#general will

The failure of general will

In The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau (b. 1712; pictured) explicates his concept of ‘general will’ (‘volonté générale’). General will is political recognition of common interests between people, a will which transcends their private interests. But how is it possible to go beyond political factions and party politics? Not even Rousseau had an ultimate solution.

Political will

We should all be quite familiar with the idea of political will: governments apparently carry it forward in law- and policy-making. Unlike in monarchies and theocracies, in democracies governments attempt to use voting as an indication of this will, say, as opposed to God’s word. But how we demarcate its generality merely from votes is not obvious.

Rousseau quantified general will like this:

‘[I]f, from these [particular] wills, one takes away the pluses and the minuses which cancel each other, what is left as the sum of differences is the general will.’

And:

‘To be general, a will need not always be unanimous; but every vote must be counted: any exclusion is a breach of generality.’

However, we should be suspicious of Rousseau’s formula here. Why think general will resides in the ‘sum of differences’? Furthermore, though a good voting system may translate majority opinion into common decision-making, it cannot express a transcendent will of people above the political parts. General will cannot be determined by number.

Rousseau sought a social contract in which the pure referent of politics is an emergent whole of general will—a generic political procedure for a ‘collective being’. General will is a name for the self-belonging of the people to themselves through a social contract; this supreme pact supplements their particular wills without corresponding directly to them.

‘Each of us puts … [their] full power in common under the supreme direction of the general will.’

However, here we meet an impasse between particular and general will. How do we take mere majorities into the absolute stipulation of general character in practice?

Salvation of the fatherland

Rousseau writes that general will cannot be represented by governmental representatives: their power represents private interests. They can execute certain functions. However, they cannot handle law, which must be ratified by the people in person.

‘[W]hat sovereignty essentially is is the general will, and a will can’t be represented; something purporting to speak for the will of x either is the will of x or it is something else; there is no intermediate possibility’.

To avoid the impasse Rousseau sets the scene for dictatorships, which designate ‘for the salvation of the fatherland’ ‘a supreme chief who silences all the laws’. A dictator cannot make laws but they can temporarily abolish the people’s sovereign to protect the constitution the social pact is founded on.

Is it even remotely feasible for there to be such dutiful statespersons who aren’t tempted by power? Someone should go back in time and take Rousseau on a whistle-stop tour of world politics in the 20th century to see how dictators upheld constitutions. Even today’s politicians act like they enact general will when they don’t.

To quote Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

‘The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

‘To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

‘To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.’

With differences always being present between us, do we accept endless political arguments and weak connections between shoddy voting systems and governments? Or do we entrust a ‘supreme chief’? As always in politics, the choices aren’t flattering.

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If the late 1700s through the early 1800s are known for anything it is for the political disruptions overtaking America and the European continent.  As a foretaste, the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain nearly a hundred years earlier (1688-1689) stirred the demands of non-royals/nobility to have seats at the table of national politics.  

With that, the American experience began by instituting some form of representative governance in its colonial days.  But once there, this movement took on its own steam that ended with the iconic accomplishments of first, independence, and then of a national compact formed among a national people.  This was by no means a smooth development, but one can easily detect various themes building as Americans found their way to a constitutional foundation.

         But in gaining a full appreciation of this development, one can look at the European version and understand how that experience was different.  And there, the attention shifts to France – which this blog already focused on when describing the French collectivist formula, upon which their revolution relied.  A closer look at the Jacobins, the leaders of the French effort, is necessary if one is to gauge how similar yet different the French experience was (with its effects lasting till today) from the American experience.

         As sort of a rule of thumb or a symbolic representation by which each revolution can be represented, one can – without any formality or finality – compare what custom has ascribed to the colors of their respective flags – since both boast of their same tri colors, red, white, and blue (which the French list as blue, white, and red).  

By custom, the American rendition states that red stands for hardiness and valor, white for purity and innocence, and blue for vigilance, perseverance, and justice.[1]  Each is a value or a character trait, elements that each American holds or strives to hold within him/herself.  By contrast, the French version cites that blue represents the nobility, white the clergy (the priests), and the red stands for the bourgeois (and eventually the workers and small farmers).[2]  

This writer, among many, can see that the American form reflects a national union made up of free-willed individuals agreeing to a resulting polity.  On the other hand, the French promote through their symbols, an organic whole made up of types of people who function to meet the needs of that organic whole.  This variance is profound in how each view influenced – and continues to influence – the formulation of the resulting polities.

Daniel Elazar addresses the dissimilarity.[3] And here the role of the Jacobins is central.  Whereas, similar to the Americans, the French confronted the challenge of devising a democratic formula for governance, they rejected central assumptions Americans grabbed unto in figuring out not only how to form a national structure, but their state structures as well.  

To the French, the American solution was simply too pessimistic about human nature. They saw the American model as undervaluing the ability of the common man and woman to avoid being corrupted. Americans made it central to guard not only the corruption of leaders in public office, but also of the people. For the French, a new set up needed to merely protect against autocratic despotism, but not against popular despotism.

To them, checks and balances merely subverted the “general will,” a central attribute of what they perceived as an organic unity.  They ascribed a general will to constituting the French society and that that handily trumped the relatively insignificant interests of individuals.  Being short of such guarantees for the collective whole was/is tantamount to being anti-democratic.  According to Elazar, such a view of individuals, Americans felt, was subversive of liberty.  He writes,

 By retaining notions of the organic society, the Jacobins and their revolutionary heirs were forced to rely upon transient majorities to establish consensus or to concentrate power in the hands of an elite that claimed to do the same thing.  The first course invariably led to anarchy and the second to the kind of totalitarian democracy which has become the essence of modern dictatorship. While the “general will” was undoubtedly a more democratic concept than the “will of the monarch,” in the last analysis it has proved to be no less despotic and usually even more subversive of liberty.[4]

 And one can see this distinction being played out in both countries, the French went through a string of “republics” before hitting on a lasting formula.  As for the Americans, not all was smooth after the writing of the proposed constitution took place back 1787.

         Central to the argument posed by the Anti-federalists – those who opposed the new constitution in America – was the loss of power the states were to suffer if this new basic law were to be ratified.  And initially, this concern was shared by a majority of the American people.  Along with perceiving the loss of power to this central entity, Americans were concerned with higher taxes (by this far off government), potentially over-powered central government, and, therefore, a loss of liberty.

         Central to their concerns was to fight for the retention of states’ power or rights.  This was ameliorated by the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 but would quickly spring to the fore as the nation marched toward the Civil War sixty years later. And that war did not end that story as the nation maintained the relative power of the states to be relatively more vibrant until the eventual prominence of the central government through the New Deal.  It took a world-wide depression to finally allow the central government to address national problems on an ongoing, institutionalized basis.

           One sign this writer cites as reflecting the basic notion of how undominant federalist values remain is how often these days he hears of states’ rights.  Currently, the principle is being heard concerning voting rights as state legislatures in “red” states have passed or are considering passing new laws to restrict their voting processes.  

The motivation, of course, varies according to the rhetoric of each side of that debate.  Those defending the new laws argue that the laws are meant to protect against unauthorized voting and those against them say they are meant to keep Democratic voters from voting or having their votes count.  

Congress is considering passing a law that would undo the effects of the new or proposed state laws, but with little hope of passing.  Consequently, those who favor the new state laws complain that the federal government is encroaching on states’ rights to run their elections. This more recent claim has reinserted this issue after not being heard of in decades.  It was a recurring claim until the sixties by mostly southern states and had to do with civil rights – which is not too far off the current debate.  

In both cases, opposition to states exerting their “power” has been perceived as efforts by “states’ rightists” to deprive African Americans of some rights such as voting, or a set of rights of which they have been deprived.  But the point here is to state that this “federalist” argument has not been heard for some time.  

And one cannot help think that both today and in its prior use, these “federalist” arguments amount to being rationalizations utilized to defend unfederated positions.  In both cases one can see the ultimate goal is to deprive citizens of equal standing – such standing being a central federalist value.

Elazar argues that Americans seem to find their way back to true federalist policies. The road can be long and hazardous, but the destination cannot be denied.  To some extent, this blogger agrees but ultimately in the give and take of daily politics, this nation holds federalist values in the back domains of its collective memory.  Up front, it is the transactional factors that the various players in the political arena hold prominent and bring to bear.  

And with that final thought, this blog will proceed to trace the history of this nation’s political thinking in an episodic fashion now that the reader has been led to the Constitution writing years (and even on to the election of Jefferson as the nation’s third president).  The aim will be to share the various experiences the American republic had prior to the late 1940s to test the assertion that Americans were prominently guided by a federalist view in their governance and politics.

[1] “What Do the Colors of the Flag Mean?,” The American Legion (n.d.), accessed June 21, 2021, https://www.legion.org/flag/questions-answers/91471/what-do-colors-flag-mean .

[2] “Why Is the French Flag Blue, White, Red?,” Institut Linguistque Adenet (n.d.), accessed June 21, 2021, https://www.ila-france.com/blog/why-is-the-french-flag-blue-white-red .

[3] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution? Thoroughly,” in a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar, prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute (conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1994), 1-30.

part i

I said that Rousseau wrote on politics as well. Lads, we are entering the frev. 

First, I think, we need to talk about the build-up to the French Revolution. Now, I could lose myself down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, or down the textbook rabbit hole, or down the notes rabbit hole, but here is the gist of it. France and England get involved on opposite sides of the War of the Austrian Succession. The Hapsburgs try to win back Silesia, dragging France and England back into war. Most of the world’s continents become involved. France loses most of its colonies in the Americas to England. 

Whiteness and the General Will: Diversity Work as Willful Work