Rousseau and Revolution

26 Rousseau and Revolution
and that requires time. It is, before everything else, to make the serfs to
be emancipated worthy of freedom and capable of tolerating it. [ . . . ]
Emancipate their bodies only once you have emancipated their souls;
without this preliminary, be prepared for your operation to turn out
badly. (Rousseau, 1997a, 196–7) 4
The real engine of history is thus neither physical power nor violence which
create and destroy regimes which are always illegitimate and improperly
founded. The real hidden engine of history is culture, that is to say, the
manner in which social and political institutions shape moral habits.
We now understand why Rousseau is so skeptical about the ability of the
great European peoples of his time, and specifi cally of urban populations,
to lead revolutions that are more than mere mutinies preparing new kinds
of subjugation. The dominate passions among residents in Paris or London
are passions which are hardly compatible with a real exercise in political
freedom. In the text on Corsica Rousseau writes: ‘Selfi shness makes [the
inhabitants of cities] servile, and idleness makes them restless; they are
either slaves or mutineers, never free men’ (Rousseau, 1986, 291). Being a
‘mutineer’ does not of itself make one ‘free.’ On the contrary, mutiny, as a
sudden and ephemeral expression of a desire for freedom, bears witness to
the fragility and superfi cial nature of this desire for freedom. Basically for
Rousseau, if people need to engage in mutiny, it is because they have
allowed servitude to take hold.
Here once again, the concept of ‘voluntary servitude’ is key to understanding
his point of view. When people exist in servitude, when they have
allowed tyranny to take hold, this is not simply the result of bad luck. For
Locke, we can say that tyranny is the result of bad luck, an unfortunate
event which justifi es the exceptional awakening of the people. Their sovereignty
ceases to be ‘dormant’ just long enough to depose the tyrant. For
Rousseau, if people need to be awakened, this generally means that it is
already too late. A people which only awakens itself on occasion is one
which most often is not interested in its own freedom. The Social Contract, in
order to explain the institution of the people’s representatives, speaks of
‘the cooling of the love of fatherland, the activity of private interest’
(Rousseau, 1997e, Book III, chapter 15). A people which only awakens itself
fl eetingly is one which is asleep most of the time, and which is, therefore,
incapable of freedom: its revolts thus have little chance of bringing it freedom.
For avoiding servitude, such brief and violent awakenings are not suffi
cient. Something else is necessary, that is to say, people who are constantly
awake, vigilant people. What is needed is a people whose great and constant