Syed Yusuf Saadat
Senior Research Associate, Centre for Policy Dialogue
E-mail: saadat@cpd.org.bd
Nobody has any natural authority over anybody else. The strong have no natural authority over the weak. If the strong can oppress the weak on the basis that “might is right”, then the weak may also assemble themselves and overthrow the strong on the same basis. Since strength is itself evanescent, it cannot be the basis of a natural right. Thus, the right of the strongest is illegitimate. Therefore, the only legitimate authority among individuals must be based on a social consensus. This was the conclusion reached by the Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in his remarkable book titled “The Social Contract”.
In the state of nature each individual is free to do whatever the person wants. However, Rousseau believed that such absolute freedom is driven by animal instincts, and that “to be governed by appetite alone is slavery”. The social contract is a form of association in which each individual gives herself or himself up completely to the whole of the community. In this process the community establishes the “sovereign”, which is guided by the “general will” of the people. The manifestation of the “general will” is found in the laws that govern society, which the people themselves formulate. Under the social contract, the life, liberty and livelihood of each individual are preserved, and each individual obeys nobody but themselves and remains as free as before. Thus, Rousseau mentions that “obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom”.
The social contract creates a moral and lawful equality so that all individuals become equal by social consensus and by right, regardless of their inequality in physical strength or mental intelligence. Unfortunately, such moral and lawful equality is contingent on the distribution of income and wealth in society. Rousseau believed that since laws are useful exclusively for the rich, the social state can only be beneficial to everyone if “all possess something and none has too much”. This means that if inequality is high, then the laws of society may no longer reflect the “general will” of the people, but rather represent the “exclusive will” of the rich. Thus, Rousseau implied that excessive inequality was not only detrimental to society, but was also a violation of the social contract. Hence, in the presence of high inequality entering into any pseudo social contract does not lead to the civil liberty that comes from obeying the laws that one has prescribed for oneself, but rather leads to slavery that comes from obeying the laws “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich”.