Rousseau and Revolution

General Will and National Consciousness 39
best fi t for a democracy. Ironically, the counties and jurisdictions that the
colonists had introduced and the destruction of the local nobility that they
had overseen could facilitate a transformation in this direction: A strategy
that had been devised to subdue the Corsicans could be reemployed to
enlarge their equity and freedom. It was key to avoid certain errors so frequently
made, however. Rousseau insisted that political creativity would be
necessary to assure that different parts of the island did not develop
unevenly, with the administrative capital thriving as everywhere else fell
into economic stagnation and a small group of cities drew in all of the aspiring
bourgeoisies that produced nothing. A government surely did require
a center, but this would be a purely administrative one that public men
occupied only temporarily before returning to the other dimensions of
their lives. Rousseau hoped this might forestall the drawing of cultivators
away from the countryside that would be and would have to be affi rmed as
Corsica’s real source of strength (ibid., 132).
Rousseau sought to fi gure out how to link political privileges not to
amassed wealth but to productive labor. He therefore aimed to avoid what
he considered the debasing introduction of money, arguing instead for the
use of a strict system of exchange. He explained that money was useful only
as a sign of inequality, particularly for foreigners. One could make exchanges
of goods themselves without mediating values, creating storehouses in certain
essential places. Ultimately, he reminded his readers that political independence,
their ultimate aim, required that all lived well without becoming
rich. He insisted repeatedly that the ease and health of politics were two
fundamentally different concerns and that the latter should be their focus.
Effi ciency, in other words, though a modern ideal, was also often an antipolitical
one. In the absence of money and taxation, citizens could be asked
to contribute in kind through labor. If roads needed to be built, it would be
the citizenry who would have to do it.
Rousseau concluded with refl ections about the qualities of human beings.
Here echoing Hobbes, he wrote that it is fear and hope that govern men.
Parting company there he qualifi ed that fear only holds people back lest
they not face punishment, that it is only hope that can lead men and women
to act. The task then was to awaken the nation’s activity, literally to give it
ground for great hopes. Not a hope linked to sensual pleasure, but to a
substantive pride that he explained involves ‘esteeming oneself based on
truly estimable goods’ (ibid., 154). Nothing, he wrote, is more ‘really beautiful
than independence and power.’ What could sustain the character of a
newly articulated nation was to maintain and deepen activity and life in the
entire state by paying close attention to the emerging nature of civil power,