On ‘The Social Contract’ by Rousseau
Hong Zhang
In class I have discussed this book briefly. My previous discussion is based
on how to frame and discuss possible problems like corruption based on
Rousseau’s book. In this summary, I will analyze some of the key and
interesting points either by this book or by the class discussion.
This book is about political law, government and people. This book gives
out bigger view of what a contract really means in different contents. It is
one of the most powerful books in human history. Let me try to understand
Rousseau's world as follows:
 Legitimacy and Nature Law
Rousseau starts this book by legitimacy. Unfortunately, we have very short
life and no human being ever lives long enough to experience the historical
changes of the society. Rousseau’s problem is a common problem to people
who is born in a ready society with existing classes, governments and
cultures. Back into the civilization history, there are too many examples of
making power by force. Thus the first point Rousseau argue is that power is
not right, unless it transfers obedience into duty, strength into right.
Otherwise there is no need for a further discussion of the formation of the
society: the strongest wins everything. Rather, Rousseau argues that right
comes from social convention. But what types of social convention will
prevent the strongest from being the absolute king of all others? Rousseau
doesn’t answer this question directly. Instead, in book I the first sentence is:
MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
My interpretation is that Rousseau uses the Nature law to justify the social
convention. To be more specific, Rousseau assumed that men are aware of
the fact that freedom is the given property as a birthright, or, he assumes the
existence of Nature Law and the awareness of the Nature Law by the
majority people.
As I have mentioned in class, in ancient Chinese philosophy, there is no
counterpart of the Nature Law of freedom. In Confusion man is born of the
society at no price, and in Taoism man is for the nature. But no statement is
for the individual himself. In the following 2000 years of literature, there is
still no idea about the born rights. Thus one first question about the
modernization of China could be the Nature law. To be more generalize, do
people realize that they have some born right and do people have right to
claim that right? We see that the modernization of China began from end of
last century adopts a quite different approach. The identity of Nation as a
whole plays an extremely important role. This is an interesting topic but I
won’t have space to discuss it in length.
Based on Nature law, man chooses to enter the social contract at the price of
his nature right. He gains civil liberty and proprietorship of all he possesses.
Rousseau didn’t specify what is nature law and what is the Nature State as
Locke did. He might take it for granted. What behind the nature law is the
choice of alternatives. We have seen that the whole modern economic
theory is based on the concept of opportunity cost. It is not hard to find out
the direct relationship between the opportunity cost and the concept of the
nature law. Here we see how powerful the idea is; it is the foundation of our
modern society.
 Sovereign and Law
It is interesting to see the explanation why human being needs a society
anyhow. Hobbes identified the war of everyone against everyone for selfpreservation as the cause. Montesquiieu thought it was in the human nature
(in his nature law) that people want to live with others. Rousseau was
similar to Hobbes. He identified self-preservation as the primary goal and
he also mentioned the commonwealth that people gain from participating the
social contract.
Rousseau didn’t specify what is sovereign. Again, he might think the idea
self evident as the nature law. And he really regards the whole of social
contract participants as the sovereign. What he did, is to develop a theory of
political law based on this sovereign. I don’t know whether Rousseau was
the first one to give that meaning to the word sovereign and many other
words. But it is amazing that we still use the words Rousseau used in his
Social Contract. Of course, we still use his ideas today.
Rousseau specifically makes distinguish between the two concepts about
common will, the will of all and the general will:
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the
general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former
takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular
wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that
cancel one another,7 and the general will remains as the sum of the
differences.
Now though he noticed that people have private interests, he believed that in
the aggregate will all the private interests will cross one anther to some
degree. If not then there exist some common interests for all social
participants. Therefore his sovereign is popular sovereign in the form of
everyone’s democratic right. Rousseau opposed interests of associations
formed by some members of the society. He said that
When one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the
result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this
case there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is
purely particular.
This is dramatically different from the works of Marx who emphasized at
the very beginning that all opinions are opinions of social classes. Thus in
Marx’s phrases, there is no room for Rousseau’s sovereignty. This is very
interesting. The whole French Revolution was sort of based on Rousseau’s
system. When Marx observed the world, which is supposed to be based on
sovereign and general will, he observed the right of the strongest at the
social class level. Though Marx might goes to some extreme case, his work
states some weakness of Rousseau’s dream. That is, if a social contract is
violated totally, how can people come back to the ideal state. This type of
dynamics is not considered by Rousseau. Though he in later chapters
mentioned the decay of government, his social movement is based on the
friction between sovereign and government. Or, on the legitimacy of
government. He didn’t ask the question how to institute the sovereign itself.
Rousseau further discussed the freedom and equality in terms of social
contract. In other words, social contract is based on these two properties.
Based on equality, the sovereign no long makes distinguish between
individuals. This also makes a ceiling for the power of sovereignty, that is,
it can not exceed the limits of general conventions.
I have already discussed the law system in Rousseau's book. Even though
he is not generally regarded as founder of modern law system, his
description about law is clear and intuitive. For Rousseau,
BY the social contract we have given the body politic existence and life; we
have now by legislation to give it movement and will. For the original act by
which the body is formed and united still in no respect determines what it
ought to do for its preservation.
Rousseau adopted a narrow definition of law. The law is about the relation
between two aspects of the entire object, without there being any division of
the whole. Thus law is always general, because law considers subjects en
masse and the actions in the abstract, and never a particular person or action.
This satisfies Rousseau's general will. Because general will itself will not
direct to a particular object. And the greatest good of all should be the end
of every system of legislation. Thus we meet the two common factors again,
Freedom and Equality.
Law is divided by the relationship it is specifically designed to deal with.
The Fundamental Laws (Political laws) states the relationship between the
government and sovereignty. The Civil Law states the relationship between
members one to another, or member to the body as a whole. The Criminal
Law is for relationship between the individual and the law, in another word,
the dis-obedience of the law and its penalty. Rousseau regarded morality
and custom as the fourth and the most important one. This might be based
on his belief that society comes from convention, which is the base for the
sovereign will. But seems to me that the fourth law is not in a written form
and thus might have different interpretations by social contract participants.
When we come to the concept of sovereignty and law, we immediately find
ourselves in the center of many problems. For examples, if general will or
sovereign makes government legitimacy, then what makes an ordinary
contract legitimacy? Note that in this case Rousseau's law won't offer a very
precise foundation of the legitimacy of ordinary contracts. This is because
the law is general but the ordinary contract general says deal with very
specific conditions. Otherwise we don't need these contracts, we need just
law. Thus contracts should be below the law but reflect some spirit of the
law, like the freedom or equality. It should be a very interesting topic as
what is a good contract (in terms of general will) versus what is a efficient
contract (in terms of social cost, thus also part of general will).
I have mentioned in class that generally speaking we can't base our law or
contracts on common knowledge. This is because the common knowledge
could be good or bad and not necessary lead to the general will of the
society. In class we discussed the example of corruption. The corruption
should be prevented by law because it violates the equality principle
directly. But it could be common knowledge that the assumption of
corruption is necessary as a format of friction cost. If common knowledge is
deceiving, there should be some other standards which guard the general
will. In Rousseau's world, if we go one step further, we find out that it is
exactly the fourth law, the morality and custom which defends the general
will. It is really a pity that Rousseau only discussed government corruption
under the general will. Otherwise there should be very exciting words on
this aspect too. To some sense, the morality and custom are sort of
experience wisdom getting from long history of civilization. If we look at
different countries, the different history and convention makes out different
moralities and customs. Therefore conflicts between different cultures seem
to be another interesting point to discuss. As for the corruption itself, why
negative common knowledge will prevail despite of the fourth law? Why
systemic corruption could be quite stable at some period? Rousseau's work
provides a starting point to think of.
 Size of government and corruption
Rousseau put a special emphasize on the size of a state as one of the
determinations of best constitution, law, form of government, etc.
Especially, when the population of a state grows, each individual's will is
less represented in the general will. At the same time, a bigger population
might ask for a more centered power to govern. A best example is offered
by the study of direct democratic system in ancient Greek cities. At about
the same age, most of the countries in the world adopt systems where there
existed one king. Therefore as the state becomes bigger, it is likely that the
government should go more efficient (like King-subject system), while the
sovereignty asks a strong checking power to prevent the government to
disobey the general will.
Why government could disobey the general will?
conflicting of the wills to state this problem.
Rousseau uses the
In the person of the magistrate we can distinguish three essentially different
wills: first, the private will of the individual, tending only to his personal
advantage; secondly, the common will of the magistrates, which is relative
solely to the advantage of the prince, and may be called corporate will,
being general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the
State, of which the government forms part; and, in the third place, the will of
the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the
State regarded as the whole, and to the government regarded as a part of the
whole.
And the problem comes from the fact that the general will is always the
weakest form of will. The corporate will second, and the individual will
strongest of all. In the government, each member is first of all himself, then
a magistrate, and then a citizen — in an order exactly the reverse of what
the social system requires.
These are extremely powerful words which state that any political system, if
there is no check power functions, will go eventually to corruption.
Rousseau stated this in the following sentense:
…sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and
break the social treaty. This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which,
from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age
and death end by destroying the human body.
Here he didn't think that the difference between types of government will
make any different results.
An interesting problem is that whether higher education will reduce
corruption, because people with higher education are supposed to have more
exposure to law and moral standards. We see that if we follow Rousseau,
there is no difference for an education system. But history also tells us that
when there are outside balance power, even people still first behaviors
individually and then a magistrate, and then a citizen, he will more likely go
to the common factors of the three different roles than difference.
Competition is often but not always a good way. Especially, the government
is not competitive. Thus how to express sovereignty could be a key issue in
the modern society.
On the form of corruption, Rousseau states that not the government, but the
State, undergoes contraction. Government no longer represents the general
will, and it begins to represent the will of associations. At the same time, the
state is dissolving because general will is not represented. A new 'state' is
born based on the will of all for the government members. Of course, the
new state is much less than the old one. The contracting continuous and the
state finally dissolves.
It is very interesting to compare this with Marxism's understandings about
state. (At least the standard education in China when I was in school.) In a
typical Marxism interpretation, state is a tool for one group of people to
govern another group. Thus the key issue is what makes a government
legitimacy. Does size play a most important role here? Is it more legal for
90% of the people to govern the remaining 10% than the opposite condition?
If we use Rousseau's analysis, none of these governments represents the
general will. It is very interesting to me that why Marxism had been once
popular even in western countries? Just because it states out the reality that
power and size do matter and the strongest should be king or something?
How about Rousseau's sovereign? I guess there is no easy answer.
In Rousseau's description, every free action is produced by two causes: one
moral (will) and one physical (the power which execute it). Government too
has legislative power (will) and executive power. In which case will the
executive power too strong to represent the legislative power? In which case
executive power itself is enough to cover the legislative power? In which
case the two parts goes into conflict and how a new balance is achieved?
Montesquieu's main concern is to protect the executive power from
excessive interference by the legislative and the juridical. A modern society
is more a hybrid of Montesquieu and Rousseau. This is because Rousseau
didn't pay attention to the dynamic of the social movements while
Montesquieu's checking balance is pretty dynamic.
Before I end this brief discussion of the Social Contract, let me use some of
the concepts here to discuss an organization contract. I have mentioned that
contract should deal with more specific person or conditions and thus the
written law is not enough to regulate the contract. Especially, the answer for
what is a good contract depends heavily on what is defined as good. Like,
common wealth, fairness, participants' utility functions, etc. Thus we will
expect to see lots of legal but not morally legal contracts, implicit or explicit.
Who has the power to justify a mis-specified contract? And why?
Further more, the contract theory of firm doesn't answer a simple question,
what is a good firm, and what firms make good society. Again, goodness
might have different interpretations. For example, if we emphasize the
fairness or equality of the contract participants, there is no aggregating
fairness, because even there is unfair contracts when we 'sum up' the fairness
we balance the gets and loss of the participants of that bad contract. A
further question is that does firm have more meanings than a pure economic
sense?