by Joshua Simmet

Created on: April 16, 2010

The eighteenth century was a major time in history, with the Enlightenment and Renaissance reaching a crescendo, political and independence revolutions across both the new and old world and new ideas spreading across the world. Politics were then, as they always are, a subject of much discussion and improvisation, with many major political and economic thinkers arising to proclaim their ideas. One among these, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, put forth a new concept of politics such that had never been thought of before. He believed that the state was the people and the people were the state.

Rousseau’s argument was the state of inequality results in the creation of government. With the government come all different sorts of negative connotations that create the drift between economic classes, the rich and the poor.  Rousseau puts forward the concept that the people should take control of the state. That the majority needs to seize the reins of government and adjust them in a direction that benefits everyone rather than the select few. They would do this by holding meetings that everyone would attend to decide on issues. The choices of the majority would become the law and the minority would just be flat out wrong. This would be made possible through the adaptation of a social contract that establishes democracy for the community. However the democratic process as put forward by Rousseau puts no merit on the subject of representation, the only representation that Rousseau advocates is the individual representing the General Will. The General Will is the guiding influence behind the choices of the majority in Rousseau’s system and is represented through the majority. The establishment of a social contract forms the General Will and renders sovereignty to the people indivisible.  The overall theme of Rousseau’s political system is that the liberty of people is in no way compatible with the inequality created by the differences in classes.

In the social contract there are few actual laws only the decisions of the majority, the General Will. The General Will is not enacted through laws but through general acts that encompass the population. When deciding these acts within the majority the individual votes are not considered, only the majority. The decisions of individual voters, people who have vested interests in whatever decisions are being discussed, are expected to be balanced through other people who have opposing views on the subject, thus

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