Of course Rousseau was no idiot. He was just wrong on some things. Many larger than life people have had great influence, even in their wrongness. Witness Karl Marx,
V. I. Lenin, even persons such as
Sir Thomas More (Utopia, 1516).
Rousseau in his Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality (1754) wrote:
THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
Those words, the calumny, led to my comment on the man Rousseau's mental faculties.
Yet it was those words and similar statements of the man Rousseau that led to much mischief over a 200 or so year period. Given the history that led to totalitarian governments in many countries, seeking More's Utopia, and Rousseau's "social contract" led to enormous loss of human life over these past two centuries. Man's capacity to define enlightened thought as that which declared that all mankind should be made equal led to the socialist quest. Property was evil. Rights in property meant injustice per se. Justice required that all product of human labor be distributed so that all should benefit…equally.
Rousseau was a man of the Enlightenment (possibly the smaller period, not including the so-called Age of Reason). Actually, Rousseau is properly characterized as a prominent actor, a progenitor, and a causal factor in producing that period of thought.
Rightly so. The American founding fathers, many if not most, could be said with certainty to be influenced by the thinking of Rousseau and his enlightened bedfellows; Thomas Jefferson perhaps in particular.
But Jefferson and the American founding fathers differed greatly from Rousseau's ideas on equality and more important, his ideas on property, and rights in property.
Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, a collaboration of the thoughts of many, yet still uniquely Jefferson's, is a case in point.
Jefferson in his declaration turned a familiar phrase of the time, "life, liberty and property" into the statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Two points: "all men were created equal," meant simply, equal before the law, not equal in an egalitarian or utopian or redistributive of wealth sense, as Rousseau intended. The "pursuit of happiness" was, for Jefferson, an expression of the right to liberty, freedom, through rights of property protected by law.
The second point expands the first. Jefferson saw liberty, freedom, as the expression of man's self. He saw the fact that men could not be equal, that all had talents, but different, and that justice, law, liberty, freedom depended on all to pursue their own happiness (read property). And be protected by law, individually. No state could make man equal in wealth and/or happiness. The liberty of man depended on protecting equality before the law. The law, the State, the government could not create equality. It could, however provide justice, and in that secure man's liberty. But only if the result was the protection of what man created through his own efforts, his individual property.
There is irony. France, after America, had a revolution. Whether Jacobin or Bourbon a lot of folks died. And they spoke of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The guillotine decided life, liberty and property. Out of this, equality was the downfall, the socialist idea…cast upon humanity. It produced Nazism, Fascism, and Communism… somewhere maybe 100 million, maybe more like 200 million deaths…in the name of equality. Equality of poverty resulted. A class of people arose that were perhaps "more equal than others". This is true today. Still, after communism's supposed demise, in the former Soviet Union, its republics and territories; and in Ukraine.
Jefferson's idea… give credit to his many contemporaries too… saw virtue in the protection of property rights. Democracy was a concept. Liberty, freedom were concepts. Justice in society, a goal. Instinctively they understood. One can't do justice without protecting man's right to his own property.
The inequality that is the result of man's pursuit of happiness is justice if all men's right to the protection of his property is found in the law. The equality that is needed is that before the law. For all mankind. No society, government can appropriate property and distribute it equally. That idea in itself, the idea of taking and making people equal is totalitarianism itself. The late, 'great' Soviet Union is Exhibit 'A".
A downward spiral of mankind ensued from the French Revolution. The idea of equality of result lay not in the pursuit of happiness or the justice and liberty that came from recognizing the ability of free people to pursue property. The expectation that society would recognize the need for such liberty was demeaned by the equality sought by those who yielded the guillotine. And many who advanced such views died by the same guillotine.
But the ideas advanced. Socialism, utopia, communism would supposedly advance mankind towards equality. Not simply equality before the law, but equality in property, in wealth.
I said above, "a downward spiral". What else can the pursuit be called that in its lifetime has resulted in millions upon millions of deaths.
That time should be done. We know, as Orwell indicated, that under equality of result, some would have to be more equal than others. And to get there, millions must die, in this pursuit of equality. The pursuit of that kind of equality is always totalitarianism. The purpose of this article is to call attention to the fact that any people seeking, liberty, justice, must recognize and protect the people's right to property.
And in the word property, I do not talk of rights in land, or if so, only partially, and in an overall concept. Man's liberty is his property. And it should not, cannot be debased on the concept of equality of result.
Man's liberty lies in equality of each person before the law, not equality of result. Men are not born equal, with the right to equal wealth, happiness, or even long life. The best result is that we have equal opportunity before the law. People are not born with equal talents. Some people are born more fortunate, to greater wealth, or even with more brainpower. It is only necessary that people be equal before the law.
Ukraine is an example of a society where people are not equal before the law.
There is no 'rule of law' in Ukraine.
Ukraine, a fledgling democracy, must understand at some point that there must be recognition of property rights, there must be no immunity for legislators, and there must not be manipulation of laws against freedom of contract.
In acts such as the recent court decisions related to the telecommunications industry; in actions that have changed contractual rights of grain traders and the people of Ukraine, the countries lack of understanding of rights in property, a system of justice have again been illustrated.
Ukraine is run by those more equal than others.
Ukraine, at the moment has no leaders.
There is no law west of the Pecos. An old Texas saying.
I add, there is no Rule of Law east or west of the Dnipro.
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