The fundamental problem of the social compact is to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each member with the full force of the whole community, while each member, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only themselves and remains as free as before. This seemingly impossible demand — to surrender individual independence in exchange for collective protection, without losing freedom — is what the social compact resolves.
The compact does not merely suggest; it obligates. Those who accept its benefits must also accept its burdens. Rousseau's most contested claim follows: when a citizen refuses to obey the general will, the community may compel him — not as an act of tyranny, but as the necessary condition of freedom itself. To live under no law is not freedom but the chaos of the state of nature; to live under self-given law is the only genuine freedom available in civil society.
Entry into the compact transforms the individual. The natural person, driven by appetite and self-interest, becomes a moral and civic being, capable of justice and duty. What is lost in natural liberty — unconstrained licence — is gained back many times over in civil liberty, which is the only freedom worthy of the name.
The social compact is described in Book I, Chapter VI of The Social Contract (1762). G.D.H. Cole translation, 1913.
