Glossary
The stabilizing arrangement in which elites justify rent extraction by giving back to society through public goods and rituals.
Topic brief
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Social contract
The stabilizing arrangement in which elites justify rent extraction by giving back to society through public goods and rituals.
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Key Notes
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He reads Rousseau's social contract as a theory in which people surrender individual freedom to society only in order to become more free through the general will.
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Jiang presents Locke's social contract as a government whose purpose is to protect life, liberty, and property, with property becoming an engine for wealth accumulation and English power.
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Rousseau's social contract supplies the Enlightenment route to nationalism: individuals form a general will, government serves that will, and the French Revolution implements it as the nation-state.
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The Social Contract is the Bible of the French Revolution in Jiang's account because it reasons from general principles toward a society people choose rather than are compelled to enter.
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The social contract stabilizes rent extraction: elites acknowledge that rent is bad for the people but are obligated to help society by giving back through public goods and rituals.
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Early cities and societies competed for people because labor and resources could leave for another social organization if rent extraction lacked a social contract.
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Timestamped Evidence
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"...he dealt with the theory that underpinned the French Revolution called social contract theory. Before, we didn't really think about what the individual's relationship..."
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"So why do we choose to surrender our freedom in order to join a community? And so his theory is that we join society..."
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"...do so and at this time the most popular idea is social contract theory social contract theory and there are two major theorists okay..."
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"...John Jacques Rousseau and this theory is different okay it's also social contract theory but it's a different idea which is okay we're born..."
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"...have Rousseau and Rousseau remember wrote a book called called the social contract and in the book he argued that as individuals we are..."
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"rights of people to ensure their happiness to ensure their well -being this this is where Abraham Lincoln gets a famous phrase of the..."
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"...all right so let's move on to the final book the social contract okay the social contract is the bible of the french revolution..."
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"...general principles as to how to form a good society, a social contract where everyone chooses to participate in a society, and is not..."
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"...But what keeps, the system together, is the idea, of a social contract. Okay? Basically, the idea of a social contract, is, yes, we..."
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"...for holding public feasts. Okay? So this, this idea of a, social contract. Okay? And the reason why, you need a social contract, is,..."
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"...culture, education, okay? So for Jean -Jacques Rousseau, this is the social contract. This is the ideal state. The French Revolution started because there..."
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"...a theory of a nation -state. But they didn't like the social contract theory, okay? So they came up with a new theory based..."
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