Rousseau and Revolution

Arbitrariness and Freedom 67
intention and interest is eliminated so that all action is ‘state action’, the
only real action remains individual. An ineffectual abstraction dooms the
general will, which effects ‘no positive deed’ (ibid., 434). For a positive deed
would mark a permanent ‘difference’ in the whole and constitute an element
of resisting ‘otherness’. The whole would be divided into powers, into
different branches of government, into particular spheres of interests. In
this case, however, ‘universal freedom’ would end up embracing particularity
and the general will ‘would cease to be truly universal’ (ibid., 435).
Rousseau’s idea of direct democracy pushes the revolution away from
Sieyes’ representative model as well as from the English solution of a mixed
constitution. His notion of equality, on the other hand, remains abstract as
it simply cancels all differences. Thus, the universal self-consciousness cannot
‘be tricked’ by the promises of representation or by the illusion of obeying
a law made only by a part and not by the whole. ‘The general will cannot
be represented by anything but itself’ (ibid., see Rousseau, 1997e, Book II,
chapters 1 and 4) declares Rousseau. The claim of absolute freedom is the
uncompromising conviction that the general will can be real only by willing
the universal. Yet reality is on the side of the individual.
We have come to the transition from the National Assembly of 1789 to
the Jacobin dictatorship of 1793. In order to act, the universal will must put
‘the one of individuality’ in charge of the whole. This is the extreme contradiction
of Rousseau’s general will – the contradiction that brings it down to
utter tyranny and reduces government to a faction. Following its own dialectic,
the general will has become the one of individuality. A faction stands
now opposed to the ineffectual and powerless general will. In this way, however,
absolute freedom can produce no positive deed. ‘It is merely the fury
of destruction’ (Hegel, 1986, 3, 435–6, my italics). Rousseau’s un-dialectical
attempt to set the universality of the will apart from the individual results in
the non-negotiable opposition between ‘the simple, infl exible, and cold
universality, and [ . . . ] the discrete, absolutely hard rigidity and self-willed
atomism of actual self-consciousness’. The relation between these two sides
is ‘the entirely unmediated pure negation’, the negation of the individual’s
existence – its death. Rousseau’s objective is overturned. Far from being free
and protected in the whole (obeying ‘only himself’; Rousseau, 1997e,
Book I, chapter 6), the individual is liquidated by it. This happens not only
theoretically, in an equality in which all difference is erased, but also existentially.
‘The sole work and deed of universal freedom is death’ (Hegel,
1986, 3, 436).
What is it exactly that precipitates the revolution into the Terror? Or:
What has gone wrong in Rousseau’s theory of the general will? For Hegel,