Rousseau and Revolution

Why Rousseau Mistrusts Revolutions 21
which are purely and simply exercises of force. For Rousseau, force alone
cannot serve as the basis for any political legitimacy. This is exactly what he
repeats in The Social Contract:
If I considered only force, and the effect that follows from it, I would say:
as long as a people is compelled to obey and does obey, it does well; as
soon as it can shake off the yoke and does shake it off, it does even better;
for in recovering its freedom by the same right by which it was robbed of
it, either the people is well founded to take it back, or it was deprived of
it without foundation. But the social order is a sacred right, which provides
the basis of all others. (Rousseau, 1997e, Book I, chapter 1)
This text, if read carefully, immediately dispels the hypothesis that makes
the seizure of power by force legitimate, even if it is the force of the people.
Rousseau writes: ‘If I considered only force, and the effect that follows from
it, I would say . . . ’, and so forth. Now, Rousseau will make the effort to discover
a foundation for power different from mere force, for he then goes
on to say: ‘Force is a physical power; I fail to see what morality can result
from its effects. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; at most it
is an act of prudence’ (Rousseau, 1997e, Book I, chapter 3).
Admittedly, we cannot strictly speaking condemn the acts of force which
result in the overthrow of tyrants, since they are the predictable consequence
of the tyrant’s violent use of power. We can establish that a power
based solely on force runs the risk of being overthrown by force and that
this overthrowing is thus no more an illegitimate act than the tyrant’s exercise
of power. But, not condemning is not the same thing as justifying.
Is the Judgement of a People in Revolt Necessarily Right?
We now have several key indications for grasping the difference between
the positions of Rousseau and Locke. But this difference must be further
specifi ed and elaborated.
Richard Ashcraft has convincingly shown that the principal goal of the
two Treatises of Civil Government was to justify philosophically the revolution
against James II (Ashcraft, 1986). This justifi cation aims at showing how a
revolt against a tyrant can be an act comparable to which an executive
power, within context of civil society, applies positive laws when punishing
criminals. For Locke, the despot acts like the enemy of his own people; he
wages war against them. He is thus, as Locke says, the real ‘rebel’ in the