Tentative Answer: Submitting to the General Will

4. Rousseau says man will attain freedom by submitting to the General Will. Many, famously Karl Popper, have argued that this is the same as, or will lead to tyranny. What are the arguments on both sides?

Rousseau writes that “whoever refuses to obey the general will, will be forced to do so by the entire body.  This means merely that he will be forced to be free” (167).  It is this axiom that “bestows legitimacy upon civil commitments” (167), Rousseau further argues, and without it, the social contract would fall to tyranny and abuses.  In short, people give up their natural liberty when they enter the social contract, but they gain “civil liberty and the proprietary ownership of all [they] possess” (167)—as there is no private property in the state of nature, the social contract is the only way to establish ownership.  While Hobbes presented submission to the sovereign as something that would lead to what can only be viewed as tyranny through a modern lens, Rousseau believes in the sanctity of the general will, arguing that “the general will is always right…[and] the populace is never corrupted” (172).  However, he admits, the populace is “often tricked” (172).  

The concept of the general will, at least from a modern viewpoint, seems tenuous at best and easily corruptible at worst.  Rousseau sees the general will as the sentiments that remain after the “pluses and minuses” (172) of private views have been subtracted from the will of all, leaving only something he refers to as the “general interest” (172).  Does he then see the general will as a moderate one?  If this is assumed, it follows that the general will is a construct that would most likely prevent the rise of tyranny.  Rousseau does discourage the formation of factions, as the United States government did in its nascent stages, but this idea of a lack of “partial societies” (173) leaves two options, neither of which yield the government that Rousseau imagines.  The first is a truly factionless state, which would be extremely vulnerable to tyranny; as most of political history is the story of domination by powerful factions, the lack of factions would merely be an invitation for the rise of extremism, especially if one subscribes to a Hobbesian or Machiavellian view of human behavior.  The second option is a government that is safe from tyranny but has difficulty coming to any sort of consensus; although the factions that dominate American politics are the cause of constant gridlock and difficulty, they do offer citizens convenient ideologies to subscribe to.  In a completely factionless state, how could there ever truly be a general will?  It seems that it would be impossible to “cancel...out” (172) so many different views to form one general will.