The Social Contract

Contents

1. Foreword 1 min 4

   Under an epigraph from Virgil about the fair terms of a treaty, Rousseau explains that this short book is the most substantial surviving fragment of a longer work on political institutions, begun years earlier and abandoned. The rest, he says, no longer exists.

2. I.1 Subject of the First Book 2 min 4

   Rousseau sets out his question: whether a legitimate and sure rule of government can exist, taking men as they are and laws as they might be. Writing as a citizen of Geneva with a vote, he opens with “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” He does not know how the change came about, but thinks he can say what would make it legitimate. Force alone cannot: a people that throws off a yoke would be as justified as the power that imposed it. The social order is a sacred right, but one founded on conventions, not nature.

3. I.2 The First Societies 4 min 6

   The family is the only natural society, and even it lasts naturally only while children need their father; afterwards it continues by convention. The state resembles the family, but the ruler’s pleasure in command replaces paternal love. Rousseau attacks Grotius and Hobbes for treating mankind as herds belonging to their rulers, an argument he compares to Caligula’s. Aristotle was right that some are born slaves, but mistook effect for cause: force made the first slaves. The chapter ends mocking the patriarchal descent of kingship from Adam and Noah.

4. I.3 The Right of the Strongest 2 min 2

   The “right of the strongest” is a contradiction. Force is a physical power with no moral effect; yielding to it is necessity or prudence, not duty. If force made right, any greater force would inherit the right and disobedience would be legitimate whenever it was safe. A robber’s pistol is a power, yet no one is bound in conscience to hand over a purse. Force creates no right, and obedience is owed only to legitimate powers.

5. I.4 Slavery 10 min 4

   Since force creates no right, legitimate authority must rest on conventions. Rousseau refutes Grotius’s claim that a people can alienate its liberty to a king as a man can sell himself: subjects receive nothing in return, a gift of oneself is madness, and no one can alienate his children’s freedom. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man. The supposed right to enslave captives also fails, because war is a relation between states, not individuals, and gives no right to kill those who surrender. Slave and right are contradictory terms.

6. I.5 That We Must Always Go Back to a First Convention 2 min 1

   Even granting the despots’ arguments, subduing a multitude is not ruling a society: a conqueror with many slaves has an aggregation, not an association, and his empire dies with him. Before asking how a people gives itself to a king, one must ask how it became a people. Majority rule itself rests on a prior convention that was unanimous at least once.

7. I.6 The Social Compact 5 min 5

   When the obstacles of the state of nature exceed individual strength, people must combine their forces. The problem is to find an association that protects each member with the common force while each, obeying only himself, remains as free as before. The solution is the total alienation of each associate, with all his rights, to the whole community: the conditions are equal for all, and each, giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody. The compact creates a collective body, called State, Sovereign or Power, whose members are citizens and subjects.

8. I.7 The Sovereign 5 min 3

   Each individual is bound in a double capacity, as a member of the Sovereign and as a subject. The Sovereign cannot bind itself by any fundamental law, not even the contract, and cannot alienate any part of itself. Formed of the individuals, it can have no interest contrary to theirs, but individuals may have particular wills contrary to the general will. The compact therefore tacitly includes the undertaking that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled by the whole body: he will be forced to be free.

9. I.8 The Civil State 2 min 1

   The passage from the state of nature to the civil state substitutes justice for instinct and gives human actions morality, turning a stupid animal into an intelligent being. In the exchange man loses natural liberty and an unlimited right to what he can take, and gains civil liberty, limited by the general will, and property founded on a positive title. He also acquires moral liberty, since obedience to a self-prescribed law is freedom, though Rousseau sets this philosophical point aside.

10. I.9 Real Property 6 min 5

    On founding, each member gives the community his goods along with himself. The right of the first occupier becomes a real right only once property is established, and requires that the land be unoccupied, that only what is needed be taken, and that possession be shown by labour and cultivation, not ceremonies such as Balboa’s claim to the South Seas. The community, far from despoiling owners, turns usurpation into right while keeping its own superior claim over all property. The compact replaces natural inequality with moral and legal equality.

11. II.1 That Sovereignty Is Inalienable 3 min 1

    Only the general will can direct the State toward its end, the common good, because the common element in particular interests is what makes society possible. Sovereignty, the exercise of the general will, cannot be alienated or represented: power may be transmitted, but not will. A particular will may agree with the general will for a moment but cannot promise to agree in future. A people that promises simply to obey dissolves itself; when a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign.

12. II.2 That Sovereignty Is Indivisible 4 min 2

    Sovereignty is indivisible for the same reason it is inalienable: a will is either general or not. Theorists who divide it into legislative and executive power, or rights of taxation, justice and war, mistake emanations of sovereignty for parts of it, like Japanese jugglers who dismember a child and make it fall back alive. Declaring war is an application of law, not law. Grotius and his translator Barbeyrac, courting kings, tangled themselves in sophistries; truth, Rousseau notes, is no road to fortune.

13. II.3 Whether the General Will Is Fallible 3 min 4

    The general will is always right, but the people’s deliberations are not always correct: the people is never corrupted but often deceived. The will of all is a sum of particular wills; the general will is what remains when their opposing differences cancel out. When factions and partial associations form, there are only as many votes as associations, and if one dominates, its particular will prevails. There should therefore be no partial societies in the State, or else many small and equal ones, as Solon, Numa and Servius arranged.

14. II.4 The Limits of the Sovereign Power 8 min 2

    The compact gives the body politic absolute power over its members, but citizens also have rights as men. Each alienates only what matters to the community, though the Sovereign judges what that is, and it cannot impose useless burdens. The general will must be general in object as well as source: it loses its rectitude when applied to particular persons or facts, which is why Athens, deciding on individuals, acted as magistrate rather than Sovereign. Because laws bind all equally, the contract is not a renunciation but an advantageous exchange.

15. II.5 The Right of Life and Death 5 min 1

    Individuals can transfer to the State a right over their lives because everyone may risk his life to preserve it. The citizen exposed to danger by law owes his security to that condition, and the criminal who breaks the treaty becomes a public enemy who may be exiled or killed. But condemnation is a particular act, not a function of the Sovereign. Frequent punishments show a weak government; the State may not kill anyone it can safely leave alive, and pardons should be rare.

16. II.6 Law 7 min 2

    The compact gives the body politic life; legislation gives it will. Justice from reason is ineffective unless mutual, so laws are needed. A law is an act in which the whole people decrees for the whole people, general in both will and object: it may create privileges or a monarchy but not name who receives them. Every State governed by laws is a Republic. Yet the people, though it always wills the good, does not always see it, and a blind multitude cannot draft a system of laws. This makes a legislator necessary.

17. II.7 The Legislator 8 min 7

    Giving laws to men would take gods. The legislator must be able to transform human nature, making each individual part of a greater whole. His office is neither magistracy nor sovereignty: Lycurgus resigned the throne, and the Greek cities and Geneva used foreign lawgivers. He has no legislative right, since only the people’s vote can bind. Unable to use force or reason with a people not yet formed, he puts his wisdom in the mouths of the gods; only real genius, as in the founders of the Jewish and Islamic laws, makes such institutions last.

18. II.8 The People 4 min 1

    The wise legislator first examines whether a people is fit for laws, as Plato did in refusing the Arcadians and Cyrenaeans. Peoples, like men, are docile only in youth; once customs harden, reform is useless. Civil wars and revolutions occasionally renew a State, as in Sparta, Rome, Holland and Switzerland, but never twice: liberty may be gained but never recovered. Peter the Great civilised Russia too soon, making imitation Germans and Englishmen, and Rousseau predicts that the Tartars will one day conquer the empire and Europe.

19. II.9 The People (continued) 5 min 1

    A State has natural limits of size, too large for good government or too small to sustain itself. Distance multiplies costly layers of administration paid for by the people, weakens enforcement, and loosens affection for rulers, country and fellow citizens; diverse provinces cannot share the same laws, and the State ends governed by clerks. Yet a State must be strong enough to resist neighbours’ pressure. The internal reasons for contraction should outweigh the external reasons for expansion, and States that must conquer to survive are near their fall.

20. II.10 The People (continued) 6 min 2

    The right relation between territory and population is that the land should support its inhabitants and be fully used by them; too much land invites defensive wars, too little offensive ones. The legislator must weigh soil, climate and fertility, and found institutions only in a time of peace and plenty, since usurpers exploit crises to pass destructive laws. The people fit for legislation is united but not set in its ways, secure, self-sufficient, neither rich nor poor. Corsica, Rousseau says, is still such a country.

21. II.11 The Various Systems of Legislation 5 min 4

    The ends of every system of legislation are liberty and equality. Equality does not mean identical wealth, but that power never amounts to violence and that no citizen is rich enough to buy another or poor enough to be forced to sell himself. Because circumstances constantly erode equality, law must constantly sustain it. These general aims must be adapted to each country’s soil, coast and people, as Montesquieu showed; a constitution lasts when laws follow natural relations and fails when the legislator mistakes his object.

22. II.12 The Division of the Laws 3 min 1

    Laws are divided by the relations they regulate: political or fundamental laws, governing the relation of the Sovereign to the State; civil laws, governing citizens’ relations to one another and to the body; and criminal laws, which sanction the rest. A fourth kind, the most important, is morality, custom and public opinion, written in citizens’ hearts, which the great legislator attends to in secret. Only the political laws, which fix the form of government, concern the rest of the book.

23. III.1 Government in General 12 min 4

    Rousseau defines government as an intermediate body between the Sovereign (the people making laws) and the State (the people as subjects), charged with executing the laws. Rulers hold a revocable commission, not a contract. Using a geometrical analogy, he argues that as a people grows more numerous each citizen’s share of sovereignty shrinks, so the government must be stronger, and the Sovereign stronger still to control it. There is therefore no single best form of government: the right one depends on the size and circumstances of each State.

24. III.2 The Constituent Principle in the Various Forms of Government 6 min 1

    Rousseau distinguishes three wills in every magistrate: his private will, the corporate will of the government, and the general will of the people. In nature the most concentrated will is the strongest, the reverse of what the social order requires. Since a government’s total force is fixed, the more magistrates there are, the weaker and slower it becomes, though its will comes closer to the general will. Large States therefore need fewer rulers, and the legislator’s art is to balance force against rectitude.

25. III.3 The Division of Governments 3 min

    Governments are classified by the number of magistrates: democracy when most citizens govern, aristocracy when a few do, monarchy when one does. Each admits wide variations and mixtures, so there are as many possible forms as citizens. No form is best everywhere; as a rule democracy suits small States, aristocracy middling ones and monarchy large ones, though many circumstances may create exceptions.

26. III.4 Democracy 4 min 5

    Uniting legislative and executive power seems ideal but confuses general and particular acts. In the strict sense a real democracy has never existed and never will: the people cannot always be assembled, and small bodies inevitably take over. Democracy requires a tiny State, simple manners, near-equality and no luxury, all of which need virtue. It is also the form most prone to civil strife. “Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.”

27. III.5 Aristocracy 5 min 4

    Aristocracy began as the rule of elders among the first societies, as among the peoples of North America. As artificial inequality grew, it became elective and then hereditary. Elective aristocracy is the best government, since it selects able men, conducts business efficiently and keeps the two powers distinct, provided the rulers govern for the many and not for themselves. It needs moderation among the rich and contentment among the poor, and merit should sometimes be preferred to wealth.

28. III.6 Monarchy 13 min 4

    Monarchy concentrates all governmental force in one man and is the most vigorous form, but the private will rules most freely in it. Kings want their people weak, as Machiavelli’s Prince really teaches. Monarchy suits only large States and needs intermediate orders. Its ministers are usually petty intriguers, successions are stormy, hereditary crowns give children and imbeciles power, royal education corrupts, and policy shifts with each reign. Royal government must be judged as it is under bad kings, not good ones.

29. III.7 Mixed Governments 2 min

    No government is strictly simple: every ruler needs subordinates and every popular government a head. Distribution of power may be equal, as in England, or divided and imperfect, as in Poland, which is bad. Simple government is better in itself, but where the executive is too independent of the legislature it should be divided to weaken it, and where it is too lax, tribunals should be created to concentrate it. Mixed forms produce a middling strength.

30. III.8 That All Forms of Government Do Not Suit All Countries 12 min 3

    Following Montesquieu, Rousseau argues that liberty does not suit every climate. The State consumes without producing and lives on the surplus of its members’ labour, which varies with soil, climate and needs. The further taxes travel from the people, the heavier they become, so monarchy suits rich fertile lands, aristocracy middling ones and democracy small poor ones. Hot countries need less, yield more and favour despotism; scattered populations aid tyranny, while concentrated ones resist it.

31. III.9 The Marks of a Good Government 2 min 2

    There is no absolute best government, but there is a simple factual mark of a good one. Subjects and citizens disagree about whether security, liberty, severity or prosperity matters most, yet the end of political association is the preservation and prosperity of its members. The surest sign of that is growth in population. Other things being equal, the government under which citizens multiply most, without immigration or colonies, is the best; that under which they decline is the worst.

32. III.10 The Abuse of Government and Its Tendency to Degenerate 4 min 3

    Because the particular will constantly works against the general will, every government tends to usurp sovereignty. It degenerates either by contracting, from many rulers to few to one, or by the dissolution of the State, when the prince usurps sovereign power or magistrates seize separately what they should exercise jointly. Then the compact is broken and citizens obey only by force. Rousseau distinguishes the tyrant, who usurps royal authority, from the despot, who places himself above the laws.

33. III.11 The Death of the Body Politic 3 min 1

    Every body politic carries the causes of its death, as Sparta and Rome show; the aim is to prolong its life by a good constitution. The legislative power is the State’s heart and the executive its brain. The State lives not by its laws but by its legislative power: old laws bind only because the Sovereign tacitly confirms them by not repealing them, which is why respected ancient laws are a sign of health.

34. III.12 How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself 2 min

    The Sovereign can act only through laws, and therefore only when the people is assembled. To the objection that this is a chimera, Rousseau answers with Rome: a city of hundreds of thousands of citizens met in assembly almost every week, exercising sovereignty and part of government. Ancient monarchies such as the Macedonian and Frankish had similar councils. It is good logic, he says, to reason from the actual to the possible.

35. III.13 How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself (continued) 3 min 1

    Besides extraordinary meetings, there must be fixed periodic assemblies that need no summons and cannot be prorogued; other assemblies not lawfully called are void. The stronger the government, the more often the people should meet. Sovereignty cannot be divided among towns, nor one town subjected to another. Unions of towns are bad; where a State is too large, it should have no capital and move its seat from town to town. Capitals ruin the countryside.

36. III.14 How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself (continued) 2 min 2

    When the people is lawfully assembled as a sovereign body, the jurisdiction of the government lapses. At such times consuls are mere presidents and the humblest citizen equals the first magistrate. Rulers therefore dread such assemblies and work to prevent them; where citizens prefer ease to liberty, sovereignty gradually disappears. Rousseau notes that an intermediate power sometimes stands between sovereign authority and arbitrary government.

37. III.15 Deputies or Representatives 8 min 8

    When citizens prefer to serve with money rather than in person, paying soldiers and naming deputies, the State is near its fall. Commerce and love of gain replace civic service with taxes. Sovereignty cannot be represented: deputies are only stewards, and laws the people has not ratified in person are void. The English are free only at elections. Representation is a feudal idea unknown to the ancients, whose liberty depended on climate and slaves. A people that accepts representatives is no longer free.

38. III.16 That the Institution of Government Is Not a Contract 3 min 1

    Executive power, operating by particular acts, must be separate from the Sovereign. Rousseau rejects the view that government rests on a contract between people and rulers: sovereignty cannot be limited or alienated, such a contract would be a particular act and not a law, it would have no guarantor, and it would contradict the original compact. There is only one contract in the State, the act of association.

39. III.17 The Institution of Government 3 min

    Government is instituted by two acts: a law establishing its form, and the nomination of rulers, which is a particular act and a function of government. The puzzle of a governmental act before government exists is solved by the people briefly turning itself into a democracy, as the House of Commons turns into a Grand Committee. Only democracy can be set up by a simple act of the general will.

40. III.18 How to Check the Usurpations of Government 4 min 2

    Government is a law, not a contract; rulers are the people’s officers, removable at will, though changes should be made with caution and proper forms. Princes exploit those forms to prevent assemblies and usurp sovereignty, as the decemvirs did. Periodic assemblies are the remedy, opening with two separate votes: whether to keep the present form of government, and whether to keep those now administering it. Even the social compact itself may be revoked by all.

41. IV.1 That the General Will Is Indestructible 5 min 3

    Among simple, united peoples, such as Swiss peasants governing under an oak, the common good is obvious and few laws are needed. As the social bond weakens, particular interests and factions arise and the general will ceases to be the will of all; in a dying State it falls silent and private decrees pass as laws. Yet the general will is indestructible: even a man selling his vote only evades it. Assemblies must ensure the right question is put.

42. IV.2 Voting 6 min 4

    The nearer votes come to unanimity, the more the general will dominates, though unanimity under servitude is mere acclamation. Only the social compact requires unanimous consent; afterwards the majority binds all. The citizen is free even when outvoted, because a vote asks whether a proposal conforms to the general will, and losing shows only that he was mistaken, so long as the majority retains the general will’s qualities. Graver questions should require larger majorities, urgent ones smaller.

43. IV.3 Elections 5 min 2

    Magistrates may be chosen by election or by lot. Rousseau agrees with Montesquieu that the lot suits democracy, but because choosing rulers is a governmental act and office in a democracy is a burden. Election suits aristocracy. Venice’s mixed method fits its mixed government; its nobility, including the poor Barnabotes, corresponds to Geneva’s citizens. Military posts should be elected, judicial ones may be filled by lot. Monarchs alone appoint their officers.

44. IV.4 The Roman Comitia 23 min 5

    Rousseau describes Rome’s divisions: Romulus’ three tribes and thirty curiae, Servius’ local tribes, later thirty-five, and his six property classes divided into 193 centuries, with the rich holding a majority. Rural tribes were honoured, the propertyless counted only by head. He compares the comitia curiata, centuriata and tributa, the conditions for lawful assembly, and the change from open to secret voting, which he defends as suited to a corrupt people, against Cicero.

45. IV.5 The Tribunate 4 min 1

    The tribunate is a magistracy outside the constitution that preserves the laws and the legislative power, protecting the Sovereign against government or the reverse, as at Rome, Venice and Sparta. Able only to prevent, it is sacred and powerful, but it becomes tyrannical when it usurps executive power, as the Ephors and Roman tribunes did. It weakens as members multiply, and should be suspended at fixed intervals to prevent usurpation.

46. IV.6 The Dictatorship 7 min 3

    Laws are too rigid for every crisis, so in extreme danger the State may concentrate power in a few magistrates or name a dictator who silences the laws without being able to make them. Early Rome used dictators too lavishly, the late Republic too sparingly, failing to name one against Catiline, which forced Cicero to exceed his powers. A dictatorship must be brief and never prolonged; the Roman six-month term was right.

47. IV.7 The Censorship 4 min 3

    As law declares the general will, the censorship declares the public judgment. Censors cannot make opinion but only express and preserve it; morals arise from legislation and opinion, not from censure. The censorship can preserve morals but never restore them. A French edict mocking those who called seconds ended the practice, but declaring duelling itself cowardly failed. Rousseau admires the Roman and especially Spartan use of the institution.

48. IV.8 Civil Religion 23 min 11

    Early societies were theocracies, each with national gods, so war and religion coincided. Christianity separated spiritual from political power, producing endless conflict between priest and prince; Hobbes alone saw the remedy. Rousseau distinguishes the religion of man, of the citizen, and of the priest, finding fault with all, and argues that true Christianity makes people indifferent to their country. The Sovereign should fix a short civil creed, banish unbelievers and punish relapsed professors with death, and tolerate all tolerant religions.

49. IV.9 Conclusion 1 min

    Rousseau closes by noting that a full theory would treat the State’s external relations: the law of nations, commerce, war and conquest, leagues and treaties. That subject is too vast for this work.