What do you guys think of Rousseau?

[Guardia Rossa]

Pretty much straightforward.

Was he pre-socialist, a utopian socialist, or just a radical petit-bourgeois ideologue?

I bought his Social Contract but I lent it to a friend of mine I'm trying to "sovietize" as he was interested in it.

[Hatshepsut]

Rousseau lived in the 18th century before these categories really existed in full across society. He was concerned with the problem of absolute monarchy in his own France. He would have welcomed a modern bourgeois liberal state as progress. Immanuel Kant considered him an influence.

I don't hate capitalism or capitalist states, as in their historical place in human political evolution. Of course I think capitalism's day in the sun needs to end soon. It's moved into a new phase Marx and Lenin didn't discuss—more "democratic" and "equal" than before, but on a basis of global banking & finance, with an irresponsible mingling of private, state, and overseas finance under partial control of speculators. Repression is (usually) softer—the USA has gay marriage now—but it's taken on an insecurity aspect where people wonder when it will suddenly come back full force. Cincinnati police used 135 pistol shells to down a single black motorist in a stalled car, for instance, whereupon we note a "24 hour/7 day" temporal schedule not formerly present. Social amelioration in the rich world has entailed "offshoring" of new oppressive and exploitative formations to other countries, using finance to maintain their dependency. Either Socialism or Communism will replace capitalism to continue human economic advance.

Rousseau did have a communitarian outlook and introduced numerous ideas later socialists and communists developed further. He is celebrated as a "father" of the French Revolution that began shortly after his death. He wrote a discourse on social inequality, rejecting the Hobbesian social contract in favor of sunnier assumptions regarding human nature, saying that not to know good is not to be incapable of it. He opposed the Atlantic slave trade. Unfortunately, declinism marred his thinking; humankind's distant past as innocent "savages" was the golden age for him and everything afterward was downhill. Rousseau subscribed to a conventional notion of virtue borrowed from classical Greece which is totally alien to socialism. But for his day, a pioneer.

[OGG]

Rousseau lived in the 18th century before these categories really existed in full across society. He was concerned with the problem of absolute monarchy in his own France. He would have welcomed a modern bourgeois liberal state as progress.

That's an important point. When analyzing people from the past, the time in which they lived is important to understanding the thoughts of the person.

[tuwix]

Pretty much straightforward.

Was he pre-socialist, a utopian socialist, or just a radical petit-bourgeois ideologue?

I bought his Social Contract but I lent it to a friend of mine I'm trying to "sovietize" as he was interested in it.

He's an author of many political ideas. It's difficult to put him to one ideology. But what is the most interesting to radical left, he started to criticize a phenomenon of property. As first of philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment has noticed that property is absolutely against freedom and equality. This statement was the reiterated by radical leftist. The most famous of them were Proudhon and Marx.

The critique of property is much older than Rousseau. In ancient Greece, there were first found texts criticizing a property, but Rousseau was first in modern era.

[ComradeAllende]

He's an author of many political ideas. It's difficult to put him to one ideology. But what is the most interesting to radical left, he started to criticize a phenomenon of property. As first of philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment has noticed that property is absolutely against freedom and equality. This statement was the reiterated by radical leftist. The most famous of them were Proudhon and Marx.

I think this is why he is virtually ignored in Western (primarily US) circles; that and his influence on the French Revolution. As far as I can tell, most Americans have embraced a Federalist (Hamiltonian) view of the world, eschewing egalitarianism and radical change for "natural aristocracy" and gradualism.

Back to the OP's original question, I would have to argue that Rousseau is a pre-socialist, like Thomas Paine. He had the courage to question the foundations of property, but couldn't envision a truly propertyless society (partly because the Industrial Revolution had not fully transformed the means of production). Nevertheless, he was far more progressive than his intellectual contemporaries (Locke, Hobbes, etc).