Origin and Terms of the Social Contract
Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains. This man believes
that he is the master of others, and still he is more of a slave than
they are. How did that transformation take place? I don't know. How may
the restraints on man become legitimate? I do believe I can answer that
question....
At a point in the state of nature when the obstacles to human
preservation have become greater than each individual with his own
strength can cope with . . ., an adequate combination of forces must be
the result of men coming together. Still, each man's power and freedom
are his main means of selfpreservation. How is he to put them under the
control of others without damaging himself . . . ?
This question might be rephrased: "How is a method of associating to
be found which will defend and protect-using the power of all-the person
and property of each member and still enable each member of the group to
obey only himself and to remain as free as before?" This is the
fundamental problem; the social contract offers a solution to it.
The very scope of the action dictates the terms of this contract and
renders the least modification of them inadmissible, something making
them null and void. Thus, although perhaps they have never been stated
in so man) words, they are the same everywhere and tacitly conceded and
recognized everywhere. And so it follows that each individual
immediately recovers hi primitive rights and natural liberties whenever
any violation of the social contract occurs and thereby loses the
contractual freedom for which he renounced them.
The social contract's terms, when they are well understood, can be
reduced to a single stipulation: the individual member alienates himself
totally to the whole community together with all his rights. This is
first because conditions will be the same for everyone when each
individual gives himself totally, and secondly, because no one will be
tempted to make that condition of shared equality worse for other
men....
Once this multitude is united this way into a body, an offense
against one of its members is an offense against the body politic. It
would be even less possible to injure the body without its members
feeling it. Duty and interest thus equally require the two contracting
parties to aid each other mutually. The individual people should be
motivated from their double roles as individuals and members of the
body, to combine all the advantages which mutual aid offers them....
Individual Wills and the General Will
In reality, each individual may have one particular will as a man
that is different from-or contrary to-the general will which he has as a
citizen. His own particular interest may suggest other things to him
than the common interest does. His separate, naturally independent
existence may make him imagine that what he owes to the common cause is
an incidental contribution - a contribution which will cost him more to
give than their failure to receive it would harm the others. He may also
regard the moral person of the State as an imaginary being since it is
not a man, and wish to enjoy the rights of a citizen without performing
the duties of a subject. This unjust attitude could cause the ruin of
the body politic if it became widespread enough.
So that the social pact will not become meaningless words, it tacitly
includes this commitment, which alone gives power to the others: Whoever
refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to obey it by the whole
body politic, which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be
free. This condition is indeed the one which by dedicating each citizen
to the fatherland gives him a guarantee against being personally
dependent on other individuals. It is the condition which all political
machinery depends on and which alone makes political undertakings
legitimate. Without it, political actions become absurd, tyrannical, and
subject to the most outrageous abuses.
Whatever benefits he had in the state of nature but lost in the civil
state, a man gains more than enough new ones to make up for them. His
capabilities are put to good use and developed; his ideas are enriched,
his sentiments made more noble, and his soul elevated to the extent
that-if the abuses in this new condition did not often degrade him to a
condition lower than the one he left behind-he would have to keep
blessing this happy moment which snatched him away from his previous
state and which made an intelligent being and a man out of a stupid and
very limited animal....
Property Rights
In dealing with its members, the State controls all their goods under
the social contract, which serves as the basis for all rights within the
State, but it controls them only through the right of first holder which
individuals convey to the State....
A strange aspect of this act of alienating property rights to the
state is that when the community takes on the goods of its members, it
does not take these goods away from them. The community does nothing but
assure its members of legitimate possession of goods, changing mere
claims of possession into real rights and customary use into
property.... Through an act of transfer having advantages for the public
but far more for themselves they have, so to speak, really acquired
everything they gave up....
Indivisible, Inalienable Sovereignty
The first and most important conclusion from the principles we have
established thus far is that the general will alone may direct the
forces of the State to achieve the goal for which it was founded, the
common good.... Sovereignty is indivisible ... and is inalienable.... A
will is general or it is not: it is that of the whole body of the people
or only of one faction. In the first instance, putting the will into
words and force is an act of sovereignty: the will becomes law. In the
second instance, it is only a particular will or an administrative
action; at the very most it is a decree.
Our political theorists, however, unable to divide the source of
sovereignty, divide sovereignty into the ways it is applied. They divide
it into force and will; into legislative power and executive power; into
the power to tax, the judicial power, and the power to wage war; into
internal administration and the power to negotiate with foreign
countries. Now we see them running these powers together. Now they will
proceed to separate them. They make the sovereign a being of fantasy,
composed of separate pieces, which would be like putting a man together
from several bodies, one having eyes, another arms, another feet-nothing
more. Japanese magicians are said to cut up a child before the eyes of
spectators, then throw the pieces into the air one after the other, and
then cause the child to drop down reassembled and alive again. That is
the sort of magic trick our political theorists perform. After having
dismembered the social body with a trick worthy of a travelling show,
they reassemble the pieces without anybody knowing how....
If we follow up in the same way on the other divisions mentioned, we
find that we are deceived every time we believe we see sovereignty
divided. We find that the jurisdictions we have thought to be exercised
as parts of sovereignty in reality are subordinate to the [one]
sovereign power. They presuppose supreme wills, which they merely carry
out in their jurisdictions . . . .
Need for Citizen Participation, Not Representation
It follows from the above that the general will is always in the
right and inclines toward the public good, but it does not follow that
the deliberations of the people always have the same rectitude. People
always desire what is good, but they do not always see what is good. You
can never corrupt the people, but you can often fool them, and that is
the only time that the people appear to will something bad....
If, assuming that the people were sufficiently informed as they made
decisions and that the citizens did not communicate with each other, the
general will would always be resolved from a great number of small
differences, and the deliberation would always be good. But when blocs
are formed, associations of parts at the expense of the whole, the will
of each of these associations will be general as far as its members are
concerned but particular as far as the State is concerned. Then we may
say that there are no longer so many voters as there are men present but
as many as there are associations. The differences will become less
numerous and will yield less general results. Finally, when one of these
associations becomes so strong that it dominates the others, you no
longer have the sum of minor differences as a result but rather one
single [unresolved] difference, with the result that there no longer is
a general will, and the view that prevails is nothing but one particular
view....
But we must also consider the private persons who make up the public,
apart from the public personified, who each have a life and liberty
independent of it. It is very necessary for us to distinguish between
the respective rights of the citizens and the sovereign and between the
duties which men must fulfill in their role as subjects from the natural
rights they should enjoy in their role as men.
It is agreed that everything which each individual gives up of his
power, his goods, and his liberty under the social contract is only that
part of all those things which is of use to the community, but it is
also necessary to agree that the sovereign alone is the judge of what
that useful part is.
All the obligations which a citizen owes to the State he must fulfill
as soon as the sovereign asks for them, but the sovereign in turn cannot
impose any obligation on subjects which is not of use to the community.
If fact, the sovereign cannot even wish to do so, for nothing can take
place without a cause according to the laws of reason, any more than
according to the laws of nature [and the sovereign community will have
no cause to require anything beyond what is of communal use]....
Government . . is wrongly confused with the sovereign, whose agent it
is. What then is government? It is an intermediary body established
between the subjects and the sovereign to keep them in touch with each
other. It is charged with executing the laws and maintaining both civil
and political liberty.... The only will dominating government ... should
be the general will or the law. The government's power is only the
public power vested in it. As soon as [government] attempts to let any
act come from itself completely independently, it starts to lose its
intermediary role. If the time should ever come when the [government]
has a particular will of its own stronger than that of the sovereign and
makes use of the public power which is in its hands to carry out its own
particular will-when there are thus two sovereigns, one in law and one
in fact-at that moment the social union will disappear and the body
politic will be dissolved.
Once the public interest has ceased to be the principal concern of
citizens, once they prefer to serve State with money rather than with
their persons, the State will be approaching ruin. Is it necessary to
march into combat? They will pay some troops and stay at home. Is it
necessary to go to meetings? They will name some deputies and stay at
home. Laziness and money finally leave them with soldiers to enslave
their fatherland and representatives to sell it....
Sovereignty cannot be represented.... Essentially, it consists of the
general will, and a will is not represented: either we have it itself,
or it is something else; there is no other possibility. The deputies of
the people thus are not and cannot be its representatives. They are only
the people's agents and are not able to come to final decisions at all.
Any law that the people have not ratified in person is void, it is not a
law at all.
Sovereignty and Civil Religion
Now then, it is of importance to the State that each citizen should
have a religion requiring his devotion to duty; however, the dogmas of
that religion are of no interest to the State except as they relate to
morality and to the duties which each believer is required to perform
for others. For the rest of it, each person may have whatever opinions
he pleases....
It follows that it is up to the sovereign to establish the articles
of a purely civil faith, not exactly as dogmas of religion but as
sentiments of social commitment without which it would be impossible to
be either a good citizen or a faithful subject.... While the State has
no power to oblige anyone to believe these articles, it may banish
anyone who does not believe them. This banishment is not for impiety but
for lack of social commitment, that is, for being incapable of sincerely
loving the laws and justice or of sacrificing his life to duty in time
of need. As for the person who conducts himself as if he does not
believe them after having publicly stated his belief in these same
dogmas, he deserves the death penalty. He has lied in the presence of
the laws.
The dogmas of civil religion should be simple, few in number, and
stated in precise words without interpretations or commentaries. These
are the required dogmas: the existence of a powerful, intelligent
Divinity, who does good, has foreknowledge of all, and provides for all;
the life to come; the happy rewards of the just; the punishment of the
wicked; and the sanctity ol` the social contract and the laws. As for
prohibited articles of faith, I limit myself to one: intolerance.
Intolerance characterizes the religious persuasions we have excluded.
From JeanJacques Rousseau, Contrat social ou Principes du droit
politique (Paris: Garnier Frères 1800), pp. 240332, passim.
Translated by Henry A. Myers.
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
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