“You libertarians and your obsession with the individual! What you don’t seem to understand is there’s this little thing called the social contract…” Ah, yes. The social contract. I’m familiar with it, and it’s quite a piece of work. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau states in his introduction to The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right,
“This little treatise is part of a longer work which I began years ago without realising my limitations, and long since abandoned. Of the various fragments that might have been extracted from what I wrote, this is the most considerable, and, I think, the least unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.”
If The Social Contract is the best part of Rousseau’s writing, I shudder to think of what was contained in the pages he threw away. Here are a few key points from Rousseau’s little treatise; let’s review them and see what impact they have on modern political thought:
- The total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community.
- 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.
- It is consequently against the nature of the body politic for the Sovereign to impose on itself a law which it cannot infringe.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
So Rousseau believes that we secure liberty by subjugating ourselves to society, following the dictates of the volonté générale, which he believes can do no wrong. He also states that government itself is above the law, and cannot be bound by any silly rules constraining its behavior. That kind of thing might concern those of us who value freedom and resist totalitarianism, but Rousseau assures us that our concerns are baseless. You see, since government is derived from the larger society, it cannot possibly do any harm to that society. Rousseau also clearly states that only the existence of government bestows morality to man’s actions, and that all property rights are merely gifts granted to us by the State.
The actual history of government is too long and bloody to require much in the way of refutation of Rousseau’s belief in its infallibility and benevolence. Nevertheless, this idiotic tract continues to hold sway amongst statists of all stripes. It is often the first thing they turn to when attempting to justify yet another increase in government power. I seriously doubt many of these people have ever actually read Rousseau’s treatise, but they would do well to at least skim over the ideas in which they place so much faith. They might then think twice about building their arguments on so weak a philosophical foundation.
Instead of dreaming up fantasies about the social contract, it might be worthwhile to note that actual contract law requires at least three elements: offer and acceptance, consideration, and an intention to create legal relations. The careful reader will notice that none of these requirements are present in the social contract. Instead of two parties mutually defining and agreeing to specific terms of performance, the social contract requires only that one party (government) dictate whatever terms it wishes, for whatever price, with no accountability whatsoever for actually delivering the services for which it is allegedly created. I wish I could negotiate deals like that!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often referred to as the author of the French Revolution. Given Rousseau’s ridiculous assertions about the omnipotence of the State, is it any wonder that these principles helped move France down the road to socialism? The American experiment in limited government was based on a very different political philosophy, one that recognized the inviolability of individual rights. The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were influenced by Locke, not Rousseau, and that has made all the difference. We would do well to remember this, and defend the principles of liberty against attacks by modern American socialists who base their arguments on a thoroughly corrupt notion of an infallible volonté générale.
