IT'S TIME TO END THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL

>HeRedditary monarchy is the only kind

Well there's the Roman alternative, where they chose their successors through adoption. But Rome wasn't exactly the most stable society, and I'd take our democratic system where there's a clear an effective means of succession. Find me a monarchy that can handle changing dynasties every eight years without breaking into civil war and I'll spin on a dime.

Frogs tried Rousseau

people died

Roses are red
Charles II is king
Hobbes was right about everything

The Roman Kingdom? The one before the Roman Republic.

>Hobbes
>muh human beings are naturally immoral and need a ruthless dictator to beat them till they behave

>One of them argued for a republican regime in which power is derived from the people through the social contract
>He is at the same time blamed for totalitarianism

>The other's philosophy is literally "any state is better than no state at all" and describes a literally monsterous nation-state in which everything, from faith to morality, is subservient to the authority of whoever is in charge in whatever way, shape or form imaginable
>He is praised as one of liberalism's greatest thinkers
Opposite day much?

>People die in wars
Any other brilliant insights you'd like to share?

>Reign of Terror
>war casualties

I guess you can say that in a way

both of those greentext describe Hobbes

Please tell me about the Reign of Terror and its causes. While you're at it, please cite the direct passage from Du Contrat Social which orders regular purging of the masses. The closest I can find to such a commandment is a statement from Jefferson, who according to American exceptionalism participated in the 'good' revolution: The tree of liberty regularly needs to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

>both
>even though they're mutually exclusive

>even though they're mutually exclusive
not really

he believed government derives power from a social contract with the people, it's just that the incentive of the people to that contract is "any state is better than no state"

and he is loved for it AND blamed for totalitarianism (Rousseau is blamed for mob rule and "general will" bullshit).

My point was he believed an authority was good, as long as it was complete. That's mutually exclusive with the republican (especially in the res publica sense) statement. In fact, Rousseau and Locke both set out to solve the conflict Hobbes left in his wake: the tyrannical Leviathan.

>and he is loved for it AND blamed for totalitarianism (Rousseau is blamed for mob rule and "general will" bullshit).
I guess they're similar in the same sense then. That 'general will' is often cited as being what inspired totalitarianism (though Marx never cited Rousseau even once) while at the same time being blamed for mob rule (even though he never advocated for this, stating that while a direct democracy would be ideal France was simply too big for it to be viable).

Problem is with the vague "general will" anyone can justify their actions by saying "muh general will!" Whose to determine them wrong especially if they get a mob to agree with them?

With movements created "for the people" like communism and republicanism being corrupted into totalitarianism due to this justification you can understand how they are connected.

>Problem is with the vague "general will" anyone can justify their actions by saying "muh general will!" Whose to determine them wrong especially if they get a mob to agree with them?
>especially if they get a mob to agree with them.
"general will" isn't mob rule, bruh. That's "will of all". In fact, this idea of a "general will" is expressed in representative democracies, where politicians (ideally) rule according to the best of their abilities rather than mindly following the will of all peoples. General will simply means something among the lines of "greatest interest of the people". Are you implying we should abandon this concept of summom bonum because every tyrant who ever lived claimed that what he did was in the greatest interest of his subject?

>With movements created "for the people" like communism
Once again, Marx NEVER cited Rousseau. You're blaming Rousseau for something he never inspired based on the vaguest of associations, with an argument as valid as "Jesus was a communist because he told people to share".

If we're going to disregard the facts, I can connect everything to Marx given enough associations.

I never said that Marx cited Rosseau

Then where do you get this idea from that Rousseau inspired Marx, if you have no evidence for it? You're effectively admitting it's baseless conjecture.

I said communism was created "for the people"

both argue that the system is corrupt because bad people tricked the common man into working for them

>“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The Discourses

>Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.

-The communist manifesto

or are you saying they have no similarities?

They have similarities with eachother, and with so many other writers. The similarities are just not big enough to call it a direct connection. What Rousseau here refers to is the end of the Natural State (which he himself admits that we can never revert back to and perhaps never existed at all, it's a thought experiment) in which the creation of the construct of property created scarcity which creates war ,a point of view he shares with Plato, if we're going to make comparisons anyway.*

What we see with Marx is an entirely different beast altogether: it makes no reference to the origins of property or the nature of scarcity. Instead it simply claims that workers are exploited by the bourgeois, a relationship Rousseau barely concerned himself with if at all. The closest we even get to this is Rousseau bringing up the problem of "free-riders" in a Republic (ie. people who do not work at all), and even then his concern was that they do not contribute, not that they're somehow exploiting a working class.

*For some added fun, let's make Plato a communist too!
ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1689&context=luc_theses
Like I said, anyone can be a communist if facts aren't a concern!

While they were obviously diametrical opposites on the question of human nature, their political philosophies are even't that incompatible. Hobbes provides an argument for the state, but says any particular kind of state (democracy, oligarchy, monarchy) can work, though he prefers monarchy. Meanwhile Rousseau provides an argument for democracy. Put them together and you get an argument for a democratic state, yes? I once saw it said that these two are the originators of the nation-state: Hobbes give the state, Rousseau the nation (in the original French Revolutionary sense of course)

He's 'meme rammed down in school' tier