Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract

PUBLISHED in 1726 at Amsterdam to escape French censorship, Rousseau's Social Contract is one of the most influential treatises on politics ever written. It is an endeavour to place all government on the consent, direct or implied, of the governed. Rousseau's ideal state is founded on man's universal desire for freedom, which can only be secured by a contract which each makes with all, and in which each surrenders his will to receive it back again as part of the whole. Logically, the Social Contract is full of gaping flaws, and as a political essay it is a tissue of fantastic arguments, based on unreal hypotheses, but it set men's minds on fire, and was the literary inspiration of one of the most tremendous events in history--the French Revolution. 

[THE TERMS OF THE COMPACT - ROUSSEAU - FROM THE SOCIAL CONTRACT] 

MY object is to discover whether in civil polity there is any legitimate and definite canon of government, taking men as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall uniformly try to reconcile that which is permitted by right with that which is prescribed by interest so as to avoid the clash of justice with utility. 

Man is born free, and yet is everywhere in fetters. He is governed, obliged to obey laws. What is it that legitimises this subjection to government? I think I can solve the problem. 

It is not merely a matter of force; force is only the power of the strongest and must yield when a greater strength arises; there is here no question of right, but simply of might. But social order is a sacred right that serves as a base to all others. This right, however, does not come from nature; it is founded upon conventions. 

The explanation of social order is not to be found in the family tie, since when a child grows up it escapes from tutelage; the parent's right to exercise authority is only temporary. Nor can government be based on servitude. An individual man may sell his liberty to another for sustenance; but a nation cannot sell its liberty--it does not receive sustenance from its ruler but, on the contrary, sustains him. The gift is a civil act which presupposes a public deliberation. Before, then, we examine the act by which a people chooses a king, it would be well to examine the act by which a people becomes a people. 

Let it be assumed that the obstacles which prejudice the conservation of man in the state of nature [a time without government] have prevailed by their resistance over the forces which each individual is able to employ to keep himself in that state. The primitive condition can then no longer exist; mankind must change it or perish. 

The problem with which men are confronted in these circumstances may be stated as follows: 'To find a form of association that defends and protects with all the common force the person and property of each partner, and by which each partner, uniting himself with all the rest, nevertheless obeys only himself, and remains as free as heretofore.' To this problem the social contract affords a solution. 

The essence of the pact is the total and unreserved alienation by each partner of all his rights to the community as a whole. No individual can retain any rights that are not possessed equally by all other individuals without the compact being thereby violated. Again, each partner, by yielding his rights to the community, yields them to no individual, and thus in his relations with individuals he regains all the rights he has sacrificed. 

The compact, therefore, may be reduced to the following terms: 'Each of us places in common his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will, and we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.' 

By this act is created a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the society has voices, receiving from this same act its unity, its common 'I,' its life and its will. This body is the republic, called by its members the state when passive, the sovereign when active. The partners are collectively called the people; they are citizens, as particpants in the sovereign authority, and subjects, as under obligations to the laws of the state. 

BY passing through the compact, from the state of nature to the civil state man substitutes justice for instinct in his conduct and gives to his actions a morality of which they were formerly devoid. What man loses by the contract is his natural liberty and an illimitable right to all that tempts him and that he can obtain; what he gains is civil liberty and a right of secure property in all that he possesses. 

I shall conclude this chapter with a remark which should serve as a basis for the whole social system. It is that in place of destroying natural liberty, the fundamental pact substitutes a moral and legitimate equality for the natural physical inequality between men, and that, while men may be unequal in strength and talent, they are all made equal by convention and right. 

[THE SOVEREIGN AND THE LAWS] 

THE first and most important consequence of the principles above established is that only the general will can direct the forces of the state towards the aim of its institution, which is the common good; for if the antagonism of particular interests has rendered necessary the establishment of political societies, it is the accord of these interests that has rendered such societies possible. 

I maintain, then, that sovereignty, being the exercise of the general will, cannot be alienated and that the sovereign, which is simply a collective being, cannot be represented save by itself; it may transfer its power, but not its will. 

For the same reason that sovereignty is inalienable it is indivisible. For the will is either general, or it is not. If it is general, it is, when declared, an act of the people and becomes law; if it is not general, it is, when declared, merely an act of a particular person or persons, not of the sovereign. 

A law is an expression of the general will and must be general in its terms and import. The sovereign cannot legislate for part of the individuals composing a state, for it it did so the general will would enter into a particular relation with particular people, and that is contrary to its nature. The law may thus confer privileges, but must not name the persons to whom the privileges are to belong; it may establish a royal government, but must not nominate a king. Any function relating to an individual object does not appertain to the legislative power. 

As a popular assembly is not always enlightened in its judgements--though the general will, when properly ascertained, must be right--the service of a wise legislator is necessary to draw up laws for the sovereign's approval. 

The legislator, if he be truly wise, will not begin by writing down laws that are good in the abstract, but will first look about to see whether the people for whom he intends them is capable of upholding them. He must bear in mind many considerations--the situation of the country, the nature of the soil, the density of the population, the national history, occupations and aptitudes. 

Among these considerations one of the most important is the area of the state. As nature has given limits to the stature of a normal man, beyond which she makes only giants or dwarfs, there are also limits beyond which a state is, in the one direction, too large to be well governed, and, in the other, too small to maintain itself. There is in every body politic a maximum of force which cannot be exceeded, and from which the state often falls away by the process of enlarging itself. The further the social bond is extended, the slacker it becomes; and, in general, a small state is proportionately stronger than a large one. 

It is true that a state must have a certain breadth of base for the sake of solidity and in order to resist violent shocks from without. But, on the other hand, administration becomes more troublesome with distance. It increases in burdensomeness, moreover, with the multiplication of degrees. Each town, district and province has its administration, for which the people must pay. Finally, overwhelming every-thing, is the remote central administration. 

Again, the government in a large state has less vigour and swiftness than in a small one; the people have less affection for their chiefs, for their country and for each other--since they are, for the most part, strangers to each other. Uniform laws are not suitable for diverse provinces; yet diverse laws among people belonging to the same state breed weakness and confusion. 

The greatest good of all, which should be the aim of every system of legislation, may on investigation be reduced to two main objects--liberty and equality: liberty, because all dependence of individuals on other individuals is so much force taken away from the body of the state; equality, because without it liberty cannot exist. 

Thomas Hobbes’s Views on Government and the “Social Contract:”

Hobbes continues . . . that to ensure contracts (and peace) power must be given to one person, or one assembly. We do this by saying, implicitly or explicitly, "I authorize and give up my right of governing myself, to this person, or to this assembly of people, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner." His definition of a commonwealth, then, is this: "One person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants on with another, have made themselves every on the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defense" This person is called a "sovereign." He continues that there are two ways of establishing a commonwealth: through acquisition (force), or through institution (agreement). 

In Chapter 18 Hobbes lists the rights of rights of sovereigns. They are, 
(1)	Subjects owe him sole loyalty; 
(2)	Subjects cannot be freed from their obligation; 
(3)	Dissenters must consent with the majority in declaring a sovereign; 
(4)	Sovereign cannot be unjust or injure any subject; 
(5)	The sovereign cannot be put to death; 
(6)	The right to censor doctrines repugnant to peace; 
(7)	Legislative power of prescribing rules; 
(8)	Judicial power of deciding all controversies; 
(9)	Make war and peace with other nations; 
(10)	Choose counselors; 
(11)	Power of reward and punishment; 
(12)	Power of all civil appointments, including the militia. 

In Chapter 19 he discusses the kinds of governments that can be instituted. The three main forms are monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. He argues that monarchy is best for several reasons. Monarch's interests are the same as the people's. He will receive better counsel since he can select experts and get advice in private. His policies will be more consistent. Finally, there is less chance of a civil war since the monarch cannot disagree with himself. 

John Locke and the “Social Contract”, in an essay called “Two Treatises of Government”: 

In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the Monarch, and to establish a theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political order. According to Locke, the doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the state of nature towards one another.   Labor is the origin and justification of property; contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the individual person. The state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man "mixes his labour with" is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primitive condition of human life in which there was enough for all and "the whole earth was America." Locke sees that, when men have multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In the state of nature all men equally have the right to punish transgressors: civil society originates when, for the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to certain officers. Thus government is instituted by a "social contract"; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred them. Locke's theory is thus no more historical than Hobbes's. It is a rendering of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served its purpose as a justification of the Revolution settlement in accordance with the ideas of the time.