The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right - Literature review Example

In Western society today, many people take their freedoms for granted. They can vote freely, say what is on their mind, even sometimes challenge the president of the state, without feeling the least bit anxiety that their lives might be in danger. Westerners think of such freedoms as if they were manna from heaven and sometimes chide societies that lack such basic freedoms for their lack of progressive spirit. The kind of freedoms that people enjoy in the West, however, have come about through long struggle, both the physical kind that involves fighting with weapons and the kind that involves ideas. In this paper, two of the greatest contributors to Western socio-political thought are considered through their major works. Though Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill hailed from Geneva and England respectively, their ideas have helped to focus the Western mind more closely on the issue of personal liberty and how the individual relates or ought to relate to the state and indeed other members of the society. While the two thinkers do not agree on practically every element there is enough correspondence in their ideas, if only in terms of their having done their individual parts to ensure that the societies in which they lived retreated from the dangerous primitive instincts and more towards societies that are closer to just for all and sundry. John Stuart Mills is considered in many circles as the greatest supporter of liberalism in the 19th century. His ideas have become a part of the thinking in the areas of law, politics, and writers and poets have also used his ideas as a starting point for expressing their own. In order to appreciate Mills’ ideas it is necessary to understand a bit about his background. Mills’ father was an economist and historian who opened up the world of education to the young Mills at a very early age so that by the age of six he was reading Greek. Three years later he had mastered Latin and was reading some of the most important works in these languages. He went on to learn mathematics, French, and to devour the Bible. The seeds of learning that his father sowed in the young Mills stayed with him all his life so that he continued to study and write all throughout his life. Mills’ father had provided him with a great start in life but had at the same time saddled him with the notion of utilitarianism, which posited that an action is right if it promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. For a child, such an idea might be accepted but as Mills grew and continued to think about this issue he felt that the philosophy was too cold and left no room for feeling or consideration of others. Certainly, making the majority happy would mean accepting that a minority had to suffer. But did this have to be? Rather than accept what his father had taught at him at face value Mills was willing to subject it to the rigor of thinking and logic and to find out if he could not improve on this idea for the benefit of the human race. It is quite revealing when one considers that “Lenin and Hitler were pious utilitarians, as were Stalin and Mao, as are most members of the Mafia. As Mill recognized, the "greatest happiness principle" must be qualified by some guarantee of individual rights, if it is not to excuse the tyrant” (Scroton 2006). As a thinker Mills was disturbed by the laws in the England of his time, which prevented people from expressing ideas that went against the church and made adultery a crime. It seemed that people could not exercise their free will and thinking even if their actions did not hurt anyone. To Mills’ way of thinking focusing on the happiness of the majority robbed individuals of their rights to freedom. He did not consider the price that minorities had to pay for the so-called good of society a fair deal. This did not mean that the individual had the right to impose his will on the majority. Rather, “if the exercise of individual freedom threatens harm to others, it is legitimate to curtail it -- for in such circumstances one person's gain in freedom is another person's loss of it. But when there is no proof of harm to another, the law must protect the individual's right to act and speak as he chooses” (Scroton 2006). It seems that Mills did not see the happiness of the majority and the minority as a zero sum game in which one had to be happy and the other suffer. Rather, he wanted to find out if there was a way to ensure that everyone was happy or that no one was bullied in order for another to be happy. Mill sought to show that the purpose of the law was not to ensure that the will of the majority was carried out, which meant imposing the majority view on everyone. He did not excuse one person harming the majority but also he thought it significant that the individual should be given consideration if it became clear that the imposition of the majority will did harm or circumscribe the individual in a way that was harmful. In his treatise “On Liberty,” he expressed some ideas that seemed to contradict his own respect for the individual. For example, he argued that all property had to be taken over by the state and redistributed. This appeared to him fair even though he was born to some privilege himself. This assumes that the state is inherently fair but as countless governments have proven, the state can be very destructive. Mills idea, according to Scroton (2006) “is, in short, a recipe for the disaster that we have seen in the communist and socialist systems, and it is a sign of Mill's failure of imagination that, unlike Smith, he did not foresee the likely results of his favored policies” (Scroton 2006). Though Mills believed that by freeing the individual society as a whole could be free, there are those who see some dangers in his ideas. This is because when individuals in a society are allowed to challenge the shared values and norms of the society it can create a destabilizing effect. As we have learned in recent years, however, the majority can learn to adapt. For example, a few decades ago, homosexuality was viewed in very negative terms and many people saw it as one of the ultimate destroyers of society. As more and more people have come out of the closet, it has become obvious that this so-called “aberration” is not going away any time soon. Thus, for many people, homosexuality has ceased to be the burning issue that it was a few decades ago. In fact, in the course of two decades, we have got to the point where gays can adopt children without large sections of the population worrying themselves inordinately about it. Some of the reasons for which Mills made his arguments have relevance for our own day. There was much religious intolerance in Mills’s day, emanating chiefly from the churches, which held to a strict ideology and sought to control the thinking of their parishioners and in fact members of society at large. In fact, Mill considered the situation so bad that, “In "On Liberty" Mill claimed that where there was religion, there was intolerance. Second, he wanted to establish a commitment to freedom and liberation that would allow humanity to pursue its happiness” (Uner 2005). It was Mills’s belief that people could take care of their own happiness if given the chance. In other words, people could, through their own efforts, pursue things that would bring them happiness. For a scholar like Mills, this made eminent sense. He had largely been able to steep himself in the kind of learning that he wanted. Though his father had given him the start it would have been terrible for society or anyone to have tried to rob him of the precious freedom he had to learn what he wanted. But he was not sharing these thoughts merely for his own edification. He really did hope that with widespread understanding of his ideas society would become better, giving rich and poor alike, the opportunity to follow their own lights. “The Social Contract,” written by Jean Jacques Rousseau also had a great impact in the 18th century, that is, before Mill’s time. In this work, Rousseau considered the relationship that individuals have among themselves and with the state and government. It was to Rousseau’s mind fairly clear that since each man is born alone no one holds any sway over another. In effect, no one has a natural authority over other human beings. In other words, a person cannot simply assert his authority over another simply because he is stronger. This kind of exercise of power over another human being would be illegitimate. For such a relationship to be legitimate, it was necessary for the people involved to have an agreement, a social pact or contract that would delineate the nature of the relationships. It was Rousseau thinking that as long as resources were abundant and all men could roam free and take from the earth what they needed they would be no incentive for a social pact. This, therefore, may have been the nature of things in times long ago when there was indeed plenty of space and land and food for all to eat. With dwindling resources, however, would come clashes between and among people. In such an environment it is clear that the stronger or more cunning would be the ones that would prevail while those without the necessary cunning or strength would lose out. The social contract purports to provide a proper alternative to the "state of nature". For Rousseau, the state of nature was initially peaceful, with this harmony attributable - among other things - to the small size of the population, the abundance of nature and the absence of competition. Gradually society became more complex, introduced private property and created new forms of dependence among men, resulting in economic and social inequalities. The state of greed and competition that came into being led Rousseau to propose a new social pact…(Carrin 2004) In Rousseau’s formulation, the social contract can be viewed as a sort of association among people with imposes reciprocal commitments between the state and the individual. As citizens, it is the individuals who share sovereign power but once they have elected a government they themselves become subject to that government. The government, is therefore, an intermediary between the citizens and the subjects, who are incidentally, one and the same! The state, through the sovereign power granted it, enacts laws and ensures that there are rules and regulations that will provide an environment of peace and order within which each individual can pursue his or her goals. Rousseau saw that such a society involved trade-offs. As he wrote, "What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses" (cited in Carrin 2004). Within the social compact, individuals, who might otherwise have suffered under any number of bullies, might actually get protection from the government, and avoiding the kind of lawlessness that might emerge when people exist in a state of nature with scarce resources. The opening salvo of Rousseau’s Social Contract is powerful indeed. He writes: “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” (Rousseau http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau-soccon.html ). It is interesting that years after Rousseau answered this question many Americans found themselves in the proverbial chains, with whites asserting their position as “masters” while denying their black counterparts the fruits of the land, even though these same slaves had done backbreaking work to ensure the prosperity of the land. What Rousseau might have been thinking about when he made his bold assertions about the social contract might have been the incredible power that various kings and queens across Europe held over their subjects. In those situations, it seems that the vast majority of people were being governed without their consent. They had fallen into the unfortunate circumstance where someone somewhere had declared himself the sovereign, passing on the position and all the benefits that went with it to successive generations. This, of course, meant that the ordinary people who had been robbed of all power would continue in their state of misery through no fault of theirs. Rousseau saw the unfairness of this situation but what made his opening pronouncement all the more powerful was that whereas the kings and queens might have seen themselves as the epitome of freedom they were actually in bondage as well. For fairness to prevail there must be no king and subject but rather all must acquiesce to follow Rousseau’s first 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” (Rousseau http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau-soccon.html ). Following this initial compact, it becomes clear that if a person hurts another he has indeed hurt the whole body. Rousseau, however, did not see the contracting of the individual with others as a mode of total surrender of a person’s individuality. There would still be individual will and general will. Being able to enter into contracts with others also meant that individuals had to be responsible and committed to the body politic. They would hold their own and not make themselves a burden on the others. In terms of property, Rousseau saw the State as having to control all the goods under the social contract. People would be able to hold property but the state becomes the mediator and referee, in effect, of who holds what property at what time. It seems that Rousseau foresaw some of the dangers that might easily crop up in a society that has a social compact. For example, in the United States, politics has become so much a matter of who has the money and who is able to connect with different voting blocs. While Rousseau acknowledges that religion might encourage devotion to duty in a society he believed that the State should take no interest in the dogmas of different religions. This encapsulates the so-called separation between state and religion. Where this separation has not been observed some in the society are apt to feel disconnected from it and perhaps feel less of a part of the society. In the United States, for example, some people claim that the nation is a Christian nation. This controversy erupted recently when a Muslim was voted into Congress. When the newly elected Congressman said that he would make his vows using the Quran many were those who came down on him. As he pointed out, however, there is nothing in the American constitution that says that America is a Christian nation and that the Bible alone is the document that should be used to swear people into public office. In sum, Rousseau believed that it was useful for the sake of harmony and peace that each person in society bind together with others to create a body politic to which all of them would be subject. He deplored the creation of factions as this would not allow individual predilections to determine what was good for the society as a whole. In Rouseau’s view, holding a referendum was likely to yield the kind of result that bode well for the society because people would both be considering their individual will and the general will in expressing themselves. In any case, signing onto the social compact should not be viewed, according to Rousseau, as surrender. Rather, it put an individual under the protection of society, protection that included ensuring that one did not lose one’s property to others simply because they were stronger. The reader might by now have figured out that Rousseau would have wanted each vote to count. In short, each individual had rights that he could exercise both for his own benefit and for that of the state. For his part, Mills was concerned about the increasing demands of the working classes due to industrialization and saw an opportunity to call more justice within the society. Democracy, which is touted as the best form of government is one that favors the majority, disregarding the needs of the minority sometimes. This struck Mills as being patently unfair. To Mills, individuals had to have the freedom to pursue their individual goals. Like Rousseau, Mills believed in universal franchise but perhaps he could not completely cast away the life of privilege to which he had been born. He believed that there were situations when the votes of some in society had to mean more than those of others. In this regard, he was probably thinking about super-intelligent people like himself who might have been worth one vote to ten of those of the masses. It must be noted though that some of the most oppressive people in the society were the clergy and the aristocrats all of whom pretended to greater intelligence than the masses. Rousseau may have been focused on the rights of individuals but Mills really took the matter of personal happiness to heart. He had had the chance to chart a path of intellectual development, one that no doubt brought him great satisfaction. He had also been able to pursue the kind of romantic liaisons that were generally frowned upon in his day. If that relationship did really bring him pleasure, it seems sure that he was all for others pursuing their pleasures even if these went against the grain of society’s customs. Bibliography Carrin, Guy J. “Rousseau’s “social contract”: contracting ahead of its time? World Health Organization. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Vol. 84 Issue 11 (Nov 2006):917. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. “The Social Contract.” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau-soccon.html Rousseau, Jean Jacques. “The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right.” Trans. G.D.H. Cole, 1762. http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_01.htm Scroton, Roger. “Thoroughly Modern Mill.” Wall Street Journal, (May 19, 2006):A10. Uner, Daglier. “John Stuart Mill’s two-pronged argument for freedom of expression.” (2005) Boston College, AAT 3176660. Walker, Lewis J. “The Morality of Economics: How do you define and contribute to a “just” society? A classic philosophy text offers some guidance.” On Wall Street, (Dec 1, 2004):1. Read More