The Social Contract

“ There are a great many people whose idea of Rousseau consists solely of the first words of the opening chapter of the Social Contract, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." ”

“ This theory of the Social Contract was once famous, and exerted a notable influence on political history, and it is still interesting in the same way that spinning-wheels and wooden frigates and powdered wigs are interesting; but we now know that men lived in civil society, with complicated laws and customs and creeds, for many thousand years before the notion had ever entered anybody's head that things could be regulated by contract. ”

“ Now, reparative justice should endeavor to re-establish the normal conditions of human association, of the "social contract." These normal conditions require that the contracting parties or associates be really free and major. ”

“ How can individually free persons unite in a society without giving up their freedom? The answer to this question took the form of a controversy on the subject of the social contract, i. e., the contract or agreement of individuals, as units, to form and maintain societies. ”

“ Being able to regard itself in only one capacity, it is in the position of an individual who makes a contract with himself; and this makes it clear that there neither is nor can be any kind of fundamental law binding on the body of the people — not even the social contract itself. This does not mean that the body politic cannot enter into undertakings with others, provided the contract is not infringed by them; for in relation to what is external to it, it becomes a simple being, an individual. ”

“ The Social Contract or Compact is the most systematic form which has ever been assumed by the error we are discussing. It is a theory which, though nursed into importance by political passions, derived all its sap from the speculations of lawyers. True it certainly is that the famous Englishmen, for whom it had first had attraction, valued it chiefly for its political serviceableness, but, as I shall presently attempt to explain, they would never have arrived at it, if politicians had not long conducted their controversies in legal phraseology. ”

“ Under the social contract, by which they conceived the State to be constituted, individuals gave up all their rights and possessions to the community, and got them back immediately afterwards as mere State concessions, which there could be no injustice in withdrawing again next day for the greater good of the community. ”

“ The social contract theory did not originate with the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It had its roots in the popular consciousness of mediæval society, and had been anticipated by the Greek Sophists. In the popular consciousness of the middle ages, and among writers on the ecclesiastical side, there grew up that particular form of the contract theory which has fixed itself most prominently in the minds of ordinary men — the idea of a contract between government and people. ”

“ The social contract founded upon this basis will be a perpetual pact between those who have and those who have not. And acting on these principles, those who benefit by the laws will be the lawmakers, for they necessarily have the instinct of self-preservation, and foresee their dangers. ”

“ It is required to find a form of association able to defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of every associate, and of such a nature, that each, uniting himself with all, may still obey only himself, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution. The problem of political obligation is seen as including all other political problems, which fall into place in a system based upon it. How, Rousseau asks, can the will of the State help being for me a merely external will, imposing itself upon my own? ”

“ Saint-Just expresses himself in almost the same words in his speech demanding the death of Louis XVI.: "The social contract is a contract which the citizens conclude with one another, and not a contract with the government. ”

“ The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. But how are they to regulate them? Is it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? ”

“ The "Social Contract" defines the modern citizen by "eliminating the differences which distinguish a Frenchman from a Papuan, a modern Englishman from a Briton in the time of Cæsar. The resulting essence is very meager: it is 'a being with a desire to be happy and the faculty of reasoning'"—after Jean Jacques Rousseau. The French agitators consider the nation as composed of twenty-six millions of equal, free, and independent entities of this description, without obligations, institutions, or history; and free at any moment to make a social contract, de novo, of their own. ”

“ The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting parties. He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at others' expense should also, when it is necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law-desires him to expose himself ”

“ The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have been exposed to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far as they meant that there is at the back of all historic government an idea of content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right. ”

“ THIS formula shows us that the act of association comprises a mutual undertaking between the public and the individuals, and that each individual, in making a contract, as we may say, with himself, is bound in a double capacity; as a member of the Sovereign he is bound to the individuals, and as a member of the State to the Sovereign. But the maxim of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings made to himself, does not apply in this case; for there is a great difference between incurring an obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of which you form a part. ”

“ It will be seen at once that the second statement, which could easily be fortified by others from the Social Contract, says more than the first. It is not apparent that the common will, created by the institution of society, need "tend always to the welfare of the whole." Is not the common will at least as fallible as the will of a single individual? ”

“ Let not a culpable and pernicious indifference to the maintenance of the constitution ever induce you to neglect, in case of need, the prudent advice of the most enlightened and zealous of your fellow-citizens; but let equity, moderation and firmness of resolution continue to regulate all your proceedings, and to exhibit you to the whole universe as the example of a valiant and modest people, jealous equally of their honour and of their liberty. ”

“ What else is the declaration itself than the formulation of the state contract according to Rousseau's ideas? And what are the several rights but the stipulations and specifications of that [Pg 9] contract? [7]
It is hard to understand how an authority upon the Contrat Social could make such a statement though in accord with popular opinion.
The social contract has only one stipulation, namely, the complete transference to the community of all the individual's rights. [8] The individual does not retain one particle of his rights from the moment he enters the state. ”

“ When these distinctions have once been admitted, it is seen to be so untrue that there is, in the social contract, any real renunciation on the part of the individuals, that the position in which they find themselves as a result of the contract is really preferable to that in which they were before. ”

“ The Social Contract renders law necessary, and at the same time makes it quite clear that laws can proceed only from the body of citizens who have constituted the State. "Doubtless," says Rousseau, "there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, must be mutual. Humbly speaking, in default of natural sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among men." Of the law which set up among men this reign of mutual justice the General Will is the source. ”

“ The government gets from the Sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the State to be properly balanced, there must, when everything is reckoned in, be equality between the product or power of the government taken in itself, and the product or power of the citizens, who are on the one hand sovereign and on the other subject. ”

“ The short treatise on the Social Contract is an inquiry into the just foundations and most proper form of that very political society, which the Discourses showed to have its foundation in injustice, and to be incapable of receiving any form proper for the attainment of the full measure of human happiness. ”

“ The common element in these different interests is what forms the social tie; and, were there no point of agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is solely on the basis of this common interest that every society should be governed.
I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will. ”

“ To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.
If then there are opponents when the social compact is made, their opposition does not invalidate the contract, but merely prevents them from being included in it. They are foreigners among citizens. When the State is instituted, residence constitutes consent; to dwell within its territory is to submit to the Sovereign. ”

“ Whether there was ever such a thing as a Social Contract or not, as has been somewhat otiosely discussed, this, at least, is certain,—that the basis of all Society is the putting of the force of all at the disposal of all, by means of some arrangement{348} assented to by all, for the protection of all, and this under certain prescribed forms. ”

“ Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. ”

“ Moreover, his aim is to find "a sure and legitimate rule of administration, taking men as they are and laws as they might be"; that is to say, his Social Contract is something which will be found at work in every legitimate society, but which will be in abeyance in all forms of despotism. ”

“ In general, although the institution of the laws which regulate the power of individuals in the disposition of their own goods belongs only to the Sovereign, the spirit of these laws, which the government ought to follow in their application, is that, from father to son, and from relation to relation, the goods of a family should go as little out of it and be as little alienated as possible. ”

“ Much as the notion of a "social contract" has been ridiculed, it nevertheless seems to be clear enough, that all social organization whatever depends upon what is substantially a contract, whether expressed or implied, between the members of the society. No society ever was, or ever can be, really held together by force. It may seem a paradox to say that a slaveholder does not make his slaves work by force, but by agreement. ”

“ A society based on contract is a society of free and independent men, who form ties without favor or obligation, and co-operate without cringing or intrigue. A society based on contract, therefore, gives the utmost room and chance for individual development, and for all the self-reliance and dignity of a free man. That a society of free men, co-operating under contract, is by far the strongest society which has ever yet existed; that no such society has ever yet developed the full measure of strength of which it is capable ”

“ Five years after the publication of the Social Contract, a remarkable book was written by one of the economic sect of the Physiocrats, the later of whom, though specially concerned with the material interests of communities, very properly felt the necessity of connecting the discussion of wealth with the assumption of certain fundamental political conditions. ”

“ But the body politic or the Sovereign, drawing its being wholly from the sanctity of the contract, can never bind itself, even to an outsider, to do anything derogatory to the original act, for instance, to alienate any part of itself, or to submit to another Sovereign. Violation of the act by which it exists would be self-annihilation; and that which is itself nothing can create nothing. ”