FREE ESSAY ON CRIT OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

CRIT OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

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.