Rousseau's "Social Contract" B. Taylor

28 Rousseau's "Social Contract": A Critical Response by Bobby Taylor P olitical theorists have long attempted. to find a plausible rationale for the exis tence of the coercive State. This quest reached a climax during the Enlightenment when philosophers and political scientists re joiced over the discovery of a new model de picting the relationship between the individual and the State: the social contract. According to the theory of the social con tract, individuals may leave an anarchic' 'state of nature" by voluntarily transferring some of their personal rights to the "community" in re turn for security of life and property. A seem ingly rational and practical concept in its gen eral 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 en force. Rousseau justifies this strange synthesis of communism and direct democracy by ar guing that the abrogation of individual rights would abolish special privileges, and that tyrBobby Taylor is a senior at Sullivan South High School in Kingsport, Tennessee. anny 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 particu larly vulnerable in three essential areas: the for mulation of the "general will," the subordina tion 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 pro vides a slightly less demanding criterion: ma jority rule. By accepting this annotation, however, Rousseau deviates from his position that the People would never oppress themselves. His tory 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 legiti mate 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 indi viduals, why would the coercive State be needed at all?

ROUSSEAU'S "SOCIAL CONTRACT" 29 Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778 "Whoever ventures to undertake the founding of a nation should feel himself capable of changing human nature, so to speak, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a perfect and separate whole, into a part of a greater whole, from which that individual receives all or part of his life and his being,. of changing the constitution of man in order to for tify it; of substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence that we have all received from Nature. In a word, he must be able to deprive man of his own powers in order to give him those that are foreign to him . ... " -from The Social Contract 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 safe guard against tyranny, and in reality the indi vidual 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 indi viduals have granted it this right by virtue of the social contract. The term "social contract" works to legitimize actions normally consid ered 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. Addi tionally, the terms of the contract are extraordi narily 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 bla tantly anti-libertarian document, it should be read and studied closely by all students of the free society. In Rousseau's work one can dis cover the roots of contemporary socialism and can see the mass of contradictions and fallacies underlying this morally bankrupt ideology, un obstructed by the clever rhetorical devices of modern 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. D 30 The Irish Potato Fallline by Teresa R. Johnson E very year from 1845 to 1851 a deadly blight attacked Ireland's potato crop, causing severe famine. About a million people died and at least a million others emi grated. Historians offer various explanations of how such massive suffering could have oc curred in a province of Great Britain, then the richest nation in the world. Although their ex planations vary, most historians insist that if the British government had abandoned free market principles, few, if any, Irish people would have died. Yet evidence shows that free market principles did not increase the suffering of the Irish, but, rather, alleviated much of the misery that the famine caused.