Key Arguments

• Rousseau states that 'the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will,' so the very nature of government sets it against sovereignty.
• He infers that 'the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty,' meaning that the executive’s corporate interest is structurally driven to encroach upon the sovereign people.
• As this exertion grows, 'the more the constitution changes; and, as there is in this case no other corporate will to create an equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty,' indicating that there is no counter‑corporate body to check this tendency.
• He explicitly calls this 'the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it,' likening it to the natural aging and death of a human body to stress its inevitability.
• He concludes that this degenerative tendency manifests in 'two general courses by which government degenerates: i. e. when it undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved,' showing that all political decay takes one of these forms.

Source Quotes

CHAPTER X: the abuse of government and its tendency to degenerate As the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will, the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty. The greater this exertion becomes, the more the constitution changes; and, as there is in this case no other corporate will to create an equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty.

CHAPTER X: the abuse of government and its tendency to degenerate As the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will, the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty. The greater this exertion becomes, the more the constitution changes; and, as there is in this case no other corporate will to create an equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the human body.

The greater this exertion becomes, the more the constitution changes; and, as there is in this case no other corporate will to create an equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the human body. There are two general courses by which government degenerates: i. e. when it undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved.

This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the human body. There are two general courses by which government degenerates: i. e. when it undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved. Government undergoes contraction when it passes from the many to the few, that is, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty.

Key Concepts

• As the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will, the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty.
• The greater this exertion becomes, the more the constitution changes; and, as there is in this case no other corporate will to create an equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty.
• This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the human body.
• There are two general courses by which government degenerates: i. e. when it undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved.

Context

Opening of Book III, Chapter X ('the abuse of government and its tendency to degenerate'), where Rousseau generalizes his earlier distinction between general and particular will into a universal law of governmental degeneration and the mortal condition of the body politic.