The Social Contract · Chapter
Real Property explained
Rousseau examines how the social contract transforms individual possession into legitimate property under the sovereign, arguing that the community's right over all goods is supreme and that the fundamental compact replaces natural inequali
What happens
Rousseau examines how the social contract transforms individual possession into legitimate property under the sovereign, arguing that the community's right over all goods is supreme and that the fundamental compact replaces natural inequality with moral and legal equality.
Themes in this chapter
The Social Contract
The social contract is the basis of all rights, making the State master of all goods and transforming possession into legitimate property.
State of Nature vs. Civil Society
The right of first occupier is weak in the state of nature but becomes respected in civil society through labor and cultivation.
Liberty and Equality
The fundamental compact substitutes natural inequality with moral and legal equality, making all equal by convention.
Characters to notice
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Author of the Social Contract; argues for the subordination of private property to the community's right.
Key passages
“Each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its foundation, just as he is, with all the resources at his command, including the goods he possesses.”
At the founding of the community, each person surrenders everything they have, including their possessions, to the collective.
Rousseau emphasizes the total alienation of individual resources to the community.
“The right of the first occupier, though more real than the right of the strongest, becomes a real right only when the right of property has already been established.”
The right of first occupancy is stronger than mere might, but it only becomes a genuine right after property rights are already in place.
Rousseau distinguishes between natural and civil property rights.
“Thus the possessors, being regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having their rights respected by all the members of the State and maintained against foreign aggression by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits both the public and still more themselves, acquired, so to speak, all that they gave up.”
By giving their property to the community, individuals actually gain more than they lose, as their possessions are now protected by the whole State.
Rousseau explains the paradox that alienation of property to the sovereign secures it more firmly.
“that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become everyone equal by convention and legal right.”
The social contract does not eliminate natural differences but replaces them with a conventional equality, making all citizens equal under law.
Rousseau concludes the chapter by asserting the moral equality established by the compact.