LIBERTY, DEPENDENCY AND INEQUALITY: A COMPARISON STUDY OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU AND ALGERNON SIDNEY

While both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Algernon Sidney looked upon dependency on another’s arbitrary will as antithetical to liberty, Rousseau alone inquired into the origins of dependency and found men’s mutual dependence and economic inequality at its root. Whereas Sidney’s approach to restrain arbitrary power was to make laws to limit the sovereign power, Rousseau’s approach consisted in making laws to alleviate social inequality. While both Sidney and Rousseau’s approach were flawed, the two in combination might shed light on a practical way to redress dependency and preserve liberty.

I. Both Rousseau and Sidney Embraced Independency from Arbitrary Will as Liberty but Rousseau Alone Considered the Origins of Political Dependency

Rousseau and Sidney shared their spirited opposition to oppression. They both viewed men’s dependency upon the will of a tyrant as slavery and antithetical to liberty. For Sidney, “liberty solely consists in an independency upon the will of another, and by the name of slave we understand a man, who can neither dispose of his person nor goods, but enjoys all at the will of his master.” Similarly for Rousseau, “to see [oneself] at the discretion of another” is the worst “in the relationships between man and man”, and it is “incontestable and the fundamental maxim of all political right that the people gave themselves leaders to defend their liberty and not to enslave them.” Nevertheless whereas Sidney took dependency as a given and perennial evil of human society, Rousseau took it upon himself to inquire into the origins of dependency. In the primitive state where men are not so unequal in natural qualities as to enslave one another easily, and where men are self-sufficient and “have no more need of another man than a monkey or a wolf would need of a creature like itself” , anyone can see that “the chains of dependence” do not exist, and no man can “succeed in making others obey him.” If man is born free, why is he everywhere in chains? To this Rousseau answered: mutual dependence of men and economic inequality of society, both of which non-existent in the state of nature and only the inventions of human society, were the causes of dependency.
For Rousseau the first step men took in the long succession of time and events that led men from independence in the state of nature to dependency on a tyrant’s will was the division of labor and the loss of men’s self-sufficiency thereafter. “[I]t is impossible to enslave a man without previously having put him in the position of being unable to do without someone else.” “[T]he bonds of servitude were not formed except from the mutual dependence of men and the reciprocal needs which unite them.” In the state of nature a man’s needs are simple and can be easily sustained. His desires “do not go beyond . . . food, a female, and rest,” and he can satisfy them by “eating his fill” and “discovering his bed” under an oak tree. A primitive man is therefore perfectly independent and free of any yoke, until the invention of metallurgy brought about division of labor. “As soon as men were needed to melt and forge iron, other men had to feed them. The more the number of workers increased, the less the number of hands used to provide their common sustenance.” For Rousseau this is the beginning of all vices of human society. “[F]rom the moment a man had need of someone else’s help, from the time they noticed that it was useful for one alone to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became necessary, and . . . slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow along with the crops.”
However, not being completely independent is very different from being completely dependent. Even after men began to have reciprocal needs from one another, they were still a long way from being subject to the will of one man. The next subject Rousseau took up was the origins of economic inequality in human society, which began with the introduction of private property. Private property first amplified the natural inequalities among men and then led to the formation of social classes. With the division of labor “the differences among men . . . became more perceptible,” “[t]he strongest man did more of the work” and “[t]he most skillful was better at turning his work to his own advantage.” Nevertheless only after they were able to appropriate their labor to their own, the stronger and the more skillful were able to make their own lots substantially better than the weaker and the less skillful. Moreover, private property made possible inheritances from one generation to another, and the effects of human differences became much more permanent, “when inheritances had increased in number and extent to the point of covering all the land and of creating boundaries for everyone.” At that point those “whose weakness or idleness had prevented [them] from acquiring an inheritance in their turn became poor without having lost anything.” From thence first emerged the economic inequality of society, the rich and poor, and the first instances of dependency when the poor “were obliged to receive or steal their sustenance from the hands of the rich.” Thus cynically proclaimed Rousseau: “The first man who, having enclosed off a piece of land, got the idea of saying ‘This is mine’ . . . was the true founder of civil society.”
Furthermore, according to Rousseau, the rich men perpetuated the economical inequality by forming laws to protect their properties and governments to enforce them. With the founding of political society, the condition of human inequality progressed from the stage of the rich and poor to the stage of the powerful and the weak. From “the usurpations of the rich” and “the thievery of the poor” arose “a perpetual conflict” and “the most horrible state of war.” Finding himself “alone against everyone”, the rich man persuaded his neighbors to unite into “one supreme power” that would keep all “in an eternal harmony” by “assuring to each man the possession of what belongs to him.” The establishment of property and laws thus stabilized and legitimized the economic inequality. The institution of magistracy, moreover, opened the door to abuses and usurpation, and worst of all led to despots and tyrants.
With the coming of despotism, men came under the yoke of government’s arbitrary taking of their goods, liberty and lives, the very things the government was constituted to defend. By this time, men’s mutual dependence and society’s economic inequality had given rise to the final stage of human inequality, that of the master and slave. But in order for men to resign to this extreme inequality, in order for men to accept as the only virtue the blindest obedience, men had to forsake the two principles of human soul prior to reason: their “passionate interest in preserving themselves” and their “natural repugnance to seeing others perish or suffer.” According to Rousseau, man’s nature was changed by a multitude of new needs: man’s natural passion for self-preservation were substituted by his new passion for vanity and desire of dominion, and man’s natural pity was overcome by his self-interest and need of commodities. Ever since man began looking at others and wanting to be looked at, public esteem had a value. Out of “vanity and scorn” on the one hand and “shame and envy” on the other, dominion became dearer to some men than independence, and they would let themselves be oppressed so long as they could do the same to others—“they consent to carry chains in order to be able to give them out in their turn.” Meanwhile men’s natural compassion was extinguished by calculating self-interest. The first several types of commodities were the first yokes men imposed on themselves; they through habit degenerated into real needs that men could not do without. The pursuit of private business turned man back within himself: “[t]hrough philosophy he says in secret at the sight of a man suffering: Perish if you wish; I am safe.”

II. Sidney Redressed Dependency by Limiting the Supreme Power Whereas Rousseau Did So by Alleviating Economic Inequality
 
The purpose of Rousseau’s intellectual quest for the origins of dependency was more than academic but had practical effects. While both Sidney and Rousseau were concerned with making laws to redress dependency, their solutions sharply differed. For Sidney hard-and-fast limitations on what the prince could do was the surest guarantee of men’s independence from him. Nations that “[thought] fit to have kings, yet desire[d] to preserve their liberty” were obliged to “set limits to the glory, power and riches of their kings” so that their kings would be “kept within the rules of the law.” The safety of a nation ought not to depend upon “the uncertain will or understanding of a prince”, and the public interests “cannot be preserved by one who is transported by his own passions of follies, a slave to his lusts and vices.”
By sharp contrast, Rousseau explicitly rejected any hard-and-fast limitation on the power of general will because it was only the state’s force that could make its members free from one another. “[The] clauses [of the social contract] all come down to just one, namely the total alienation of each associate with all of his rights to the whole community.” “[S]ince each gives himself entirely, the condition is equal for all, and since the condition is equal for all, no one has any interest in making it burdensome to the rest.” Instead of limiting the general will, Rousseau argued only by using the power of general will to alleviate economic and political inequalities could arbitrary will be restrained and liberty preserved. “[T]he end of every system of legislation . . . comes down to these two principal objects, freedom and equality.” “[F]reedom cannot subsist without [equality].” Having at-length traced the origins of arbitrary will and found economic inequality at its root, Rousseau concluded that laws should be made not only to effect equality of power, so that power “stops short of all violence and never be exercised except by virtue of rank and the laws”, but also equality of wealth, so that “no citizen be so very rich that he can buy another, and none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself.”
The opposing approaches Sidney and Rousseau took to preserve liberty from depending on arbitrary will illuminate the shortcomings of each other. The weakness of Sidney’s approach consists in its potential impotence in a vastly unequal society. Law is never self-executing, and to impose legal restraints on the executive power of law requires especially strenuous efforts. In a society of significant inequality, and in the unhappy situation where the rich and powerful are carried by men’s perpetual passion for dominion and the poor and weak are too busy minding their private businesses to pay attention to public affairs, the law would be loosened and the chains on the prince broken. On the other hand, the boundless power Rousseau vested in the sovereign provides the most fertile ground for tyranny. By making citizens excessively dependent on the state Rousseau left them barehanded in the event of usurpation of the state. Men’s fever for equality is the best disguise for demagogues. Men, under the cover for equality, transported by such passions as envy and jealousy, would not hesitate to get rid of those that are superior to them, only to find in the end the demagogue sitting at the pinnacle of power. Unbounded sovereign power and untempered social inequality therefore both present danger to liberty. Although neither Sidney nor Rousseau had the ultimate answer to how to redress dependency, the combination of their approaches—making laws to both limit sovereign power and alleviate social inequality—looms as a potentially practical way to curb arbitrary will and preserve liberty.