The Social Contract: 3

Rousseau previously defines the sovereign as the collective of public persons - citizens - in an active role (in its passive role he calls it the state). It is worth noting Rousseau's distinction between natural man and cultural man once more - in his view natural liberty is constrained only by physical power (of the relevant individual) whereas civil liberty is limited by the general will. This distinction continues the slightly ambivalent attitude towards nature and culture respectively, which I noticd before. He maintains that

man acquires with civil society, moral freedom, which alone makes man the master of himself; for to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom

He then declares that in The Social Contract "'freedom' is no part of my subject" and so absolves himself from clarifying the apparent endorsement of some of societies' ideals.

I've been dipping my attention a little into the preface and fist chapter of The Confessions and from the preface one gets a clear impression of someone who was allergic to society's yoke. Good for him. But that makes it all the more interesting that he shouldn' t clarify himself a little more in The Social Contract.

Be that as it may, the nature-culture dichotomy makes for a useful juxtaposition of terms - possession is based on force and is part of natural liberty, whereas property is a legal claim that can only be decided for the individual through the state, i.e. the sovereign or general will (which also always has a stronger right over the estate of the individual than the individual has):

the state, vis-a-vis its own members, becomes master of all their goods by virtue of the social contract, which serves, within the state, as the basis of all other rights

But there is a catch: the state has "right of the first occupant" which was determined through individuals' actions. And so it is, relative to other states.

Rousseau states three conditions by which an individual can claim a land: firstly, the land is not already inhabited; secondly, the individual claims no more than is necessary for subsistence; thirdly, the individual must work the soil and not keep it idly.

It is useless to point out that virtually all empires have disregarded the second condition. More specifically I would say - and many would agree - that the
first condition is practically undecidable, unless a certain force of power is not taken into account. And so one is left with the suspicion that society came into existence because of forms of domination and force. Again, many would agree. In fact, we know it's so - why think differently? So nature and culture is a false dichotomy to start off with, and the only reason I can think Rousseau must justify culture is because it is a given, and he wants his audience to take him seriously.

Having said that, his insights into the basic injustices of society shine through - here is a little footnote on p.25:

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing

He gives this as basis for his earlier contention that in society all men (but we should say individuals) should have enough for subsistence and none too much.