The General Will: Rousseau, Marx, Communism

Philosophical Review 104 (4):597 (1995)
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Abstract

The principal aim of Andrew Levine’s most recent book is to defend the ideal of communism. Its strategy is to demonstrate the coherence and desirability of that ideal by invoking Rousseau’s concept of the general will. More specifically, the general will is supposed to provide a model for the kind of cooperation that will take place among members of a communistic society. Since the notion of a general will is itself highly obscure, this book can also be read as an attempt to clarify and flesh out the central concept of Rousseau’s political thought by interpreting it in light of some of Marx’s claims about the nature of communism. Yet the book is both less unified and wider in scope than this description implies. As Levine himself suggests at one point, the book is more accurately described as a collection of essays on a variety of topics, all of which deal in some way with the relation between the normative standards implicit in Marx’s ideal of communism and those that guide liberal political thought. Although this book has many interesting things to say about Rousseau, it is valuable more for its discussion of issues within Marxist political theory than for the light it sheds on Rousseau’s thought itself. While the treatment of Marx’s ideas is both subtle and sympathetic throughout, there are crucial aspects of Rousseau’s project, especially those that do not fit in easily with Marx’s concerns, that are ignored or misunderstood. One example of this is Levine’s misinterpretation of amour-propre—it is said to be the equivalent of Hobbes’s rational egoism —and his consequent failure to appreciate how the desire for recognition from one’s fellow beings figures centrally in Rousseau’s understanding of the basic task faced by political theory. thought.) These interpretive shortcomings diminish in importance, however, if we think of the book as primarily an attempt to clarify and reconstruct Marx’s views on the nature of communism. Viewed from this perspective, the book represents an important part of the author’s ongoing project, begun in several previous books, of rethinking and defending the central ideas of Marxist social thought.

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Frederick Neuhouser
Columbia University

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