by Greyson Ruback
“L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers” – is the familiar paradox on which Rousseau begins The Social Contract, his most seminal contribution to the art of politics; a treatise which has been abused far more often than it has been approached with the care and candor it requests, deserves, and requires. He continues “So long as a people is constrained to obey, and obeys, it does well; but as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does better.” Rather than extract from these propositions the illegitimacy of all government, or to reduce it to an exposition of force in a Hobbesian sense, Rousseau attempts to square the circle (and save his neck) with what he describes as “the general will,” the exercise of which, in his construction, is the only justifiable liberal foundation for sovereignty: inalienable, indivisible, and inerrant, and distinctly juxtaposed against a collection of private interests, “the will of all.” Without using the term, Rousseau provides what in my understanding is the most elegant, if admittedly (and likely intentionally) obtuse recitation of the term now at hand: isonomia.
Etymologically, the term originates from the Greeks, most notably Herodotus who employed it in dialogue through the voice of Otanes, as a contrast to oligarchy and monarchy – a government designed to “hold power accountable,” in hopes of avoiding the kind of bloody conflict that had just put the fate of their nation in their hands. Otanes’ “rule of the multitude” became connected with the classical republic, leading to its later misidentification with a modern conception of democracy, and by extension to the kind of conception provided in last quarter’s issue by Jason Kuznicki, Is Isonomia Even Possible? Much to its credit, the piece outlines both the most critical question “What counts as relevant?” and the appropriate conclusion “We may be able to choose either the reality of isonomia or its semblance” but somewhere in between the discussion gets caught in a flawed depiction of the “fully isonomic society” as one that is “full of its own denunciations” – a depiction that echoes Darius’ defense of monarchy in response to Otanes: “when the people rule (the state) it is impossible that wickedness will not occur; and when wickedness towards the state occurs, hatred does not result among the wicked, but strong alliances; for those that want to do the state harm conspire to do it together. This goes on until one of the people rises to stop such men.” Ultimately, to Darius, democracy and oligarchy both invariably revert to monarchy over time, and history itself has borne this out repeatedly.
After this brief but thorough debate, seeing that Darius’ argument had won the day with support from four of the seven conspirators, Otanes rises to speak again: “I desire neither to rule nor be ruled,” and he abandons his claims to the throne on the condition that his family line “shall not be subject” to the chosen king, but only “Persian law.” Otanes, the initial defender of isonomia ultimately achieves it for himself and his family, subject only to the laws of the people – Rousseau’s general will. Through this dialogue Histories provides us with an early illustration of the principle that just powers can only derive from the consent of the governed.
When faced with the complaint “The law treats A differently from B, though both are similarly situated in all of the relevant ways,” the arbiter’s first task is to define the ambiguities – “What counts as relevant?” Kuznicki claims that the law cannot settle this question, and asserts that the pursuit of isonomia “means having difficult conversations,” but the real heart of the issue is who are the interlocutors? In a liberal society, where each is considered the ultimate judge of relevance in their own lives, how can we expect these dialogues to bear fruit? If competing perspectives fail to reach a consensus, in an isonomic society what voice can assert a final decision, and by what strength would it impose that perspective on the dissents – if not the voice of law?
It is clear from the outset that “relevant” must mean something, for if “two” things are situated in *all* ways, our language simply treats them as a single entity. The physical world bears this out through the Pauli exclusion principle of quantum mechanics (through a perspective rarely considered by most humans.) In a liberal society, it is equally as clear that we cannot impose a definition of relevance on any individual – in Rousseau’s terms this would alienate the particular will of the dissenter from the general will and either transform the general to a particular will undermining its legitimacy and exposing it to liability, or effectively excise the dissenter from society thus negating the justification for civil judgment; returning the relationship between the individual and the society to the state of nature “for since it regains its freedom by the same right as that which removed it, a people is either justified in taking back its freedom, or there is no justifying those who took it away.” Finding no recourse from outside authority, and having dispensed with the possibility that authority can be created through numbers or force, the only thing remaining to save liberalism is its foundation: the individual.
The individual need not go beyond personal experience to understand the importance of this implication: that relevance can only be justifiably determined by the private actors involved. As I write this, I find myself leafing back through my copy of The Social Contract, physically the exact copy that I first encountered (too) many years ago as an undergrad, but functionally it is hardly the same. I reread pages that have sat dog-eared for decades and struggle to find what revelations my former self found of particular importance; I labor to decipher my naïve chicken-scratch notes; and I find new relevance in pages I remember glossing over as a young student. As we grow, and our world grows around us, our perceptions of relevance fundamentally change – rewatching old TV shows from past decades illustrates how much community standards and sensitivities have changed: even if we could reach a consensus on the definition of relevance, how long could we expect such a consensus to last? As a child I’d pore over baseball statistics as if they were gospel, noting batting averages, fielding percentages, and (pitcher) wins – all statistics that are now widely ridiculed by the predominant analytic community: where my perspectives haven’t shifted I more and more find myself feeling like the old guy yelling “Get off my lawn” at the neighborhood kids, my will becoming more and more alienated from the society to which I used to consider myself committed. In Rousseau’s terms “no sovereign could say: ‘What this man is going to want tomorrow I too shall want.’” In a landscape of shifting times and perspectives, how can we ever expect any durable government to have the capacity to impose its decisions without free and informed consent?
These same concerns are constantly playing out across communities. We can see them echoed in school district meetings across the country, where concerned individuals argue over what books should be deemed acceptable, in which forums, to which readers. They argue that there are relevant differences between this book and that book on the same subject, or this book to these (younger) students and the same book to those (older) students. As a child who fervently worked his way through my suburban Georgia elementary school library’s offerings on Greek mythology – reading stories about Zeus impregnating a swan, and Athena springing forth in full combat regalia from his head – I’m grateful that I was educated at a time when some libraries were still mostly just a collection of books that had been accrued over time, and not a battlefield for majoritarian control over the access we allow students to the collected knowledge of our past.
Having extended this concept of sovereignty to its requisite liberal form, it is easy to understand why Rousseau and Kuznicki were compelled to sneak a defense of the status quo in through the back door of their analyses – in pursuit of isonomia in “reality”, and not an academic pursuit, a utopian theory, or its mere “semblance.” However, in shifting from an individual-focused understanding of the term to a societal one, the etymological roots become weaponized. Through a liberal lens, the Greek isos meaning “fair or impartial,” and nomos deriving from the verb nemein meaning “to manage; to give what is due,” implicates the “certain unalienable rights” identified at the founding of our nation, but when these terms are viewed through a collective perspective, it allows us the false refuge of stretching the definition of “failure” to incoherence, in the vein of Marx’s critiques. Capitalism’s failure is not an inevitable future as Marx imagined, but the defining challenge of our time; it lies not in a dramatic global collapse of society, for Kuznicki is right to identify its virtues and many successes, but in its co-option by adherents of force – be they fascists, socialists, or the defenders of most modern conceptions of democracy – who have assumed its power and bent it to serve their particular wills. In short, the failures of capitalism do not come from the system, but from operators bent on exploiting its inherent weakness; with rent-seeking and regulatory capture. This inherent limitation of capitalism shows the importance of marrying the revolutionary economic theory with an equally liberating political theory.
Modern discourse is replete with people ascribing intention and capacity to capitalism, an atomistic theory based on vague definitions which makes no definite attempt at prescription. There are scores of critics online ready to describe how capitalism requires industry to ‘turn a profit’, but when pressed I find just as many different understandings of what that term means. Again, Kuznicki is right to describe “pursuit of profit” and “pursuit of consumer satisfaction” as largely duplicative, (though I would suggest the term “consumer” is also unnecessary). Capitalism, unlike command-based economic theories, leaves it to each operator respectively to define “satisfaction” and to pursue it on their own terms, and thus is the liberal epitome of isonomia in economics. Capitalism allows its operators to wear their differences lightly, but it also allows traditionalists the space to make and test their denunciations. While the fully isonomic society is full of denunciations, they are not “society’s” denunciations, and only carry as much weight as imbued by the denunciator and respected by an audience likely limited to those with a sympathetic conception of satisfaction.
So then what is left? Have we reduced isonomia to an academic exercise in utopian thought? Are we left with just another example of James Madison’s Federalist 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Or is the only way to win our liberal’s bet to make the government commensurate with the governed, so that each is simultaneously enabled and obliged to govern only themselves? Is it time for liberals to eschew government of others and its endless focus on reforming the system, and turn our focus to improving the operators and bettering our selves? Rousseau’s life paints that kind of picture: The Social Contract itself was originally part of a larger work on political science, which Rousseau felt inadequate to complete, ultimately abandoning it to the fire. After its publication he turned his pursuits largely to morality and self-betterment – Emile or On Education his most thorough treatment on the nature of man, and a series of introspective Confessions largely focusing on his own moral failures and justifications – while only twice returning to political work, in an unfinished attempt to give laws to Corsica, and in a similarly complicated attempt to provide Considerations on the Government in Poland.
If the United States is the first draft of the better nation it should be, perhaps it is time we return to its blueprint and reorganize our powers, laying a new foundation on the same principles which have taken a backseat to pragmatism for too long – to shake off the yoke, and do better. Follow in the path of Otanes, refuse our consent to the selection of a new king, and accept the responsibility that comes with governing ourselves. Let us push federalism to its natural extent, trading Justice Brandeis’ state-based “laboratories” for a society of single courageous individuals. As Brandeis warned “denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the nation.” Powered by a new era of interconnectivity, individuals today have the capacity to create new consent-based institutions; trustless accounting; and rule-ordered relationships capable of serving as the foundation for decentralized and polycentric approaches to ensure that our exercise of this power is “ever on our guard lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles.”
Greyson Ruback holds a JD from the University of Georgia, and writes from the Pacific Northwest. Send him mail.
Isonomia Quarterly 