- Because there is no fair baseline for the agreement so that each is given an equally valuable fair share.
- Secondly the institution once made is irrevocable and therefore enshrines the power of the technological elite. For Pufendorf it is an alienation contract – once and for all. Once the weak farmers and metallurgist dominate they become strong.
But why is this a contract? Because as Hobbes shows it can only be on the basis of an agreement or consent. If someone puts up a fence in the state of nature what is to stop us all taking it down? Nothing except superior force or the fact that we are duped into accepting it as beneficial. So agreement and consent to our own domination is essential for creating the state.
Why is it evil? Because it institutionalises inequality – something that does not exist in the natural condition. Inequality or power is a human creation. (as such it must be something we can unmake – hence the revolutionary consequences of JJR’s thesis)
Historical Reason
This what makes him a theorist of historical reason? He sees nature as immanent in social practices, but still takes a conception of nature as a regulative ideal against which we can criticize those practices. So that we can talk of corruption because we can conceive of nature being other than it is.
We can be different, we reason and will can overcome the corrupting features of traditional property relations and the state. Historical reason provides us with a way of seeing both the conceptions of nature underpinning Hobbesian realism and the universalist conceptions of natural law in Pufendorf and Locke as historical creations. This creates a potential contradiction of the pessimism of The Discourses, because it does suggest the possibility of progress and development where they did are explicitly neutral on the idea of social progress and evolution.
How do we overcome the tyranny of interest? Through a renewed conception of political society based on the idea of a social contract – but a conversion contract that allows us to reconcile our natural freedom and independence with the existence of political rule.
The contract
Against domination by force and slavery
Arguing against domination by force and slavery is Rousseau’s first step towards arguing for a free regime. It is also his original critique of existing Government.
- Against domination (I-3): a conceptual, not moral, arguments
‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ Where does subordination come from? Issue is one of legitimacy so matters of fact do not settle the issue.
Natural subordination is based on love and mutuality – therefore different from Political rule.
Might cannot make right – the right of the strongest does not bind the will. The relationship is structured inequality therefore it is not a source of legitimacy. There is a moral component but that is complex. ( This is taken up by thinkers as diverse as Marx and Rawls).
- 3 arguments against slavery (I-4)
We cannot alienate ourselves because there is no return – to alienate is to sell. Yet King does not give subsistence like a slave master instead he takes it from his subjects.
War – again threatens subjects. So again no fair exchange of goods. No mutuality no legitimacy. War is also something that can only exist between states – so cannot exist in the S of N.
Even if we could alienate ourselves we could not alienate anyone else – children and future generations are exempt for first-person agreements.
There can be no right to enslave.
(a) to enslave yourself through a contract is a contradiction in terms; because the agreement is irrevocable,
(b) to give yourself into slavery is irrational;
(c) to give yourself into slavery is immoral.
Each of these arguments against slavery raises issues about the nature of coercion, but they do not mean that despotic regimes are legitimate.
Freedom as non-domination and freedom as subjection to the general will. Rousseau’s positive theory of freedom. Contrast with Berlin on negative liberty and with ‘republican theories’ – Pettit and Skinner.
The social contract: the fundamental political act.
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How we get out of the state of nature. Problem of scarcity – power of resistance is greater than resources. Problem is economic not one of motive as we find in Hobbes or Locke. Only solution is to restructure our social relations: ‘the human race would perish unless its manner of existence changed.’
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Through the contract I alienate all my rights to the community and become a member of the sovereign, law-making body, i.e. a citizen, and a subject who has to obey the law. A society founded on that principle does respect equality and freedom. It respects equality, since all its members have renounced all their rights; it respects freedom, in substituting civil freedom – i.e. the freedom to live under laws one has agreed to- for natural freedom –the freedom to do as one wishes which stems from total independence from others.
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The sovereign is absolute: it cannot bind itself to act towards itself, i.e. it cannot bind itself not to revoke laws it has passed. Implication: against constitutions; the sovereign is one, unified. Problem: I may disagree with the law, in fact I may have voted against it: to what extent, then, is the law mine, or to what extent can I be said really to be free, if I have to obey it?
In this we create ourselves as a political community – this is an act of constitution. It is irrevocable and it makes us into a demos – or people. This is derived from Locke and Pufendorf, it precludes secession and is influential for subsequent theories of nationalism. It involves a CONVERSION contract, a mysterious transformation from individual into citizen (not subject). We alienate our egoistic self-but do not subordinate our natures as equals.
- How is this achieved – by ruling and being ruled in turn. Constituting ourselves so that the rule of law is not external but an expression of my will. This takes us to the General Will.
The General Will
Rousseau, then, faces a challenge: on the one hand he believes that men are by nature free and equal; on the other hand, he believes that the sovereign created by the social contract, i.e. the whole people, has absolute power over each of its individual members. How then are freedom and equality preserved? Answer: the general will: To act under the general will, then, consists for each citizen in thinking about what is in the common interest, even though the common interest conflicts with his own private interest. In order to discover what the common good requires, citizens must use their reason.
The general will has the following features:
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It is not the will of all: the will of all is a compromise between particular wills; the general will is the product of every citizen’s reason as applied to determining what is in the common interest.
- It cannot lead to the destruction of the state as a polity
- It cannot be wrong by definition (echoing Hobbes)
- The general will cannot represented – this is what is wrong will Locke and other liberal theories: we can embody the general will in a particular class.
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It and only it can make laws. A decision is a law only if it applies equally to all and furthers the common good: only the general will can produce that. Decisions which apply to certain people in particular are not laws and are not made under the general will. (This is a feature that we find taken up in Kant’s account of the categorical imperative).
- The laws it makes preserve freedom and equality: they preserve freedom since freedom means living under a law one agrees with; and they preserve equality, because they apply to everybody equally.
The general will and freedom
Freedom: living under laws one has voted for, where those laws are the product of reason, apply equally to all and promote the common good. If I vote for a law which, for example, restricts opportunities to associate with others, I do not lose my freedom, since I have voted for the law, since that law is dictated by reason, and since it is for the common good. If I disobey the law, I shall be forced to obey it by the sovereign, I shall, in fact, be forced to be free, as Rousseau very famously puts it.
- To force someone to be free is not really a paradox
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Is it really true that obeying to laws made under the general will preserve my freedom? Rousseau believes that it will, because such laws, as made under the general will, reflect my will as a citizen, and thus enable me not to be dominated by any private individual. What about cases where I have not voted for the law?
- Rousseau’s answer: decisions made by majority rule are more likely to be right than wrong: if I am in the minority it means that I am wrong. (Condorcet’s theorem.) The general will reflects my true will.
2 problems: there is a difference between a decision being likely to be true and a decision being certain to be true; Rousseau presupposes a huge degree of agreement between citizens.
Conditions under which the general will can work – Rousseau’s conception of the state.
Rousseau has to deal with two pbs: there is a gap between our private interests and the common good so we have to be motivated to go for the common good; getting at the general will presupposes the existence of certain institutions: (i.e., we need to have the people gathered and voting); but those institutions themselves have to be set up by the general will: there is a pb of circularity here. So: under what concrete conditions can the general will obtain?
- Civil religion – based on a Spartan ideal, but also closure of the state. No international relations, trade and commerce. All of these threaten to foster self-interest.
- The legislator – gives content to the law, maxims. But he cannot rule. He needs to be mythological or historically distant, like Solon and Lycurgus or even Moses.
Rousseau and democracy
- In each of those three regimes, citizens make the law, according to the general will; democracy is when more than 50% of citizens constitute the government; aristocracy is when less than 50% of citizens constitute the government; monarchy is when one person constitutes the government (III-3.)
- Small countries are most conducive to individual freedom because in a small country you have a greater share of sovereignty; and democratic regimes are well suited to small countries, first because democratic governments are weak (by contrast, big countries require strong governments), and second, because in a small country, the sovereign is small, and can only control a weak government. Rousseau’s argument to that effect uses the notion of governmental will as distinct from private and general will. The less people in the government, the stronger and the more effective the government. Fine for a big state, but dangerous for a small state.
Rousseau's "Social Contract":A Critical Response
Bobby Taylor
Political theorists have long attempted to find a plausible rationale for the existence of the coercive State. This quest reached a climax during the Enlightenment when philosophers and political scientists rejoiced over the discovery of a new model depicting the relationship between the individual and the State: the social contract.
According to the theory of the social contract, individuals may leave an anarchic "state of nature" by voluntarily transferring some of their personal rights to the "community" in return for security of life and property. A seemingly rational and practical concept in its general form, the social contract theory began to lose its luster as its proponents clashed over what form the State should take and what rights, if any, the individual should retain.
During this period of intense conflict, French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau produced a seminal work entitled "The Social Contract." In it Rousseau proposes a visionary society in which all rights and property would be vested in the State, which would be under the direct control of "the People." Large meetings of the public would be held in order to determine the collective interest as perceived by the "general will"; this the State would then dutifully enforce. Rousseau justifies this strange synthesis of communism and direct democracy by arguing that the abrogation of individual rights would abolish special privileges, and that tyranny would be impossible because the People would never oppress themselves.
"The Social Contract" has been used by both democrats and totalitarians to support their respective positions. This ambiguity is rather symptomatic of the contradictions underlying Rousseau's entire essay. His work is particularly vulnerable in three essential areas: the formulation of the "general will," the subordination of individual rights, and the validity of the "social contract" concept.
The term "general will" seemingly implies that there is an interest common to all persons involved. But even if this were true, running a direct democracy on this principle would be hopelessly impractical. Rousseau, after building a heady image of united purpose and brotherhood among the masses, finally admits the impracticality later in the essay and provides a slightly less demanding criterion: majority rule.
By accepting this annotation, however, Rousseau deviates from his position that the People would never oppress themselves. History has clearly shown that majoritarianism without constraints, such as the Bill of Rights, leads to oppression of the minority and State confiscation on a vast scale. The only legitimate conception of the "general will" that would satisfy Rousseau's great expectations is complete
unanimity, and if it could ever be reached in a large body of self-interested individuals, why would the coercive State be needed at all? Rousseau believes that personal liberty need not be secured since the individual would in a sense rule himself via the "general will." As we have seen, however, Rousseau's conception of the "general will" is an inadequate safeguard against tyranny, and in reality the individual citizen would be incessantly victimized by the State. This monstrous miscalculation on Rousseau's part stems from his regard of human beings as means to higher ends, rather than as ends in themselves. His utter disregard for the rights of man runs directly counter to traditional Western individualism and leaves his ideal society suspended in a sterile moral vacuum.
Finally, Rousseau maintains that the State may exercise complete control over the lives and property of its citizens because these individuals have granted it this right by virtue of the social contract. The term "social contract" works to legitimize actions normally considered to be enslavement and theft, and at first glance the concept seems rather reasonable. Upon further reflection, however, an important question arises: Is the social contract really a contract at all?
Where Rousseau Fails
Contracts by definition must have two basic features: they must be entered into voluntarily and they must also clearly enumerate the rights and duties of the parties involved. Rousseau's social contract fails miserably on both points.
The social contract is ostensibly voluntary, but any individual refusing to enter into the contract would be forced to flee by the State and would have his land confiscated, though he had not initiated force against anyone. Additionally, the terms of the contract are extraordinarily vague: the contracting individual agrees to grant his precious life, liberty, and property to the State in return for one ineffectual vote in the formulation of a governing but extremely faulty "general will." This so-called contract is actually the epitome of the one-way street: the State receives everything yet grants nothing and therefore holds all the cards. The fact that no contract even faintly resembling Rousseau's has ever appeared in the free market is ample proof that such an agreement would never be accepted by anyone - except, perhaps, at the point of a gun.
Although "The Social Contract" is a blatantly anti -libertarian document, it should be read and studied closely by all students of the free society. In Rousseau's work one can discover the roots of contemporary socialism and can see the mass of contradictions and fallacies underlying this morally bankrupt ideology, unobstructed by the clever rhetorical devices of modem collectivists. The principles espoused by Rousseau in his essay haunt us even today, and until they are finally faced, the specter of tyranny will continue to hang like a pall over the Western conscience.
2. Freedom and legitimacy
The whole above process depraves us but also makes us human. The Social Contract (1762) is a solution to this contradiction. It proposes a form of association which will enable humans to recover their internal and external freedom without reverting to the state of nature. Thus one which will remake human psychology (as it has been remade already by the descent into civilised society). NB Rousseau’s historicism about human nature (we are a product of our kind of society) and his critique of Hobbes’s psychology (it projects human characteristics under modern society onto human nature as such). It is unclear whether the state of the SC is a possible future for mankind or a ‘might have been’ that is only available to a few undeveloped and uncorrupted places. If it is the latter then the Discourse and SC together involve a kind of Aristotelian account of the evolution of society to the point where it can enable humans to realise their own nature, although (a) this process involves a long period of corruption lasting from earliest societies up to the present, and (b) Rousseau’s notion of realised humanity is different from Aristotle’s, centring on freedom.
However the argument of SC is in terms of legitimacy rather than human self-realisation: only the state of the SC is legitimate (has legitimate power and authority). ‘Legitimate’ implies natural law, but Rousseau does not elaborate a theory of natural law as Locke does. Instead he argues that a state is legitimate only if it preserves individuals’ freedom, so that in it ‘each obeys only himself and remains as free as before’ (SC 1.6).
For Rousseau humans are free in that they are: (1) self-determining, or capable of self-determination, rather than driven by their desires or instincts, and therefore (2) self-authoritative or ‘sovereign’, i.e. having ultimate authority over themselves. ‘Every man being born free and his own master, no one, under any pretext whatsoever, can make any man subject without his consent’ (SC 4.2) (Rousseau also uses freedom in a third way, to mean ‘unconstrained by external pressures’. Today this is often called ‘negative liberty’. But whether humans are free in this sense depends on their circumstances.).
Because of individuals’ self-authority, a rightful or (to use Rousseau’s preferred terminology) a legitimate state, which will have genuine authority over its citizens and correspondingly whose citizens will be under a genuine obligation to obey it, can only come into existence through individuals voluntarily surrendering their individual self-authority to it through a contract. ‘Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions [i.e. contracts − AC] form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.’ (SC 1.4)
At present people are internally enslaved, so their consent is not genuinely voluntary (SC 1.2, Noone). So the legitimate state must also establish internal freedom. Rousseau’s state will do this by replacing all relations of personal dependency by a relation of dependency of each on the social whole.
But furthermore if a contract is to be valid then it must somehow preserve individuals’ self-authority. One cannot voluntarily agree to unconditionally obey (to alienate all one’s natural liberties/freedoms to) someone else (as in Hobbes); such a contract would be ‘illegitimate and void’ (SC 1.4) because it would destroy freedom: ‘To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties ... Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.’ (SC 1.4). In Rousseau’s words the will is ‘inalienable’. The idea seems to be that the obligation to keep the terms of a contract is based on a more basic obligation to carry out your own decisions, so as to be true to your status as a self-determining being. But if you agree to surrender all of your self-authority to a third party then you will lose your status as a self-determining being and so the basis for obligation, so the resulting contract will be void, i.e. you will be under no obligation to keep to it.
Yet Rousseau (like Hobbes) thinks that a legitimate state requires that individuals surrender all their self-authority, for if they surrendered part of it (as happens in Locke) ‘there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public [i.e. the state]’ (SC 1.6).
3. The social contract
The solution is a contract in which we must alienate all our liberties, but alienate them to ourselves as a collective body. ‘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.’ (SC 1.6), thus ‘each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody’ (SC 1.6). Rousseau calls this collective body the ‘sovereign’ or ‘the state’ (he does not mean the central apparatus of power by that term). It meets periodically and decides by majority vote on the basic laws of the state and on a government (of whatever type – not necessarily democratic) to apply those basic laws in particular instances and to make more specific regulations (‘decrees’).
So what is then authoritative over individuals is the will of this collective body or social whole, which is their own ‘general will’. A system of government is legitimate in so far as it is brought into being by this contract and in so far as its laws are all expressions of the general will of its citizens.
4. What is the general will in Rousseau?
Rousseau is notoriously ambiguous about what he means by the general will (his main discussions of it are in SC 1.7, 2.1, 2.3, 2.4, 4.1, 4.2). It could mean:
(1) What all the citizens want (so will vote unanimously for).
(2) What the majority of the citizens want (so will vote by a majority for).
(3) What all the citizens want insofar as they think of themselves as members of the social whole.
(4) What all the citizens would want if they were true to their own essence as free beings.
(5) What all the citizens must truly want, even if they don’t think they do.
(6) What is in the citizens’ common interest.
(1)-(3) are ‘factual’ (or ‘procedural’) definitions of the general will. They make the general will a matter of what citizens actually want. (4)-(5) are ‘ideal’ (or ‘substantive’) definitions. They make the general will something whose content can be determined without actually finding out what the citizens want.
My view is (3) (although Rousseau sometimes introduces ideal elements into his talk about the general will). The general will is the ‘intention of the people’ (SC 4.6), what the people wants (‘volonté generale’ could be translated ‘general want’ as well as ‘general will’), and this means what each citizen wants insofar as he thinks of himself as part of a single body composed all the citizens, and what each such citizen wants is that the ‘common good’ be realised. ‘As long as several men in assembly regard themselves as a single body, they have only a single will which is concerned with their common preservation and general well-being ... the common good is everywhere clearly apparent, and only good sense is needed to perceive it.’ (SC 4.1)
The ‘common good’, or ‘common interest’ or ‘general interest’, would be ‘whatever, when it exists, automatically benefits everyone in the society’. Examples would be street lighting, clean air, flood defences, or of course the absence of violence (nowadays these are technically called ‘public goods’; they are the kind of good whose provision poses a collective action problem). Rousseau assumes that the provision of public goods is always equally beneficial to all, so more accurately ‘the common good’ seems to mean the provision of equally-beneficial public goods.
5. Particular and general will
The general will of the people does not necessarily translate itself into the majority decision of the people when they are assembled because they think of themselves as individuals as well as members of the social whole, and the will of each individual towards the common good may be in tension with, and even overcome by, his will towards his own personal good. ‘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’ (SC 1.7). E.g. if I have a bedroom that is on the street I may have a particular interest in there being no street lighting, which contradicts the general interest I share with everyone else in there being street lighting.
Although the general will in each person never disappears (even in ‘detaching his interest from the common interest’ and pursuing the first at the expense of the second, a man ‘does not extinguish in himself the general will, but only eludes it’, SC 4.1), individuals can often end up by voting for laws which will advance their particular interests (or the common interest of a sub-group of society), and then the ‘will of all’ (i.e. the actual majority decision in a vote) may fail to express the general will. E.g. the car-owners think not so much about preventing theft as about preventing the theft of cars. ‘There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills’ (SC 2.3). (NB this is separate from the problem of everyone wanting the common good but being mistaken about what measures will advance it.)
Rousseau has various voting rules to avoid this happening. E.g. (a) make it clear that everyone must consider only general and not particular interests in voting (as he puts it, they must ask themselves of a proposed measure ‘whether it conforms to the general will that is theirs’, SC 4.2); (b) prevent factions forming, then even if everyone only considers their particular interests what they will vote for will on average be the general will (defined as what is in the general interest) - ‘pluses and minuses’ will cancel out (SC 2.3). But these solutions will not work, for people may vote on their particular interests even if they are told not to, and they don’t need to make explicit factions in order for the majority, following its particular interests, to vote in laws which discriminate against the minority. In the end he has to rely on individuals thinking for the whole.
Conversely if everyone thinks of himself as a member of the social whole rather than as an isolated individual then the majority decision will express the general will. Rousseau’s elaborate voting rules are designed to maximise the chance that this will still happen even when not everyone is thinking as a member of the social whole, and voting under these rules is the best possible way of ascertaining what the general will is. His advice to the legislator, the figure who devises a constitution for the people to approve, to devise one which will maximise the extent to which everyone in fact thinks as a member of the social whole, and thus possesses the traditional republican civic virtues. ‘He who dares to undertake the making of a people’s institutions ought to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which he in a manner receives his life and being’ (SC 2.7)
The result is a system of government and its laws are legitimate when they have been chosen by the general will of the citizens, as expressed by their majority decisions under specific voting rules at their periodic assemblies. They must be chosen by a majority decision that expresses the general will (as opposed to just any majority decision) because individuals created the social body, with its powers of coercion over them, strictly in order to advance the common good, and if they are to carry out their original decision, and so be true to their status as self-determining beings, then they can only use it for that purpose: ‘the general will can only direct the forces of the state towards the end for which it was instituted, i.e. the common good’ (SC 2.1).
6. Idealisation
However there are passages in Rousseau where he seems to introduce an ‘ideal’ strain into his account of the general will. For example, he says that the general will necessarily wills equality: ‘the particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality’ (SC 2.1). ‘The general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as its essence; that it must both come from all and apply to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular and determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true principle of equity to guide us’ (SC 2.4; cf. 2.6). The idea seems to be that the social contract only transformed individual self-authority into collective self-authority, and this gives citizens the authority to make laws over themselves collectively but not over any particular citizen, for this would be a law made by one group (however numerous) over someone external to them, violating that person’s self-authority. Therefore equality before the law follows.
Rousseau also ties the general will to freedom, in the sense of self-determination, for he sometimes slips into describing the general will of the individual simply as his ‘will’, such that when the general will is enacted, even against the individual’s own desires, this is only the enactment of his own real will and therefore makes him free (self-determining). ‘We can be both free and subject to the laws, since they are but registers of our wills’ (SC 2.6). When a law is proposed people are asked to vote on whether the law is in conformity with the general will, and if I am outvoted this just shows that I was wrong about the general will. Rousseau adds: ‘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’ (SC 4.2). This makes sense only if my general will is my true or real will.
Similarly even if all vote for the common good, since the benefits to each of having it will exceed the costs to each of providing it, when they get home and look at the situation, each will think to himself that he would be better off if he could avoid having to contribute to the public good, which would still continue to exist even if he personally stopped contributing to its production. He will be tempted to free ride. For example, I may join in enacting a law against theft but still be tempted to make an exception for myself when I get home. This is why the laws have to be coercively enforced. But when I am so coerced I am ‘forced to be free’ (SC 1.7), because the law is only a ‘record of my own will’ (SC 2.6). So this coercion does not contradict my freedom.
If our general will is our real will then the laws we institute through it are the expression of our real will, and the enforcement of these laws realises the freedom (self-determination) of each of us. This means that living in the society of the social contract brings into existence the very freedom (self-determination) that provides the basis for the legitimacy of that society. So here Rousseau unites themes from Locke and Aristotle.
This ambiguity about the general will is reflected in an uncertainty about whether Rousseau thinks that a legitimate state must actually be initiated by a historical social contract (his view for the most part), or whether it only needs to be one that could have been so initiated. While the ‘factual’ account ties him to the republican and democratic tradition, the ‘ideal’ elements represent step in the development of a political philosophy based on the idea of deducing those laws and structures that are required for humans to be free, developed by Kant and Rawls.