卢梭的革命主义社会政治思想1

卢梭的革命主义社会政治思想

卢梭的革命主义社会政治思想：《人类不平等的起源》和《社会契约论》Before Rousseau appeared on the literary scene in Europe, critics of the existing order had slowly been widening their orbit of interest to include the people in their plans of reform. But “the people”meant primarily the discriminated Third Estate of prosperous and respectable merchants, lawyers, and intellectuals. Rousseau is the first modern writer on politics who was of the people: the submerged, inarticulate masses of the petite bourgeoisie, the poor artisans and workingmen, the small peasants, the restless and rootless, the déclassés, for whom there was no room, and no hope, in the existing order of things.

Rousseau was born of a poor family in Geneva, his French ancestors having migrated there as religious refugees in the sixteenth century. Rousseau’s mother died a few days after his birth, and his father, an impecunious watchmaker and more enthusiastic dancing master, was unable to raise Jean Jacques in any coherent fashion. From the age of twelve Rousseau was apprenticed to various masters, but he failed to establish himself in any art or trade. At sixteen he ran away from Geneva, and for the remainder of his life could claim no permanent abode anywhere.

V oltaire and Montesquieu had traveled through Europe in grand style; Rousseau saw much of the continent through the eyes of a penniless, and at times hunted, vagabond, who did not always know where his next meal would come from and where he would sleep. Poverty made him commit minor thefts and larcenies, change his religion for temporary material advantage, and accept charity from people he detested….

His Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755)

Turning to the origin of inequality in society, Rousseau starts out with a passage that has a distinctly socialist and revolutionary flavor: “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”The natural voice of compassion was stilled by the usurpations of the rich and the robberies of the poor, and the newborn society thus led to a “horrible state of war.”The rich then devised a plan by which they would better enjoy their power and possession without the threat of constant war.

The first step was easy, to obtain agreement among the rich themselves to set up a system of law and government for the maintenance of peace. The second step, “the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man,” was to employ the forces of the poor for the creation of government, under which all would be protected and their possessions safeguarded: “Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and, for the advantage

of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labor, slavery and wretchedness.

In the long run, however, Rousseau foresees that from extreme inequality of fortunes and conditions spring divisions and dissensions that undermine the fabric of society and government. Despotism arises out of these disorders, but despotism is the “last term of inequality.” Popular insurrection deposes the despot, or even puts him to death: “As he was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him.”This was strong language for the middle of the eighteenth century, when revolution was not thought of as yet and when free expression was curbed by both church and state.

The concluding words of the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality made it plain that Rousseau was not referring to hypothetical states of nature or society but to the injustices of contemporary France, “since it is plainly contrary to the laws of nature, however defined, that children should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life.”

His Social Contract (1762)

The main concern of The Social Contract is the central issue of all political speculation: political obligation. “The problem,” Rousseau says, “is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.” In the very beginning of the book, Rousseau puts the same question in more dramatic form: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”

Like his predecessor, Rousseau uses the conceptions of the state of nature and the social contract that puts an end to it. Rousseau’s conception of man’s life in the state of nature is not quite so gloomy as that of Hobbes, nor as optimistic as that of Locke. Each man pursues his self-interest in the state of nature until he discovers that his power to preserve himself individually against the threats and hindrances of others is not strong enough. The purpose of the social contract is thus to combine security, which comes from collective association, with liberty, which the individual had before the making of the contract. But the social contract consists in “the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community.”

The total surrender of the individual to the sovereign community is completely contrary to Locke and recalls Hobbes’view of the social contract, in which the individual also surrenders himself completely to the sovereign. But whereas Hobbes’ subject is completely submissive to his sovereign, Rousseau reflects this kind of social peace without liberty. “Tranquility is also found in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in?”To renounce liberty, Rousseau says, is to renounce being a man, for there can be no obligation that is not, to some extent at least, mutual. In Rousseau’s social contract man does not surrender completely to a sovereign ruler, but each man gives himself to all, and therefore gives himself to nobody in particular: “As there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields

others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he does, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has.”

Rousseau shows in The Social Contract a much greater appreciation of civil society, as compared with the state of nature, than he showed in his earlier writings. In the state of nature, Rousseau now says, man is guided by instinct only, whereas in society he is inspired by justice and morality. Man loses through the social contract his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he can lay his hands on, but he gains civil liberty and property rights in all he possesses. The liberty of the state of nature is no true liberty, because it is merely enslavement to uncontrolled appetites. By contrast, moral liberty, which man acquires solely in the civil state, makes him master of himself, because “obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”

These three forms of liberty progress from the lower to the higher. Natural liberty is devoid of any reflective or rational elements, and its boundary—constantly shifting—is simply the strength of the individual to assert himself. Civil liberty has a firmer and more rational foundation—the laws and rules of the political community which determine what each member may and may not do in relation to other members. However, if liberty rises to the level of moral liberty, for in obeying laws we ourselves have made, we remain free. Whereas civil liberty creates individual rights and freedoms in relation to others, moral liberty is the only type of freedom in which the individual is free in relation to himself.

….Rousseau’s conception of sovereignty differs from both Hobbes’ and Locke’s. In Hobbes’the people set up a sovereign and transfer all power to him. In Locke’s social contract the people set up a limited government for limited purposes, but Locke shuns the conception of sovereignty—popular or monarchical—as a symbol of political absolutism. Rousseau’s sovereign is the people, constituted as a political community through the social contract.

Unlike nearly all other major political thinkers, Rousseau considers the sovereignty of the people inalienable and indivisible. The people cannot give away, or transfer, to any person or body their ultimate right of self-government, of deciding their own destiny. Whereas Hobbes identified the sovereign with the ruler who exercises sovereignty, Rousseau draws a sharp distinction between sovereignty, which always and wholly resides in the people, and government, which is but a temporary agent (as in Locke’s conception) of the sovereign people. Whereas, in Locke, the people transfer the exercise of their supreme authority, legislative, executive, and judicial, to organs of government, Rousseau’s concept of inalienable and indivisible sovereignty does not permit the people to transfer their legislative function, the supreme authority in the state. As to the executive and judicial functions, Rousseau realizes that they have to be exercised by special organs of government, but they are completely subordinated to the sovereign people, and there is no hint or suggestion of separation, or balance, of power.

Rousseau’s system of government is unmitigated popular sovereignty, unmodified by competing or balancing powers; this aspect of Rousseau has always strongly appealed to adherents of radical and uncompromising democracy….

….the problem of the General Will, the key conception in his political philosophy. He sees the body politic “possessed of a will; and this General Will, which tends always to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part, and is the source of the laws, constitutes for all the members of state, in their relation to one another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust.”By introducing the concept of the General Will, Rousseau fundamentally alters the

mechanistic concept of the state as an instrument (shared by both Hobbes and Locke) and revives the organic theory of the state, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle.

….The character of the General Will is determined by two elements: first, it aims at the general good, and second, it must come from all and apply to all. The first refers to the object of will; the second, to its origin. The Will of All must therefore not be confused with 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.” The generality of the will is not so much a matter of numbers as of intrinsic quality and goodness. The people always will be good, but they do not always understand it, particularly when factions make it difficult for the independent citizen to pursue the common good. Nor can the General Will be represented, because representative assemblies tend to develop particular interests of their own, forgetting those of the community. Obviously referring to the direct democracies of Swiss city-republics, Rousseau glowingly describes how “bands of peasants are seen regulating affairs of state under an oak, and always acting wisely”….

Obeying the General Will is thus the expression of the moral freedom of the individual, and if he refuses to obey, he may be compelled to do so: “This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.”

….Rousseau was first vindicated by the success of the American Revolution, and the opening words of the Constitution of the United States. “We the people….”were of the spirit of Jean Jacques Rousseau. In the French Revolution, only a few years later, the French nation discovered its communal solidarity in a new birth of individual freedom and popular government. Since then, the message of Rousseau has been carried to all corners of the world, and its vitality and persistent timeliness continue to inspire free men and free women everywhere.

From William Ebenstein and Alan Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers: Plato to

the Present, 6th edition (reprinted by Beijing University Press, 2004) ,

pp. 445-451.