Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract Or Principles Of Political Right came after John Locke’s Essay Concerning The True Original Extent And End Of Civil Government. John Locke’s Essay came out in 1690; Rousseau was aware of the Essay when he published his Social Contract in 1762.

One would casually think that Rousseau’s would be an improvement upon Locke. More founded in reason, less founded in emotive or religious dogma. It wasn’t. While Locke’s reasoning was notably independent of cultural or religious foundation, Rousseau often left his arguments unreasoned, as if their reasoning was self apparent.

Locke considered the individual to be paramount; Locke’s social contract served as a foundation for individuals to interact.

Rousseau considered the collective (”General Will”) to be paramount, and the individual to be suspect, or evil.

Locke’s social contract allowed men to retain the good part of individual sovereignty. Men gave up just enough to ensure law and order.

Rousseau’s social contract requires all individuals to give up all sovereignty to the collective.

Locke sees the individual as best suited to be master of his own destiny. Locke’s individual is competent to seek his own happiness.

Rousseau’s individual is weak, a victim of oppression everywhere, and not competent to decide good for himself. He needs the General Will to compel him to do good, and to create equality freedom must be lost.

Individual freedom was paramount for Locke.

Equality and the collective was paramount for Rousseau.

Locke’s Essay heavily influenced the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.

Rousseau’s Social Contract heavily influenced socialism and communism, especially with his attacks on private property and man-as-victim attitude.

Frankly, I’m not impressed with Rousseau’s ability to think, at least on political topics. He seems to emote more than think, and his specious postulation of a General Will that is incapable of harming individuals is just absurd, as history has shown.

While reading, I highlighted a few passages, which may however present the wrong impression out of context.

The Social Contract Or Principles Of Political Right

Book I :

3. The Right OF The Strongest

The Strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.

5. That We Must Always Go Back To A First Convention

There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. Even if scattered individuals were successively enslaved by one man, however numerous they might be, I still see no more than a master and his slaves, and certainly not a people and its ruler;

6. The Social Compact

“The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution.

These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one-the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community: for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others.

Moreover, the alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has anything more to demand: for, if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical.

“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will.

7. The Sovereign

Again, the Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs; and consequently the sovereign power need give no guarantee to its subjects, because it is impossible for the body to wish to hurt all its members.

In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuse to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body.

We must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will;

9. Real Property

Each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its foundation, just as he is, with all the resources at his command, including the goods he possesses.

Book II :

1. That Sovereignty Is Inalienable

I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will. The particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality.

2. That Sovereignty Is Indivisible

To be general, a will need not always be unanimous; but every vote must be counted: any exclusion is a breach of generality.

4. The Limits Of The Sovereign Power

As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty.

It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them; for, under this system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others:

6. Law

The individuals see the good they reject; the public wills the good it does not see. All stand equally in need of guidance. The former must be compelled to bring their wills into conformity with their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it wills.

11. The Various Systems Of Legislation

If the object is to give the state consistency, bring the two extremes as near to each other as possible; allow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the friends of tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always between them that public liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and the other sells.

Book III:

5. Aristocracy

I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.

6. Monarchy

This supposition once made, royal government is cleary preferable to all others, because it is incontestably the strongest, and, to be the best also, wants only a corporate will more in conformity with the general will.

16. That The Institution Of Government Is Not A Contract

As the citizens, by the social contract, are all equal, all can prescribe what all should do, but no one has a right to demand that another shall do what he does not do himself.

Book IV:

2. Voting

When the state is instituted, residence constitutes consent; to dwell within its territory is to submit to the Sovereign.

Apart from this primitive contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the rest. This follows from the contract itself. But it is asked how a man can be both free and forced to conform to wills that are not his own. How are the opponents at once free and subject to laws they have not agreed to?

I report that the question is wrongly put. The citizen gives his consent to all the laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those which punish him when he dares to break any of them. The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will; by virtue of it they are citizens and free. When in the popular assembly a law is proposed, what the people is asked is not exactly whether it approves or rejects the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with the general will, which is their will. Each man, in giving his vote, states his opinion on that point; and the general will is found by counting votes. When therefore the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion had carried the day I should have achieved the opposite of what was my will; and it is in that case that I should not have been free.

This presupposes, indeed, that all the qualities of the general will still reside in the majority: when they cease to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty is no longer possible.

7. The Censorship

As the law is the declaration of the general will, the censorship is the declaration of the public judgment: public opinion is the form of law which the censor administers, and, like the prince, only applies to particular cases.

8. Civil Religion

There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or faithful subject. While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them – it can banish him, not for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If any one, after publicly recognising these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law.

But whoever dares to say: Outside the Church is no salvation, ought to be driven from the State.

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