Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a fascinating individual whose unorthodox ideas and
passionate prose caused a flurry of interest in 18th century France. Rousseau's
greatest work were published in 1762 -The Social Contract. Rousseau society
itself is an implicit agreement to live together for the good of everyone with
individual equality and freedom. However, people have enslaved themselves by
giving over their power to governments which are not truly sovereign because
they do not promote the general will. Rousseau believed that only the will of
all the people together granted sovereignty. Various forms of government are
instituted to legislate and enforce the laws. He wrote, “The first duty of the
legislator is to make the laws conformable to the general will, the first rule
of public economy is that the administration of justice should be conformable to
the laws.” His natural political philosophy echoes the way of Lao Tzu: “The
greatest talent a ruler can possess is to disguise his power, in order to render
it less odious, and to conduct the State so peaceably as to make it seem to have
no need of conductors.” Rousseau valued his citizenship in Geneva where he was
born, and he was one of the first strong voices for democratic principles.
“There can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty without virtue, no
virtue without citizens; create citizens, and you have everything you need;
without them, you will have nothing but debased slaves, from the rulers of the
State downwards.” In the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate
rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be.
In this inquiry we shall endeavor always to unite what right sanctions with what
is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be
divided. We enter upon this task without proving the importance of the subject.
We shall be asked if we are the prince or the legislator, to write on politics.
We answer that we am neither, and that is why we do so. If I were a prince or a
legislator, I should not waste time in saying what wants doing; I should do it,
or hold my peace. As we were born citizens of a free state, and a member of the
sovereign, we should feel, however feeble the influence of our voice can have on
public affairs, the right of voting on them makes it our duty to study them: and
we are happy, when we reflect upon governments, to find the inquiries always
furnish us with new reasons for loving that of our own country. Man is born
free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others,
and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? we
do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question can be answered. If we
took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, “as long as a
people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake
off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its
liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming
it, or there was no justification for those who took it away.” But the social
order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless,
this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on
conventions. Before coming to that, we have to prove what has just been
asserted. The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural,
is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so
long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the
natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed
to the father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children,
return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no
longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only
by convention. This common liberty results from the nature of man. His first law
is to provide for his own preservation, his first cares are those which he owes
to himself; and, as soon as he reaches years of discretion, he is the sole judge
of the proper means of preserving himself, and consequently becomes his own
master. The family then may be called the first model of political societies:
the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all,
being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage.
The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father for his
children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the state, the
pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have
for the peoples under him. The strongest is never strong enough to be always the
master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence
the right of the strongest, which, though to all seeming meant ironically, is
really laid down as a fundamental principle. But are we never to have an
explanation of this phrase? To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of
will at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? Suppose
for a moment that this so-called “right” exists. Maintained that the sole
result is a mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the
effect changes with the cause: every force that is greater than the first
succeeds to its right. As soon as it is possible to disobey with impunity,
disobedience is legitimate; and, the strongest being always in the right, the
only thing that matters is to act so as to become the strongest. But what kind
of right is that which perishes when force fails? If we must obey perforce,
there is no need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey, we
are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to
force: in this connection, it means absolutely nothing. Obey the powers that be.
If this means yield to force, it is a good precept, but superfluous: we can
answer for its never being violated. All power comes from god, we admit; but so
does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor? A
brigand surprises me at the edge of a wood: must we not merely surrender my
purse on compulsion; but, even if we could withhold it, are we in conscience
bound to give it up? For certainly the pistol he holds is also a power. Let us
then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey
only legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs. Since no man
has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must
conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.
If an individual, “can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of a
master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a
king?” There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need
explaining; but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to
give or to sell. Now, a man who becomes the slave of another does not give
himself; he sells himself, at the least for his subsistence: but for what does a
people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with their
subsistence that he gets his own only from them. Do subjects then give their
persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? It will be said that
the despot assures his subjects civil tranquillity. Granted; but what do they
gain, if the wars his ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity,
and the vexations conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own
dissension’s would have done? What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they
enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is
that enough to make them desirable places to live in? To say that a man gives
himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is
null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his
mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and
madness creates no right. Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not
alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to
them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to
years of judgment, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their
preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without
conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the
rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimize an
arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a
position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no
longer arbitrary. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender
the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no
indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to
remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one
side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. Is it not
clear that we can be under no obligation to a person from whom we have the right
to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in the absence of
equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For what
right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his
right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of
meaning? The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished,
the latter can buy back his life at the price of his liberty; and this
convention is the more legitimate because it is to the advantage of both
parties. But it is clear that this supposed right to kill the conquered is by no
means deducible from the state of war. Men, from the mere fact that, while they
are living in their primitive independence, they have no mutual relations stable
enough to constitute either the state of peace or the state of war, cannot be
naturally enemies. War is constituted by a relation between things, and not
between persons; and, as the state of war cannot arise out of simple personal
relations, but only out of real relations, private war, or war of man with man,
can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no constant property,
nor in the social state, where everything is under the authority of the laws.
War is a relation, not between man and man, but between state and state, and
individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens, but
as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally,
each state can have for enemies only other states, and not men; for between
things disparate in nature there can be no real relation. Furthermore, this
principle is in conformity with the established rules of all times and the
constant practice of all civilized peoples. Declarations of war are intimations
less to powers than to their subjects. The foreigner, whether king, individual,
or people, who robs, kills or detains the subjects, without declaring war on the
prince, is not an enemy, but a brigand. Even in real war, a just prince, while
laying hands, in the enemy's country, on all that belongs to the public,
respects the lives and goods of individuals: he respects rights on which his own
are founded. The object of the war being the destruction of the hostile state,
the other side has a right to kill its defenders, while they are bearing arms;
but as soon as they lay them down and surrender, they cease to be enemies or
instruments of the enemy, and become once more merely men, whose life no one has
any right to take. Sometimes it is possible to kill the state without killing a
single one of its members; and war gives no right which is not necessary to the
gaining of its object. These principles are not those of grotius: they are not
based on the authority of poets, but derived from the nature of reality and
based on reason. The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of
the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the
conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which
does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make
him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the
right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the
price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not
clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on
the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?
Even if we assume this terrible right to kill everybody, we maintain that a
slave made in war, or a conquered people, is under no obligation to a master,
except to obey him as far as he is compelled to do so. By taking an equivalent
for his life, the victor has not done him a favor; instead of killing him
without profit, he has killed him usefully. So far then is he from acquiring
over him any authority in addition to that of force, that the state of war
continues to subsist between them: their mutual relation is the effect of it,
and the usage of the right of war does not imply a treaty of peace. A convention
has indeed been made; but this convention, so far from destroying the state of
war, presupposes its continuance. So, from whatever aspect we regard the
question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate,
but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right
contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally
foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: “I make with you a
convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as
long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.” Even if we granted
all that we have been refuting, the friends of despotism would be no better off.
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, we still see no more than a master and his
slaves, and certainly not a people and its ruler; we see what may be termed an
aggregation, but not an association; there is as yet neither public good nor
body politic. The man in question, even if he has enslaved half the world, is
still only an individual; his interest, apart from that of others, is still a
purely private interest. If this same man comes to die, his empire, after him,
remains scattered and without unity, as an oak falls and dissolves into a heap
of ashes when the fire has consumed it We suppose men to have reached the point
at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature
show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal
of each individual for his maintenance in that state. That primitive condition
can then subsist no longer; and the human race would perish unless it changed
its manner of existence. But, as men cannot engender new forces, but only unite
and direct existing ones, they have no other means of preserving themselves than
the formation, by aggregation, of a sum of forces great enough to overcome the
resistance. These they have to bring into play by means of a single motive
power, and cause to act in concert. This sum of forces can arise only where
several persons come together: but, as the force and liberty of each man are the
chief instruments of his self-preservation, how can he pledge them without
harming his own interests, and neglecting the care he owes to himself? This
difficulty, in its bearing on the present subject, may be stated in the
following terms: “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. The clauses of this contract
are so determined by the nature of the act that the slightest modification would
make them vain and ineffective; so that, although they have perhaps never been
formally set forth, they are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted
and recognized, until, on the violation of the social compact, each regains his
original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional
liberty in favor of which he renounced it. 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. Finally, each man, in giving himself to all,
gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not
acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent
for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what
he has. If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence,
we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms: “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. This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons formerly
took the name of city, and now takes that of republic or body politic; it is
called by its members state when passive. Sovereign when active, and power when
compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take
collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing
in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the state. But
these terms are often confused and taken one for another: it is enough to know
how to distinguish them when they are being used with precision. This formula
shows us that the act of association comprises a mutual undertaking between the
public and the individuals, and that each individual, in making a contract, as
we may say, with himself, is bound in a double capacity; as a member of the
sovereign he is bound to the individuals, and as a member of the state to the
sovereign. But the maxim of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings
made to himself, does not apply in this case; for there is a great difference
between incurring an obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of
which you form a part. Attention must further be called to the fact that public
deliberation, while competent to bind all the subjects to the sovereign, because
of the two different capacities in which each of them may be regarded, cannot,
for the opposite reason, bind the sovereign to itself; and that it is
consequently against the nature of the body politic for the sovereign to impose
on itself a law which it cannot infringe. Being able to regard itself in only
one capacity, it is in the position of an individual who makes a contract with
himself; and this makes it clear that there neither is nor can be any kind of
fundamental law binding on the body of the people not even the social contract
itself. This does not mean that the body politic cannot enter into undertakings
with others, provided the contract is not infringed by them; for in relation to
what is external to it, it becomes a simple being, an individual. But the body
politic or the sovereign, drawing its being wholly from the sanctity of the
contract, can never bind itself, even to an outsider, to do anything derogatory
to the original act, for instance, to alienate any part of itself, or to submit
to another sovereign. Violation of the act by which it exists would be
self-annihilation; and that which is itself nothing can create nothing. As soon
as this multitude is so united in one body, it is impossible to offend against
one of the members without attacking the body, and still more to offend against
the body without the members resenting it. Duty and interest therefore equally
oblige the two contracting parties to give each other help; and the same men
should seek to combine, in their double capacity, all the advantages dependent
upon that capacity. 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. We shall also see
later on that it cannot hurt any in particular. The sovereign, merely by virtue
of what it is, is always what it should be. This, however, is not the case with
the relation of the subjects to the sovereign, which, despite the common
interest, would have no security that they would fulfil their undertakings,
unless it found means to assure itself of their fidelity. In fact, each
individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the
general will which he has as a citizen. His particular interest may speak to him
quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and naturally
independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as
a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than
the payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the moral person
which constitutes the state as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish
to enjoy the rights of citizenship without being ready to fulfil the duties of a
subject. The continuance of such an injustice could not but prove the undoing of
the body politic. 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 refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so
by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be
free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country,
secures him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working
of the political machine; this alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which,
without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful
abuses. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very
remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct,
and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when
the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite,
does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act
on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his
inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages
which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are
so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled,
and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition
often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless
continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a
stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Let us
draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses by the
social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he
tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the
proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one
against the other, 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; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the
right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a
positive title. We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in
the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself;
for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we
prescribe to ourselves is liberty. But I have already said too much on this
head, and the philosophical meaning of the word liberty does not now concern us.
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. This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change
its nature, and become property in the hands of the sovereign; but, as the
forces of the city are incomparably greater than those of an individual, public
possession is also, in fact, stronger and more irrevocable, without being any
more legitimate, at any rate from the point of view of foreigners. For the
state, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social
contract, which, within the state, is the basis of all rights; but, in relation
to other powers, it is so only by the right of the first occupier, which it
holds from its members. The right of the first occupier, though more real than
the right of the strongest, becomes a real right only when the right of property
has already been established. Every man has naturally a right to everything he
needs; but the positive act which makes him proprietor of one thing excludes him
from everything else. Having his share, he ought to keep to it, and can have no
further right against the community. This is why the right of the first
occupier, which in the state of nature is so weak, claims the respect of every
man in civil society. In this right we are respecting not so much what belongs
to another as what does not belong to ourselves. In general, to establish the
right of the first occupier over a plot of ground, the following conditions are
necessary: first, the land must not yet be inhabited; secondly, a man must
occupy only the amount he needs for his subsistence; and, in the third place,
possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labor and
cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others,
in default of a legal title. In granting the right of first occupancy to
necessity and labor, are we not really stretching it as far as it can go? Is it
possible to leave such a right unlimited? Is it to be enough to set foot on a
plot of common ground, in order to be able to call yourself at once the master
of it? Is it to be enough that a man has the strength to expel others for a
moment, in order to establish his right to prevent them from ever returning? How
can a man or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of
the world except by a punishable usurpation, since all others are being robbed,
by such an act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which
nature gave them in common?. We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where
they were contiguous and came to be united, became the public territory, and how
the right of sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held,
became at once real and personal. The possessors were thus made more dependent,
and the forces at their command used to guarantee their fidelity. The peculiar
fact about this alienation is that, in taking over the goods of individuals, the
community, so far from despoiling them, only assures them legitimate possession,
and changes usurpation into a true right and enjoyment into proprietorship. Thus
the possessors, being regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having
their rights respected by all the members of the state and maintained against
foreign aggression by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits both the
public and still more themselves, acquired, so to speak, all that they gave up.
This paradox may easily be explained by the distinction between the rights which
the sovereign and the proprietor have over the same estate, as we shall see
later on. It may also happen that men begin to unite one with another before
they possess anything, and that, subsequently occupying a tract of country which
is enough for all, they enjoy it in common, or share it out among themselves,
either equally or according to a scale fixed by the sovereign. However the
acquisition be made, the right which each individual has to his own estate is
always subordinate to the right which the community has over all: without this,
there would be neither stability in the social tie, nor real force in the
exercise of sovereignty. This shall end this essay by remarking on a fact on
which the whole social system should rest: i.e., That, instead of destroying
natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical
inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and
legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become
every one equal by convention and legal right.