Marx and Rousseau: Social Reformation

Where Rousseau and Marx disagree is with respect to whether or not the civil state as it was constructed with the goal of providing protection to those with what Rousseau (7) called the "right of property" serves mankind as a whole or merely benefits those who possess such properties. For Marx (486), doing "away with property" is a necessity to eliminate the inequities that pervade society. Specifically, the thesis explicated herein is that Marx and Rousseau differ with respect to the nature of capital with the latter regarding it as social power and the former accepting it as a personal power vested in "the right of the first occupier over a plot of ground" (Rousseau, 8).

Rousseau (8) states that "each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its foundation, just as he is, with all the resources at his command, including the goods he possesses." He goes on to note that the state, "in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social contract, which, within the state, is the basis of all rights" (Rousseau, 8). Here, he is establishing the principle that individual