Introduction

'The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine", and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.' This was Rousseau's second discourse, written for a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon. He imagines a state of nature in which primitive man is solitary, free and healthy, moved only by self-preservation and pity for his fellows, with almost no inequality among men. With the family, language, agriculture and metallurgy, men begin to compare themselves and seek one another's esteem; private property appears, and the rich, to protect what they own, devise a trick, the founding of the state and its laws, which fixes inequality for ever. The book had a profound influence on later social criticism, Marx's included.