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Essay Bibliography (leave it blank if you don't have one):If you agree to all of the above then click "Register" Upon entering the social contract does one become a slave to their social surroundings? To this question I believe Rousseau succeeds where Locke fails. Rousseau’s argument of a free social environment with self?imposed rules is consistent. His concept of the general will and his breakdown of the different functions of government seems to remain within the boundaries of his argument. The terms of his social contract do not imprison the people who enter into it instead; they protect them and allow them to remain in control of their government. Whereas Locke’s terms imprison the people within their social community, making them slaves to the majority and to themselves. Rousseau’s social contract provides for a government that would be beneficial to the people as a whole, for everyone who enters is an equal and has equal rights. This is so because they give up their individual rights to the community. “…The complete alienation of each associate member to the community of all his rights” (180). This is not to say that the people have given up anything other than the state of nature itself. It follows that we gain the exact equivalent of what we lose, as well as an added power to conserve what we already have (181). For if everyone gives up the same rights to enter into the same society, could you not say that they all have the same rights and are equal, plus with everyone working together as a community, they now have the power to preserve what is theirs.