Rousseau Closer to Marx Than to Locke

 

David Bozarth

Sonoma State University

POLS 315

15 June 2004

 “Were there such a thing as a nation of Gods, it would be a democracy. So perfect a form of government is not suited to mere men.” [1]

Karl Marx might have been reluctant to accept characterization of Rousseau as transitional between Locke and himself. Locke was a dead-on-the-money political theorist; Marx was a critical-visionary economic and social analyst. Both were concerned with the matter and forces of human affairs.

Rousseau’s Social Contract is a thorough and meaningful reflection on a brilliant hallucination. There is no such “general will” among any substantial body of humans, but the engaging idealism of Rousseau convinces us that function follows form in the life of the body politic. Marx the “scientific” observer would have now to agree that Rousseau carried Locke’s groundwork aloft on mythic wings and returned in searing glory, bearing the fire of totalitarian utopia.

FREEDOM & SLAVERY

Freedom is a prime essential quality of the state of nature. In forming a social pact, humans accept limitation on individual freedom, in order to gain collective freedom from danger. Locke examines this process, emphasizing the individual’s stake in the association. Rousseau is similarly concerned with formation principles, but requires the forming associates to check their individualism at the door (p186), to enable expression of the general will. Marx sees the triumph of bourgeois society, essential in redirecting the systematic exploitation endemic to corrupt individualism, as preparation for a truly reformed contract founded on community. Rousseau may be seen to share Marx’s interest in suppressing anti-communitarian conceits of the individual, but Rousseau expresses (within Social Contract) less regard for the flourishing of the individual within a rational society (Marx). This suggests, as might be expected over the course of a century, a more refined consideration by Marx compared with Rousseau’s earlier reaction to the “conservative liberalism of the Enlightenment.”

Locke and Rousseau agree that it is no person’s natural right to submit to slavery. Locke appeals to a seemingly specious ontological or theological proposition (one doesn’t own one’s own life to give)(p15). Rousseau claims that surrender of freedom is an irrational contravention of one’s own nature (p175). None has right over the freedom of others, including offspring (pp174). Furthermore, if one can submit, then by logical extension an entire population can submit themselves – an insult to reason (p173).

Locke allows enslavement in case of a just conquest, as continuation of the state of war, and asserts that by consent, such a relationship is transformed out of slavery into something more palatable (p16).  Rousseau refutes this specifically and at length. Might is not right, and “war … is something that occurs not between man and man, but between States … a State can have as its enemies only other States, not men at all.” But “slavery” takes on a more encompassing meaning for Rousseau. Life under despotism is slavery, and guarantees the sword, not peace for those who submit (pp173-178).

For Marx, slavery (class exploitation) is the dominant paradigm. The masters, moreover, are themselves enslaved to the extent that they must propagate their ownership or suffer retraction. Only by slave revolt and seizure of political and economic control, can liberation be achieved for all.

In Locke, freedom for the individual is achieved through social contract and effective government. In Rousseau, freedom for the population is achieved through submission to the general will, which is based on social contract and nurtured by effective government.  In Marx, freedom for every population (and thus for each person) is to be achieved through economic and social restructuring – and once a critical mass of freedom exists on the planet, the State will wither away.

PROPERTY & LABOR

Private property is a fundamental right of the Lockean individual. Most relations among persons, the social contract, and governmental structures are all organized around protection of private value interests.

Rousseau performs one of many virtuous mental transformations, as humans associate to form a compact. All their holdings of material value (including land) instantaneously accrue to the commonwealth. In the same instant, all those items that were obtained or occupied in moderation, through honest means, are returned and assigned to the original owners, occupants, tenants, farmers, miners, artisans, and so on. (Presumably, the original chain of custody applies instantly as well, so that basically everyone gets their stuff back.) Anything in excess of what is needed by a person, according to the general will, is retained by the commonwealth. Likewise, all future acquisitions and transactions are subject to the limitation of prudence established by the general will.

In essence, this material abundance held in common coincides closely with formation of the State, to be distinguished from the Sovereign (the People guided by the general will). Also, Rousseau’s notion of fair sharing coupled with right of first occupancy, is based on a deeper concern with equality:

Under a bad government such equality is but apparent and illusory. It serves only to keep the poor man confined within the limits of his poverty, and to maintain the rich in their usurpation. In fact, laws are always beneficial to the ‘haves’ and injurious to the ‘have-nots.’  Whence it follows that life in a social community can thrive only when all its citizens have something, and none have too much (p189).

Marx sees the holding and pursuit of “class property” (property gained and held by means or for purpose of class exploitation by the bourgeoisie) as target for abolition by socialist reform[2]. Redistribution of wealth and real property are to be mechanisms for alleviating the inequities engendered by class exploitation, and for providing an economic basis for the well-being and productivity of an egalitarian society.

Locke, Rousseau, and Marx all hold that material goods acquire value from the labor of people, and that labor entitles the worker to some benefit from the work. Rousseau agrees with Locke that individuals have a right to hold and exploit private property, but insists (like Marx) that the commonwealth retain a more fundamental order of ownership over all valuable resources in its domain, even to the extent of redistribution.

POWER & GOVERNMENT

Once an association has been formed by social contract in the Lockean world, the next thing to watch out for is tyranny.  He separates a proper government into Legislative, Executive, and Federative sections, each with defined and limited powers, in order to hold back the heavy hand of government and protect the rights of property owners.

Rousseau is more concerned with the corrupting tendencies of individual ambition. This is consistent with the character of his political theory as outlined in Social Contract - complex in its interdependency, and replete with reliance on metaphysical gymnastics.  One example from the text:

The difficulty is to understand how it is possible to have an act of government before ever a government exists, and how a People, which can only be sovereign or subject, can, in certain circumstances, become prince or magistrate.

It is here that there again comes to light one of those astonishing properties of the body politic by which it reconciles apparently contradictory operations. For this situation is brought about by a sudden conversion of sovereignty into a democracy, in such a sort that, without any noticeable change, and merely as a result of a new relation of all to all, the citizens, having become magistrates, pass from general acts to particular acts, from the law to the execution of law.(p265)

Rousseau at once proceeds to offer a concrete example. His reasoning is coherent. My claim is that his theory is riddled with dependencies on such formal convolutions, and is therefore brittle. This is significant because perturbations happen in the life of the body politic – individuals plot, they are greedy, and so on. A circumspect genius, Rousseau does well in vigilance for the integrity of his system of thought and his prescriptions for government. His bulwark of protection for the Sovereign and the State is built on derogation of individual rights and the submission of the individual to the general will.

Both Locke and Rousseau advocated expression of the popular will by government, separation of powers, and limited Executive prerogative. Locke avoided abstractions like the Sovereign and the general will, in part because his theory of government was less ambitious, but also because he took for granted the greedy self-interest feared by Rousseau, and found less cause for alarm.

Locke, Rousseau, and Marx spanned over two centuries between them. They all attempted to explain how things came to be the way they are, in political society. They each critiqued existing power structures and offered prescriptions for change. Marx had less to say about the structure of a continuing government, because his long-range view entailed obsolescence of the State.

Rousseau and Locke are associated with classical liberal tradition: Locke on the short list of godfathers, Rousseau off-sprung and heading elsewhere. For Marx, classical liberalism and bourgeois society breathed the same air and were busy fulfilling the same destiny together.

Rousseau was not explicitly utopian or totalitarian. Nominally, his task was to apply the lessons of history and reason to the problem of a lasting national government in a changing but seemingly well-understood world. His detailed historical methodology, his strong communitarian emphasis, and his rationalist framework may have given Karl Marx food for thought.

Rousseau envisioned a Sovereign people of like mind on key issues, with similarly directed urges for cohesion and justice, so that deviants would be identified and processed so to avoid harming the Sovereign, and the mechanism of society could run uninterrupted. While in harmony with Puritan values, this is more than a stone’s throw from the Lockean political world of expected conflict and compromise amid institutions designed to govern least.

The hope of forcing some variant of freedom through sublimation of the individual in the Sovereign is a vision with attraction. Like it or not, it’s an idea that keeps coming back for more.