Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Social Contract, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Freedom and Society
Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Direct Democracy
Government and the Separation of Powers
National Longevity and Moral Virtue
Summary
Analysis
Rousseau now examines the history of Roman government. It is unclear how Rome was first established, but Rousseau believes the authoritative traditional narratives about it. The original Roman Republic was the Roman army, which was divided into “tribes” and other subgroups. The king Servius reorganized these tribes to prevent “future inequality,” and because the Romans honored rural people and ways of life, the urban tribes could not fully dominate politics. However, when the government allowed citizens to choose their tribes, tribal divisions stopped influencing daily life. For similar reasons, the subdivisions also lost their relevance.
Since he has already used Rome as an example of a legitimate republic, Rousseau now turns to its history in more depth, in order to show what made it so successful. Curiously, while he has argued that a republic can form an army to protect itself, in Rome’s case, the army formed the republic. While all armies are hierarchical, Rome’s was relatively egalitarian, and Servius’s interest in preventing “future inequality” is a reminder that all citizens must enter the social contract and participate in the sovereign on equal terms in order for the society they create to function as well as possible. Rousseau seems to think that the Romans’ cultural virtues—specifically, their sense of humility and respect for rural people—advanced the cause of equality and let them more easily form into a people.
Themes
Servius re-divided Rome into six classes, based on wealth. The wealthiest, least populous classes got the most military subdivisions and the poorest class of commoners got only one because they lacked “the honour of bearing arms.” Rousseau argues that this only worked because, unlike modern people, the Romans were neither overly prideful nor greedy.
Although Rousseau praises it, Servius’s policy appears to have been gravely unequal and elitist, as it gave the wealthy more representation in the military, which was clearly considered an “honour.” Rousseau thinks that the Romans’ virtues limited the effects of this inequality, but there is no doubt that the wealthy would have had more power over (sovereign) communal decisions because of their greater representation.
Themes
Next, Rousseau examines how these divisions mapped onto the Roman comitia, or assemblies. The comitia had representation from every class division and subdivision, and only the comitia made laws and elected magistrates, so all Romans could vote, and “the Roman people was truly sovereign.” Convened under the legally permitted circumstances, these comitia essentially functioned as the government as well as the sovereign.
Even if Roman society was unequal, the comitia explain why Rousseau considers it to have been a success: these comitia gave everyone a voice in politics, and so even if people’s voices did not have equal sway, at least everyone made up some part of the sovereign. This does not mean that Rome’s system of government was successful—as Rousseau notes here, the Roman Republic used a democratic government rather than appointing a separate one, and Rousseau has already argued that this strategy leads to corruption.
Themes
There were three different kinds of comitia throughout Roman history. The first gave the people a voice against the Senate, but it also let wealthy patricians pay “clients” to persuade the people. Servius replaced this with a comitia based on his class system, which meant that the single wealthiest class got the majority of the votes. However, this class was “balanced” by some less wealthy people, and because the vote was taken in a random order and later votes tended to agree with earlier ones, the top class’s majority did not mean it dominated all decisions. The third and last comitia was strictly an assembly of citizens, not including the Senators (who had the executive power). Rousseau thinks that each of these systems had different origins and benefits, but the second one, which was closest to aristocracy, was the most effective.
None of the three comitia systems could be considered truly equal: the first institutionalized self-interested manipulation, the second based power on wealth, and the last did not truly include all citizens because it excluded those citizens who happened to be appointed to the government. Readers are free to disagree with Rousseau about which of the systems is most equal, but his point is more about each system’s historical success in balancing power, rather than its theoretical likelihood to do so.
Themes
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In Rome, at first, voting was honest and simple: people “vote[d] by word of mouth,” and a majority won. But eventually, as the Republic’s political culture declined, people started buying votes, and to try to prevent this practice, the comitia started voting by secret ballot. Rousseau laments that more reforms of this kind were not successfully carried out. Ultimately, like all the other laws passed and strategies implemented to prevent corruption, the secret ballot was unsuccessful, although in most ways the comitia continued to function relatively smoothly.
These shifts in voting practices over time reflect people’s gradual shift from genuinely caring about and identifying with Rome as a political community to returning to the natural instinct for self-preservation. In other words, they are “signs” of decline in the Republic’s health, which worsened even as Rome’s institutions appeared to stay the same on the surface. This example underlines Rousseau’s distinction between the structure of institutions (which determines if a state is legitimate) and the civic values that govern how people put these institutions to work (which determine if a state actually survives).
Themes
