The General Will?

A great number of liberal critics have charged Jean-Jacques Rousseau as one of the progenitors of totalitarianism insofar as Rousseau inspired GWF Hegel and Karl Marx thereby setting some of the wheels in motion towards really existing socialism. It is true that Rousseau was a critic of equality before the law and the notion of private property. The interventionist state implied in the opposition to the market society of individual property-owners seems at odds with fundamental ideas of liberalism.[1] The blunt advocacy of ‘force’ to compel people comes across as authoritarian. Let alone the distinction between the general will and the will of all seems to posit an opposition between what people might decide and what they should decide. The insistence on the indivisibility of sovereign power seems to eliminate any possible system of checks and balances which are given in a liberal democracy. We are lead, by this view, to see Rousseau as at least on the slippery slope towards authoritarianism.

If we follow on this line of thought we might take Rousseau as a proponent of positive liberty on the grounds that he holds happiness and freedom lies in the individual setting aside their own particular wills and finding their true freedom by aligning themselves with the general will of the people. It may be necessary to ‘force’ people to be free, specifically the people who did not realise that their best interests were in line with the Common Good.[2] It has been said that Rousseau’s outlook is much more complicated for the reason that the particular notions of freedom evoked in his work do not fit easily into the distinction between positive and negative liberty.[3] The rejection of slavery comes out of an adherence to a notion of freedom as non-subjection to the particular will of others and this seems in line with the liberal tradition of negative liberty. But Rousseau goes further to the claim that the basis of legitimate authority is ‘agreed convention’ and rests on this same basis of non-subjection.[4] The aim of The Social Contract was to uncover a ‘form of association’ in which each individual is as ‘free as before’.[5]

In The Social Contract Rousseau makes a distinction between three forms of freedom: natural, civil and moral.[6] Natural freedom is the absence of all restraints people experienced in the state of nature; the only possible impediments are the forces of the individual. Only the physical power of others could impede such a freedom, the only form of ownership was a form of physical possession but there were no obligations to others. When we become citizens of a society we forfeit natural freedom as to attain civil freedom. We can understand civil freedom as the freedom guaranteed by its limits, or more specifically, the general will. The limits imposed are the reason to associate in a civil state, the bi-product of this association rather than the reason for it is moral freedom. This kind of freedom should be understood as the submission to laws prescribed to oneself. It might be broken down as a formula: each person only obeys himself and remains as naturally free as before; each person only obeys himself and remains as civilly free as before; by these means each person remains as morally free as before.

It is important to note that moral freedom seems to presuppose a democratic system whereby we can prescribe laws onto ourselves. This is a bi-product of association in society rather than its ultimate aim, whereas civil freedom is the freedom maintained through the limitations set by the general will. This may seem dangerously close to the suggestion that the agreement we set into is not in itself a guarantee of freedom, but it might lead to a greater freedom by accident. But the general will arises out of the will of each individual, it is where we find our true interests, so submission to the general will is not subjection in the way Rousseau understood it. All of this seems to presuppose a democratic system and is in accordance with Rousseau’s emphasis on autonomy over subjection. It was the dependency of the poor on the rich, and vice versa, which was created and sustained by inequality. It would seem the idea here is that the citizenry should be bound by the laws forged in democratic participation, which they have participated in making, even if a citizen does not agree with them.

The point being to prevent the laws from being undermined by a particular will. The laws would apply to all and arise from all. There are no exceptions and any opposition to the laws would be intolerable as it would undermine the whole framework at a fundamental level. The law has to be enforced and since these laws have been self-prescribed there is no violation of freedom, at least in Rousseau’s terms. This seems to run against the individualism of liberal thought, if the law is one we prescribed to ourselves through collective decision-making then the opposition to it is not just ‘individualistic’. It is ideological because it is more so about the egalitarian order Rousseau advocated rather than the framework which is meant to guarantee such order.[7] Rousseau thought individuals might have to be ‘forced to be free’ in order to guarantee the conditions whereby individuals could coexist freely and equally. This is down to the trajectory of history, particularly in the last century, which saw the rise and fall of socialist states around the world. The need to refute Marxism in the Cold War went as far as looking to uproot the ‘seeds’ of totalitarianism to Rousseau and even as far back as Plato.[8]

As sovereignty is based on the citizenry through which the general will is expressed, it is directed towards the Common Good by the general will and cannot be shaken by the particular wills of individuals – which are preoccupied with preference rather than aimed at equality. Sovereignty is indivisible and inalienable; it derives its being from the sanctity of the contract into which the people have entered. The general will cannot be ‘delegated’ nor can sovereignty be transferred as it is the only legitimate form of representation.[9] The general will is the will of the body of the people, the will is either general or it is not. It holds legal authority because of its vital role in the establishment of sovereignty. This is where Rousseau states bluntly that the division of sovereignty, of power from will, of legislature from executive. The power to raise taxes, declare war and so on must rest within reach of the people, this is the application of sovereignty rather than the thing itself.[10] Sovereignty is really about the capacity of the people to deliberate and direct the state.

The establishment of society is only possible when the interests of individuals converge rather than stand in opposition. The Common Good is essential to the foundation of society and from there it is easy to see why society should be governed in the common interest. We are subject to no one’s will but our own in the sense that the laws enforced are those which we have willed. This is the reason that the general will is not a violation of autonomy and a notion of freedom as non-subjection can remain. Rousseau holds that once the citizenry become servile to a ‘master’ then sovereign authority comes to an end and the body-politic is destroyed. Consent remains important as the decrees handed down by a ‘master’ could pass for the general will, but only if the sovereign authority does not oppose them even though it is free to do so. The government is not the sovereign itself, rather it is the intermediate body between subjects and sovereign, whereby mutual correspondence is ensured through the practice of law and the maintenance of freedom.

Clearly there is a tension in the work between the democratic conception of general will as what the citizens of the state have decided together and the transcendental conception where general will is the incarnation of the citizens' common interest in abstraction from what any of them actually wants.[11]   We might be led to interpret the argument as specific of the right conditions and subject to the right procedures whereby citizen legislators may converge on laws that correspond to the common interest. The state lacks legitimacy whenever these conditions and procedures are absent. So the theoretical state, which Rousseau stood for, may exercise authority over its citizens even though really existing states fail to meet the criteria for legitimacy. This is where Rousseau might be tied in with the anarchist tradition. But it has to be noted that the transcendental conception seems to be more in accordance with Rousseau’s view that the best kind of government is an elective aristocracy. This has even more in common with the liberal system of representative democracy, where elected officials hand down decrees.[12]

It is difficult to say definitively whether or not Rousseau stood for an authoritarian state. It might be said that the conception is an authoritarian one insofar as it doesn’t affirm classical liberal doctrines of individualism, that the state may be a tool for shaping society, institutions and even people. There are problems with the institutions that Rousseau advocates and there are indeed illiberal aspects of his thought. But there are also similarities between Rousseauian ideas and the liberal tradition, we also shouldn’t lose sight of the anarchist strain running through Rousseau’s work. To some extent whether or not the supposed authoritarianism of Rousseau is problematic comes down to the political leanings we hold. Therefore it becomes a matter of whether or not egalitarianism as an end is worth so-called "authoritarian" means. If we are to take ideals such as liberty, equality and fraternity seriously then it means (to the chagrin of liberals everywhere) we may have to embrace the means as justified only by the end.

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[1] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.190-203

[2] Thompson, Mel: Understand Political Philosophy (Hachette UK, 2010) pg.143-144

[3] The particular understanding of liberty is important here. Isaiah Berlin drew a highly influential distinction between negative and positive forms of freedom. The negative conception of freedom is defined by the absence of constraint on actions and aims which we can choose to pursue without such impediments. This is the standard conception originally defined by Thomas Hobbes and typically embellished in liberal thought. The positive conception is focused on the capacity of the agent to set their own goals and pursue what they wish to do with their lives.

Thompson, Mel: Understand Political Philosophy (Hachette UK, 2010) pg.131-153

[4] The possibility of an ‘agreed convention’ of slavery is dismissed by Rousseau on the grounds that a man does not ‘give himself’ but sells himself in such a scenario. Anyone who does so should not be considered sane, as Rousseau argues to give up freedom is to give up our humanity in terms of morals, rights and duties.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract, A new translation by Christopher Batts (Oxford University Press, 2008) pg.48-53

[5] In simple terms, communism is an egalitarian order which emerges on the basis of the material proper material preconditions generated by advanced capitalism and after the development of socialism via the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism has been achieved once a common ownership of the means of production has been established, where there is no exploitation of man by man and the state has "withered away". It is the ideal which anarchists strive for in the immediate breakdown of capitalism, whereas Karl Marx held that there has to be an intermediate phase. By contrast, Rousseau is out to draw up an alternative social contract to the ones put forth by Hobbes and Locke. This vision of a new society is not made to include the transition from society as it is to a new system. Instead the contract is posited in a kind of alternative universe, where what should have been is possible. Consequently Rousseau has had a great influence on the traditions of communism and anarchism, for the reason that the ultimate aim is a free and egalitarian order.

[6] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.190-203

[7] It is hardly allowed in a liberal democracy for people to decide not to follow the law and to step out of the political system of rights and liberties to establish a competing system. Theoretically, in a liberal society there is no space an exception as every individual is equal before the law in terms of rights and freedoms. We have to keep in mind that even at the origins of liberal thought with John Locke such an exception in order to justify slavery, slaves were not equal in terms of rights and freedoms because slaves were not counted as human beings. A much more relevant and befitting analogy is in the work of JS Mill, the ‘tyranny of the majority’ is specifically about an exception. The idea is that the majority cannot impose discriminatory or threatening laws on a minority, who are less powerful by the fact of being a minority.  The problem is that there are powerful minorities in society, whether they are politicians, intellectuals or economic elites. A Marxist would be keen to point to classical liberalism as superstructural to the economic base, with the privileged class falling back on the doctrines of property rights and individual freedom to insulate itself.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: JS Mill, Social and Political Philosophy –

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#SocPol

[8] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.82-89

[9] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract, A new translation by Christopher Batts (Oxford University Press, 2008) pg.56-65

[10] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.97-127

[11] Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Rousseau, the Idea of the General Will – http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/#IdeGenWil

[12] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract, A new translation by Christopher Batts (Oxford University Press, 2008) pg.91-117

Hobbes on Democracy.

Thomas Hobbes was a perfect foil for Machiavelli in a way, as Machiavelli claimed to have discovered a new continent of a new order but it was Hobbes who made that continent habitable. The focus of Leviathan, specifically in chapter 19, shifts onto the different kinds of commonwealth as distinguished from one another in terms of institutions and the succession to sovereign power, as well as in differences of convenience, aptitude in the creation of the peace and security of the people. For Hobbes there were only three main models of commonwealth: monarchic, aristocratic and democratic. This is due to the indivisible nature of sovereign power can only be peacefully manifested in representatives of “either one or more or all”.[1] For our purposes we will be focused particularly on what Hobbes has to say about democracy rather than aristocracy and monarchy. But the views he held on aristocratic and monarchic systems remain important only insofar as they can be distinguished from a democracy or a “popular commonwealth” as Hobbes deemed it.

Early on in the chapter democracy is marked out as distinct from monarchy and aristocracy, as a popular commonwealth in which representation comes in the form of “all that will come together”. Thomas Hobbes contrasts this with monarchy, where the representative is one man, and aristocracy, which is only partial assembly. In the case of a democracy every man has the right to enter into it, rather than in an aristocracy where only the men distinct from the rest can enter. Notably, if the power of the monarch has been limited then the state in question is not a monarchy as sovereignty fell into the hands of an assembly (which could be either democratic or aristocratic). For Hobbes the indivisibility of sovereign power is necessary for peace, an end for which sovereignty is instituted. Once power becomes divided it is no longer sovereign, so for conflict to be avoided it is vital for a duality of power to be averted.

For peace the sovereign must have absolute authority, be not a party to the covenants and hold absolute authority only to the extent that the sovereign has the power to enforce the law. Then it is absurd to think that there could be perpetual peace when sovereign power is in the hands of an assembly (as in a democracy) for the absolute representation of the people would fall to subordinate representatives and the power could very easily become divided. Thus subordinate representatives pose a danger to sovereign power insofar as such a system can become a source of division in the commonwealth.[2] So sovereign power can be divided, but it shouldn’t be because power ceases to be sovereign once it has been divided.[3] Think of instances in which states have collapsed into chaos amidst an uprising, a rupture of the order from which the sovereignty of the regime is undermined to the extent that a duality emerges and a rival for sovereignty appears.

There are also cases where the sovereign takes the form of a one-party state and a sudden rupture explodes the status quo. The revolution and subsequent civil war in Libya was one such example where power was stripped of its sovereignty as the people rebelled, but eventually sovereign power was manifested in a new government as the Gaddafi regime was brushed aside in Tripoli. We might even segue into theories of what makes a revolutionary situation. We might understand a revolutionary situation as defined by the emergence of what Charles Tilly called “multiple sovereignty”, which has three main features. First of all, the existing state suffers a loss of power to contenders and rivals. Secondly the rivals fall back on a base of popular support which is a significant portion of the population overall. Lastly, the existing state cannot, for whatever reason, repress the contenders and the base of support behind them. The fears of a divided sovereignty, which Hobbes had, are precisely a fear of this kind of situation arising.

Whether or not it is possible for a sovereign to hold absolute power regardless of its' form (whether monarchic or democratic) is not really explored by Hobbes at this point. For Hobbes, democracy is problematic for a number of reasons let alone the question of indivisible sovereignty. In a democracy the people of the assembly would not just represent the common interest of constituents. The individual has their own private interests which would rival the common interest and could easily come first, as Hobbes notes that the “passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.” Where the public and private interests are unified the public is most advanced, Hobbes maintains that in a monarchy the private interest is the same as the public. The reasoning being that the wealth, power and honour of a monarch are derived from the subjects. The ability of the state to defend itself from enemies would be undermined if the people are poor, contemptible or too weak to maintain such a war. In a democracy, the prosperity of the people contributes not so much to a corrupt leadership as it does many times deceit, treachery and conflict.

Hobbes points out that a monarch can receive counsel wherever and from whomever he so deems fit, in secrecy, at whatever point before the time of action. In a democracy in which a sovereign assembly has been established, there is no time or place in which the assembly could receive counsel with secrecy because of the multitudinous nature of an assembly. So when such an assembly requires counsel, it will not be received except from those who have a right to do so and may not leave the confines of its own body to do so. Typically this will mean that the assembly will receive counsel from people who are more versed in the accumulation of wealth than knowledge. The advice could likely come in the form of long discourses, which would commonly call upon men to act in various ways rather than govern them. For Hobbes the assembly could reach out to counsel from the unskilled in civic matters, orators and so on, who give their opinions in speeches full of pretence and inept learning, this could only lead to the disruption of the commonwealth or do it no good at all.

It is possible that the assembly could strip good citizens of property to enrich friends of the assembly (e.g. friends of the people rather than the friends of elected representatives). Hobbes concedes that this is a possibility in a monarchy, he maintains that “we do not read that this has ever been done.” For the favourites of the assembly are more numerous than a monarch, so there is a greater temptation to serve the interests of their own kindred as well as to seductive orators – who have greater power to hurt than to help, as “condemnation than absolution more resembles justice.” Not only is it impractical for the assembly to be well advised there is a great potential for inconstancy as the potential for such in a monarchy is multiplied as with the mass of the representative. For Hobbes the resolutions of a monarch are subject to no other inconstancy than that of his own nature, whereas democratic resolutions are subject to the nature of the masses.

The assembly would be prone to disagreement as a result of the nature of man, as well as due to envy and interest, to the height of such disagreement a civil war maybe the consequence.[4] So it would seem that the stability of the state in question is at stake with the rise of a democracy. At the same time, the whole of the assembly cannot fail unless the multitude fail as well and there is no place for the question of the right of succession in a democratic government for the reason that anyone can enter into such a government. Though the death of a monarch differs from the death of an entire assembly, it would still dispossess the people of a representative and leave the multitude without a sovereign which unites them. The question of stability inevitably arises once again, without the guarantee of the “peace of men” it is likely that the state could return to the “condition of war in every age” and the only alternative to this is an “artificial eternity of man”.[5]

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[1] Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.118-120

[2] It makes sense then that Hobbes considered it absurd that the monarchy could hold sovereign power as it invites the people to elect representatives capable of putting forth the advice from the people. In the rare case of a monarchy in which the monarch is never considered a representative, though called sovereign, the status of representative would fall to those who have been sent by the people to carry their petitions and give the monarch their advice. In such cases then it is imperative for the “true and absolute representative of a people” to instruct the people in such offices and watch how they admit any other representation on any occasion.

[3] Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.120-121

[4] For Hobbes, to say it is inconvenient to place sovereign power in the office of one man or an assembly of men (e.g. rather than a democratic assembly) is to hold that “all government is more inconvenient than confusion and civil war.” All danger must originate in the dispute between those who are for an office of such honour and those out to profit for themselves.

Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.122-123

[5] Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.124-125

The Original Sin of Liberalism.

The Truth as a Whole.

At the origins of liberal thought, in the political writings of a certain anonymous Englishman all the way back in 1691, is the idea of the state of nature and notions of consent. Man is by nature free and equal in the state of nature, in which there was no impartial authority and no solid legal framework to resolve conflict. In order to preserve property and constrain the powers, which might oppress the individual, man entered into a social contract and by consent submit to a government. The writer went on to draw a distinction between expressed and tacit consent. The first of which is obvious, expressed consent is the willful acceptance of society and the state. In exchange for freedom and equality the netural state will act to preserve property, as well as the rights and liberties entrenched in property. Tacit consent is a less simple concept. Everyone who has profited or benefited in any way from the state and society has automatically surrendered equality and freedom in exchange for such rewards.

So in one way or another the people consent to society and the government, all freedom and equality is surrendered for the sake of life, liberty and property. As some critics of Michael Moore will point out, Moore has consented to the system and American society in benefiting so much from it all - so why does he make such terrible films? Next comes the demand that Moore should give all of his money to charity and go to live in Cuba. In other words Michael Moore "consented" to American capitalism when he was born in the US and started to benefit enormously from the system as it had developed. If he wants to criticise America he should give away everything he has gained from living the American dream. This is the line of the American Right, reactionaries everywhere and at the fundamental level of it is the idea of "consent". The assumptions of freedom and equality are embellished throughout liberal ideology, concealed at the base of notions of individual responsibility and meritocracy.


Many of the arguments against positive discrimination and political correctness rest lazily on these assumptions. Affirmative action is often slapped down as putting black people before whites, that in itself is a double-standard and an inequality. This assumes that there were equal in standards and background, when in actuality there is a huge inequality as black people have been disenfranchised and kept in a miserable place. A common argument against political correctness is that while white people are not permitted to use racial slurs, the groups of the ethnic groups often subject to such language are themselves allowed to use the slurs. But there is a difference in context and once again the assumption of equality is false. According to the vague distinction of tacit consent just by the use of money people surrender their equality and freedom. We've all bought into this system of free enterprise and competition, individual freedom and responsibility so stop whining about the crimes of the past and calling for social justice! The historical context of slavery, segregation and racial oppression are removed from the picture.

Look at the grounds onto which the soup-run has been done away with in Westminster, it encourages homelessness and brings more homeless people into the borough so it is being scrapped. The homeless are viewed as a public nuisance and as failed citizens, they were free to work and live normally but failed somehow and are responsible for their own plight. This is consistent with the atomised interpretation of the world which liberals adhere to. This is in denial of the 'Truth as a Whole', so the contextual determinants are removed from view and society becomes a mass of autonomous individuals. Hegel held that there is no phenomenon that can be grasped in isolation because this would ignore the network of relations that constitute such things. To understand the world reasonably is to take into account the context of events. In denial of the 'Truth as a Whole' liberals remove all the contextual determinants which led people to become homeless and instead emphasise the freedom and responsibility of the individual. An informed answer would be to have soup-runs throughout London combined with serious efforts to eliminate homelessness.

If we go further than this to look at the Enlightenment interpretation of history as progress we find this same fundamental problem. The material conditions onto which liberalism is predicated, it's foundations are coated in blood, is the accumulative processes of slavery and feudalism. The debt owed to the suffering of slaves and serfs is quietly kicked under the rug. The advances of Western civilisation are often achieved through slaughter, such advances open up new possibilities of barbarism as well as emancipation. The countless generations butchered and terrorised into subservience to advance the mode of production and amass a vast material resources which enable the emergence of new forms of exploitation. American capitalism is indebted to the genocidal bloodbath and centuries of misery and injustice preceding the Revolution and merely change in form after independence. The liberal order providing retrospective justifications for slavery, low-taxes, the theft of Native American land and the accumulation of capital. The huge debt to the slaves, who built the White House, is the legitimate claim for reparations and positive discrimination.

The Ballardian State of Nature.

The Noble Savage.
 

In Ballard's High-Rise (1975) we see the professional inhabitants of a luxurious apartment building descend into mayhem and debauchery. It began with wild sectarian parties, then the swimming pools and the school were cut off from the dwellers of the lower levels. Gradually the high-rise becomes more and more cut off from the outside world. As the services of the high-rise begin to break down, a war breaks out between the middle floors and the lower floors. Barricades are put up to keep marauders at bay. Dogs are released into the air-vents and hunted down for food by the tenants. Initially the metaphorical class system of the high-rise degenerates to a stratified array of competing tribes - a war of all against all - and then further to the level of disassociated hunter-gatherers. This is reflected by bizarre rituals of sexual domination, Wilder drifts from floor to floor sleeping with numerous women along the way as Royal creates a sort of "harem" on the 40th floor. 

The protagonists are Robert Laing, Richard Wilder and Anthony Royal, who reside in each of the three segments. Laing is recently divorced and is trained physician who teaches at a medical school, to avoid entering the field of a general practitioner and treating patients. Ironically Laing has found his first "patients" by the end of High-Rise. Wilder works in the television studies and initially tries to produce a documentary on the high-rise. He moves into the high-rise with his wife Helen and two sons, but abandons them to "climb" the building - a metaphor for the meritocrat. Royal is one of the architects of the high-rise, he resides on the 40th floor with his upper-class wife and attempts to cultivate a position of power over the whole building. In these aristocratic pursuits, the polar opposite of Wilder's "ascent", Royal builds an entourage of servants and a "harem" (including Helen Wilder) at the top of the high-rise.


At first the segmented nature of the high-rise is a metaphor for the class system, the first 10 floors are occupied by the lowest earners and represent the proletariat. The top five floors are occupied by the highest earners and most prestigious tenants, like Anthony Royal on the 40th floor, whilst floors 10 to 35 are inhabited by a kind of middle-class. Though the entire building is home to professionals, the kind of people who would be regarded as members of the bourgeoisie, who are brought down to earth as the high-rise seems to unleash primitive behaviours among the tenants. The bourgeois veneer falls away as the characters hold back less and less, from alcohol and parties to sex and violence, as if venturing into a primeval realm where one's true self might be found. Out of the main characters it is Laing who seems to find himself in the chaotic trajectory of life in the high-rise. By the time we are introduced to him, from which point the rest of the story is told in flashback, Laing is content eating dog in his apartment with Alice and Eleanor.


The most vitriolic of Ballard's detractors would claim that his characters remain two-dimensional, lack development, and Ballard's works are totally plot driven. This is ignorant of the way Ballard externalises human experience to the point that the changing setting becomes an extension of the characters. In High-Rise the building itself becomes a revealing extension to the development of characters. For instance, Richard Wilder begins on the second level and ends on the roof of the building. Wilder abandons his wife Helen and sons, locking them inside the apartment, to pursue reaching the 40th floor and a confrontation with Anthony Royal. He gradually becomes a bearded, almost naked, savage in this pursuit. The plans to make a documentary about the high-rise have faded by the novel's conclusion, the camera Wilder carried around with him to shoot the opening for the documentary is reduced to a inanimate object - the purpose of which he no longer understands. Towards the end the graffiti and vandalised walls of the high-rise are in the process of being replenished it would seem, as a new social order emerges.

A War of All against All.

This view of a war of all against all may be Hobbesian, but the wider view is a Rousseauian one. Many of the works of JG Ballard focus on the pathological aspects of Western civilisation, car crashes are eroticised and human beings adapt to life on a traffic island. The social order of a Leviathan idealised by Thomas Hobbes is not found in contemporary society. Instead social decay is  almost omnipresent and at the root of it all is the development of civilisation, specifically the striving towards a social order which would be born from the innovations of science and technology. The high-rise itself is a product of this striving, which is precisely why it is the ideal setting for the story, it is partly the force behind the destruction of the order it is striving for - namely, the primeval desires unleashed within the confines of the high-rise. The capitalist social order is the first to be dissolved in the apartment building, which in turn opens up a void where a new tribalism reigns only for this to fragment into a perpetual war between individuals.


Royal and Pangbourne, a gynaecologist, share the view that the high-rise is a liminoid experience from which a new social order may emerge. In the high-rise the average tenant has entered into a common realm with others, while the identity and status bestowed on them by society is gradually lost. Personal identities as well as relations to others are explored, challenged and decimated to give way for a new set of identities. Near the climax of High-Rise Royal no longer enjoys the life of "zoo-keeper" and identifies more and more with the scavenging gulls, earlier in the novel he even notes that his white safari jacket and greying hair is similar to the feathers of these birds. The transition from "zoo-keeper" to "non-human animal" would not necessarily be a hidden desire to be one of the herd as the gulls are free to fly away. Anthony Royal is passive whereas Richard Wilder is rebellious in his ascent of the building, whereas Robert Laing is the "moderate witness" who survives the vicissitudes which transpire as the social order crumbles.


In the end Royal is shot dead by Wilder, who is in turn killed and cannibalised by the women of the high-rise and Laing is left cooking an Alsatian for the two women barricaded in his apartment with him. After the layers of a social fabric produced by economic relations dissolve in the high-rise, as does the successive stages of tribes and hunter-gatherers, the only remaining order is patriarchal and it is next to breakdown. In killing Royal, Richard Wilder has completed his ascent and in doing so has initiated a paradigm shift so radical that the transition destroys him. The women of Royal's "harem", who are described as Wilder's new mothers, turn their carving knives on Richard Wilder as he reaches the penthouse and strips naked. The raiding parties are led by Helen Wilder, who let Robert Laing live as he appears submissive to Alice and Eleanor - a form of passivity to the new order perhaps. As Laing cooks Royal's favourite dog, a white Alsatian, for Alice and Eleanor he is at peace as he notices that the events of the building are spreading to another apartment block nearby.


Although Rousseau adhered to a conception of the state of nature which was harmonious and individualistic, High-Rise is not purely Rousseauian in themes as Ballard's vision is of a collective and not of individualism. The tenants of the high-rise began as atomised individuals and by the novel's conclusion the building is in transition. The contagious spread of the events in the high-rise to another building nearby represents the beginning of a shift to collectivism devoid of the boundaries propped up in the preceding orders. The confines of the high-rise could not constrain the events in the end. The radical shifts which systematically undermine and breakdown every paradigm to emerge in High-Rise may be driving towards a kind of "zero-point" like the state of nature. A point where divisions of class and sex have been smashed, the heights of subjective freedom, though not realised through the state as that would still require a reliance on scientific and technological innovation. The vision portrayed is anarchic, to say the least, and there are early signs of a radical feminism emerging as the "zero-point".