Rousseau and Revolution

General Will between Conservation and Revolution 99
a state, but you can also refer to it in order to legitimate a revolution.
(Balibar, 1997, 105–6)
The paradox is that, apparently, the very concept by means of which a revolution
can be legitimated – the general will – can also be used to legitimate
an existing order. This article is an attempt to explain this paradox. The
argument is separated into four parts. First, the conservative function of the
concept of the general will be imputed to its indivisibility. Secondly, the revolutionary
function of this concept will be imputed to its inalienability. Thirdly,
it will be shown that such a dichotomy is in fact too simple and that indivisibility
can also have an insurrectional function. Finally, it will be argued that
this insurrectional reconciliation between indivisibility and inalienability
can be conceived of as a ‘Maoist’ revolutionary government, but that such a
reconciliation is contrary to the spirit of Rousseau’s philosophy.
Conservating Indivisibility
One of the fi rst left-wing critiques of Rousseau was made by Marx and
Engels who considered the concept of the general will as being opposed to
a proletarian emancipation. It seems that this critique can be resumed in an
attack on the indivisible character of the general will. In the Social Contract,
this indivisibility is expressed as follows: ‘Sovereignty [ . . . ] is indivisible.
For either the will is general or it is not; it is either the will of the body of
the people, or that of only a part’ (Rousseau, 1997e, 58). Since there can
only be one general will in the nation, a will that represents a part of the
people is illegitimate. Rousseau provides the following explanation:
When factions arise, small associations at the expense of the large association,
the will of each one of these associations becomes general in relation
to its members and particular in relation to the State; [ . . . ] Finally,
when one of these associations is so large that it prevails over all the rest,
the result you have is no longer a sum of small differences, but one single
difference. (Ibid., 60)
Marx and Engels also address these ‘factions’ and ‘associations’, but they
call them classes and consider them as the foundation of every society.
Thus, the ‘one single difference’ denounced by Rousseau strongly resembles
the Marxian class struggle, and, as is well known, Marx and Engels
claim that ‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class