Carlos: Comparisons of Marx's and Rousseau's Political and Civil Society

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In "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality", after providing his account of history and human development, Rousseau gets to a point where humans have decided to unite to create laws and uphold justice "in order to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitious, and assure everyone of possessing what belongs to him" (69). This idea arrives from the ambition of the rich to protect their property and resources, realizing the right of power does not protect them or their belongings. Rousseau then explains that everyone else, swayed by this argument and unaware of the possibility of employing the right of power against the rich, readily agree to enter into a political society to protect their self-interest. Rousseau describes this process as granting "new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich" (70) and forever enabling ambition's uniform control over everyone, rich or poor. Rousseau then provides his solution to this problem in the form of the social contract, a government that is legitimized by the equal condition of "total alienation of each associate ... to the entire community" (148). Rousseau believes that through the social contract, people can be freed from their ambition and growing needs. The social contract would uphold the general will that leans towards equality and utility, eliminating our harmful ambition. 

For Marx, he follows a similar account of history that emphasizes the distinctions between political society and civil society. Like Rousseau's explanation, Marx explains that when man enters the political society, he does by joining the sovereign and excluding all other "effective differences" between people. The political society sheds off these differences in order to create a just and equal society, however, Marx explains that these differences are only shed to find a new home in the civil society. Within the civil society, these differences are utilized to further separate people from one another and create inequalities. In short, man "lives in the political [society], where he regards himself as a communal being and in civil society where he acts simply as a private individual"(34) that uses the difference of others for their individual good. Marx concludes that humans purport that political society is meant to uphold justice and beneficence but this illusion is only possible by shedding the inequalities into the civil sphere. For both authors, the political state is a well crafted illusion of equality and justice only to hide the inequality of people's states in the background.

Furthermore, Marx finds fault with Rousseau's Social Contract in that even if the contract removes the state of inequality amongst people, it does not prevent individuals from attempting (or succeeding) in returning to that state. As Marx puts it, even if the political emancipation that the Social Contract offers allows for the "state [to] liberate itself from a constraint"(32), man himself is not free of that constraint. The Social Contract allows for the society to leave the state of inequality by adopting the equal condition, but that does not free an individual's thoughts of returning to that state. The individual can still continue to hold the ideas of ambition and differences between men that would enable their thinking of returning to a state of inequality. Even Rousseau points to this fault in his theory where he advocates the general will to "force [the individual] to be free". As such, Marx points to the changing of ideas that motivate our political systems rather than forcing people to change. Marx's evaluation of capitalism's influence on the current political and civil society's leads him to advocate for the manipulation of ideas so that the political states are changed naturally. As to what mechanism this change would require, I am not fully sure yet.

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