The Origins and Impacts of the Social Contract
John Locke published his Five Treatises on Civil Government in 1690, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution and ascendancy of William and Mary Orange to the British throne. The second of his treatises probably was seen as justification for this political revolution, but on a broader scale, it can be seen as a new wave in political theory. Locke spoke of the need of community to keep humans from wandering about in a very dangerous type of natural freedom. In order to keep this security from nature, each individual would give up their rights in order to ensure the greater good of the community. These rights would be governed by a legislature, which would act to serve its constituents, especially their rights to property. However, if the legislature did not serve the public or allowed a foreign power to assume the property of the public, the community had the right to retake the legislature with a new constitution and new direction in governance. Locke did not feel that the monarchy should be abolished necessarily; rather, he seems to think that the monarchy should be beholden to a constitution stating the rights of the monarch’s subjects. The monarch would serve in a more restricted capacity in relation to the elected legislature. This is the early beginning of a more democratic idea of government and society, which would be built upon and refined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau defines the necessity of balancing freedom and social constraint in his work The Social Contract, published in 1762. His writings came about at a time of great Enlightenment furor, in which ideas of the old guard about science, economy, and society were in question. Rousseau was one such skeptic, more specifically about politics and social structure. He seemed to criticize the actions of war, asking what were the gains of a people if a ruler’s “ambitions…insatiable avidity…and vexatious conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own dissensions would have done?” His solution is to re-arrange the powers of the people away from harming each other towards a goal of common good. The Social Contract would solve the problems of competition of between rival political interests and would create a means of placating the “general will.” Rousseau acknowledged the fact that in the face of a general will, there would still be differing viewpoints. These people with dissenting views would be forced to conform to the general will, as this would be the best for the greatest number of people. Rousseau uses the example of the Roman Republic as proof of how the general will would work. Despite the bickering of the Senate, the lower classes seemed to be able to decide upon things when not disrupted, having but a single will. Rousseau’s ideas were revolutionary at the time, being surrounded by aristocracy who were unwilling to relinquish their landholdings and a monarchy, though trying to be enlightened, that still wanted more power. Rousseau never truly offered a means of how to incorporate this idea into society, instead producing the definition of social contract and why it should be used. He left to future leaders the task of carrying out his plan. One such leader, Maximillien Robespierre, attempted this daunting task during the French Revolution.
Maximillien Robespierre was a lawyer prior to the French Revolution and more specifically before the Terror. As the Revolution progressed, Robespierre’s radical politics drove him to the head of the Jacobin Club, a group of radical middle class men and women in Paris. The Jacobins wanted to take the revolution further, into more radical territory. When the Jacobins dominated the National Convention, Robespierre was chosen to lead the Committee of Public Safety, which relieved the National Convention and the constitution of its responsibilities. Robespierre’s On the Principles of Political Morality outlined the necessity of the Revolution and how the plans of the Committee would have been carried out. Robespierre first discussed why the Revolution was being carried out: the need for the people of France to take back their freedoms from corrupt monarchs and to instill the virtues of a republic in the stead of the misdeeds of monarchs. The means of taking back the freedom of the people would be fear. Terror was seen as virtuous by Robespierre because it would bring about the virtue of the Republic as no other means would be as effective or long lasting. Robespierre used this terror as a means to the end of establishing social equilibrium, the very idea that Rousseau attempted to portray in his works. For several months, terror reigned over France but, in the end, counter-revolutionaries took back the government and executed Robespierre. This put an end to the radical portion of the Revolution, but Robespierre was one of the first leaders to put ideas of social communism into action, succeeding in the areas of a national army and instilling patriotism among the masses.
The ideas of Locke and Rousseau would be influential upon future leaders, both for good and for bad. These revolutionary Enlightenment notions were built on the grounds of a new wave of ideas in politics and society: the people would not stand for the overwhelming differential power between the aristocrat and the worker. The greater good of the community would be met, without a monarch. These ideas would influence South America, with most of these colonies claiming independence by the mid-19th century. The United States became independent with a constitution based on Locke’s discussion of government serving the people in a fair and consistent manner. Further along in history, leaders like Hitler and Stalin would use these ideas as components of their rise to power, usually perverting these ideas for their own gains and the imperial wealth of their nations. We can see to this day that there is a strong influence of this social compact ideal. Our country’s democracy is based upon the idea of liberty of the public, the general will, and the need for majority rule. These ideas will carry through the 21st century because the influence of the Western world is so great upon the rest of the world and the spread of information technology to all reaches of the Earth.
