The Social Contract (Translated by G. D. H. Cole with an Introduction by Edward L. Walter)

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Originally published in 1762, “The Social Contract” is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatise on how to best organize politics in the face of commercial society. Rousseau writes, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” This statement exemplifies the main dilemma of government, that despite mankind having an inherent natural right to freedom, modern, especially autocratic, governments had gone too far in restricting it. The question which Rousseau is asking within this work is whether or not there can be a legitimate political authority, for as he observed, those of his time seemed to put mankind worse off than they were living by the state of nature which existed before civilization. Arguing against the concept of divine right, Rousseau asserts that true sovereignty exists only amongst the people as a whole. By a mutual agreement to a universal social contract mankind can be free equally as each and everyone agrees collectively to how their rights may be abridged and what societal duty may be placed upon them. The ideas of the “The Social Contract” form the basis for all modern democracies, making it one of the most influential political treatises ever written. This edition includes an introduction by Edward L. Walter and a biographical afterword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781420957488

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a writer, composer, and philosopher that is widely recognized for his contributions to political philosophy. His most known writings are Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract.

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

By JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Translated By G. D. H. COLE

Introduction by EDWARD L. WALTER

The Social Contract

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Translated By G. D. H. Cole

Introduction by Edward L. Walter

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5747-1

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5748-8

This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of a Portrait of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) (pastel on paper), Maurice Quentin de la Tour (1704-88) / Musee Antoine Lecuyer, Saint-Quentin, France / Bridgeman Images.

Please visit www.digireads.com

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD

BOOK I

1. SUBJECT OF THE FIRST BOOK

2. THE FIRST SOCIETIES

3. THE RIGHT OF THE STRONGEST

4. SLAVERY

5. THAT WE MUST ALWAYS GO BACK TO A FIRST CONVENTION

6. THE SOCIAL COMPACT

7. THE SOVEREIGN

8. THE CIVIL STATE

9. REAL PROPERTY

BOOK II

1. THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INALIENABLE

2. THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INDIVISIBLE

3. WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE

4. THE LIMITS OF THE SOVEREIGN POWER

5. THE RIGHT OF LIFE AND DEATH

6. LAW

7. THE LEGISLATOR

8. THE PEOPLE

9. THE PEOPLE (continued)

10. THE PEOPLE (continued)

11. THE VARIOUS SYSTEMS OF LEGISLATION

12. THE DIVISION OF THE LAWS

BOOK III

1. GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL

2. THE CONSTITUENT PRINCIPLE IN THE VARIOUS FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

3. THE DIVISION OF GOVERNMENTS

4. DEMOCRACY

5. ARISTOCRACY

6. MONARCHY

7. MIXED GOVERNMENTS

8. THAT ALL FORMS OF GOVERNMENT DO NOT SUIT ALL COUNTRIES

9. THE MARKS OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT

10. THE ABUSE OF GOVERNMENT AND ITS TENDENCY TO DEGENERATE

11. THE DEATH OF THE BODY POLITIC

12. HOW THE SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY MAINTAINS ITSELF

13. THE SAME (continued)

14. THE SAME (continued)

15. DEPUTIES OR REPRESENTATIVES

16. THAT THE INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT IS NOT A CONTRACT

17. THE INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT

18. HOW TO CHECK THE USURPATIONS OF GOVERNMENT

BOOK IV

1. THAT THE GENERAL WILL IS INDESTRUCTIBLE

2. VOTING

3. ELECTIONS

4. THE ROMAN COMITIA

5. THE TRIBUNATE

6. THE DICTATORSHIP

7. THE CENSORSHIP

8. CIVIL RELIGION

9. CONCLUSION

BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

Introduction

The Social Contract is the second of the three books published by Rousseau in 1761-62, each of which marks an important date in the history of ideas. First came La Nouvelle Héloise, from which, it might almost be said, starts the literary movement of the nineteenth century. Then came The Social Contract, and lastly Émile, probably the most important book on education ever published. Different as these books appear, they are products of the same fundamental ideas, working on different subjects, and it needs no very great diligence to discover in the loves of Saint-Preux and Julie, and in the training given to Émile, the notions which underlie The Social Contract, and gave it such tremendous force in shaping the history of the next fifty years.

The startling success of the thesis defended in Rousseau’s early discourses on the influence of the arts and sciences, and on the origin of inequality, makes it easy to understand the universal interest which was felt in what he should say later. But this early success itself needs explanation, and when this is done, it still remains to be considered what elements in these books have given them so important a place in the progress of history and of human thought.

When Rousseau came to Paris for the second time in the spring of 1741, he speedily found himself a member of a society in which the ferment of new ideas had already begun its work. The austerities of the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. and the suffering of the country under his oppressive and gloomy rule, the relief and the debauchery of the Regency, the fury of speculation which followed on Law’s schemes and the disasters which resulted from it, the confused and confusing spectacle which the politics of Europe offered in the first twenty-four years of Louis XV’s reign,—all this had not passed without leaving its mark on literary and artistic effort. Voltaire had been working for twenty years at the task for which his defects as well as his qualities fitted him; insatiable in his curiosity, with an extraordinary gift in expression, fearless in his attacks when his personal safety was not involved, ingenious in devices to express his views without danger to himself when he thought prudence necessary, he was one of the most effective instruments in turning men’s minds towards new things. The particular novelty in politics with which the century ended would certainly have been abhorrent to him; as far as it is possible to discover what his opinions were amid the numerous contradictions, intentional and unintentional, of his writings, he was a believer in the divine right of aristocracies to rule, always interpreting the term so as to include himself. The contrast between Voltaire and Rousseau was immense, but in spite of this contrast, and perhaps partially because of it, the popular instinct which later associated Voltaire and Rousseau in profoundly ignorant condemnation, and the revolutionary enthusiasm which bestowed upon them an equally ignorant adoration, were justified. If the direct contribution of Voltaire to the general stock of ideas which brought about the French Revolution was much more slender than that of Rousseau, he did scarcely less than Rousseau in preparing men to see all things called in question by his incessant activity which left nothing untouched, and in disposing men to believe that there might after all be some remedy for what was unjust and oppressive by his services in attacking abuses in administration and in the judiciary.

In 1741 Montesquieu had already published his Persian Letters and his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness and Decline of the Romans, and was working on The Spirit of Laws. What gave the earlier books their immediate historical importance was less their breadth of view, their perfect temperance of judgment, their reflections on liberty and law, which, as developed later, were to make their author the first great figure in modern historical science, than their attacks, only thinly veiled, on religion, and their undisguised admiration for the ancient Roman Republic and abhorrence of the Empire which followed. The early love for the supposed early Roman virtues which Rousseau had drawn from Plutarch must have been strengthened by the influence of Montesquieu, who had even less in common with Rousseau than Voltaire himself. The Spirit of Laws was published in 1748, and though the consistent following out of its principles would have brought about reform rather than revolution, there was enough upon which the revolutionary spirit could seize to make even this conservative book a factor of some consequence in the intellectual movements which were to be so luridly illustrated in the years from 1789 to 1796. The very attempt to discover what were the laws of various nations was an indication that France too might have her laws, which even kings were held to obey. Turgot, Malesherbes, Necker, the leaders in the moderate pre-revolutionary movement, in whom lay the only chance, feeble though it may have been, of saving France from the Reign of Terror, owed much to him, but even their moderation itself was a necessary preliminary to the putting in practice of the more radical theories of Rousseau and St. Just. If moderate measures failed, though pushed by men so strong and good as Turgot, nothing was left for the more cautious speculators even than to take extreme measures. Montesquieu’s admiration for the English constitution with its three separate powers, his reflections on the influence of climates and physical conditions generally on laws and governments, his attempt to determine the principles of every kind of government, his emphatic condemnation of slavery and torture, the lofty and generous spirit which breathed throughout the book—all this and more, if far from revolutionary in its essence, would readily furnish weapons to any who were already resolved to destroy.

Diderot was in 1741 a hack writer who earned a scanty living by translating English books, and was gaining the hearts of all who knew him by the singular ardor with which he sympathized with all suffering. If one famous story is true, he was one of the most direct influences which started Rousseau on the road which was to end in the profoundest misery, when he advised the obscure music teacher from Geneva to sustain the negative of the question set by the Academy at Dijon, whether the revival of the arts and sciences had contributed to purify mankind. Rousseau’s own account is, to be sure, different, but whether or not Diderot gave him the advice, their acquaintance could scarcely fail to nourish in him the seed of revolution which he had brought with him to Paris. The other chiefs of the philosophic movement had done little to make themselves known as yet; D’Alembert, Helvetius, D’Holbach, Raynal, Mably, Condorcet, and the others, whose importance in spreading the doctrines which were to be used in justification of the excesses in theory and practice of later years, was not to be compared to that of the men already named, were only known, some as successful bankers or rich bourgeois, some as rising men of letters or science, some as efficient administrators in the complex system of French official life, and some were not known at all, or only to their teachers in school.

But books and the literary atmosphere are at best only an indication of something more important. Revolutionary theories, with however great a flourish of trumpets put forth, will fall dead on a country and a people where comfort and content abound; a fowl in the pot is a better protection against too dangerous theories on government than whole arsenals of powder and shot. Now the years since 1700 were to France little but a preparation for an inevitable revolution, inevitable, that is to say, if the incompetence and corruption of Louis XV. and of his ministers and mistresses were to continue to direct affairs.

The evil began in the later years of Louis XIV’s reign, and it is not unlikely that if Louis himself had had less confidence in his own wisdom, or if the Duke of Burgundy could have lived to the age of his grandfather, Rousseau’s preaching, if he had preached, would have fallen on deaf ears. The glories of the earlier years of Louis’ reign had partially concealed the disastrous consequences of such expensive and long-continued wars to the economical situation. And in fact the country was rich enough to make it possible for a wise administration of affairs to recuperate its wasted interests, even after the peace of Ryswick in 1697, itself the close of a war far inferior in splendor to the wars that had preceded. But a few years later broke out the war of the Spanish Succession, in which was won neither glory nor territory, and the new war was a strain on the resources of the country which it was not able to bear. The death of Colbert, the extravagance and ambition of Louvois, the determination of Louis to be his own minister, as Saint-Simon describes him, pretending to administer the vast affairs of the kingdom with only clerks to aid him, not with agents to relieve him—a task too great for any man, though he had been Caesar or Napoleon,—the reckless expenditure of the court and clergy, encouraged by Louis’ example, even by his precept—all this made an additional burden to that left by the necessary expenditures of the war, itself unnecessary and conducted with unnecessary extravagance. Even this might have been perhaps remedied, if Louis had been willing to hear and comply with the suggestions which came to him from various quarters. But he would not believe that what was said of the sufferings of his subjects could be true, and he made those who dared to call his attention to the distress of the peasants feel the weight of his displeasure.

The last years of Racine’s life were embittered by the loss of his master’s favor, and this perhaps hastened his death, yet his offence was nothing but a plea for some means to diminish the distress of the people. In the early years of the seventeenth century the celebrated military engineer Vauban published a book in which he exposed with plainness the unjust and extravagant methods of taxation, and the consequences to the prosperity of the country, and he too lost the favor of Louis for the short remainder of his life. Boisguillebert exposed even more clearly and forcibly than Vauban the iniquities of the system of taxation, and he would no doubt have lost the favor of Louis also, if he had had it to lose, or if Louis’ attention had been drawn to it. Fénelon, the gentle archbishop of Cambrai, the friend of Mme. Guy on, the preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy, was also moved by the misery which an observing eye must see and a sympathetic heart must pity. His remedy was no doubt vague, as his conception of the cause and extent of the misery he deplored was vague, but his principle, that kings were made for subjects, not subjects for kings, if it had come to the ears of Louis, would have lost him all chance of regaining the favor which his attachment for Mme. Guyon had destroyed.

What the clearer vision of great men saw, the commoner people felt. Nor did they forget their suffering in admiration of splendors such as had marked the beginning of the reign, nor of the display of personal qualities such as those of Louis’ grandfather, which might have made even tyranny endurable, or such as were seen in the young Louis when he was the lover of La Vallière and the ornament of every court circle. But he had grown austere and religious, and if the regular expenses of the court were about as ever, they consisted rather in gifts to favorites among the clergy and elsewhere, and in pious foundations, the only effect of which was to increase the power of a clergy, already too powerful. The courtiers were as dissatisfied as the common people, and for directly opposite reasons; the money spent was not for their amusement, and benefited among them only those who were feared and hated. Nor as far as the courtiers were concerned could they look forward to a better state of things, when, after the death of the son of Louis, the Duke of Burgundy became heir apparent; the pupil of Fénelon was not likely to be too lavish with the property of those whom he had been taught to consider as the especial charge of kings. But the more enlightened among them and the sufferers who knew anything about him hoped from him some reform which should put the country on a sound economical basis and relieve the most pressing necessities.

The death of the Duke at twenty-nine put a stop to both fears and hopes, but when, in 1714, Louis died, to the great relief of everybody in France except a few personal friends and the more bigoted among the clergy, hope revived among the more liberal and intelligent observers. The Regent was a man of great natural gifts, and if they had been cultivated as they should have been, France might have found in him her salvation. But Louis had systematically kept his nephew in the background in favor of his illegitimate children, and all sense of moral decency had been lost. Yet the instincts of the new ruler seemed to bear him rather towards a less oppressive rule, and any change from the gloom of Louis and Mme. de Maintenon was felt to be a relief. And in fact there were steps taken which could serve as indications of a wiser rule. The magistrates received greater consideration, corrupt financiers were prosecuted and severely punished, the Jesuits lost something of their power, there was even found in the edict excluding the bastards from the succession the doctrine that to France alone belonged the right to bestow the crown if the legitimate heirs should fail.

But it could hardly be expected that a prince of the character and history of the Regent would remain in the way of reform, if any reasons of personal interest appeared to him to make it advisable to desert it. One of the legacies left by Louis was a controversy, ostensibly over a matter of doctrine, in reality over a question of influence as between Jesuits and Jansenists. A bull had been issued by Clement XI., through the influence of Louis’ Jesuit confessor, which required the faithful to avoid as heretical and full of false doctrine a book of devotion written by a priest of the Oratory. This was the beginning of a quarrel which lasted as long as the old monarchy, which, at first purely religious,