Moral and legitimate equality

Moral and legitimate equality names the equality established by the social compact in place of natural differences among people. It does not demand identical strength, intelligence, power, or wealth. Rather, it makes citizens equal by convention and legal right, requires sovereign acts to apply to them alike, and sets limits on social and economic disparities so that liberty is not hollowed out by dependence. Its decisive significance is that equality is both a principle of legitimate political obligation and a practical condition that law must continually defend.

Equality Established by Convention

The compact does not abolish physical inequality. People may remain unequal in strength or intelligence, but political membership substitutes for those differences an equality that is moral and legitimate: each person stands as an equal under convention and legal right. The change is not a claim that natural distinctions have disappeared; it is a change in what those distinctions entitle anyone to do. No person's greater physical or intellectual capacity alone can establish a legitimate political superiority.

This equality follows from the reciprocal structure of the compact. Citizens accept common conditions and, because each is bound by the same terms imposed on others, are entitled to the same rights. The obligation is mutual: in carrying out commitments to the political community, citizens do not simply act for others but also for themselves. The general will can therefore aim at the happiness of each because every citizen, in willing for all, is included among those for whom the common decision is made.

The General Will and Equal Law

For the general will to be genuinely general, it must be general both in origin and in object: it must come from all and apply to all. A sovereign act is accordingly not an agreement between a superior and an inferior, but a convention between the body of citizens and each of its members. Its legitimacy comes from the social compact, its equity from being common to all, and its proper object from the general good. It binds or benefits citizens equally and recognizes the nation as a body without making distinctions among its members.

The common interest, rather than the sheer number of voters, gives a decision its general character. When citizens deliberate under rules they must accept for themselves as well as for others, interest and justice can converge. But a decision aimed at a particular person or fact lacks that common object. In such a case, the public and the individual concerned become opposing parties, and a decision presented as the general will risks becoming a particular will imposed on one side. Moral and legitimate equality therefore depends not only on equal standing in principle, but also on keeping law general in its object and application.

The same limit governs the reach of sovereign power. Although sovereign authority is absolute within its proper sphere, it cannot exceed the bounds of general conventions. Citizens retain the freedom to dispose of goods and liberty that those conventions leave to them; the Sovereign cannot impose greater charges on one citizen than another in a way that turns a general matter into a particular burden. Equality is thus built into the form of legitimate authority: common rules bind the political body and its members reciprocally, rather than placing one citizen at another's arbitrary disposal.

Liberty, Wealth, and the Work of Legislation

The greatest good sought by legislation has two principal elements: liberty and equality. Equality supports liberty because particular dependence takes force from the body of the State. Yet equality does not mean that everyone's power or riches must be identical. Political power must never become strong enough to produce violence and must be exercised through rank and law; wealth must not make one citizen rich enough to buy another, or leave someone else so poor as to be forced to sell himself. This standard asks for restraint among the wealthy in possessions and status, and among the less wealthy in avarice and covetousness.

The ideal is acknowledged to be difficult to realize. That difficulty is not a reason for legislation to abandon it. Circumstances continually tend to erode equality, so legal measures should continually work to maintain it. The standard is consequently not a demand for perfectly identical outcomes, but an ongoing political test: do differences in power and riches remain compatible with equal civic standing, or have they become means of violence and dependence?

Property, Public Costs, and Consent

Property makes the problem of equality concrete. It is treated as a particularly sacred right of citizenship because it supports the preservation of life, is vulnerable to usurpation, and underwrites citizens' undertakings and obedience to law. At the same time, the State and government incur costs, and citizens must contribute from their property to sustain them. Public provision and secure ownership therefore cannot be separated from the question of who bears common expenses, and under what authority.

If citizens directly governed themselves, they could assess contributions according to public needs and individual means, while keeping the collection and use of the money in view. In a society too populous for such immediate administration, however, public money passes through the hands of rulers, who have individual interests as well as public duties. Citizens may then see rulers' expenditure and cupidity rather than public necessity, and resent being deprived of necessities to provide others with superfluities. When confidence has been sufficiently damaged, voluntary contributions fail, while forced contributions lack legitimacy. The fiscal problem is therefore not merely how to raise revenue: it is how to sustain the State without undermining the property rights on which it rests.

The proposed safeguard is popular consent expressed through a general will decided by majority vote, rather than the particular permission of each individual taxpayer. A tax must answer to a need recognized by the people and rest on a proportional assessment that leaves no arbitrary element in its imposition. The principle is not that citizens may each pay only what they personally choose; it is that taxation must be authorized as a common decision and distributed according to public rules.

Proportionality requires more than counting property. Other things being equal, someone with ten times another person's property should contribute ten times as much. But the use of wealth matters too: those with only life's common necessities should pay nothing, while those possessing superfluities may justly be taxed on what exceeds necessity. Claims that luxury becomes necessary because of social rank are rejected: a person of high status has the same basic bodily needs as a herdsman, and relinquishing expensive display for a pressing public need could bring honour rather than disgrace.

A further measure is the advantage each person receives from social protection. The rich benefit from powerful safeguards for extensive possessions, while the poor may struggle to keep even a modest home secure. The distribution of public favour is also unequal: lucrative offices, exemptions, and the practical protection of authority tend toward the powerful, while wrongdoing by people of eminence may meet less effective accountability. Conversely, official attention can mobilize quickly when a wealthy person is robbed or insulted, whereas a poor person may have difficulty obtaining justice and may bear burdens from which a richer neighbour escapes. These contrasts expose a gap between equality under general law and unequal access to society's protections. The concept thus reaches beyond formal rights: a defensible order must attend to how property, taxation, security, and public authority distribute both burdens and benefits among citizens.