Rousseau and ‘The Social Contract’ (1762). Clearing the Confusion.

I have found from too many debates with Statists (Left and Conservative Right), including an IRD staffer, when they are trying to justify my having to live behind an IRon Drape, subject to the whim of slave making tax laws which are enforced by the full power of a brute totalitarian state, that the ultimate recourse for them is to ‘the social contract’. Because of the ‘social contract’ I am forced to give one third, at least, of my labour to the state to fund a system I have little agreement with; because of the social contract I must attend any desired interrogation by an IRD officer on pain of the highest sanction of the law, my freedom, and my livelihood; because of the social contract I am to have no privacy whatsoever from an IRD officer. Because of the social contract, in other words, I am to live, apparently, as a barbarian: a life subject to the whim of the majority, my effort not my own, every detail of my life to be  given to the bureaucracy on demand, even though I have harmed no one.

Pardon?

We have become so immured in the corrupted big-nosing ethic and immorality of the police state, that those who rule us with their perfumed fists, and manicured coifs, don’t even know the meaning of the social contract, anymore, nor do most of those happy to live as slaves, who would force free men to live, bound, with them. Quoting from a work in progress – (novel) initial draft, so heavily cribbed for now – let’s (re)understand the nature of the social contract as it was intended, rather than the sick, perverted travesty it has become:

… the originator of the term was Rousseau in his 1762 treatise 'The Social Contract'. Significantly, that document starts, quote: 'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' Moreover, Rousseau argued that in a society founded on laws devised upon mans’ reason, that is, the rule of law, no man would, or should, logically, surrender his freedom for a state of slavery. The contract was at its heart about safeguarding rights to property, and better, an individual was free to exit such a contract, and be as free again as when he was born.

Think how far this is removed from how we are forced to live behind the IRon Drapes of the taxation legislation in our Western police states. The social contract, according to Rousseau, and according to classical liberalism, was only ever about creating the conditions for a civilising freedom, by protecting that smallest minority in any society: the individual. Under the rule of law the state would protect that individual from the use of force, on the understanding that individuals would exercise those responsibilities that make it possible for us all to live in a free society – the primary responsibility being for one’s own life, and the acknowledgement that no man’s need forms an enforceable claim on the life of a total stranger (that is solely in the realm of compassion, namely, the noble acts of generosity and charity). The problem is that under the cynicism of the Left, of Statists of all hues, the state has now assumed those responsibilities that should solely have been in the purview of the individual, and so we have had voted in, on the bribes of irresponsible and immoral politicians, the Thug State, where the Thug State is now the chief abuser of my rights as a free man, and is consequently the chief initiator of force on me. We are far closer to the trapped, slave society of Soviet Russia (for KGB, secret police, read IRD – they have all the same powers of snooping, search and seizure), than to the civilised free society envisaged by Rousseau in his social contract. And listening to Statists, including every politician in parliament, use the social contract as the justification of the state’s use of force on me, makes my skin crawl, as it would have Rousseau’s.

And what allowed the Statists’ to do this to free men? I’m beginning to think the fault partly lay at the feet of the flawed thinking of too many free men, though I don't blame them for it: unlike the cynical Left, they have been too gullible, too trusting: that is, too many of us, from the Founding Fathers to Ayn Rand, have thought that rights, including all those rights that allow our freedom, are metaphysical, a ‘given’. They’re not, the very IRon Drapes we live behind are the proof of it:  the lack of vigilance this confusion has caused has been lethal. A comment in a post from Lindsay Perigo at his excellent SOLO site, has finally opened my eyes to the nature of what is required for me to be a free men, in this respect, and so this topic will be the subject of my next blog post.