In 1762, Rousseau published The Social Contract in which he defined the ideal social contract, describing how man could be free and live together in a community. By ‘equality’ Rousseau did not mean that everyone should be exactly the same, but differences in wealth should not imbalance the state, as massive material inequality can put liberty up for sale. The poor would be willing to sell their freedom, and the rich would be capable of buying it. Both the very rich and the very poor would value money more than liberty. Thus, Rousseau asserts, that some level of material equality is necessary to ensure that liberty comes before profit. On the public level, Rousseau regarded anger or righteous indignation as a part of virtuous citizenship. Today, social media algorithms reward and amplify attacks precisely because they’re engaging. Studies show this makes outrage more potent and visible, giving users a warped view of what the public believes.
Rousseau maintained the wealthy trick the poor into creating a government with the sole purpose of protecting their property and locking in moral inequality as a permanent feature of civil society. In this manner, the social contract is promoted as treating everyone equally, but in reality, it is in the interest of the few who have become stronger and richer. He believed that the role of government should be to secure freedom, equality and justice for all within the state (regardless of the will of the majority). The only reason human beings agree to be ruled is because they believe that their rights, happiness and property would be better protected under a form of government. Everyone is free because everyone forfeits the same amount of freedom and imposes the same duty upon all. Rousseau said that vanity among human beings and differences in property led to inequality – the rich became richer and the poor became poorer.
A cultural process gave rise to the inequalities, Rousseau noted, it will take a change in cultural process to reverse the harmful inequalities. Equality it seemed to him, is a necessary condition for the preservation of liberty, while property and material inequality are the root of human misery and evil. Rousseau observes, evil, greed, and selfishness emerged as human society began to develop. As people formed social institutions, they developed vices. One such institution was private property that encouraged avarice and self-interest. Thus, Rousseau asserts, that some level of material equality is necessary to ensure that liberty comes before profit. He also defended private property; if everything we did was for the state, we would no longer be free. Rousseau’s critical views on the trends of the Enlightenment made him of great intellectual influence to both Romanticism and the French Revolution.
For Locke, the role of the social contract that placed authority over people was to protect human equality and freedom; this is why social groups agreed to a social contract that placed an authority over them. Top-down systems tend to deal with the abstract while bottom-up systems deal with ‘facts on the ground’. When something is designed and pushed down from the top there is an underlying belief that the few know better than the masses. We need to reject making public policy decisions through the lens of the market (complex and multi-faceted issues are oversimplified allowing self-responsibility to become the dominant issues, and life-style change the response) as determined by the few. Then we switch to filter social and economic policies through a bottom-up system like the lens of the social determinants of health, before they are implemented to ensure they support actions that reduce inequities in the system.
The economic system in the West, in the 21st century, is a top-down system. This top-down system is about cheap money and power staying concentrated with a small group at the top of the economic pyramid. Milton Friedman claimed that the system helps poor people by the trickle-down effect, and that economic growth flows down from the top to the bottom, indirectly benefiting those who do not directly benefit from the policy changes. The 2008 economic debacle was a top-down disaster. It was triggered by the consequences of policies championed by a small group of influential people. The financial sector took advantage of the system, empowered by reckless deregulation. There were 25 bank failures in USA in 2008. The present top-down system of trickle-down economics ensures the next generation in the workplace can not only expect to earn less than their parents, but are on track to enjoy poorer health.
It is about a system, corrupted by the influence of big donors and powerful interests, that makes voting more difficult than necessary, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups. Republicans are using the same baseless lies about voting fraud to push a staggering number of laws to scale back voting rights. The reason they’re willing to weaken American democracy is very simple: it’s all about retaining power. The rules being put into place will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for many minority voters to participate in elections. As corporations and oligarchs gain more control over politics and society, they erode the principles and institutions of democracy and human rights. They undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the freedom of expression, the right to privacy, the right to education, the right to health care, and other civil liberties. They also promote authoritarianism, nationalism, populism, fascism, and other forms of extremism.
It is time to reject the metanarrative of neoliberal globalization – postmodern thought – and chose action that is part of the process to address social inequality and social injustice. What the mainstream media have really supported is the neoliberal project that has reduced everything to markets, undermined regulation, stagnated wages, introduced risk, precarity and uncertainty, and brought about recurrent major economic crises. In all of this the mainstream media has been a significant enabler in the shift from the social democratic advances of the post-war period to the establishment of a corporate-financial oligarchy in which democracy in any real sense is meaningless. In this setting the media have not been the purveyors of truth which has weakened democracy. This assault on reality is the fraud used to support a specific formation of power. If Trump is elected again, America will be left with the trappings of a democracy – while the reality slowly disappears, replaced instead by a nationalist oligarchy.
Unfortunately, America’s social contract broke down in the 1980s when the gap between wage growth and productivity growth first started to appear, creating the conditions that Trump tapped into during the 2016 election. Trump used the primary contest as a tool for purging the party of dissent, and took over the Republican Party. In the false belief to achieve a new social contract workers may elect an authoritarian, in this case, Donald Trump. However, Trump is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The Republican Party, is now a party without dissent or internal debate, one that exists only to serve the will of one man. Top Republicans are already rushing to buy into a new 2024 election fraud narrative sown by ex-President Donald Trump in their zeal to position themselves close to the centre of power in the country. Election rage shows why America needs a new social contract for American workers based on mutual respect and attuned to today’s workforce and economy. However, Trump’s Republican Party has no interest in a new social contract to ensure the economy works for all.
Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand, which says that competition channels self-interest for the common good, is probably the most widely cited argument today in favor of unbridled competition – and against regulation, taxation, and even government itself. But what if Smith’s idea was almost an exception to the general rule of competition? Robert Frank, who coined the term “Darwin’s wedge” challenges this, resting his case on Darwin’s insight that individual and group interests often diverge sharply. Far from creating a perfect world, economic competition often leads to “arms races,” encouraging behaviors that not only cause enormous harm to the group but also provide no lasting advantages for individuals, since any gains tend to be relative and mutually offsetting. What Frank argues, is that Darwin’s understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith’s. Today inequality and competition drive the debate on how much government we need.
The Enlightenment was a movement to displace the dogged adherence to established opinions and customs, and to enlighten a population the system had kept in the dark. The Enlightenment era ushered in revolutionary ways of thinking. Carl Jung says, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” Many Enlightenment thinkers criticized arbitrary, authoritarian governments. They began to propose a different form of social organization, based on the idea of “natural rights” that all people had. Enlightenment thinkers held that society existed as a contract between individuals and some larger political entity. They advanced the idea of freedom and equality before the law. Enlightenment ideas about how governments should be organized and function influenced both the American and French Revolutions.
Was the French Revolution caused by the Enlightenment, or was it a repudiation of it? Did it happen because Enlightenment had been pursued too strongly or not strongly enough? The Revolution was people’s revolt against the inequalities of French society, the corruption of royal officials, and despair owing to widespread economic hardship. Instead of the Internet creating a new age of enlightenment through easy communication and universal access to information, today we see the emergence of an increasingly polluted information environment. The expected turmoil in November 2024 – will it be caused by Trump’s conspiracy theories or will it be about outrage over them? The European Union is in the process of developing a renewed social contract.1 Will enough Americans vote for Democrats in November to reject Project 2025 and support a renewed social contract to address the growing inequalities within communities; and counter the increased levels of polarization and fragmentation at the political level?
1https://www.politico.eu/sponsored-content/no-future-for-europe-without-a-new-social-contract/