Rousseau’s ‘Sacred Right’ of Property and its Relevance to Issues of Economic Justice

Abstract

“‘If we have a prince,’ said Pliny to Trajan, 'it is to save ourselves from having a master.’” (Rousseau, Second Discourse)In his Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau directly challenges the liberal tradition concerning the relationship between politics and economics, and in so doing presents his own conception of justice. For Rousseau, the aim of the political order is human happiness. He argues that humans can only be happy when they can live in harmony with the essential elements of their nature, amour de soi, pitie, and free will. Civilization has placed man at war with himself both individually and collectively by creating the necessity of labor. As a result, men are forced to choose their individual well-being over both pity and freedom. They have become slaves in order to live. This should be an unnecessary choice. Rousseau wants to construct a political economy that will allow men to reclaim the natural harmony of their nature by controlling the necessity of labor. The key to creating this order is the “sacred” right of property. This right is categorically different than liberal natural right. In fact, it is, in some sense, its opposite. The natural right of property is created by the action of individuals based on the labor theory of value and the resulting conveyance of ownership independent of any sovereign law. The sacred right is granted by the Sovereign General Will (the will that is based on the wholeness of human nature) whose essence is to protect the right to life of all its members. It is not labor which creates property, but property which creates the opportunity and conditions of labor. By controlling the necessity of labor, man is freed from slavery to nature, and thereby freed from slavery to other men. For Rousseau, the just political economy is one based on the sacred right of property, because this is the only order which will allow humanity to reclaim the integrity of its nature and have the opportunity to develop as a moral being. My paper attempts to answer the following question: How is Rousseau’s analysis relevant to contemporary discussions of economic justice? The answer involves his discussion of the Aristotelian distinction between use value and exchange value, his view of morality based on sentiment rather than reason, and his attempt to reconcile freedom and equality through the creation of a political economy where labor is “…always necessary and never useless…”