ABSTRACT
Concerns about capitalism’s tendency to discourage the constitution of a public world and simultaneously to encourage a retreat into privacy emerge almost as soon as capitalism becomes the dominant socioeconomic system in the world. In The Social Contract (which he wrote in 1762), Jean-Jacques Rousseau laments the destructive effect of the turn away from public service. Though he doesn’t associate this effect directly with capitalism, he does lay out the alternative to participation in the public world in pecuniary terms. He notes, “As soon as public service ceases to be the Citizens’ principal business, and they prefer to serve with their purse rather than with their person, the State is already close to ruin.” 1 As capitalism has developed since Rousseau’s epoch, this tendency toward privatization has grown exponentially and today threatens the very existence of public space or of a commons.
