In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a
particular will contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a
citizen. His particular interest may
speak to him quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and,
naturally independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common
cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to
others than the payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the corporate
person which constitutes the State as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish to enjoy the rights of citizenship
without being ready to fulfil the duties of a subject. The continuance of such an injustice could not
but prove the undoing of the body politic.
In order then that the social compact may not
be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give
force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be
compelled to do so by the whole body.
This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this
is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him
against all personal dependence. In this
lies the key to the working political machine; this alone legitimizes civil
undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical and liable to the
most frightful abuses.
Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, tr. G.D.H.
Cole, revised J.H. Brumfitt and John G. Hall (New York: Dutton/Everyman’s
Library, 1978), p. 177 (Book I, Chapter
7).
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