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
be one with only one social class and all private property and business would be run by the state. I find these two ideas to be fascinating, because they are polar opposites yet they have the same goal in mind. However, as fascinating and as well thought out as these ideas of the ideal society are, at the end of the day they are only ideas and would never actually work in the real world. By examining the concepts of utopian societies presented in Rousseau and Marx’s writings, we are able to further prove the point that Utopias are simply ideas and would never be able to succeed anywhere outside of one's imagination.

Theories about man in the state of nature have been around since Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan in the mid 1600’s since then a hand full of people have written about the topic, but the only other two notable notable writings on man in the state of nature have been John Locke who discussed the idea in his Second Treatise on Civil Government and Rousseau himself in his Discourse on Inequality. Rousseau describes man as a noble savage. In this sense man acts as every other animal does, but within reason. Rousseau writes,

“But savage man... no longer afraid of them.”(Rousseau pg11).

In other words he is saying that within the state of nature, man being forced into some sort of conflict is inevitable, however as man is faced with more and more conflicts over time he will develop the reasoning skills needed to know whether to fight or to run away based on his own abilities as well as the abilities of his opponent. One of Rousseau’s arguments as to why the state of nature is the ideal form of society is that in the primitive state of man aside from physical differences (height,strength,weight) there are no inequalities. In fact Rousseau writes that inequalities among men began only came to be as man evolved from his primitive state. Rousseau’s argument as to why the state of nature is the ideal state for man to live in is due to the simplicity of it.

“It is by the activity of the passions that our reason is improved...the only evils he fears are pain and hunger.”(Rousseau pg 14)

In this excerpt Rousseau is saying that in terms of man’s wants and needs, he is unable to comprehend anything other than that of a physical level, because they have not yet been exposed to anything else.
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
self-improvement.

“It would be melancholy... over himself and over nature.”(Rousseau pg14)

Rousseau is saying that it is human nature to want to improve one’s self and this trait will inevitably lead humanity into what it is today. This very fact is the sole reason why the primitive state of man can not be regarded as a utopia. A utopia in theory is a perfect society. The state of man is only a near perfect society, because it cannot exist forever. It could be regarded to as a temporary utopia, because for a period of time the state of nature is the ideal society, but since state of nature inevitably comes to an end to bring about a society with more vices and evils, it can not be regarded as a Utopia.

To Karl Marx a communist society is synonymous with a utopian society and at a first glance, communism doesn't seem all too bad.
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
state, there are no trades, ergo no market prices. With nothing to base their decisions off of, it would only be a matter of time before a catastrophic economic crisis occured. Imagine stock brokers on wall street trading and buying stocks, now imagine them trying to buy and trade stocks when they have no value because they are all owned by the government. Essentially the russians would be managing their economy while blindfolded. A utopia where the economy is a ticking time bomb just waiting to blow just can’t exist, because it defeats the entire purpose of a Utopia.

At the end of the day nothing has changed. Utopias are still merely a figment of our imagination. As brilliant and as well thought out as some of the proposals are, it is just simply impossible for a utopian society to exist anywhere else than in our imagination. Rousseau’s state of nature is brilliant, besides the fact that it could never truly be a utopia due to the fact that it is within our “nature” to want to better ourselves and improve which will inevitably bring us to wear we are today. And communism is a really intriguing idea if it wasn’t for the hot mess of an economy that would come to be if the free market were eliminated