Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract: Part Two
- Stephan Sturm
- Dec 22, 2024
- 16 min read
Updated: Jan 14, 2025
This is the second part on Rousseau's social contract. In the first part we have already seen the following: For Rousseau, one of the first things that is important is that you are not dependent on your fellow human beings in the state, especially not economically dependent.
Rousseau is different from other state theorists. For him, the common good is decisive. Equality therefore plays a very important role. Unlike other state theorists, parliamentarianism is excluded. Rousseau also thinks parties are bad. The common good is not what all citizens want, but what is good for all citizens. Rousseau found that the people usually do not know what is good for them. That is why they regularly fall short of the common good. Rousseau found that the people often do not know what is best for them. That is why you cannot simply rely on politics and the decisions of the majority, as is the case with Locke or Kant. Instead, we need people who are wise and can really implement the common good. The state must be designed accordingly. It is about equality. Freedom can only exist under conditions of equality. In order for the common good to be achieved, it must be implemented in the state. This requires a legislator who is not part of the government. This legislator must regulate the laws in such a way that the common good is achieved.
Rousseau was against the separation of powers in the state. He thought that the common good must always be the same. Otherwise, there is a danger that private interests become more important than the common good.
There is only one principle in the state. There is no separation of powers and no parliamentarianism. At least not one that could pass fundamental laws.
The state has the task of filtering out the common good from a multitude of individual interests.
If everything runs ideally, then the individual private interests cancel each other out and align. However, this only works if there are no parties in the state. Because then they bundle certain individual interests. Then the individual interests no longer cancel each other out, but certain group interests prevail. And they then hinder the common good. The state must be small so that the citizens all know each other. They must have a common ancestry or culture. Only then is the common good possible.
We must now look at how the state functions if it is to realize the common good. Rousseau describes this in the third book of his book on the social contract.
Third Book
The first chapter is about government in general. It says what a government should be like.
The government in general
Rousseau thus makes a fundamental distinction between will and power. Every action has two sides: The will and the power. First you have to know what you want. Then you have to expend energy to achieve it.
At the state level, the will is then the legislation and the power is then the execution of the laws.
Legislation actually lies with the people. However, we have already seen that this is not entirely true, because the people in turn need institutions that distil the common good from private interests. In principle, however, the people are the sovereign and therefore make the laws. And the government then enforces these laws. So that would actually be a distinction between the legislative and executive branches. We'll see in a moment that this is somewhat limited.
The government mediates between the citizens and the head of state. The people and the government are not the same thing. That is why we need a government that mediates and makes it clear that the government does not simply do what the people want. The government ensures that decisions are for the good of all.
So what is the government? A mediating body that is appointed between the subjects and the head of state for their mutual connection and is entrusted with the execution of the laws.
The government therefore actually has a mediating mandate. The decisive factor is that the parliament or the representatives of the people do not have a contract with the government, in this case the king, but only commission him. That is why the government can also be replaced, because there is no contractual obligation to this government.
The head of state, who is not identical to the king but rather the representative of the people, does not conclude a ruling treaty with the prince but issues him with orders. They simply instruct him to implement certain things. The election is therefore not based on people, as is the case with us, but on orders. The person who receives the order is then not free to implement it at their own discretion, but is obliged to implement the order according to the specifications. If he does not do his job well, the order can be taken away from him again. This is a construction that exists in all grassroots socialist systems. It is called an imperative mandate.
Characteristics of good Government
Next, we need to define what characterizes good government. As we have already seen, Rousseau's state is oriented towards utility, especially the welfare of the citizens. That is its goal.
A government is good when its citizens are doing well. The population is growing. So the higher the population growth, the better a government is, because it is obviously in a position to provide the means to do so.
What is the purpose of the political association? Nothing other than the preservation and welfare of its members. And what is the surest sign that they will survive and prosper? The increase in population.
Malthus demanded that the population should remain constant. He thought that people were multiplying too quickly. Rousseau said that the population in a good state continues to grow.
Thomas Robert Malthus' population principle is a theory that he formulated in his work "An Essay on the Principle of Population" (1798). Malthus postulated that the population tends to grow in a geometric (exponential) progression, while resources (especially food) only increase in an arithmetic (linear) manner. This means that the population increases much faster than the available resources, leading to a natural imbalance.
Malthus argued that this imbalance would lead to regularly occurring crises such as famine, disease and war, which would reduce the population to a sustainable level. If the population exceeded the limit of available resources, the "corrective mechanism" (e.g. famine and disease) would reduce the number of people again so that resources would once again be in proportion to the size of the population.
Malthus' theory was a reaction to the optimistic idea of the Enlightenment that progress and prosperity would continue to increase. It had an enormous influence on 19th century economics and social policy, particularly in relation to poverty and overpopulation. Malthus assumed that poverty and misery were inevitable if the population grew faster than production capacity.
We now have a definition of "good government". Now we need to define "bad government" and "abuse of government".
Abuse of the Government
In the ordinary sense, a tyrant is a king who rules violently and without regard for justice and the law. In a narrower sense, a tyrant is a private individual who arrogates royal power to himself.
This much is clear, a bad government is therefore a tyranny. As you would expect from Rousseau, the cause of tyranny is that a private citizen takes over the reins of government without being authorized to do so. We have seen that the king has no imperative mandate. Instead, he pursues private interests.
Under certain circumstances, this can lead to the entire body politic ceasing to function and virtually dying.
Dying of the Body politic
This short quote says a lot. All constitutional states say that the state is based on laws. It doesn't matter who makes the laws. The only thing that matters is that the laws are obeyed and are good.
Rousseau distrusts people who could make laws. He thinks that it is more important who makes the laws than which laws are made. That is the opposite of a constitutional state.
Maintaining sovereign Power
In the next step, Rousseau now wants to make clear how supreme power is maintained.
Rousseau distrusts all governments. He does not think it is good to simply establish a state constitution and introduce a government.
Instead, fixed dates must be set for regular assemblies. We have seen with Locke that there could be a problem. The assemblies could be banned or obstructed. It must therefore be ensured that there are such assemblies and that the king cannot decide just like that: There will be no more assemblies now.
If the government is strong, the people must meet more often. Otherwise it will pursue its own interests. Rousseau is different from most other state theorists. For him, there should be no deputies. Instead, the citizens themselves must go to the assemblies. This is a kind of direct democracy in which the citizens meet together.
This only works if the state is small and people can meet. Rousseau says that it is dangerous when political and economic interests are mixed. When this happens, the members of parliament no longer pursue political interests, but economic ones.
This is also the case today, because they want to stay in power at all costs because they benefit from it. There is a great danger that certain people will push through their economic interests by persuading or bribing MPs.
So we have a democracy in which the people are personally involved.
Member of Parliament
In the next chapter, Rousseau writes more about the problem with deputies.
If there are deputies whose influence must be limited anyway, they are never representatives of the people, but only plenipotentiaries. In other words, they also have an imperative mandate.
The people have to meet often. Then they can also issue specific orders. They don't just elect random people who can then do what they want. Anyone who does that can no longer decide freely. And the people then no longer have it.
Rousseau deals with a problem that we are familiar with: You elect someone every four years and then you no longer have a vote because you have now elected people who don't do what they promised.
The problem can be solved by giving them a mandate and withdrawing it if they don't carry it out.
There is a parliament with members of parliament, but they only carry out orders. The legislature has no contract with the government. We have just seen that. The government only receives orders from the legislature. The legislature must implement certain orders from the People's Assembly.
There is only one contract, namely the social contract. Everything else runs via imperative mandates and never via free representatives.
As soon as public service ceases to be the main concern of the citizens and they prefer to serve it with their money rather than with their person, the state is already close to its downfall.
Rousseau says that nobody cares about the state anymore. Everyone just thinks about themselves and pays their taxes.
Many people are no longer interested in politics. They only care about themselves. Many people are no longer interested in politics and only pursue their own goals.
Soldiers and MPs hire them to pursue their own goals.
The restless hustle and bustle of trade and the arts, the never-satisfied lust for profit, the softness and love of comfort mean that every personal service is replaced by money.
Here, of course, you can see Rousseau's basic socialist interest again and Rousseau obviously doesn't like business very much and says that it is a desire for profit. People try to do good business rather than politics.
In a truly free country, citizens do everything with their arms and nothing with their money. Far from freeing themselves from their duties, they would even pay to fulfill them personally.
The idea of substitution belongs to more recent times. Substitution is the outgrowth of that inequitable and senseless form of government of the feudal era, in which the human species is degraded and the name of man is profaned.
Rousseau uses the word "feudal times". This is a word from the time of the early socialists. And he means that before the feudal era, people would have met in person and discussed political matters instead of paying other people to do so. That may have been the case in ancient Greece.
Establishment of the Government
Next, we need to consider how we can use the government. You don't have a contract with the government. You use it because you have certain orders.
Rousseau says thn at this is about an appointment and not a contract. Treaties of dominion, as with Hobbes, do not work. With Hobbes, you can never get out of it. You elect a sovereign forever because that's what the treaty says. With Rousseau, you can change the government, just like with Locke. However, the form of government is fixed forever.
The legislature decides that there should be a government. That is then a law. This law cannot be repealed. It applies forever, whereas an appointment or an order or something similar can be withdrawn or changed at any time. Rousseau's government is based on orders and not on laws.
So the legislature appoints certain people in the government. Again, it is explicitly stated that this is not a law, but the consequence of the first law. The laws should be formulated in such a way that the government cannot abuse them. It is easier to appoint people and tell them what to do. If they don't do it, you can take their mandate away again.
It contradicts our principles of parliamentarianism. Because there is freedom for members of parliament. It contradicts the principles of the rule of law. Because according to these, everything should be regulated by laws and not by orders. Locke, for example, expressly said that under no circumstances should anything be regulated by short-term orders, but everything must be regulated by fixed laws. Kant would see it similarly. It doesn't matter who implements the laws. What is important is what they look like.
Rousseau is different from other state theorists. They rely on laws.
Fourth Book
We are now on the fourth book. We have established a government. Now it's about the general will and the general good. The general will cannot be abolished.
The general Will is indestructible
As long as several united people regard themselves as a single body, they have only one will, which has the common preservation and the general welfare as its objects.
The goal is now once again general welfare and not a constitutional state. It is all about utility principles and economic interests.
Votes
The question now is: How do you do this in voting? For Rousseau, the general will is the same as the content of the social contract.
This is a contract that must be agreed unanimously and not by majority vote. Anyone who does not accept the social contract does not belong to society and must leave. Everyone who lives in a country automatically agrees to the social contract. If you live in a country, you are considered to have agreed to the rules. This is different from Locke, for example. Locke is concerned with whether you have property in that country. Rousseau is only interested in people and whether they live in this administrative district.
And this social contract simply applies. He agrees t everything that society decides, even if he doesn't agree with everything. He only has to agree to the articles of association once. He has agreed that he will accept all of the company's decisions. Regardless of whether he likes them or not.
And that is a theory of identity and not a theory of competition.
Rousseau also added something interesting. If my opinion does not prevail in society, I have made a mistake. Otherwise my opinion might be the common good. But that can't be the case, because the common good is always the opposite of private interests.
So it can't be that I have a legitimate private interest that unfortunately doesn't prevail in votes, but if it doesn't prevail, then that proves that I was wrong.
It's so easy to convict dissidents of having the wrong opinion.
Now freedom is being reinterpreted again. I am not free because I can express my private opinion, but because I am free through the general will, i.e. through what society decides.
For it is only through the general will, i.e. the volonté générale, that people are free. So if I mean something against the general will, then I prove that this is only my private interest. Because in the case of the general will, private interests are factored out.
And I prove that I am quasi asocial and do not represent the common will. I prove that I am wrong because the will of the general public is always right. I prove that I am unfree.
There is only one law that by its nature requires unanimous approval, the social contract, because civil association is the most voluntary act in the world.
So saying something against the general will is simply stupid. You have to accept that. Anyone who doesn't see that must be forced to understand it.
The Tribunal
Now Rousseau introduces another special office, namely the tribunal. We can now see the proximity to the French Revolution again.
When the powers of society are no longer evenly distributed and this is no longer possible, tribunals are set up.
This is especially true when there is a dispute between the ruler and the people. Such tribunals are quick to condemn people as traitors to the people. Because it is not clear who knows the common good and on what basis people are actually sentenced.
If you say goodbye to majorities and parliamentarianism, you always end up with a court of broken pieces. It makes arbitrary decisions for the common good.
The Dictatorship
If there is a great danger, you can also set up a dictatorship. Because otherwise the state could come to an end. Who decides that there is an emergency? Of course, we also have such emergency laws. Taking the common good as a basis is dangerous.
We need to define more precisely what this dictatorship is allowed to do.
If, on the other hand, the danger is such that the law machine would be an obstacle to protecting against it, then a supreme head is appointed who commands all laws to be silent and suspends the supreme power for a moment.
That is a clear formulation for an "Ermächtigungsgesetz". It allows a dictator to say that there is danger and to silence all parliaments. That is dangerous.
The "Ermächtigungsgesetz" (officially: Act to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich) was passed by the German Reichstag on 24 March 1933 and authorized the Reich government under Adolf Hitler to enact laws that deviated from the constitution of the German Reich. It was a key step towards the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship.
The law gave the government almost unlimited legislative power, enabling it to pass laws that could also restrict fundamental rights without the approval of the Reichstag or Reichsrat. In practice, this meant the end of Weimar democracy and the basis for the totalitarian rule of the National Socialists.
The Enabling Act was signed through intimidation and violence, in particular through the Reichstag fire and the repression that followed, and is considered one of the decisive instruments for the establishment of the National Socialist regime.
In such a case, the general will is not in doubt. And the main view of the people is obviously that the state should not perish.
The Censor's Office
In addition, Rousseau has an office that does not otherwise exist in state theories: the office of censor.
This censor is similarly undefined to the office of dictator. The censor is responsible for expressing public opinion and interpreting the general will.
He is therefore the mouthpiece of popular opinion. You need to know what the basis for this is and who is qualified to do so.
Why is his translation correct and why is he right in his judgment?
Now it gets even worse. He maintains morality by acting as a censor and giving a certain direction to the fluctuating opinions of the people.
People don't know what they want. They need someone to tell them what they want. That is Big Brother.
In George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984", "Big Brother" is the ubiquitous symbol of the Party's totalitarian control over society. Although he never makes a direct appearance, his image is everywhere - on posters, coins and placards, accompanied by the slogan "Big Brother sees you".
Big Brother represents the absolute power of the party and its constant surveillance state. He stands for control over the individual thoughts and actions of citizens in the totalitarian state of Oceania, in which the novel is set. The constant surveillance and manipulation of the truth by the Party make Big Brother appear as a kind of overpowering leader who determines people's lives in all areas. However, the question of whether Big Brother is actually a real person or just a symbolic figure remains open - what is decisive is that his existence illustrates the total influence and oppression of the individual by the state.
Summary
So we see that the moment Rousseau relies not on the volonté des tous, but on the volonté générale, i.e. not on what any parliaments might decide, and also makes it clear that any private interest is bad and wrong for them, he has laid the foundations for turning the state into a dictatorship. It has many means to influence people. It has many ways of influencing people. It can also say that the state is in danger. Then it can set up a dictatorship. And it can abolish all laws.
Rousseau also rules out any kind of organization of private interests, which could now be run via the market, for example. Everything private must be fought against. Only the common will and the common good are good. The state must enforce this by all means.
Rousseau's constitution allows everything.
Basically, you could also say that Rousseau is the inventor of the total state and totalitarianism. If you say that a certain goal is important for everyone and then it is decided that way, then that is always the case. That is the opposite of a constitutional state. Laws are laid down there and all civil servants and state functions must abide by them.
Totalitarianism refers to a form of political rule in which the state controls almost all aspects of citizens' lives. In a totalitarian system, there is no real political freedom, as all power is in the hands of a central authoritarian leadership that monitors and directs all institutions - such as the media, judiciary, education and economy. Opposition groups are suppressed and the population is forced to conform through propaganda, surveillance and violence.
Important characteristics of totalitarianism are a strong ideology that permeates society, the exclusion of dissenters, the censorship of information and the creation of an all-powerful leader who is considered infallible. Historical examples of totalitarian regimes are National Socialist Germany under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin. In a totalitarian state, individual freedom is almost completely sacrificed in order to secure the power of the ruling party or leader.
Rousseau has almost no laws. There is only one social contract, which must be concluded unanimously. From then on, everything is based on imperative mandates. Nobody can control such mandates because there are no corresponding laws.
Some people like Rousseau and his view that people are peaceful and like each other. But the construction of the state is perhaps even worse than Hobbes.
"The Leviathan" is a work by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, published in 1651, in which he sets out his ideas about the state and political order. The book is subtitled "A work on the matter, form and power of a state of ecclesiastical and secular government" and represents one of the fundamental theories of political absolutism.
Hobbes describes the state as an artificial "Leviathan" - a powerful and superior entity created by a contract between individuals in order to end the "war of all against all" which, in his view, would prevail without a central authority in the state of nature. In this state of nature, according to Hobbes, people are in constant fear of violence and insecurity, which leads to a state of anarchy.
In order to ensure peace and security, individuals must give up their freedom and submit to a sovereign ruler who has the power to enact and enforce laws. This ruler, the "Leviathan", must have absolute power in order to create stability and order. Hobbes argues that the security of the community is more important than individual freedom, and that a strong, centralized government is necessary to ensure the survival of society.
The work had an enormous influence on political philosophy and the development of modern political theory.
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