Rousseau and Revolution

104 Rousseau and Revolution
Polish constitution. Thus, the so-called Girondin constitution from 1793 lay
down a ‘legal means of protest [reclamation] requiring a new examination of
the law’ (Swenson, 2000, 223). The idea was that such claims could ‘begin
with the action of a single citizen’ and then ‘require [ . . . ] majority support
from progressively larger bodies’ until they became ‘the object of a yes or no
vote on the national level’ (ibid.).
Now, both the Polish confederative diet and the Girondin constitution are
indeed very interesting. One might even agree with Swenson that the latter
constitution is ‘the most democratic constitution ever proposed’ (ibid., 224).
However, the problem remains. Insurrection or revolt cannot be inscribed
into the constitution; it is per defi nition something extra- constitutional.
This problem is indicated by Rousseau’s admission that, in the end, the functioning
of the confederative diet is dependent on the Polish citizen’s ‘truly
heroic zeal’ (Rousseau, 1997a, 219), that is, something extra-constitutional
(Baczko, 1978, 75).
In other words, it seems that what we called the moderate or realist
anarch ist reading must be abandoned. The only possible anarchist reading
of Rousseau is a radical one that not only legitimates every insurrection,
but also de-legitimizes every institutional or administrative decision made
by any delegate.
Indivisible Insurrection
To sum up, two opposing interpretations of the concept of the general will
have now been presented. One stresses the indivisibility of the general will –
it stresses that the general will is a will – and shows how this indivisibility can
be invoked in order to legitimate the conservation of an established order
against the aspirations of different groups or classes. The other stresses the
inalienability of the general will – it stresses that the general will is general –
and shows how this inalienability can be used to legitimate insurrection or
revolution.
Indivisibility is linked to conservation, inalienability to revolution. In fact,
the matter turns out to be a bit more complex as there is also an evident
link between indivisibility and revolution. In order to explain this, we will
return to Rancière who in fact tends to claim, without saying it explicitly,
that unity, and by consequence indivisibility, is always conservating. On the
contrary, the essence of emancipatory politics is the display of a ‘disagreement’,
for instance, the class struggle. Moreover, this disagreement should
not be regarded only as a disagreement between two entities, say, between