Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the anti-economic anti-ethics
By Jean-Yves Naudet
Professor at the University Paul Cézanne
Director of Research economic ethics
By Jean-Yves Naudet
Professor at the University Paul Cézanne
Director of Research economic ethics
A Nicolas, who gave me the strange urge to reread Rousseau
In the series of articles devoted to the Social Contract, Nicolas Madelenat di Florio shows how negation, in Rousseau, the individual, on behalf of equality for the benefit of the masses, or at least the majority of society, leads ineluctably to deny our freedom to act and, thereby, the possibility of free moral choices. Speaking of equality, property, society, Rousseau certainly talking about politics, but it also touches on political economy. Yet the great "Dictionary of Political Economy" of Coquelin and Guillaumin, a major work from the mid-nineteenth century, states, under the pen of Henry Baudrillart "Rousseau is not an economist . But he adds immediately: "But his influence on economic and social trends of his time and ours was great: he is a father of modern socialism."
But there's more. It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself who wrote in the Encyclopedia of d'Alembert, the entry "Political Economy" (in Volume V, 1755, that is to say, appeared before Social Contract-1762) and not a member of what will soon call "the sect of economists" in the process of formation, that is to say, the Physiocrats. As soon as the article "Political Economy" will be published independently from the Encyclopedia (1758), he will name it still gives "Discourse on Political Economy." (We know, however, that Rousseau wrote most of the entries for the Encyclopedia of Music).
must situate this date in the chronology of the history of economic thought: the mercantilist have long been on the decline, new theories are emerging here and there (Mandeville and his Fable of the Bees, Cantillon, financial economists as Melon ), but the revolution in economic thinking that is preparing, with what we call the Physiocrats, is just the germ: Quesnay published in the Encyclopedia Articles Beans and Farmers in 1756 and 1757, so after Rousseau, still later -1758 - its economic picture, Le Mercier de la Riviere published his "Natural Order of Political Societies" in 1767 and Turgot is still far from power (1774).
Rousseau would have been the true pioneer of political economy and understand the shift that was done in his time, of the mercantilist state interventionism to free trade and economic freedom, the presentation of the State as a defender of private property and the idea of a natural economic order, all themes dear to the Physiocrats. It did not happen. While many economists have recently studied the economics literature of Rousseau (eg C. Spector in Rousseau and the critique of political economy in "Rousseau and science", Harmattan, Paris, 2003), some have even wanted to be the ancestor of modern criticism against neo-classical theories of market failures, or even written on the ethics of Nobel Sen, a straw! All these economic analysis Text of Rousseau's "Discourse on Political Economy" are well known to specialists.
What we do is more modest: to show how the economic conception of Rousseau is a misunderstanding of what was happening in his time, led to a nationalization of economic life and, thus denying economic freedom, reduced freedom itself, and with it the possibility of choice, including economic, free and responsible, so the ability to make ethical choices.
After giving the etymology of the word economy, Rousseau took care to distinguish the economy household (the wise government of the house), the political economy, it extends "to the Government of the big family, which is the state." Somehow, everything is already said: the heart of political economy, is the state. This is more an extension of the domestic economy to the city (polis) with an economy dominated by the free choice of producers and consumers, and based on free trade, is the state that is, him, the center of political economy. If it is the state, not the choices of free people exercising their responsibilities, ethics has already disappeared.
Better yet, if the father's power is limited to Rousseau (no right of life and death for example) the sovereign power "has no other bounds than the public interest well understood": we is far from the fundamental rights of individuals, the general will apply to all, even in economic matters, even if Rousseau concedes here that "private property" is prior to general administration, but we know his conception of the fluctuating property because it also explains, in a kind of anticipation of progressive taxation and especially of its excesses, we must take each surpassing the necessary (in the name of equality): what is to own if the state can resume essential in order to make us equal to others in terms of resources. We will return.
But he goes further: if the small family is intended to extend to not disappear, "the great being made to last forever in the same state, just not only that it" is preserved, but can easily prove that any increase would be more detrimental useful. . If Rousseau is a prophet, not two centuries of growth that will follow, but it is of zero growth. Without growth, no opportunity to progress, to get rich if you want it, so still no free choices, and no freedom, no ethics. Again, we will come back in fine.
Rousseau took the opportunity to perform a shift of vocabulary that speaks volumes, since it believes that "it is rightly distinguished public economics of the particular economy": an economy service substitutes here in political economy. And a little further and asks readers "to distinguish even the public economy of which I speak, and I call government, public authority, which I call sovereignty", one being the statutory law, the other the executive power. Admirable shift of political economy at public economy and finally to the government. It's hard to find the person and free moral choices. Rousseau and then to expound at length on the body politic, "which will" (...) and the "general will" (...) "is for all members of the state, compared to them and to him, the rule of fair and unfair. " Nothing could be clearer and farther from our open economies based on free trade and freedom of choice. As for ethics, is the general will which sets the rules. Besides, he immediately opposite the small communities (which constitute what is now called civil society) to large (state), a decision which may be advantageous to small and highly prejudicial to the great. Then came one of the key phrases, in fact, "the personal interest is is always inversely proportional to the duty. " The name of duty, on behalf of the great society, personal decisions or small groups should bow. Suffice to say that self-interest, in principle, is evil. Conclusion: "Proof that the indomitable will, the wider is always the fairest, and the voice of the people is indeed the voice of God: two centuries of totalitarian temptations arising therefrom. Ethics and fell to the dustbin of history.
Yet the interest is not inherently immoral. Without going into the idea of the fable of the bees Mandeville, for which private vices lead to public benefits, the whole tradition of economic liberal after Rousseau emphasize the role of self-interest in economic decisions, even if Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations focused on this interest, do not forget the Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, centered on sympathy. And all economic flows from the Physiocrats and the Classical to Neo-classical and especially the Austrians like Hayek will insist that this interest will be born an order, called natural in XVIII, and spontaneous order in the twentieth Austrians (as opposed to the created order, which can be found among socialists) is the generalization of the proof of Smith that it is not the benevolence of the butcher, the baker and the brewer is expected our food, but because they pursue their personal interests. The famous "invisible hand", which is simply the price mechanism does the rest to achieve a coherent order, and that Mises and Hayek, repeating the old phrase of Richard Whately, will call an order catallactic, before Hayek does this spontaneous order from the market and the free exchange of the final name "catallaxy" because of ambiguities (that illustrate theories of Rousseau) of the word economy.
For Rousseau fell into the trap that condemns Hayek in his trilogy "Must, Legislation and Liberty": the idea that eventually the state will play in the great society the role of the father in the small company, even if Rousseau seems to defend himself at the beginning of his article: what Rousseau has not seen is the shift from a closed society to a society open in the sense of Popper, in which each pursues his own good, its own goals, and where there is no agreement on the goals, but only on the playing field, each exercising his freedom of choice according to his personal ethics. Personal interest is not in itself inherently anything wrong, selfish or immoral (that Marxism which, according to Rousseau, totally throw aspersions on the personal interest and feel guilty and even those who defend the market). Pursue his personal interest is pursuing its own good, as they say in philosophy, which is not in itself immoral and allow Pierre Coulange speak of "the moral value of acts concerned." All those who now criticize the principle of self-interest (we're talking about a normal behavior, normal, rational beings, not pathological excesses of those who, blinded by this purely selfish, forget that the others) in fact carry the stigma of Rousseau and Marx. It is there for immoral to want to honestly earn a living to live and support his family properly?
short this means that Rousseau, he expresses himself clearly establish "the general will for the first principle of public economy." This has the merit of clarity. It even distinguishes between "public economics and popular" economy and "tyrannical". In the first case, it is almost (two centuries will suffice) to the "democracies" we know what they are and of democratic and popular! And we know the means of states, inherently totalitarian, will use that rule, in the words of Rousseau "between the people and leaders of interest and unity of will": Beware of dissidents !
The rest of the article on Rousseau's political economy is disconcerting, because if we see the politics, we see much the economy, if not totally subservient to the political economy. Besides the first part of his article begins "The first and most important maxim of legitimate or popular government, that is to say who is to benefit the people, therefore, as I said, to follow all the general will. " As for her government also means public economics, political economy, therefore, for him, the general will will therefore dominate the economy: are again popular democracies announced. Rousseau'm arguing about the need "to ensure both the public liberty and government authority, we are hardly reassured and prefer in any case the concrete liberties to freedom in the abstract.
Worse, it is "the law alone that men owe justice and liberty": the law, the result of the general will, therefore, a majority of circumstances, not the law, according to natural law . The majority rule, unrelated to fundamental rights, is the contempt for the minority starting with the smallest minority: the individual. Rousseau and threat "As soon regardless of laws, a man claims to submit another in his private will, he released at the instant of the state civil" because the law in Rousseau can not be arbitrary. And leaders must, of course, ensure compliance with the laws, since the general will can not err, even when it comes to destroying the fundamental rights! In any case, there is little room for economic freedom. Here is how Rousseau concludes this part "I conclude that as the first duty of legislature is to conform the laws to the general will, the first rule of public economy is that the administration complies with the laws "(meaning the administration of the economy).
In the second part, Rousseau said: "The second essential rule of public economy, no less important than the first. Do you think the general will be accomplished? Make all the individual wills thereto, and as virtue is that the individual will comply with the general, to say the same thing in a word, ask reign of virtue. " Ethics back through virtue? On the contrary, since virtue is "that the individual will comply with the General": Rousseau also shows his ulterior motives by saying "do under the rule": not: become virtuous, but be there to reign strength. Otherwise? The door of the gulag already appears in the distance! Yet there is virtue and ethics as free men. Wanting to force men to be virtuous is to deny the ethical as well as freedom. Rousseau had forgotten that St. Thomas Aquinas had already said that "the law can not punish all the evil there is in the world." Besides the moral value of an act that requires us to do so is void.
Inequality of wealth is the worst thing for Rousseau, excluding any free market operation, since it rewards each according to services rendered, so unevenly. Aristotle had already said he is no worse injustice than to treat equally different things. Rousseau says the opposite: "So one of the most important affairs of government, to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes, not by removing the treasures from their owners, but by removing all means to accumulate ": that which is worse: it does not address the accumulated wealth, static, but the creative process of this wealth; impossible to make progress in such a society. like say more than a century later Pope Leo XIII condemned Marxist socialism, which Rousseau is an ancestor here, "instead of this equality as a dream, equality in the poverty, in destitution and misery "(Rerum Novarum § 12-1). All the miseries come to Rousseau "interest especially substituted in the public interest "still denying the right to seek his own good.
But do not worry "you all if you train citizens' means all, educated and not even walking in, it sends shivers down your spine. We therefore begin with the children: "If there are laws to mature, there must have for children, who teach others to obey." We know how in the twentieth century totalitarian regimes of Nazism to communism, will begin by indoctrinate children. "And since we do not give the reason for each man sole arbiter of his duties, we must all less abandon the lights and prejudices of fathers the education of their children, it is important to state more than fathers' in one sentence, he killed and the family (while all the legal and Religions say that the family has rights antecedent and superior to those of the State) and ethics, since we can not rely solely because of men. Nice work of demolition. Conclusion: "The state remains, the family dissolves. The public authority, he says, must "take the place of fathers'! "Public education, under rules prescribed by the government and under magistrates established by the sovereign, is one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government. " Here in all its splendor, with two centuries in advance, the great "secular and unified public service of National Education" dreamed of by the union of the left.
Finally, last part of the text of Rousseau on Political Economy: "It is not enough to have citizens and protect them, we must also consider their livelihoods, and provide for public needs is a clear continuum the general will, and the third essential duty of government ". For Rousseau understands the real problem: he still supports the right of property "the most sacred of all rights" (he later changed) but adds "it is difficult to ensure one side of the property without special attack of another ": the current problem in the tax burden, exacerbated by the fact that Rousseau has a design range of the third duty of government. It is far from the minimalist design of Montesquieu, who believed that the tax was part of the property that was willing to sacrifice to ensure the rest of the property For if the part becomes dominant property vanishes. Now, as for Rousseau, the state must "consider the livelihood" of citizens, it is likely that its share will be strong.
Rousseau thought that support the foundation of the social pact is the property, he hastened to empty it of its substance. Moreover, it appears explicitly about the tax: "Whoever did that simply should not need to pay anything at all, tax that which is superfluous may need to go to the extent of any which exceeds its need. " One suspects that it is the state that will define what is unnecessary or necessary: no freedom of choice, freedom to consume, but the essential thing is: if taxes can go up to remove all unnecessary, it could translate into modern terms: after-tax, all at minimum wage! What surely boost the productivity of most creative!
And no distinction in the requirements "because a lot" (translate, a noble example) "has two legs and a herdsman, and has a belly, not more than him. . Perfect equality, not of dignity or rights, but a condition: the communist ideal, which the Abbe de Mably, shortly after Rousseau, ask the foundations. "The law does not prescribe the magnificence in person, and decency is never a reason against the law." All equal, all poor! In any case the company gives much more rich than poor, because the rich have more to protect: here we fell at the height of demagoguery, but these are assertions that are appealing even today. It is more charitable here not to mention Rousseau, which was known to a higher level of argument. Of course, it also will tax imports (whose country does not need!) And exports (which he does not have too much ") are back protectionism mercantilist dearly. (It is far from "sweet trade" dear to Montesquieu). And surtaxons taxa and luxury, of course for him. But what he calls luxury we now seem very necessary, and besides "it may, I confess, that taxes helping to move more quickly some ways" over, the freedom to consume, the State will select what is good for us. "We can look at the tax as a kind of fine, which compensates the product of the abuse she punishes" here, admittedly, is a precursor Rousseau, alas!
Rousseau, at a key moment in history of thought, when the eighteenth rocker mercantilism moribund since the end of the seventeenth, with his love of wealth purely monetary interventionism and its protectionism, to the world of open society, had at its disposal a pioneering role in play: it will leave that role to the Physiocrats, in the years to come, with their demonstration of the natural order of societies (spontaneous order explaining much later Hayek), with the freedom of trade and beyond, shock in the form of Vincent de Gournay, "laissez-faire, laissez passer," that is to say, freedom of trade and industry that will take our Civil Code of Portalis, early next century. All of this has escaped Rousseau.
Rousseau, far from having anticipated these developments, has remained a vision of the economy totally subservient to politics, especially for him, because equality is first and is the condition of that He calls freedom, but that is not true freedom. In doing so, he challenged the economics still nascent at the root, as with the Physiocrats and the Classics (do not forget that Adam Smith has long met the Physiocrats in France before writing The Wealth of Nations), there is a design of an economy free from political and based on freedom of individual choice. As noted by C. Spector, he did not object to a particular doctrine, but what will unite all the competing voices of economists. What battle of all is the rationality of self-interest and the idea of harmony (as defined by Bastiat) or order (in the sense of Mercier de la Riviere, or later Hayek). The economic order for him is not an order and shall be subject to the policy. The property is not sacred, but in fact largely destroyed, and, finally, he refuses to advance the growth, the name of equality, the distribution from before creation, making it more a follower of the decay dear to the "Deep" Ecology as necessary development.
His denunciation of social inequalities, the privileges of some being made to the detriment of others (one is in a static economy with a zero-sum economic game: no creation of new wealth) is not far from the Marxist future operations, the words of Henry Baudrillart with Rousseau "is the whole economy in the hands of the legislature" and, since man is naturally good and that society corrupts, yeah, to Baudrillart, "the substance of the error socialist society is poorly made, then redo.
The design of Rousseau's economy is therefore an anti-economy, the opposite of the reality of the market and free trade in so doing, this approach can only lead to anti-ethics (as design policy in the Social Contract, reviewed by Nicolas Madelenat Di Florio in his series of articles) : Indeed, a business ethics can not be that free men accountable for their actions: if, in an economy subject to politics, man loses his freedom of choice, it also loses its freedom of decision, he loses the possibility to choose between good and evil, and he loses the freedom to make ethical choices.
But there's more. It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself who wrote in the Encyclopedia of d'Alembert, the entry "Political Economy" (in Volume V, 1755, that is to say, appeared before Social Contract-1762) and not a member of what will soon call "the sect of economists" in the process of formation, that is to say, the Physiocrats. As soon as the article "Political Economy" will be published independently from the Encyclopedia (1758), he will name it still gives "Discourse on Political Economy." (We know, however, that Rousseau wrote most of the entries for the Encyclopedia of Music).
must situate this date in the chronology of the history of economic thought: the mercantilist have long been on the decline, new theories are emerging here and there (Mandeville and his Fable of the Bees, Cantillon, financial economists as Melon ), but the revolution in economic thinking that is preparing, with what we call the Physiocrats, is just the germ: Quesnay published in the Encyclopedia Articles Beans and Farmers in 1756 and 1757, so after Rousseau, still later -1758 - its economic picture, Le Mercier de la Riviere published his "Natural Order of Political Societies" in 1767 and Turgot is still far from power (1774).
Rousseau would have been the true pioneer of political economy and understand the shift that was done in his time, of the mercantilist state interventionism to free trade and economic freedom, the presentation of the State as a defender of private property and the idea of a natural economic order, all themes dear to the Physiocrats. It did not happen. While many economists have recently studied the economics literature of Rousseau (eg C. Spector in Rousseau and the critique of political economy in "Rousseau and science", Harmattan, Paris, 2003), some have even wanted to be the ancestor of modern criticism against neo-classical theories of market failures, or even written on the ethics of Nobel Sen, a straw! All these economic analysis Text of Rousseau's "Discourse on Political Economy" are well known to specialists.
What we do is more modest: to show how the economic conception of Rousseau is a misunderstanding of what was happening in his time, led to a nationalization of economic life and, thus denying economic freedom, reduced freedom itself, and with it the possibility of choice, including economic, free and responsible, so the ability to make ethical choices.
After giving the etymology of the word economy, Rousseau took care to distinguish the economy household (the wise government of the house), the political economy, it extends "to the Government of the big family, which is the state." Somehow, everything is already said: the heart of political economy, is the state. This is more an extension of the domestic economy to the city (polis) with an economy dominated by the free choice of producers and consumers, and based on free trade, is the state that is, him, the center of political economy. If it is the state, not the choices of free people exercising their responsibilities, ethics has already disappeared.
Better yet, if the father's power is limited to Rousseau (no right of life and death for example) the sovereign power "has no other bounds than the public interest well understood": we is far from the fundamental rights of individuals, the general will apply to all, even in economic matters, even if Rousseau concedes here that "private property" is prior to general administration, but we know his conception of the fluctuating property because it also explains, in a kind of anticipation of progressive taxation and especially of its excesses, we must take each surpassing the necessary (in the name of equality): what is to own if the state can resume essential in order to make us equal to others in terms of resources. We will return.
But he goes further: if the small family is intended to extend to not disappear, "the great being made to last forever in the same state, just not only that it" is preserved, but can easily prove that any increase would be more detrimental useful. . If Rousseau is a prophet, not two centuries of growth that will follow, but it is of zero growth. Without growth, no opportunity to progress, to get rich if you want it, so still no free choices, and no freedom, no ethics. Again, we will come back in fine.
Rousseau took the opportunity to perform a shift of vocabulary that speaks volumes, since it believes that "it is rightly distinguished public economics of the particular economy": an economy service substitutes here in political economy. And a little further and asks readers "to distinguish even the public economy of which I speak, and I call government, public authority, which I call sovereignty", one being the statutory law, the other the executive power. Admirable shift of political economy at public economy and finally to the government. It's hard to find the person and free moral choices. Rousseau and then to expound at length on the body politic, "which will" (...) and the "general will" (...) "is for all members of the state, compared to them and to him, the rule of fair and unfair. " Nothing could be clearer and farther from our open economies based on free trade and freedom of choice. As for ethics, is the general will which sets the rules. Besides, he immediately opposite the small communities (which constitute what is now called civil society) to large (state), a decision which may be advantageous to small and highly prejudicial to the great. Then came one of the key phrases, in fact, "the personal interest is is always inversely proportional to the duty. " The name of duty, on behalf of the great society, personal decisions or small groups should bow. Suffice to say that self-interest, in principle, is evil. Conclusion: "Proof that the indomitable will, the wider is always the fairest, and the voice of the people is indeed the voice of God: two centuries of totalitarian temptations arising therefrom. Ethics and fell to the dustbin of history.
Yet the interest is not inherently immoral. Without going into the idea of the fable of the bees Mandeville, for which private vices lead to public benefits, the whole tradition of economic liberal after Rousseau emphasize the role of self-interest in economic decisions, even if Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations focused on this interest, do not forget the Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, centered on sympathy. And all economic flows from the Physiocrats and the Classical to Neo-classical and especially the Austrians like Hayek will insist that this interest will be born an order, called natural in XVIII, and spontaneous order in the twentieth Austrians (as opposed to the created order, which can be found among socialists) is the generalization of the proof of Smith that it is not the benevolence of the butcher, the baker and the brewer is expected our food, but because they pursue their personal interests. The famous "invisible hand", which is simply the price mechanism does the rest to achieve a coherent order, and that Mises and Hayek, repeating the old phrase of Richard Whately, will call an order catallactic, before Hayek does this spontaneous order from the market and the free exchange of the final name "catallaxy" because of ambiguities (that illustrate theories of Rousseau) of the word economy.
For Rousseau fell into the trap that condemns Hayek in his trilogy "Must, Legislation and Liberty": the idea that eventually the state will play in the great society the role of the father in the small company, even if Rousseau seems to defend himself at the beginning of his article: what Rousseau has not seen is the shift from a closed society to a society open in the sense of Popper, in which each pursues his own good, its own goals, and where there is no agreement on the goals, but only on the playing field, each exercising his freedom of choice according to his personal ethics. Personal interest is not in itself inherently anything wrong, selfish or immoral (that Marxism which, according to Rousseau, totally throw aspersions on the personal interest and feel guilty and even those who defend the market). Pursue his personal interest is pursuing its own good, as they say in philosophy, which is not in itself immoral and allow Pierre Coulange speak of "the moral value of acts concerned." All those who now criticize the principle of self-interest (we're talking about a normal behavior, normal, rational beings, not pathological excesses of those who, blinded by this purely selfish, forget that the others) in fact carry the stigma of Rousseau and Marx. It is there for immoral to want to honestly earn a living to live and support his family properly?
short this means that Rousseau, he expresses himself clearly establish "the general will for the first principle of public economy." This has the merit of clarity. It even distinguishes between "public economics and popular" economy and "tyrannical". In the first case, it is almost (two centuries will suffice) to the "democracies" we know what they are and of democratic and popular! And we know the means of states, inherently totalitarian, will use that rule, in the words of Rousseau "between the people and leaders of interest and unity of will": Beware of dissidents !
The rest of the article on Rousseau's political economy is disconcerting, because if we see the politics, we see much the economy, if not totally subservient to the political economy. Besides the first part of his article begins "The first and most important maxim of legitimate or popular government, that is to say who is to benefit the people, therefore, as I said, to follow all the general will. " As for her government also means public economics, political economy, therefore, for him, the general will will therefore dominate the economy: are again popular democracies announced. Rousseau'm arguing about the need "to ensure both the public liberty and government authority, we are hardly reassured and prefer in any case the concrete liberties to freedom in the abstract.
Worse, it is "the law alone that men owe justice and liberty": the law, the result of the general will, therefore, a majority of circumstances, not the law, according to natural law . The majority rule, unrelated to fundamental rights, is the contempt for the minority starting with the smallest minority: the individual. Rousseau and threat "As soon regardless of laws, a man claims to submit another in his private will, he released at the instant of the state civil" because the law in Rousseau can not be arbitrary. And leaders must, of course, ensure compliance with the laws, since the general will can not err, even when it comes to destroying the fundamental rights! In any case, there is little room for economic freedom. Here is how Rousseau concludes this part "I conclude that as the first duty of legislature is to conform the laws to the general will, the first rule of public economy is that the administration complies with the laws "(meaning the administration of the economy).
In the second part, Rousseau said: "The second essential rule of public economy, no less important than the first. Do you think the general will be accomplished? Make all the individual wills thereto, and as virtue is that the individual will comply with the general, to say the same thing in a word, ask reign of virtue. " Ethics back through virtue? On the contrary, since virtue is "that the individual will comply with the General": Rousseau also shows his ulterior motives by saying "do under the rule": not: become virtuous, but be there to reign strength. Otherwise? The door of the gulag already appears in the distance! Yet there is virtue and ethics as free men. Wanting to force men to be virtuous is to deny the ethical as well as freedom. Rousseau had forgotten that St. Thomas Aquinas had already said that "the law can not punish all the evil there is in the world." Besides the moral value of an act that requires us to do so is void.
Inequality of wealth is the worst thing for Rousseau, excluding any free market operation, since it rewards each according to services rendered, so unevenly. Aristotle had already said he is no worse injustice than to treat equally different things. Rousseau says the opposite: "So one of the most important affairs of government, to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes, not by removing the treasures from their owners, but by removing all means to accumulate ": that which is worse: it does not address the accumulated wealth, static, but the creative process of this wealth; impossible to make progress in such a society. like say more than a century later Pope Leo XIII condemned Marxist socialism, which Rousseau is an ancestor here, "instead of this equality as a dream, equality in the poverty, in destitution and misery "(Rerum Novarum § 12-1). All the miseries come to Rousseau "interest especially substituted in the public interest "still denying the right to seek his own good.
But do not worry "you all if you train citizens' means all, educated and not even walking in, it sends shivers down your spine. We therefore begin with the children: "If there are laws to mature, there must have for children, who teach others to obey." We know how in the twentieth century totalitarian regimes of Nazism to communism, will begin by indoctrinate children. "And since we do not give the reason for each man sole arbiter of his duties, we must all less abandon the lights and prejudices of fathers the education of their children, it is important to state more than fathers' in one sentence, he killed and the family (while all the legal and Religions say that the family has rights antecedent and superior to those of the State) and ethics, since we can not rely solely because of men. Nice work of demolition. Conclusion: "The state remains, the family dissolves. The public authority, he says, must "take the place of fathers'! "Public education, under rules prescribed by the government and under magistrates established by the sovereign, is one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government. " Here in all its splendor, with two centuries in advance, the great "secular and unified public service of National Education" dreamed of by the union of the left.
Finally, last part of the text of Rousseau on Political Economy: "It is not enough to have citizens and protect them, we must also consider their livelihoods, and provide for public needs is a clear continuum the general will, and the third essential duty of government ". For Rousseau understands the real problem: he still supports the right of property "the most sacred of all rights" (he later changed) but adds "it is difficult to ensure one side of the property without special attack of another ": the current problem in the tax burden, exacerbated by the fact that Rousseau has a design range of the third duty of government. It is far from the minimalist design of Montesquieu, who believed that the tax was part of the property that was willing to sacrifice to ensure the rest of the property For if the part becomes dominant property vanishes. Now, as for Rousseau, the state must "consider the livelihood" of citizens, it is likely that its share will be strong.
Rousseau thought that support the foundation of the social pact is the property, he hastened to empty it of its substance. Moreover, it appears explicitly about the tax: "Whoever did that simply should not need to pay anything at all, tax that which is superfluous may need to go to the extent of any which exceeds its need. " One suspects that it is the state that will define what is unnecessary or necessary: no freedom of choice, freedom to consume, but the essential thing is: if taxes can go up to remove all unnecessary, it could translate into modern terms: after-tax, all at minimum wage! What surely boost the productivity of most creative!
And no distinction in the requirements "because a lot" (translate, a noble example) "has two legs and a herdsman, and has a belly, not more than him. . Perfect equality, not of dignity or rights, but a condition: the communist ideal, which the Abbe de Mably, shortly after Rousseau, ask the foundations. "The law does not prescribe the magnificence in person, and decency is never a reason against the law." All equal, all poor! In any case the company gives much more rich than poor, because the rich have more to protect: here we fell at the height of demagoguery, but these are assertions that are appealing even today. It is more charitable here not to mention Rousseau, which was known to a higher level of argument. Of course, it also will tax imports (whose country does not need!) And exports (which he does not have too much ") are back protectionism mercantilist dearly. (It is far from "sweet trade" dear to Montesquieu). And surtaxons taxa and luxury, of course for him. But what he calls luxury we now seem very necessary, and besides "it may, I confess, that taxes helping to move more quickly some ways" over, the freedom to consume, the State will select what is good for us. "We can look at the tax as a kind of fine, which compensates the product of the abuse she punishes" here, admittedly, is a precursor Rousseau, alas!
Rousseau, at a key moment in history of thought, when the eighteenth rocker mercantilism moribund since the end of the seventeenth, with his love of wealth purely monetary interventionism and its protectionism, to the world of open society, had at its disposal a pioneering role in play: it will leave that role to the Physiocrats, in the years to come, with their demonstration of the natural order of societies (spontaneous order explaining much later Hayek), with the freedom of trade and beyond, shock in the form of Vincent de Gournay, "laissez-faire, laissez passer," that is to say, freedom of trade and industry that will take our Civil Code of Portalis, early next century. All of this has escaped Rousseau.
Rousseau, far from having anticipated these developments, has remained a vision of the economy totally subservient to politics, especially for him, because equality is first and is the condition of that He calls freedom, but that is not true freedom. In doing so, he challenged the economics still nascent at the root, as with the Physiocrats and the Classics (do not forget that Adam Smith has long met the Physiocrats in France before writing The Wealth of Nations), there is a design of an economy free from political and based on freedom of individual choice. As noted by C. Spector, he did not object to a particular doctrine, but what will unite all the competing voices of economists. What battle of all is the rationality of self-interest and the idea of harmony (as defined by Bastiat) or order (in the sense of Mercier de la Riviere, or later Hayek). The economic order for him is not an order and shall be subject to the policy. The property is not sacred, but in fact largely destroyed, and, finally, he refuses to advance the growth, the name of equality, the distribution from before creation, making it more a follower of the decay dear to the "Deep" Ecology as necessary development.
His denunciation of social inequalities, the privileges of some being made to the detriment of others (one is in a static economy with a zero-sum economic game: no creation of new wealth) is not far from the Marxist future operations, the words of Henry Baudrillart with Rousseau "is the whole economy in the hands of the legislature" and, since man is naturally good and that society corrupts, yeah, to Baudrillart, "the substance of the error socialist society is poorly made, then redo.
The design of Rousseau's economy is therefore an anti-economy, the opposite of the reality of the market and free trade in so doing, this approach can only lead to anti-ethics (as design policy in the Social Contract, reviewed by Nicolas Madelenat Di Florio in his series of articles) : Indeed, a business ethics can not be that free men accountable for their actions: if, in an economy subject to politics, man loses his freedom of choice, it also loses its freedom of decision, he loses the possibility to choose between good and evil, and he loses the freedom to make ethical choices.
