Rousseau, the French Revolutionaries, Ho Chi Minh… and You
Central to the tenets and legacy of Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the notion of the general will drives the left to this day.
It sounds democratic—but it is not. It is, the idea of the general will, an elaborate justification for a kind of intellectual aristocracy rising to power. Envision a group of Plato’s philosopher kings ruling with impunity. This group of philosopher-kings closely resemble Rousseau himself, of course. The masses cannot chose themselves the correct, Enlightened path especially in the realm of political economy. They are too dumb. They are especially too unwilling to subvert individual prospects—even freedoms—for the advancement of the collective. But, what would the masses elect if they were indeed “woke”, at least the 18th century version of it? What would be the proletariat’s preferences regarding the true, the good and the beautiful if they were not overburdened with labor, libido and liver sausage? The elites would inform them of all these things, of course.
To deny that Rousseau’s thought contributes to and serves as a justification for totalitarianism is to argue that sunlight plays no role in dawn. “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains,” the philosophe Rousseau wrote, and the liberators of man are called to unshackle all—the recalcitrant, the weary, the hesitant, and, Reason forbid, traditionalists; they need to get out of the way of this movement of realizing the general will. Should they remain resolute, well, as later Rousseau fans Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin would put it: “In order to make an omelette, it is necessary to break a few eggs.”
(Link to piece on the Russian Revolution.)
Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just and the other apostles of the Committee of Public Safety (weird how government agencies name themselves… it’s like the War Department calling itself the Department of Defense) broke an estimated 35,000 eggs in the span of about 18 months during the Reign of Terror. As Robespierre said in 1794 to explain it all to the National Convention:
If the basis of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the basis of popular government in time of revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue without which terror is murderous, terror without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue.”
Killing of all barbarous sorts was necessary to save the gains of the Revolution, to keep people awoken to and aware of the idilic future their dictatorial benefactors strove to create.
My own recent reading has focused on Nguyễn Tất Thành, or as he is better known, Ho Chi Minh, a name which means “He who has been enlightened.”
Nguyễn was a devout socialist well before Versailles in 1919, when, as it is still held by some historians, there was a lost moment to address his calls for more ubiquitous national self-determination for his own Vietnam. Wilson, Clemenceau and George did not feel the same. But, while Versailles did not transform Nguyễn from moderate Vietnamese nationalist into a socialist (again, he was already there), it is fair to say that Versailles extinguished any moderation or gradualism within him. After 1919, it was a winding road back to Hanoi, with stops and even extended stays in the Soviet Union and the United States, but once back, it is clear that Nguyễn had metamorphosed into Ho Chi Minh. He was the consciousness, the soul, and the general will of his people, just as Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin and Mao had been.
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We are immune from that today though, right? Wrong. I will save analysis of the immense influence of the Frankfurt school, general progressivism and actual modernism for other posts, but in the meantime, some insights about freedom from Mortimer Adler
Adler.
Stud.
are, well, enlightening in the best sense of that term. After all, the struggle between the Rousseaus, Lenins and Minhs of the world and the Lockes, Smiths and Rothbards of the world stems from varying conceptions of freedom.
Adler reminds that there are really three components/definitions of freedom:
1. “Circumstantial freedom” denotes “freedom from coercion or restraint”.
2. “Natural freedom” denotes “freedom of a free will” or “free choice”. It is the freedom to determine one’s own decisions or plans. This freedom exists in everyone inherently, regardless of circumstances or state of mind.
3. “Acquired freedom” is the freedom “to will as we ought to will” and, thus, “to live as [one] ought to live”. This freedom is not inherent: it must be acquired by a change whereby a person gains qualities as “good, wise, virtuous, etc.”
The Rousseau camp is awful on all three, oh but that third iteration of freedom; that’s where they are monstrous and murderous.
Think of this the next time that someone lectures you on what your preferred taste in music, fashion, or television should be; what your politics, religion, thoughts on climate change, and the wage gap should be; what you should drive; where you should go to school; with whom you should consort…
All they want you to do is be fully “free”.
Once you realize this, run; or you never truly will be again.
