The social contract & discourses · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
INTRODUCTION
"Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important." This, we are told, is mere State tyranny over again. But how is it possible to avoid such a conclusion? Rousseau has already given his reasons for objecting to a limited Sovereignty (Book I, chap, vi): it follows absolutely that we must take the best machinery we can find for the execution of the State's functions. No doubt the machinery will be imperfect; but we can only try to get as near the General Will as possible, without hoping to realise it fully.
The answer, therefore, to the critics who hold that, in securing civil liberty Rousseau has sacrificed the individual may be put after this fashion. Liberty is not a merely negative conception; it does not consist solely in the absence of restraint. The purest individualist, Herbert Spencer for example, would grant that a certain amount of State interference is necessary to _secure_ liberty; but as soon as this idea of securing liberty is admitted in the smallest degree, the whole idea has undergone profound modification. It can no longer be claimed that every interference on the part of the State lessens the liberty of the individual; the "liberty-fund" theory is as untenable as that of the "wages-fund": the members of a State may be more free when all are restrained from doing one another mutual damage than when any one is left "free" to enslave another or be himself enslaved. This principle once admitted, the precise amount of State interference that is necessary to secure freedom will be always a matter for particular discussion; every case must be decided on its own merits, and, in right, the Sovereign will be omnipotent, or subject only to the law of reason.
It has often been held that Rousseau cannot really have inspired the French Revolution because this view is totally inconsistent with the "rights of man," which the revolutionaries so fervently proclaimed. If every right is alienated in the Social Contract, what sense can there be in talking of "natural rights" afterwards? This, however, is to misrepresent Rousseau's position. The rights of man as they are preached by the modern individualist, are not the rights of which Rousseau and the revolutionaries were thinking. We have seen that the theory of the _Social Contract_ is founded on human freedom: this freedom carries with it, in Rousseau's view, the guarantee of its own permanence; it is inalienable and indestructible. When, therefore, government becomes despotic, it has no more right over its subjects than the master has over his slave (Book I, chap, iv); the question is then purely one of might. In such cases, appeal may be made either to the terms of the Social Contract, or, putting the same idea another way, to the "natural right" of human freedom. This natural right is in no sense inconsistent with the complete alienation supposed in the Contract; for the Contract itself reposes on it and guarantees its maintenance. The Sovereign must, therefore, treat all its members alike; but, so long as it does this, it remains omnipotent. If it leaves the general for the particular, and treats one man better than another, it ceases to be Sovereign; but equality is already presupposed in the terms of the Contract.
It is more profitable to attack Rousseau for his facile identification of the interests of each of the citizens with those of all; but here, too, most of the critics have abused their opportunity. He does not maintain that there can be no opposition between a man's particular interests and the General Will as present in him; on the contrary, he explicitly and consistently affirms the presence of such opposition (Book I, chap. vii). What he asserts is, first, that the Sovereign, as such, cannot have any interest contrary to the interest of the citizens as a whole--that is obvious; and, secondly, that it cannot have an interest contrary to that of any individual. The second point Rousseau proves by showing that the omnipotence of the Sovereign is essential to the preservation of society, which in turn is necessary for the individual. His argument, however, really rests on the fundamental character of the General Will. He would admit that, in any actual State, the apparent interest of the many might often conflict with that of the few; but he would contend that the _real_ interest of State and individual alike, being subject to universal law could not be such as to conflict with any other _real_ interest. The interest of the State, in so far as it is directed by the General Will, must be the interest of every individual, in so far as he is guided by his _real_ will, that is, in so far as he is acting universally, rationally and autonomously.
Thus the justification of Rousseau's theory of liberty returns to the point from which it set out--the omnipotence of the _real will_ in State and individual. It is in this sense that he speaks of man in the State as "forced to be free" by the General Will, much as Kant might speak of a man's lower nature as forced to be free by the universal mandate of his higher, more real and more rational will. It is in this recognition of the State as a moral being, with powers of determination similar to the powers of the individual mind, that the significance of the General Will ultimately lies. Even, however, among those who have recognised its meaning, there are some who deny its value as a conception of political philosophy. If, they say, the General Will is not the Will of All, if it cannot be arrived at by a majority vote or by any system of voting whatsoever, then it is nothing; it is a mere abstraction, neither general, nor a I will. This is, of course, precisely the criticism to which Kant's "real will" is often subjected. Clearly, it must be granted at once that the General Will does not form the whole actual content of the will of every citizen. Regarded as actual, it must always be qualified by "in so far as" or its equivalent. This, however, is so far from destroying the value of the conception that therein lies its whole value. In seeking the universal basis of society, we are not seeking anything that is wholly actualised in any State, though we must be seeking something which exists, more or less perfectly, in every State.
The point of the Social Contract theory, as Rousseau states it, is that legitimate society exists by the consent of the people, and acts by popular will. Active will, and not force or even mere consent, is the basis of the "republican" State, which can only possess this character because individual wills are not really self-sufficient and separate, but complementary and inter-dependent. The answer to the question "Why ought I to obey the General Will?" is that the General Will exists in me and not outside me. I am "obeying only myself," as Rousseau says. The State is not a mere accident of human history, a mere device for the protection of life and property; it responds to a fundamental need of human nature, and is rooted in the character of the individuals who compose it. The whole complex of human institutions is not a mere artificial structure; it is the expression of the mutual dependence and fellowship of men. If it means anything, the theory of the General Will means that the State is natural, and the "state of nature" an abstraction. Without this basis of will and natural need, no society could for a moment subsist; the State exists and claims our obedience because it is a natural extension of our personality.
The problem, however, still remains of making the General Will, in any particular State, active and conscious. It is clear that there are States in which visible and recognised institutions hardly answer in any respect to its requirements. Even in such States, however, there is a limit to tyranny; deep down, in immemorial customs with which the despot dare not interfere, the General Will is still active and important. It does not reside merely in the outward and visible organisation of social institutions, in that complex of formal associations which we may call the State; its roots go deeper and its branches spread further. It is realised, in greater or less degree, in the whole life of the community, in the entire complex of private and public relations which, in the widest sense, may be called Society. We may recognise it not only in a Parliament, a Church, a University or a Trade Union, but also in the most intimate human relationships, and the most trivial, as well as the most vital, social customs.
But, if all these things go to the making of the General Will in every community, the General Will has, for politics, primarily a narrower sense. The problem here is to secure its supremacy in the official institutions and public councils of the nation. This is the question to which Rousseau chiefly addressed himself. Here, too, we shall find the General Will the best possible conception for the guidance of political endeavour For the General Will is realised not when that is done which is best for the community, but when, in addition, the community as a whole has willed the doing of it. The General Will demands not only good government, but also self-government--not only rational conduct, but good-will. This is what some of Rousseau's admirers are apt to forget when they use his argument, as he himself was sometimes inclined to use it, in support of pure aristocracy. Rousseau said that aristocracy was the best of all governments, but he said also that it was the worst of all usurpers of Sovereignty. Nor must it be forgotten that he expressly specified elective aristocracy. _There is no General Will unless the people wills the good_. General Will may be embodied in one man willing universally; but it can only be embodied in the State when the mass of the citizens so wills. The will must be "general" in two senses: in the sense in which Rousseau used the word, it must be general in its object, _i.e._ universal; but it must also be generally held, _i.e._ common to all or to the majority.[1]
The General Will is, then, above all a universal and, in the Kantian sense, a "rational" will. It would be possible to find in Rousseau many more anticipations of the views of Kant; but it is better here to confine comment to an important difference between them. It is surprising to find in Kant, the originator of modern "intellectualism," and in Rousseau, the great apostle of "sentiment," an essentially similar view on the nature and function of the will. Their views, however, present a difference; for, whereas the moving force of Kant's moral imperative is purely "rational," Rousseau finds the sanction of his General Will in human feeling itself. As we can see from a passage in the original draft of the _Social Contract,_ the General Will remains purely rational. "No-one will dispute that the General Will is in each individual a pure act of the understanding, which reasons while the passions are silent on what a man may demand of his neighbour and on what his neighbour has a right to demand of him." The will remains purely rational, but Rousseau feels that it needs an external motive power.
"If natural law," he writes, "were written only on the tablets of human reason it would be incapable of guiding the greater part of our actions; but it is also graven on the heart of man in characters that cannot be effaced, and it is there it speaks to him more strongly than all the precepts of the philosophers" (from an unfinished essay on _The State of War_). The nature of this guiding sentiment is explained in the _Discourse on Inequality_ (p. 197, note 2), where egoism (_amour-propre_) is contrasted with self-respect (_amour de soi_). Naturally, Rousseau holds, man does not want everything for himself, and nothing for others. "Egoism" and "altruism" are both one-sided qualities arising out of the perversion of man's, "natural goodness." "Man is born good," that is, man's nature really makes him desire only to be treated as one among others, to share equally. This natural love of equality (_amour de soi_) includes love of others as well as love of self, and egoism, loving one's self at the expense of others, is an unnatural and perverted condition. The "rational" precepts of the General Will, therefore, find an echo in the heart of the "natural" man, and, if we can only secure the human being against perversion by existing societies, the General Will can be made actual.
This is the meeting-point of Rousseau's educational with his political theory. His view as a whole can be studied only by taking together the _Social Contract_ and the _Emile_ as explained by the _Letters on the Mount_ and other works. The fundamental dogma of the natural goodness of man finds no place directly in the _Social Contract_; but it lurks behind the whole of his political theory, and is indeed, throughout, his master-conception. His educational, his religious, his political and his ethical ideas are all inspired by a single consistent attitude. Here we have been attending only to his political theory; in the volume which is to follow, containing the _Letters on the Mount_ and other works, some attempt will be made to draw the various threads together and estimate his work as a whole. The political works, however, can be read separately, and the _Social Contract_ itself is still by far the best of all text-books of political philosophy. Rousseau's political influence, so far from being dead, is every day increasing; and as new generations and new classes of men come to the study of his work, his conceptions, often hazy and undeveloped, but nearly always of lasting value, will assuredly form the basis of a new political philosophy, in which they will be taken up and transformed. This new philosophy is the work of the future; but, rooted upon the conception of Rousseau, it will stretch far back into the past. Of our time, it will be for all time; its solutions will be at once relatively permanent and ceaselessly progressive. [1] The term "general" will means, in Rousseau, not so much "will held by several persons," as will having a general (universal) object. This is often misunderstood; but the mistake matters the less, because the General Will must, in fact, be both.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.