I want to inquire whether there can be some legitimate and sure rule of administration in the civil order,5 taking men as they are and laws as they might be. I will always try in this inquiry to bring together what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility do not find themselves at odds with one another.
I begin without demonstrating the importance of my subject. It will be asked if I am a prince or a legislator that I should be writing about politics. I answer that I am neither, and that is why I write about politics. Were I a prince or a legislator, I would not waste my time saying what ought to be done. I would do it or keep quiet.
Since I was born a citizen of a free state and a member of the sovereign,6 the right to vote is enough to impose upon me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs, however little influence my voice may have in them. Happy am I, for every time I meditate on governments, I always find new reasons in my inquiries for loving that of my country.
Chapter 1
Subject of the First Book
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. He who believes himself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they. How did this change take place? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I believe I can answer this question.
Were I to consider only force and the effect that flows from it, I would say that as long as a people is constrained to obey and does obey, it does well. As soon as it can shake off the yoke and does shake it off, it does even better. For by recovering its liberty by means of the same right that stole it, either {157} the populace is justified in getting it back or else those who took it away were not justified in their actions. But the social order is a sacred right that serves as a foundation for all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature. It is therefore founded upon agreement.7 The real question is: what is this agreement? Before coming to that, I ought to substantiate what I just claimed.
Chapter 2
Of the First Societies
The most ancient of all societies, and the only natural one, is that of the family. Even so, children remain bound to their father only as long as they need him to take care of them. As soon as the need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. Once the children are freed from the obedience they owed the father and their father is freed from the care he owed his children, all return equally to independence. If they continue to remain united, this no longer takes place naturally but voluntarily, and the family itself is maintained only by means of agreement.8
This common liberty is one consequence of the nature of man. Its first law is to see to his preservation; its first concerns are those he owes himself; and, as soon as he reaches the age of reason, since he alone is the judge of the proper means of taking care of himself, he thereby becomes his own master.
The family therefore is, so to speak, the prototype of political societies; the leader is the image of the father, the populace is the image of the children, and, since all are born equal and free, none give up their liberty except for their utility. The entire difference consists in the fact that in the family the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes for them, while in the state, where the leader does not have love for his peoples, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of this feeling.
{158} Grotius denies that all human authority is established for the benefit of the governed, citing slavery as an example.9 His characteristic method of reasoning is always to present fact as a proof of right.10 A more logical method could be used, but not one more favorable to tyrants.
According to Grotius, it is therefore doubtful whether the human race belongs to a hundred men, or whether these hundred men belong to the human race. And throughout his book he appears to lean toward the former view. This is Hobbes’ position as well. On this account, the human race is divided into herds of cattle, each one having its own leader who guards it in order to devour it.
Just as a herdsman possesses a nature superior to that of his herd, the herdsmen of men, who are their leaders, also have a nature superior to that of their peoples. According to Philo,11 the emperor Caligula reasoned thus, concluding quite properly from this analogy that kings were gods, or that the peoples were beasts.
Caligula’s reasoning coincides with that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle, before these three, had also said that men are by no means equal by nature, but that some are born for slavery and others for domination.12
Aristotle was right, but he took the effect for the cause. Every man born in slavery is born for slavery; nothing is more certain. In their chains, slaves lose everything, even the desire to escape. They love their servitude the way the companions of Ulysses loved being turned into beasts.13 If there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves contrary to nature. Force has produced the first slaves; their cowardice has perpetuated them.
I have said nothing about King Adam or Emperor Noah, father of three great monarchs who partitioned the universe, as did the children of Saturn, whom some have believed they recognize in them.14 I hope I will be appreciated for this moderation, for since I am a direct descendant of one of these princes, and perhaps of the eldest branch, how am I to know whether, after the verification of titles, I might not find myself the legitimate king of the human species? Be that as it may, we cannot deny that Adam was the sovereign of the {159} world, just as Robinson Crusoe was sovereign of his island, as long as he was its sole inhabitant. And the advantage this empire had was that the monarch, securely on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear.
Chapter 3
On the Right of the Strongest
The strongest is never strong enough to be master all the time, unless he transforms force into right and obedience into duty—hence the right of the strongest, a right that seems like something intended ironically and is actually presented as a basic principle.15 But will no one explain this word [strongest] to me? Force is a physical power; I fail to see what morality can result from its effects. To give in to force is an act of necessity, not of will. At most, it is an act of prudence. In what sense could it be a duty?
Let us suppose for a moment that there is such a thing as this alleged right. I maintain that all that results from it is an inexplicable mishmash. For once force produces right, the effect changes places with the cause. Every force that is superior to the first succeeds to its right. As soon as one can disobey with impunity, one can do so legitimately; and since the strongest is always right, the only thing to do is to make oneself the strongest. But what kind of right is it that perishes when the force on which it is based ceases? If one must obey because of force, one need not do so out of duty; and if one is no longer forced to obey, one is no longer obliged. Clearly then, this word “right” adds nothing to force. It is utterly meaningless here.
Obey the powers that be. If that means giving in to force, the precept is sound, but superfluous. I reply it will never be violated. All power comes from God16—I admit it—but so does every disease. Does this mean that calling in a physician is prohibited? If a brigand takes me by surprise at the edge of a wooded area, is it not only the case that I must surrender my purse, but even that I am in good conscience bound to surrender it, if I were able to withhold it? After all, the pistol he holds is also a power.
Let us then agree that force does not bring about right and that one is obliged to obey only legitimate powers. Thus my original question keeps returning.
Since no man has a natural authority over his fellowman, and since force does not give rise to any right, agreements alone therefore remain as the basis of all legitimate authority among men.
{160} If, says Grotius, a private individual can alienate his liberty and turn himself into the slave of a master, why could not an entire people alienate its liberty and turn itself into the subject of a king?17 There are many equivocal words here that need explanation, but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. A man who makes himself the slave of someone else does not give himself; he sells himself, at least for his subsistence. But why does a people sell itself? Far from furnishing his subjects with their subsistence, a king derives his own from them alone, and, according to Rabelais, a king does not live cheaply. Do subjects then give their persons on the condition that their possessions will also be taken? I fail to see what remains for them to preserve.
It will be said that the despot assures his subjects of civil tranquility.18 Very well. But what do they gain, if the wars his ambition drags them into, if his insatiable greed, if the oppressive demands caused by his ministers, occasion more grief for his subjects than their own dissensions would have done? What do they gain, if this very tranquility is one of their miseries? A tranquil life is also had in dungeons; is that enough to make them desirable? The Greeks who were locked up in the Cyclops’ cave lived a tranquil existence as they awaited their turn to be devoured.19
To say that a man gives himself gratuitously is to say something absurd and inconceivable. Such an act is illegitimate and null, if only for the fact that he who commits it does not have his wits about him. To say the same thing of an entire populace is to suppose a populace composed of madmen. Madness does not make right.
Even if each person can alienate himself, he cannot alienate his children. They are born men and free. Their liberty belongs to them; they alone have the right to dispose of it. Before they have reached the age of reason, their father can, in their name, stipulate conditions for their preservation and for their well-being. But he cannot give them irrevocably and unconditionally, for such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature and goes beyond the rights of paternity. For an arbitrary government to be legitimate, it would therefore be necessary in each generation for the people to be master of its acceptance or rejection. But in that event, this government would no longer be arbitrary.
Renouncing one’s liberty is renouncing one’s dignity as a man, the rights of humanity, and even its duties. There is no possible compensation for anyone who renounces everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man. Taking away all liberty from his will is tantamount to removing all morality from his actions. Finally, it is a vain and contradictory agreement that stipulates absolute authority on one side and a limitless obedience on the other. Is it not clear that no commitments are made to a {161} person from whom one has the right to demand everything? And does this condition alone not bring with it, since there is no equivalent or exchange, the nullity of the act? For what right would my slave have against me, given that all he has belongs to me, and that, since his right is my right, my having a right against myself makes no sense?
Grotius and others20 derive from war another origin for the alleged right of slavery. Since, according to them, the victor has the right to kill the vanquished, these latter can ransom their lives at the price of their liberty—a contract all the more legitimate since it turns a profit for both of them.
But clearly, this alleged right to kill the vanquished does not in any way derive from the state of war.21 Men are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason that men living in their original state of independence do not have sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either a state of peace or a state of war. It is the relationship between things and not that between men that brings about war. And since this state of war cannot come into existence from simple personal relations, but only from real relations,22 a private war between one man and another can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no constant property, nor in the social state, where everything is under the authority of the laws.
Fights between private individuals, duels, and brawls are not acts that produce a state. And with regard to private wars, authorized by the ordinances of King Louis IX of France and suspended by The Peace of God, they are abuses peculiar to feudal government, an absurd system if there ever was one, contrary to the principles of natural right and to all sound polity.
War is not, therefore, a relationship between one man and another, but a relationship between one state and another. In war private individuals are enemies only incidentally—not as men or even as citizens23 but as soldiers; not as members of the homeland but as its defenders. Finally, each state can {162} have as enemies only other states and not men, since there can be no real relationship between things of disparate natures.
This principle is even in conformity with the established maxims of all times and with the constant practice of all civilized peoples. Declarations of war are warnings not so much to powers as to their subjects. The foreigner (be he king, private individual, or a people) who robs, kills, or detains subjects of another prince without declaring war on the prince, is not an enemy but a brigand. Even in the midst of war, a just prince rightly appropriates to himself everything in an enemy country belonging to the public, but respects the person and goods of private individuals. He respects the rights upon which his own rights are founded. Since the purpose of war is the destruction of the enemy state, one has the right to kill the defenders of that state as long as they bear arms. But as soon as they lay down their arms and surrender, they cease to be enemies or instruments of the enemy. They return to being simply men; and one no longer has a right to their lives. Sometimes a state can be killed without a single one of its members being killed. For war does not grant a right that is unnecessary to its purpose.24 These principles are not those of Grotius; they are not based on the authority of poets.25 Rather they are derived from the nature of things; they are based on reason.
As to the right of conquest, the only basis it has is the law of the strongest. If war does not give the victor the right to massacre the vanquished peoples, this right (which he does not have) cannot be the basis for the right to enslave them. One has the right to kill the enemy only when one cannot enslave him. The right to enslave him does not therefore derive from the right to kill him. Hence, it is an iniquitous exchange to make him buy his life, to which no one has any right, at the price of his liberty. In establishing the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death, is it not clear that one falls into a vicious circle?
Even if we were to suppose that there were this terrible right to kill everyone, I maintain that neither a person enslaved during wartime nor a conquered people bears any obligation whatever toward its master, except to obey him for as long as it is forced to do so. In taking the equivalent of his life, the victor has done him no favor. Instead of killing him unprofitably, he kills him usefully. Hence, far from the victor having acquired any authority over him beyond force, the state of war subsists between them just as before. Their relationship itself is the effect of war, and the usage of the right to war does not suppose any peace treaty. They have made a contract. Fine. But this contract, far from destroying the state of war, presupposes its continuation.
Thus, from every point of view, the right of slavery is null, not simply because it is illegitimate, but because it is absurd and meaningless. These words, slavery and right, are contradictory. They are mutually exclusive. {163} Whether it is the statement of one man to another man, or of one man to a people, the following sort of talk will always be equally nonsensical. “I make an agreement with you that is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; and, for as long as it pleases me, I will observe it and so will you.”
Chapter 5
That It Is Always Necessary to Return to a First Agreement
Even if I were to grant all that I have thus far refuted, the supporters of despotism would not be any better off. There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. If scattered men were successively enslaved by a single individual, I see nothing there—however many they may be—but a master and slaves; I do not see a people and its leader. It is, if you will, an aggregation, but not an association. There is neither a public good nor a body politic there. Even if that man had enslaved half the world, he is always just a private individual. His interest, separated from that of others, is never anything but a private interest. If this same man happens to die, after his passing his empire remains scattered and disunited, just as an oak tree disintegrates and falls into a pile of ashes after fire has consumed it.
A people, says Grotius, can give itself to a king. According to Grotius, therefore, a people is a people before it gives itself to a king. This gift itself is a civil act; it presupposes a public deliberation. Thus, before examining the act whereby a people chooses a king, it would be well to examine the act whereby a people is a people. For since this act is necessarily prior to the other, it is the true foundation of society.
In fact, if there were no prior agreement, then, unless the vote were unanimous, what would be the basis of the minority’s obligation to submit to the majority’s choice, and where do one hundred who want a master get the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority rule is itself established by agreement and presupposes unanimity on at least one occasion.
Chapter 6
On the Social Compact
I suppose that men have reached the point where obstacles that are harmful to their maintenance in the state of nature gain the upper hand by their resistance to the forces that each individual can bring to bear to maintain himself in that state. Such being the case, that original state cannot subsist any longer, and the human race would perish if it did not alter its mode of existence.
For since men cannot engender new forces, but merely unite and direct existing ones, they have no other means of maintaining themselves but to form by aggregation a sum of forces that could gain the upper hand over the resistance, so that their forces are directed by means of a single moving power and made to act in concert.
{164} This sum of forces cannot come into being without the cooperation of many. But since each man’s force and liberty are the primary instruments of his maintenance, how is he going to entrust them to others without hurting himself and without neglecting the care that he owes himself? This difficulty, seen in terms of my subject, can be stated in the following terms:
“Find a form of association that defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and, by means of which, each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem for which the social contract provides the solution.
The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the least modification renders them vain and ineffectual, that, although perhaps they have never been formally promulgated, they are everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly accepted and acknowledged. The result is that once the social compact is violated, each person then regains his first rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the contractual liberty26 for which he renounced it.
These clauses, properly understood, are all reducible to a single one, namely, the total alienation of each associate together with all of his rights to the entire community. For first of all, since each person gives himself whole and entire, the condition is equal for everyone; and since the condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for the others.
Moreover, since the alienation is made without reservation, the union is as perfect as possible, and no associate has anything further to demand. For if some rights remained with private individuals, in the absence of any common superior who could decide between them and the public, each person would eventually claim to be his own judge in all things, since he is on some particular point his own judge. The state of nature would subsist and the association would necessarily become tyrannical or hollow.
Finally, in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one. And since there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right that he would grant others over himself, he gains the equivalent of everything he loses, along with a greater amount of force to preserve what he has.
If, therefore, one eliminates from the social compact whatever is not essential to it, one will find that it is reducible to the following terms. Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and as one, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.
At once, in place of the individual person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral27 and collective body composed of as many {165} members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life, and its will. This public person, formed thus by union of all the others, formerly took the name city,28 and at present takes the name republic or body politic, which is called state by its members when it is passive, sovereign when it is active, power when compared to others like itself. As for the associates, they collectively take the name people; individually they are called citizens, insofar as they are participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects, insofar as they are subjected to the laws of the state. But these terms are often confused and mistaken for one another. It is enough to know how to distinguish them when they are used with absolute precision.
This formula shows that the act of association includes a reciprocal commitment between the public and private individuals, and that each individual, contracting, as it were, with himself, finds himself under a twofold commitment, namely, as a member of the sovereign toward private individuals, and as a member of the state toward the sovereign. But the maxim of civil law that no one is held to commitments made to himself cannot be applied here, for there is a considerable difference between being obligated to oneself or to a whole of which one is a part.
It must be further noted that the public deliberation that can obligate all the subjects to the sovereign, owing to the two different relationships in which each of them is viewed, cannot, for the opposite reason, obligate the sovereign to itself and that consequently it is contrary to the nature of the {166} body politic that the sovereign impose upon itself a law it could not break. Since the sovereign can be considered under but one single relationship, it is then in the position of a private individual contracting with himself. Whence it is apparent that there neither is nor can be any type of fundamental law that is obligatory for the people as a body, not even the social contract.29 This does not mean that the whole body cannot perfectly well commit itself to another body with respect to things that do not infringe on this contract. For in regard to the foreigner, it becomes a simple being, an individual.
However, since the body politic or the sovereign derives its being exclusively from the sanctity of the contract, it can never obligate itself, not even to another power, to do anything that derogates from the original act, such as alienating some portion of itself or submitting to another sovereign. Violation of the act whereby it exists would be self-annihilation, and whatever is nothing produces nothing.
As soon as this multitude is thus united in a body, one cannot harm one of the members without attacking the whole body. It is even less possible that the body can be harmed without the members feeling it. Thus duty and interest equally obligate the two contracting parties to come to one another’s aid, and the same men should seek to combine in this twofold relationship all the advantages that result from it.
For since the sovereign is formed entirely from the private individuals who make it up, it neither has nor could have an interest contrary to theirs. Hence, the sovereign power has no need to offer a guarantee to its subjects, since it is impossible for a body to want to harm all of its members, and, as we will see later, it cannot harm any one of them in particular. The sovereign, by the mere fact that it exists, is always all that it should be.
But the same thing cannot be said of the subjects in relation to the sovereign, for whom, despite their common interest, their commitments would be without substance if it did not find ways of being assured of their fidelity.
In fact, each individual can, as a man, have a private will contrary to or different from the general will that he has as a citizen. His private interest can speak to him in an entirely different manner than the common interest. His absolute and naturally independent existence can cause him to envisage what he owes the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will be less harmful to others than its payment is burdensome to him. And in viewing the moral person that constitutes the state as a theoretical entity30 because it is not a man, he would enjoy the rights of a citizen without wanting {167} to fulfill the duties of a subject, an injustice whose growth would bring about the ruin of the body politic.
Thus, in order for the social compact to avoid being an empty formula, it tacitly entails the commitment—which alone can give force to the others—that whoever refuses to obey the general will, will be forced to do so by the entire body. This means merely that he will be forced to be free. For it is this condition that, by giving each citizen to the homeland, guarantees him against all personal dependence, this condition that produces the skill and the performance of the political machine and that alone bestows legitimacy upon civil commitments. Without it, such commitments would be absurd, tyrannical, and subject to the worst abuses.
This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces quite a remarkable change in man, for it substitutes justice for instinct in his behavior and gives his actions a moral quality they previously lacked. Only then, when the voice of duty replaces physical impulse and right replaces appetite, does man, who had hitherto taken only himself into account, find himself forced to act upon other principles and consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although in this state he deprives himself of several of the advantages belonging to him in the state of nature, he gains equally great ones in return. His faculties are exercised and developed, his ideas are broadened, his feelings are ennobled, his entire soul is elevated to such a height that, if the abuse of this new condition did not often lower his condition to beneath the level he left, he ought constantly to bless the happy moment that tore him away from it forever and that transformed him from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man.
Let us summarize this entire balance sheet so that the credits and debits are easily compared. What man loses through the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and that he can acquire. What he gains is civil liberty and the proprietary ownership of all he possesses. So as not to be in error with regard to the value of these exchanges, it is necessary to draw a careful distinction between natural liberty (which is limited solely by the force of the individual involved) and civil liberty (which is limited by the general will), and between possession (which is merely the effect of the force or the right of the first occupant) and proprietary ownership (which can only be based on a positive title).
To the preceding could be added the acquisition in the civil state of moral liberty, which alone makes man truly the master of himself. For to be driven by appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself is liberty. But I have already said too much on this subject, and the philosophical meaning of the word liberty is not part of my subject here.
{168} Chapter 9
On Real Property31
Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all the goods in his possession. This is not to say that by this act alone possession changes its nature as it changes hands and becomes property in the hands of the sovereign. Rather, since the forces of the city are incomparably greater than those of a private individual, public possession is by that very fact stronger and more irrevocable, without being more legitimate, at least to strangers. For with regard to its members, the state is master of all their goods in virtue of the social contract, which serves in the state as the basis of all rights. But with regard to other powers, the state is master only in virtue of the right of the first occupant, which it derives from private individuals.
The right of first occupant, though more real than the right of the strongest, does not become a true right until after the establishment of the right of property. Every man by nature has a right to everything he needs; however, the positive act whereby he becomes a proprietor of some goods excludes him from all the rest. Once his lot has been determined, he should limit himself thereto, no longer having any right against the community. This is why the right of the first occupant, so weak in the state of nature, is able to command the respect of every man living in the civil state. In this right, one respects not so much what belongs to others as what does not belong to oneself.
In general, the following rules are necessary in order to authorize the right of the first occupant on any land. First, this land may not already be occupied by anyone. Second, no one may occupy more than the amount needed to subsist. Third, one is to take possession of it not by an empty ceremony, but by working and cultivating it—the only sign of property that ought, in the absence of legal titles, to be respected by others.32
In fact, by according the right of the first occupant only to those who need and who work, have we not extended it as far as it can go? Is it possible to avoid setting limits to this right? Will setting one’s foot on a piece of common land be sufficient to claim it at once as one’s own? Will having the force for a moment to drive off other men be sufficient to deny them the right ever to return? How can a man or a people seize a vast amount of territory and deprive the entire human race of it except by a punishable usurpation, since this seizure deprives all other men of the shelter and sustenance that nature gives them in common? When Nuñez Balboa stood on the shoreline and took possession of the South Sea and all of South America in the name of {169} the crown of Castille, was this enough to dispossess all the inhabitants and to exclude all the princes of the world? On that basis, those ceremonies would be multiplied quite in vain. All the Catholic king had to do was take possession of the universe all at once from his study, excepting afterward from his empire only what already belonged to other princes.
One can imagine how the combined and contiguous lands of private individuals become public territory and how the right of sovereignty, extending from subjects to the land they occupy, becomes at once real and personal. This places its owners in a greater dependence, turning their very own forces into guarantees of their loyalty. This advantage does not seem to have been fully appreciated by the ancient monarchs, who, calling themselves merely kings of the Persians, the Scythians, and the Macedonians, appeared to regard themselves merely as the leaders of men rather than the masters of the country. Today’s monarchs more shrewdly call themselves kings of France, Spain, England, and so on. In holding the land thus, they are quite sure of holding the inhabitants.
What is remarkable about this alienation is that, in accepting the goods of private individuals, the community is far from despoiling them; rather, in so doing, it merely assures them of legitimate possession, changing usurpation into a true right, and enjoyment into proprietary ownership. So, since owners are considered trustees of the public good, and since their rights are respected by all members of the state and maintained with all its force against foreigners, through a surrender that is advantageous to the public and still more so to themselves, they have, so to speak, acquired all they have given. This paradox is easily explained by the distinction between the rights the sovereign and the proprietor have to the same land,33 as will be seen later.
It can also happen that men begin to unite before possessing anything and later appropriate a piece of land sufficient for everyone, so that they enjoy it in common or divide it among themselves either in equal shares or according to proportions laid down by the sovereign. In whatever way this acquisition is accomplished, each private individual’s right to his own land is always subordinate to the community’s right to all, without which there could be neither solidity in the social fabric nor real force in the exercise of sovereignty.34
I will end this chapter and this book with a remark that should serve as a basis for every social system. It is that instead of destroying natural equality, the fundamental compact, on the contrary, substitutes a moral and legitimate equality to whatever physical inequality nature may have been able to impose {170} upon men, and that, however unequal in force or intelligence they may be, men all become equal by agreement and by right.35
END OF THE FIRST BOOK