Rousseau on Corruption: Its Causes and Elimination Essay

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Rousseau on Corruption: Its Causes and Elimination

Proprietary Ownership as the Underlying Problem in Human Society

According to Rousseau, elements of human societies promote conflict in and of themselves. Specifically, Rousseau explains in his Discourse on Inequality (1754) that the very concept of proprietary ownership, especially of real property (i.e. land ownership), is unnatural and necessarily leads to respective comparisons, competition, and envy. He argues that those who come to own large amounts of property inevitably become part of a privileged class and that everybody else is relegated to being less privileged and comparatively disadvantaged. Furthermore, in addition to inspiring envy and class conflict within individual societies, the concept of proprietary ownership, according to Rousseau, also explains the antagonism that so frequently leads to conflict and warfare between different societies.

The Origin of Corruption in Human Societies

According to Rousseau, there are four fundamental human impulses promoted by proprietary ownership that result in conflict; of those, the fourth impulse leads directly to systemic social corruption of human institutions and to political corruption of governmental bodies in society. Specifically, the first fundamental human impulse associated with property ownership is a natural urge to compete with others that leads to the accumulation of property and material wealth far beyond what any individual actually needs. The second fundamental human impulse attributable to proprietary ownership is the urge to compare one's self to others instead of valuing property for its inherent or objective worth to the individual. The third fundamental human impulse associated with proprietary ownership is dislike and hatred of others who are perceived as having more. Finally, the fourth fundamental human impulse attributable to proprietary ownership, and that which is tied most directly to the corruption of human social and governmental institutions is the differential power and the ability to influence those institutions that is typically a byproduct of accumulating material wealth within any society.

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Regardless of whether or not Rousseau's theory of the necessary link between proprietary ownership, in principle, and the other three fundamental human impulses is accurate, there is little doubt of the accuracy of the Rousseau's characterization of the fourth human impulse, particularly because it is so evident in contemporary human societies, even within modern democracies (or democratic republics).

Corruption as a Direct Function of Wealth and Power Differential in Society

Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public affairs, and the abuse of the laws by the government is a less evil than the corruption of the legislator, which is the inevitable sequel to a particular standpoint. In such a case, the State being altered in substance, all reformation becomes impossible …

[The Social Contract. Book III, Chapter IV: Democracy]

Rousseau's characterization of the danger of the influence of private interests on government was accurate in his time and, perhaps, even more so in modern American society. For example, even after the historic Emancipation Proclamation in the Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment that outlawed slavery and the subsequent Fourteenth Amendment that expressly established equal protection under the law as a right of….....

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