POLSC201: Introduction to Western Political Thought

Read this text. Rousseau uses history and travel experience to show that humans have slowly evolved from brute animality to moderate sociability and eventually corruption and inequality as the rich have taken over government. Rousseau is famous for developing the idea that freedom exists in three forms: civil, natural, and moral.

Study Guide Questions:

1. Does Rousseau advocate a return to the state of nature?
2. What role does the notion of private property play in Rousseau's thought?
3. Reading this selection, taking notes, and answering the study guide questions should take approximately 6 hours.

Read this text. As you read The Social Contract, consider the United States Constitution, particularly as amended by The Bill of Rights. Many of the concepts therein originate with Socrates and Aristotle, but come into their own as fully formed foundational principles through the US Founding Fathers' reliance upon and interpretation of Rousseau.

Study Guide Questions:

1. Can individuals be free, in the aftermath of Rousseau's social contract that involves the "total alienation of each associate of himself and all his rights to the whole community"?
2. What does Rousseau mean by a "moral freedom which...makes man the master of himself"?

Read this text as follows:

• Volume I, Chapter 2
• Volume I, Chapter 3
• Volume I, Chapter 10
• Volume I, Chapter 11
• Volume I, Chapter 12
• Volume I, Chapter 13
• Volume II, Section II, Chapter 6
• Volume II, Section II, Chapter 7
• Volume II, Section II, Chapter 8
• Volume II, Section II, Chapter 9
• Volume II, Section IV, Chapter 1
• Volume II, Section IV, Chapter 2
• Volume II, Section IV, Chapter 3
• Volume II, Section IV, Chapter 4
• Volume II, Section IV, Chapter 5
• Volume II, Section IV, Chapter 6

In this work, Tocqueville studies democracy via the civil practices he observed during a tour of the newly-independent American colonies. While in America, he noticed that wealth circulated more freely without hereditary ranks and distractions.

Study Guide Questions:

1. Why does Tocqueville want to study democracy in America?
2. How does Tocqueville view equality in America?
3. How does Tocqueville view the role religion plays in America, specifically with regard to politics and social order?

Read this chapter, which gives a brief overview of the historical and political context in which Marx and Engels studied and wrote.

Read this text. In his essay On the Jewish Question, Marx takes issue with Bruno Bauer, one of his colleagues among the Young Hegelians. Bauer had earlier made an argument against Jewish emancipation from the German Christian state from an atheist perspective, arguing that religion whether Jewish or Christian was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer, Marx introduces his distinction between political emancipation in form of liberal rights and liberties, and human emancipation, which encompasses an end to alienation from our work and from each other.

Read this preface, which constitutes a sketch of Marx's framework for historical materialism. He argues that the nature of a society's economic structure depends upon the degree of development of the productive forces or means of production, meaning human labor conjoined with technology. The relations of production or superstructure, meaning the political and legal institutions of society, is in turn explained by the nature of the economic structure. Revolution occurs, however, when the forces of production are stifled by the superstructure, which is replaced by a structure better suited to preside over the continued development of the forces of production.

Read this chapter. Marx begins by establishing two necessary conditions for commodity production: (i) a market and (ii) a social division of labor where people make different things. For Marx, commodities both have a use-value, and an exchange-value or price, but it is the latter which is problematic. In coming to understand why one commodity is priced differently from another, Marx derives his labor theory of value.

Read this chapter, in which Marx shows the effects of his law that within a capitalist economic structure, the tendency of the rate of profit must fall. This leads to increasing intensity of exploitation as well as other effects that contribute to the downfall of capitalism.

Read this work, in which Marx describes the transition from a capitalist to a socialist to a communist society, and it is here where he describes communism as a society in which each person should contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need.

Read this article, which addresses the question as to why we should study Marx today, and gives an overview of a contemporary strain of political thought called Analytical Marxism. From there, the importance of the principle of self-ownership in Marx's framework is traced, and how that principle corresponds to contemporary debates regarding distributive justice, and particularly "the difference principle" in the work of John Rawls.

Read this text. Note the distinction Mill makes between freedom of the will and civil or social liberty. Mill's fundamental question is about the nature and limits of the power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual.

Read this text. Utilitarianism has its roots in 18th- and 19th-century classical philosophy, particularly in the writings of political theorist Jeremy Bentham (and Mill's father, James Mill). This moral theory is also known as the "greatest-happiness principle", which holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all human beings, within reason.

Read this article, which attempts to reconcile the tension between Mill's principle of liberty and his invocation of utilitarianism. The difficulty lies in that the principle of liberty disqualifies utility-promotion as a reason for restraint of liberty, unless such restraint also prevents harm to others. Yet at the same time, once the harm-to-others threshold presented by the principle of liberty is crossed and liberty-limitation is justifiable, it becomes justified according to the balance of restraint of liberty and prevention of harm as assessed by a utilitarian calculation. By appealing to perfectionist tendencies in Mill's thought, and particularly his notion of "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being", the principle of liberty can be seen less in the light of problems with regard to utilitarian calculation and more as an indispensable pillar for what Mill would have us aspire to be both as a tolerant society and as autonomous individuals.