The Social Contract

The general will is best expressed when those voting in assembly are unanimous or nearly so. This indicates a healthy state. By contrast, the state is in decline when assemblies are plagued by dissent and tumult. One exception is when citizens, gripped by flattery and fear, vote unanimously to elevate a tyrant.

The social contract itself requires unanimity, though opposition when that contract is forged does not negate the contract; it simply prevents opponents from joining in it, leaving them “foreigners among citizens.” Later, if a law passes by a mere simple majority, the law’s opponents remain bound by the social contract to adhere to the law, as it is evidently the general will, whether the opponent realizes it or not. 

Rousseau agrees with the political theorist Montesquieu that the fairest form of election in a true democracy is done at random, or “by lot.” This is fair to both the elected magistrate and those the magistrate governs. Rousseau explains: “In every real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a burdensome charge which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another” (63).

Election by choice, meanwhile, is better suited to an aristocracy, though the franchise of voting for magistrates is extended only to the existing prince and magistrates.

Rousseau takes a deep dive into the inner workings of the Roman Republic Comitia, its legislative assemblies, to show how two hundred thousand citizens managed to maintain popular sovereignty for hundreds of years. He details the creation and makeup of Rome’s three popular assemblies: the comitia curiata, the comitia tribunata, and the comitia centuriata. These committees were designed to balance various interests including urban and rural, rich and poor, and aristocratic and non-aristocratic. 

At times, there may necessitate the formulation of an independent body to correct imbalances of power. Referred to as the tribunate, the body is “the preserver of laws and of the legislative power” (67). With precedents in Ancient Rome and Sparta, the tribunate may protect the sovereign from the government, or it may preserve the government against the people. Although the tribunate has no legislative or executive power, its power lies in the ability to prevent unfortunate things from being done.

Just as sovereign power is at risk of being usurped by the executive government, executive power is at risk of usurped by the tribunate. Rousseau attributes the downfall of the Roman Republic to “the excessive power of the tribunes” (68). To diminish the chances of usurpation, Rousseau recommends disbanding the tribunate at various intervals, reinstating it only when needed.

Rousseau believes that in times of extreme crisis, when the state’s very existence is at stake, a dictatorship of one or two people may be established to speed along whatever remedies are needed to save the country. Suspending sovereign authority does not violate the social contract because the preservation of the state is an obvious expression of the general will. Crucially, the dictatorship must be brief with no opportunity to prolong it.

Rousseau advocates for the existence of a censor’s office, through which public morality is sustained. He is quick to point out that the censorship may preserve morality but cannot restore it once lost.

The earliest societies were all theocracies, writes Rousseau. As each society believed in its own god, this led to theological intolerance, which in turn became civil intolerance as these societies warred with one another. This conflation of politics and theology led to a situation in which “there was no way of converting a people except by enslaving it, and there could be no missionaries save conquerors” (70).

This changed with the coming of Jesus, who established a spiritual kingdom on Earth that transcended state divisions. Yet this only created internal divisions within Christianity that still persist in Rousseau’s era, as Christians struggle to know if they are bound to obey kings or priests. Rousseau credits Hobbes as the sole Christian writer to recognize that there can be no political unity unless state power and religious power are imbued in a single sovereign authority.

Rousseau goes on to distinguish between two types of religion: the religion of man and the religion of the citizen. The religion of man exists solely in one’s heart and comprises the “natural divine right or law” (71). The religion of the citizen is an external institution of the state with its own rites and dogmas. “[O]utside the single nation that follows it,” Rousseau writes, “all the world is in its sight infidel, foreign and barbarous” (71). There is also a third type of the kind seen in countries where citizens are asked to be obedient to both religious and civil authority—pope and king—leading inevitably to contradictions and confusion.

Rousseau rejects the second and third types unequivocally. Of the first type, the religion of man, Rousseau says its only defect is that it has “no particular relation to the body politic,” depriving citizens of “one of the great bonds that unite societies” (72).

Rousseau seeks a compromise between the religion of man and the religion of the citizen. Under this compromise, each individual is free to worship in the manner of their choosing, but they must adhere to a civil religion or else they may be banished—“not for impiety, but as an anti-social being” (72). The dogmas of this civil religion should all be “positive dogmas”: concepts like the existence of God, the afterlife, and divine justice. The only “negative dogma” is to forbid religious intolerance—for, as Rousseau puts it, “It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned” (72).

Rousseau would like next to discuss how a sovereign state handles matters of foreign policy, but that topic is outside the scope of this treatise.