Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract: Part 1
- Stephan Sturm
- Dec 21, 2024
- 18 min read
Rousseaus Book about Social Contract of 1762 is one of Rousseau's most famous writings. It has a lot to do with the French Revolution. We start with the first book on the state of nature.
Rousseau asks himself why people are slaves even though they were born free. How could it come to this?
In the state of nature, people were originally free. This is another important difference between Rousseau and other state theorists. Rousseau thinks the state of nature is good in principle. Most other state theorists, however, think that the state of nature inevitably ends in a state of war.
Rousseau thus puts forward the interesting thesis that even those who actually consider themselves masters are in reality slaves - namely slaves of society.
Rousseau now wants to clarify how people originally lived, i.e. in the state of nature, and how social associations then came about.
First Book: State of Nature
The first law of nature says that you should look after yourself first. The first society is the family. All rulers are, so to speak, an image of the father and the people are an image of the children. In the state of nature, the law of the strongest applies. However, one can only deduce from this that one must obey, not that one has a moral obligation to do so.
Rousseau has a new idea. Rousseau says that one must preserve oneself. But he also says that the family is most important in the state of nature. Other state theorists do not have this addition.
The first society is therefore the family. Rousseau says that the family is a model for all political societies. Aristotle had already rejected this.
Locke also said that rule in the family is something quite different from political rule. These two things should be considered separately. However, Rousseau makes this the starting point for his reflections on the state. Rousseau says that the state should be like a father who looks after his children. Citizens cannot decide for themselves how they want to live. They need the ruler to do so.
Here, Rousseau follows a line that Aristotle already rejected. The state is actually there to benefit people. Aristotle said that this is the case in the family and in the village, but not in the state.
This makes it clear that it is to become a welfare state. First of all, it must be clarified what man is like in the state of nature.
In the state of nature, the rule is: the strongest wins. In the state of nature, the law of the strongest applies.
Rousseau says that this does not mean that we are obliged to obey. For that, you would have to have a moral basis and not simply force.
Violence is a physical capacity. I do not understand what moral obligation can arise from its effects. Yielding to strength is an act of necessity. In what sense can it be a duty?
Slavery
Rousseau now addresses a well-known theory by Grotius on slavery.
Hugo Grotius was a state theorist from 1583 to 1645 and is one of the founding fathers of the idea of sovereignty and the doctrine of natural law. In his opinion, the people sold themselves as slaves to the king. But security cannot be the motive for this, because kings constantly involve the people in wars. Hobbes' argument therefore does not work here.
That would cause a problem anyway, at the latest in the second generation. Because a slave could sell himself, but not his children. Just because someone concludes a slavery contract does not mean that all children must also become slaves. A state based on slavery would therefore only last one generation and perish in the second generation.
Rousseau also says that a people in an absolute monarchy would renounce all freedom and rights, including human rights.
That would only be rational if it got something better in return. Rousseau says that there can be no compensation for this. This means that a nation that signs such a contract always makes a bad deal.
To alienate means to give away or sell. A person who makes himself the slave of another does not give himself away, but at least sells himself for his livelihood. But what does a nation sell itself for?
Renouncing your freedom means renouncing your humanity, your human rights and even your duties. We have renounced everything, for which no compensation is possible. In short, it is a void and self-contradictory contract to establish unlimited power on one side and unrestricted obedience on the other.
So you can't say that the state comes from a slavery contract. If you derive the state from a slavery contract, that is absurd.
Rousseau then discusses the theory that the people could also have given themselves away to the king. This is Hugo Grotius' second theory.
Then it would not have a claim to anything, but would simply have given itself away. Rousseau says that this is not possible because there would first have to be a people who can enter into a contract. For this, there must be a social contract through which the people are formed in the first place. The gift must therefore be based on a private contract. Then a majority cannot dictate to a minority.
Social Contract
The social contract is the basis for all other contracts. We need to think about what a social contract could look like.
The idea behind the social contract is that we all have to work together to survive in nature. Only if we come together as a society can we all survive together. The challenge is to form a society that protects each individual, preserves their assets and guarantees their freedom.
The only solution is for every member of society to be absorbed into society with all their rights. Then everyone is equal. If everyone surrenders to everyone, then at the same time they surrender to no one. You acquire the same right over everyone else.
The social contract consists of everyone placing their person and power under the direction of the general will.
So here we can already see some of the basic principles.
As with Hobbes, the first step of the social contract is about the problems you have with others. This means that everyone must surrender themselves completely to society and may not retain anything for themselves privately.
Because if you are too dependent on others, this could jeopardize equality. Rousseau therefore says that it is better to be dependent on the state than to be dependent on other people in society.
Equality is also a decisive factor. For Rousseau, this is the prerequisite for being free.
The question is how much freedom you give up when you become part of society.
As already mentioned, society is in principle based on common benefit. This is because at a certain stage of the state of nature, the obstacles to self-preservation become too great. Now people can no longer develop new possibilities, but can only combine the existing forces in order to achieve more. From this we can deduce what Rousseau actually wants: he wants to unite the forces of all members of society. And in such a way that everyone retains the freedom to obey only themselves.
Since human beings are incapable of producing new forces, but are only able to unite and direct the existing ones, they have no other means of maintaining them than to form a sum of forces by uniting them, which can overcome resistance and set all these forces in motion by a single driving force and let them work in unison.
People are now entering into a social contract.
People come together as a group and form a community. For Rousseau, it is important that each individual is integrated into society with all their rights and powers. You give everything you have to the state.
Rousseau says: Everyone is equal. Therefore they are free. Equality only works if no one can oppress the other. As with Hobbes, there should no longer be any private rights.
And the contractual construction is again similar to that of Hobbes. The social contract is in itself a contract between individuals in society who were previously in a state of nature.
This social contract is also a contract with the state. That is why the contract with the state cannot be dissolved. Because the contract with the people and the state are essentially the same thing.
This means that everyone is obliged to stand up for others and at the same time be loyal to the head of state.
Since both contracts are the same, as with Hobbes, this means that every breach of the contract with the state is also a breach of obligations towards other people. And every breach of obligations towards fellow human beings is also a breach of the contract with the state.
If you attack a member of the community, you are attacking the community. If you attack a person, you attack the community. Everyone else must then intervene. If you attack the community, you attack all members of the community. If you mess with the state, you mess with everyone else. Then everyone has to be punished.
All of these clauses can be traced back to a single one, if you look at them properly. Namely, the complete absorption of every member of society with all their rights into the whole.
For if everyone gives themselves completely, the relationship is initially the same for everyone. And because the relationship is the same for everyone, no one has an interest in making it too oppressive for others.
Each of us collectively places our person and our entire strength under the supreme direction of the common will. And we accept each member as an inseparable part of the whole.
It follows that the state has a certain structure.The first thing to clarify is who the head of state is.
In the social contract, everyone commits themselves to all other members of society and to the state. One is therefore obligated to two sides. On the one hand as a member of the head of state, and on the other as a citizen. One is a member of the head of state and one is a citizen.
Common Good
Sometimes someone has an interest of their own that does not correspond to the will of all. Then he must be forced by the others to follow the common will. Only then is he truly free.
The violation of the contract by which it receives its existence would be its self-destruction and a nothing can create nothing.
So there is a common good, the volonté générale, to which everyone must submit, and which is not formed by the majority. And anyone who does not comply must be forced to do so by force.
And only if everyone can be forced to follow the general will can the individual be protected against the private interests of others.
In the hands of private individuals, what is called economic power can be an instrument of coercion, but it is never control over the whole life of a person. But when economic power is centralized as an instrument of political power it creates a degree of dependence scarcely distinguishable from slavery. It has been well said that, in a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation. Friedrich v. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
So that the social contract is not an empty form, it also contains the following silent obligation, which alone can accommodate the other forces. It consists in the fact that anyone who refuses the spirit of the general will should be forced to do so by the whole body. This has no other meaning than forcing him to be free.
The freedom thing is of course a certain kind of nonspeak. You are only free if you obey the state.
To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives – the craving for freedom – socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a ‘new freedom’. Socialism was to bring ‘economic freedom’ without which political freedom was ‘not worth having’. Friedrich v. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Citizenship
Next, we need to clarify what citizenship is and what it brings.
According to Rousseau, there are of course decisive advantages to being a citizen.
Being a citizen means acting justly and morally. There are now duties instead of instincts, justice instead of desire and reason instead of inclination.
Now there is something else that is different with Locke: on entering society, everyone hands over their property to the state. Everything you own now belongs to the state. The state now protects this property better because it now belongs to it.
The transition from the state of nature to citizenship brings about a very noticeable change in man, in which justice takes the place of instinct in his behavior. The loss which man suffers through the social contract consists in the abandonment of his natural freedom and of the unlimited right to everything which appeals to him and which he can attain. His gain is expressed in civil freedom and in the right of ownership of everything he possesses.
Second book: Sovereignty
In the second book, we explain how this state is structured. The state cannot be divided.
In the state, the welfare of all is most important. The social contract is intended to secure the common good. It is therefore very different from Locke or Kant. It is about the good of all and not about the interests of private individuals. It is not about securing rights. The common good takes precedence over the interests of individuals.
The common good is the most important principle in a state. It should protect against the conflict of private interests. Rousseau believes that private interests always lead to conflict.
Only if you exclude all private interests can you realize the common good, that is the basis of the state.
This state is opposed to any absolute monarchy. In an absolute monarchy, the people must follow the private interests of the king. The people cannot simply obey. That would nullify the social contract.
The most important conclusion from the previous principles is that the common good should guide the powers of the state for the common good.
The general will alone may guide the powers of the state. The common good is therefore the supreme principle. The people cannot therefore obey unconditionally, because then they would dissolve the basis of society and cease to be a people.
State policy must be geared towards the common good. Individual interests must not take priority. For Rousseau's state, however, it is important that the level of government is not divisible.
This means that there can be no separation of powers in the state.
Sovereignty is not divisible
Sovereignty cannot be shared. This is very important for the Rousseau state. That is why sovereignty cannot be divided between different areas.
In a democracy, there are normally three branches of government: Legislative, executive and jurisdictional. As they all serve the common good, they cannot be clearly separated from each other. Then you would have three parts: one for the legislature, one for the executive and one for the judiciary. But the common will can only be general. Or it serves private interests. But we want to rule out the possibility that private interests are involved.
That is why there can only be one principle in the state to which all functions are subordinate. The question is, who actually determines this?
Rousseau says: The general will is always right. The general will does not come from popular decisions, majorities or the like. Because sometimes majority decisions or popular decisions are wrong. They don't know what is good for everyone. Sometimes the people themselves don't know what is good for them. Then they decide something stupid that is not in the common good. This raises the question of who is smart enough to know: What is good for everyone?
First, there is no such thing as a clearly defined common good on which the whole people would agree or could be made to agree by rational argument. This is primarily due not to the fact that some people may desire something other than the common good, but to the much more essential fact that the common good must necessarily mean something different to different individuals and groups. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Thirdly, however, as a consequence of the two previous statements, the special concept of the will of the people or the volonté générale, which the utilitarians made their own, is increasingly evaporating. For this concept presupposes the existence of a clearly defined common good that can be recognized by all. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Thus the typical citizen falls to a lower level of intellectual achievement as soon as he enters the political arena. He argues and analyzes in a way that he would readily acknowledge as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
It follows from the foregoing that the general will is always the right one and always aims at the general best. However, it does not follow from this that popular decisions are always equally correct.
Whether the Common Will can be wrong
They will always do their best, but do not always realize what it consists of. The people can never be bribed, but they can often be deceived and only then do they seem to want evil.
This is a crucial question for Rousseau, namely the problem of diverging interests. It is actually about the question between identity and competition theories.
The general will, which for Rousseau is the volonté générale, and the will of all, namely the volonté des tous, i.e. the sum of the individual interests, are often not at all the same. The individual interests are bad and contradict the common good. But you can assume that most people have similar interests. Private interests cancel each other out. What remains is the general will.
Below there is a people with opinions and interests. The people have an overall will. This overall will is what everyone wants together. You now have to subtract the individual interests. Then you have the common good. The common good is good for everyone. This leads to the decision that the common good and individual interests go together.
There is often a big difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter is concerned only with the general best, the former with private interest and is only a sum of individual wills. If we now subtract from these will opinions the more and less that cancel each other out, the general will remains as the difference sum.
Parties are a problem because they only work for their own interests. These interests are bad and harm the general public. You can see that here too. There are many media, associations and parties between the people and the state. They all represent certain interests. This makes them strong.
Rousseau says that the interests of each individual should cancel each other out. This does not work in party states because the parties can have different strengths. And the parties ensure that certain people can assert their interests. Rousseau says: If there are many individual citizens, the many small differences balance each other out.
When there are parties, the will of the party applies to all members. They agree on a common good that is good for that party, but not for society. They represent the interests of one group in society.
When these parties become big, there will no longer be any small differences, only the differences between the parties. Then there will no longer be a common will.
Boundaries of the state
Next, we need to determine what limits the state can have. Locke says that the state has very strong limits. With Rousseau, we have to see how the power of the state can still be limited.
People often don't know what they want. We know that from our time. You have to explain to people what the common good is. If the people don't like the policy, we say: "We have to explain the policy better to the people."
Rousseau also says that power is limited. As with all other state theorists, there is first a state of nature. Then people establish a state. They hand over all power to the state. They have all the power. Now the state has the power.
The theory is that they only transfer the necessary power to the state and keep the rest. The problem is that nobody knows what is necessary and what is not. The state determines what is necessary. The state therefore has power without limits.
As nature endows every man with an unlimited power over all his members, so the social contract endows the body politic with an unlimited power over all its members. It must be understood that it is not so much the number of votes that generalizes the will as the general interest that unites them.
The last one was a good summary. It's not about everyone's opinion, but about what's good for everyone. What matters is not the number of votes, but that the decisions serve the common good.
Life and Death
A limit is when it comes to life and death. Rousseau says that the purpose of the social contract is to keep people together in a society. Those who want this end must also accept the means necessary to achieve it. This may even mean being prepared to die if this is necessary for the survival of the community.
The decisive factor is whether you do it voluntarily. You can sacrifice yourself for a good community. The state determines which rights you have to give up. Therefore, it also determines whether you have to sacrifice yourself.
The purpose of the articles of association is to maintain the shareholders. Those who want the end also agree to the means. And these means cannot be separated from some dangers, even from some losses.
Losing your own life for the state may therefore be collateral damage that you have to accept.
Legislation
The next step is about who makes the laws. Laws apply to everyone, not to individual people. Anything else would be a regulation. An ordinance is not a law.
For Rousseau, however, something else is important. Rousseau says that laws cannot be decided by the people. For the people do not know what is good for them.
How should a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wants, because it seldom knows what is salutary for it, be able to carry out such a great, such a difficult undertaking as a system of legislation is, of itself. The people always want the good from themselves, but they do not always recognize it from themselves.
So you need a legislator who is not part of the government and knows what is good for the people. And then they make the laws. Because everyone wants the same thing. But you have to tell the people the truth. The people often don't know what is really happening. You have to teach them.
Sometimes you also have to teach people how they should see things. In other words, if necessary, you have to lie to the people and use propaganda to make them realize that the government is in charge.
The general will is always right. But the judgment that guides it is not always clear. You have to let him see the objects as they are, sometimes as they should appear to him. You have to show him the right path he is looking for, protect him from being seduced by the will of individuals, make him aware of the places and times and the charm of the present and the advantages of the danger of distant and hidden evils.
The People
The next step is therefore to define what a people actually is.
Rousseau's thinking again has a consequence. The people should be a unit. This requires a common basis. It's about culture. In large countries, people don't know each other that well. That's why a country has to be small, so that people know each other and control each other.
When people distance themselves from the government, good ideas and virtues often go unused. We must create a unity of the people in order to establish a people's democracy.
One of the motives that impel men to search for an absolute and immutable standard of value is the presumption that peaceful cooperation is possible only among people guided by the same judgments of value. [...] The characteristic feature of a free society is that it can function in spite of the fact that its members disagree in many judgments of value. Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History
Equality
For Rousseau, the relationship between freedom and equality is very important. Equality is important so that people can be free. As with Hobbes, you have to ensure that you are not oppressed by your fellow citizens.
That is why there must be equality, so that everyone has the same opportunities. That's how the state can function. If people were dependent on each other, it would take away the power of the state. Politics should ensure that everyone is as free and equal as possible.
The question is, of course, whether this is even possible or whether freedom is not inevitably sacrificed in favor of equality or redefined in such a way that equality is the same as freedom.
It is often said that political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom. This is true enough, but in a sense almost opposite from that in which the phrase is used by our planners. The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialists promise us and which can be obtained only by relieving us of the power of choice. It must be that freedom of economic activity which, together with the right of choice, carries also the risk and responsibility of that right. Friedrich von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Summary
Rousseau wants a state that is not ruled by an autocrat. Rousseau assumes that all people have common foundations. These are also important for the French Revolution. Rousseau says that the common good is more important than the interests of kings or nobles.
The principle of the common good does not fit with simple majorities. Because in the end, majorities are only agreements between individual interests, i.e. private interests.
In the end, the whole thing tilts towards Robespierre, in that the state's goals are the welfare of its citizens. The common good is precisely the welfare of the citizens.
And in case of doubt, this common good can be played off against all private freedoms and private rights. In case of doubt, the state can suppress any individual interest. Sometimes this is achieved through education, sometimes by force. A lot of propaganda is also used. The people have to learn what the common good is. The people themselves do not know and are often wrong. In case you have to lie to the people.
You have to control the media in order to influence the people. If someone says something that is not good for everyone, you have to stop them. We know from history that education and violence are the most effective. You can see this clearly in re-education camps. In other words, with this theory, which is directed against absolute monarchy, every state that is governed according to Rousseau falls into a regime of terror, a dictatorship. There is no system that can be used to determine what the will of the people is. You need people who know better what is good for the people and who can then implement what they think is right.
We will see how this works in detail in the second part.
Video to this content:
Comments