Rousseau and Revolution

62 Rousseau and Revolution
Rousseau undoubtedly played a crucial role in the French Revolution.
There were indeed many Rousseaus. By the mid-1790s his infl uence was felt
everywhere, even indirectly. The two different examples discussed here –
empirical evidence of his minor explicit role in 1793–4, and a counter-factual
reading of the Social Contract as a resource for a critique of the Terror – could
be explored further, and numerous exceptions could be found. The view
that draws a straight line from Rousseau to the Terror fl ourished in the Cold
War and continues to linger. Its roots go back to early reaction to the revolution
that was often deeply hostile to democracy. In contrast, one might
imagine Rousseau as less of a decisive force on the revolution than he is
often taken to have been. Or rather, alongside his considerable symbolic
and real presence, in other ways he was also a bit player in a drama that
surpassed his life and thought. The Terror would have horrifi ed him. The
observation is prosaic, but it makes the notion that Rousseauean ideology
was the decisive factor, or even a deciding factor, in the violence of 1793–4
seem very unsatisfying. It is worth considering the apparent dearth of
appeals to him, especially to his political theory, in efforts to think through
the dilemmas and confl icts of 1793–4. The continuity between the Rousseau
of the Terror and the Rousseau of Thermidor is conspicuous.
Finally, a reading of the issue of violence in the Social Contract allows us to
highlight grounds for a Rousseauean critique of the Terror as the symptom
of a degenerative republic in the throes of disestablishment. In spite of
tremendous ambiguity in Rousseau’s essay – and passages that might very
well have been spoken by Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon – there
remains suffi cient ammunition to attack the dangers of perverted democracy.
Such perversion is the inherent, structural risk in a polity generated, oriented
and led by the people that it secures and cultivates. Indeed Rousseau develops
an impressive diagnosis of the relation between democracy and violence,
itemizing the various ways that, in so many words, the corruption of the best
is the worst. The moral qualities that prevent the lawgiver from becoming a
tyrant are rare. The people, paralyzed by ‘public panic’, hunger for masters
who pass ‘destructive laws’. Great numbers of executions demonstrate the
‘weakness’ of the government. ‘Despotism and anarchy’ result when the
prince (or government or executive) takes over the legislative function or
substitutes itself for the sovereign. Democracy is constitutively unstable,
and large populations and territories end up being governed by despotisms
and tyrannies. The government grows afraid of the people in whose name
it governs. The boundaries between legitimacy and factional sedition
become blurred and new tyrants set themselves up above the law and above
the people. Recent history provides adequate evidence for the lasting relevance
of Rousseau’s concerns.