Critique of Rousseau’s Social Contract, part 11
This week we’re covering four chapters in Book 3: Chapters 3 through 6. These chapters contain Rousseau’s definitions and thoughts on the differences inherent in governments vis a vis their relative size compared to the citizenry.
Full show notes here.
Much of this is just his extensions of his weird fuzzy math from earlier, but he does do a few crucial things in this part. For instance, he stumbles onto a form of the Iron Law of Oligarchy, which I’ve been harping on for a long time; he argues for the superiority of elective aristocracy over any other form of government; and he puts forward a few reasonable criticisms of monarchy.
On the down side, he also makes a bunch of conflicting and fuzzy definitions, employs more fuzzy math, makes a bizarre criticism of Plato, pushes his desire for subsistence farming and poverty, and trips over his own earlier definitions! He also anticipates Franz Oppenheimer’s separation of means into economic and political means, but in the worst possible way: by arguing that political power gives people another way to gain fame and influence.
What he fails to realize is that when you create a totalitarian framework, the number of magistrates is a relatively minor concern. In the end, it’s all a crooked numbers game.
This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Return to the Table of Contents for this series.
References:
Salerno and Mises on Comparative Advantage and Ricardo
https://mises.org/mises-wire/mises-ricardo-assumptions
Hayek’s “Why the Worst Get on Top” from The Road to Serfdom
https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-chapter-10-why-the-worst-get-on-top/
Intro quote by Ralph Raico, from “The Struggle for Liberty”
https://mises.org/library/book/struggle-liberty-libertarian-history-political-thought
Intro music by Praz Khanal, courtesy Pixabay
https://pixabay.com/users/prazkhanal-24653570/
Thumbnail image uses a photo by Klim Musalimov, courtesy Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/@klim11