Preview

Jean Jacques Rousseau Discourse On Inequality

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1246 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Jean Jacques Rousseau Discourse On Inequality
Throughout the course of History countless philosophers have written about the idea of utopian societies. This idea is such an intriguing topic to philosophers, because theoretically Utopian societies are impossible, so trying to come up plausible societies in which everything is perfect presents a kind of challenge for them. Of the many philosophers that have given their two cents on the matter, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx’s are two of the more interesting ones. In Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, he writes about this idea of man in the state of nature, and how that the primitive state of man would actually be the ideal form of society. In Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto he writes about communism and how the ideal society would …show more content…
Man knows that he needs food to survive, he is attracted to the female, and that sleep is a necessity. He also knows that he finds the feeling of hunger and pain to be unpleasant. When comparing man in his primitive state to present day man one key difference is that present day man has exponentially more problems than primitive state man. But why is this the case? Rousseau believes that the reason for why man in his primitive state has far less problems than current day man is due to the faculty of …show more content…
Who wouldn’t want to live in a society where everyone was treated equally, everything that you need is provided by the state, and marriage can finally be based off love and love alone, because all other factors that play a part in marriage (money, social climbing, property, inheritance,etc) have been removed from society. But as the world has shown us time and time again, almost everything good in life comes with a price. On paper communism seems too good to be true; so what’s the catch? In order to find the catch one needs to first examine the core belief of communism. Luckily Marx likes to get right to the point when he writes. “In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”(Marx 22) Now everybody knows that this is the core communist belief. However, what many people do not know is that by abolishing private property the free market was abolished as well. It may not seem like it, but the removal of the free market from society is one of the main reasons why communism failed. Think about all of the planning it takes to build something with a tremendous amounts of resources like a skyscraper or a bridge. The people in charging of running the operation base everything they do on the market prices of the necessary resources. But when these resources are owned by the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Ap Euro Chapter 20 Essay

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages

    -In order to equalize wealth and power, Communists would put an end to private property, substituting government ownership of factories, railroads, and other businesses.…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The original intent of communism was meant to have a classless society. However, the soviet…

    • 680 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rousseau depicts man in his natural state as innocent and good, blaming the invention of property as the root of societal inequalities and lamenting the sacrifice of liberty required of members of a state. Rousseau's early man is deemed non-confrontational, concerned only with 'self-preservation'…

    • 252 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Karl Marx was developed his ideal of Communism world with the goal is to remove boundaries between rich and poor, high and low classes in both social and economic; to improving the low class lives and limit some of the high class assets by eliminating the ownership of property. By doing so, equal opportunities and better standard of living and health care can be achieved (Vincent 1996, 100). Lansford (2007, 190), stated that the communist government will take the profit that earned by companies and distributed equally in the society while companies keeping and using the property. Most of the key industries are actually belong to the communist government. For example, there are eight of tenth largest steel companies in China that are 100% owned and…

    • 1673 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a communist economy, the whole market is controlled by the government in order to meet the people’s needs. Generally, the government decides what to produce, and try to produce only what and how much the people need. With the government in control, everyone is guaranteed the necessities for survival, such as employment, good education, and free healthcare (Doc B). This ensuring aspect gets rid of the worries of the people, such as being unemployed and not having social security (Doc F). Not one person has something more or better than another, so it creates true equality among the people. If one person receives up to a 5th grade education, so will everyone else. Communism “strips [the people] of their natural character” and eliminates the concepts of jealousy and competition (Doc E). This government-controlled market also means that the government can decide how much of each necessity the people are allowed to receive. Realistically, the government does not provide enough of anything for their people and use their hungry and uneducated population to their advantage. In North Korea, most families work on collective farms, but the profit that they produce all goes to the government. If they are lucky, they will get a very small return for their work (Doc C). Also, since everyone is required to live similar life styles, if not exact, there is no individuality, no bravery, and no creativity to help the…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article that I read Philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that people must surrender their freedom to a ruler. In the article, french philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau states that people should come together in societies and the solution was to form a social contract with general will or the common good.…

    • 414 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Those unfamiliar with Karl Marx, the egalitarian normative theorist insists that the “first phase of communist society the economy will distribute goods according to the norm, to each according to his labor contribution” (Arneson 56). Basically, Marx is stating that a society should satisfy its people by creating a form of equal opportunity, and yet those who cannot contribute or do not have the proper skill in contributing cannot be rewarded, thus making this type of society defective. With regards to this, Marx discarded this norm and claimed that if the communist society is attained by higher phase, then the society can eventually “move beyond the sphere of bourgeois right altogether and operate according to the norm, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Arneson 56). Marx’s is presenting how equality can be achieved if one is able to contribute anything according to his or her…

    • 1271 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Cc Exam Study Guide

    • 17156 Words
    • 69 Pages

    -we must not consider man as he is now, deformed by society, but as he was in nature.…

    • 17156 Words
    • 69 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    How Did Communism Fail

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Communism has a beneficial core to its ideals, but in practice has been proven to lead to failure. Whether it was in Europe or North America, a part of the Bolshevik party or New Harmony, communism has been a failed system, and until it has been updated, it should be left behind in the history…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Karl Marx’s philosophy has been the subject of so much judgement and Scrutiny on if his beliefs will truly save the working man. The bourgeois interlocutor believe Marx’s belief would be more detrimental to the people as a whole. They believe that by wishing to abolish private property, communism will become a danger to freedom and eventual end up destroying the very base of all personal freedom, activity, and independence. Marx responds to these comments by stating that wage labor does not create any property when considering the laborers affairs. It only creates capital, a property which works only to increase the social injustice of the worker. This property called capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Savages are forced to teach themselves everything from a young age, which makes them much sharper than educated men. The only goal of a savage is self preservation, so his senses are thoroughly developed compared to a civilized man, who is given everything he needs to survive starting at a young age. Men in societies are always striving to be greater than other men which has a negative affect on their minds and this shown when Rousseau wrote, “excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the innumerable pains and anxieties inseparable from every condition of life, by which the mind of man is incessantly tormented; … and that we might have avoided them nearly all by adhering to that simple, uniform and solitary manner of life which nature prescribed” (Rousseau, paragraph 9). Through this statement, Rousseau endorses the lifestyle of a savage, by explaining that men who lead this lifestyle have no worries besides what he will be eating and how he will protect himself. This is a simple lifestyle free of comparing yourself to others and he believes that it is ideal and that man would be much happier this…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Utopia Dystopia

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Utopia has proven to have more relevance than the concepts addressed infamous ideologies such as communism and liberalism (heylighen pp 2). In the past, the concept of Utopia has faced criticism that suggested the ideas of Utopia are unrealistic. It has been argued that the Utopia failed to apply to important aspects of the society. Development in the study of human behavior such as in psychology has proven to have the ability to answer these complex social systems (More). The modern development has played a major role for revisiting the ideologies suggested by Utopia. Despite the fact that Utopia was disregarded in the past, its ideas have slowly started showing up in the modern social systems. Utopia is a manifesting in technology,…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Every daring attempt to make great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian,” In order to have a perfect society, change for the greater good need to be made.Unfortunately, instead of a Utopian society, it becomes a dystopian society. The reason that Utopian societies are bad is because everyone has to be equal for no one is better, and all autonomy is lost.…

    • 439 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    globalisation

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Almost two centuries ago, in the midst of the first secession, Karl Marx charged with the error of "utopianism" those advocates of a fairer, equitable and just society who hoped to achieve their purpose through stopping the advancing capitalism in its tracks and returning to the starting point, to the pre-modern world of extended households and family workshops.…

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays