Right. This occurs towards the conclusion of Kant's discussion of acquisition when he writes that the problem of its justification requires reference to a notion of original acquisition before going on to write: "even if it is solved through the original contract, such acquisition will always remain only provisional unless this contract extends to the entire human race" (Ak. 6: 266).


This points to the first rationale Kant gives for a connection between the social contract and cosmopolitan considerations. To it can be added a second one to which Tim also refers. This is the very beginning of the discussion of Public Right where we find:

Since the earth's surface is not unlimited but closed, the concepts of the right of a state and of a right of nations lead inevitably to the idea of a right for a state of nations (ius gentium) or cosmopolitan right (ius cosmopoliticum). So if the principle of outer freedom limited by law is lacking in any one of these three possible forms of rightful condition, the framework of all the others is unavoidably undermined and must finally collapse. (Ak. 6: 311)

Kant's concluding comment here is fairly drastic but clearly indicates the importance of the connection he felt there was between the different elements of right. Cosmopolitan right and international right are here distinguished though the difference between them is not clear at this point of the text.


Tim's general point is that the will of a given state is, by reference to other states, still a specific will, the reasoning that Kant uses to suggest that the relationship between states constitutes a state of nature. In this situation the existent state appears to those not included within its boundaries simply as a power so that whilst the state needs no specific justification for coercion in regard to its citizens it does require some justification with regard to non-citizens who are not included in the will that was established when the state was set up. Further, to go back to the specifics of the question concerning immigration controls, there needs something specific to be shown concerning what it is that requires non-citizens to be limited and regulated in terms of their entry to the state, something that specifically relates to them as non-citizens concerning why they should be limited in this way.


A lot of separate issues are involved here. Firstly, Tim is quite right to bring out the problem of provisionality with regard to states prior to establishment of a cosmopolitan contract. This is the subject of the monograph of Elizabeth Ellis to which I have given some response elsewhere. It does importantly complicate questions of state of nature theory if the relationship between states is thought of as such a state of nature although it has to be added that this view of the existent state of play between nations is not held by, for example, Habermas who instead insists that the present relations involve a form of law that shows the state of nature has, to at least some extent, been superseded. From a strict Kantian point of view, however, Tim is right to draw attention to this point.


The second point is that the connection drawn between the right of the state, international right and cosmopolitan right at the beginning of the discussion of public right does not collapse the distinctions between them. Kant indicates an important relationship between them but he does not conflate them with each other. So there is some sense to right within the state, regardless of international right and cosmopolitan right although this sense is, as Ellis and Tim both correctly argue, provisional. The scope of such provisionality hence has to be worked through which I attempted in the article I wrote in response to Ellis.


However these points are not the core of the issue. The core is rather Tim's conclusion that we cannot abjure the provision of justification of coercive measures with regard to the non-citizens who wish to enter the domain of the state. Now, within the argument of the Doctrine of Right, Kant does not address this question. Kant only looks at the reasons why colonial settlement is problematic arguing for a need for specific contracts and against force. There is no specific discussion concerning what is required for those who would wish to settle within the domain of an existent state.


However surely the Kantian response is that the existent state has, by means of the constitutional measures it has set in place, defined the scope of agreed settlement within its borders? This would not merely include the need for new settlers to adhere to the laws already given but could well incorporate considerations the citizens of the state have made to the effect that they wish to decide whether to admit new citizens. This does not have to be based, as it so often is for existent states today, on grounds of ethnicity or on implied reference to considerations of "welfare". But part of the point of an established constitution is surely one of decision that the sovereign power can determine the basis of citizenship. After all, it is normal to be able to strip citizenship from someone if they perform certain acts deemed treasonous so, similarly, there could be grounds for determining whether or not anyone is allowed to begin life as a citizen. It is true that all this is, in the strict sense, provisional but no more so than any other ground of right. This doesn't prevent it from being the case that the non-citizen needs to be given justifications for why application for citizenship is turned down but the fact that there needs to be a process of such application would itself be a settled law of the land, like any law and as such the process would be in no more need of special justification than any other and in this sense I would continue to reject the view I took to be underlying the debate that took place in Political Theory.

Trade and the State of Nature

The last posting ended with some comments on the state of nature. Prior to looking in any detail at either how Kant treats the topic of the state of nature or how it is viewed in contemporary IR theories it is worth mentioning and previewing here a conception of it that suggests it is not singular. In the course of a paper on distributive justice, sovereignty and trade, Aaron James argues for a view of the state of nature that leads to it being seen to have a dual status. The paper, originally published in Social Theory and Practice, can be accessed on his web page here. The distinction between the two goes like this:

"Let us say that there exists a social state of nature when the coordination of behavior for common purposes is not yet established, when compliance with any agreed-upon terms is not generally assured, or when participants are unable to adjust their organization over time, whether by centralized control or by informally modifying the many particular choices that sustain the practice, through individual reform and joint efforts of moral argument and social sanction. Let us also say that there exists a political state of nature when, but only when, one lacks assurance that others will not bargain over the terms of a practice purely out of self-interest."

If you have a situation where both social and political states of nature prevail you have no hope of raising questions of distributive justice with regard to trade he suggests. If, however, there is only a political state of nature but not a social one then there are grounds for thinking of trade as susceptible to pressures of distributive justice. Does this distinction between two types of states of nature in itself show that there are reasons for thinking of trade being open to pressures of distributive justice independently of any hopes or otherwise that one might have for superseding the political state of nature?

The reason for thinking that trade is susceptible to such pressure is that we can identify a distinct level of concern separate from that applicable to specific transactions, a level that describes the background conditions of transactions in general. These background conditions are the subject of such regulation as exists (WTO etc) but could they not (and are they not?) sites of contestation in which global distribution of resources could be altered?