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cannot recognize the General Will must be made to see the light.
"Whoever refuses to obey the general will," he decreed, "will be con–
strained to do so by the entire body: this means simply that he will be
forced
to be free."
Building on his understanding of Rousseau, Sieyes viewed citizens'
rights and freedoms as deriving from their status as equal and concurring
members of society, from their submission to the General Will. "There can
be no true public freedom," he explained, "that is not based on equality."
Any individual who "exits from the common quality of citizen" cannot
"participate in political rights."
For Sieyes, as for Rousseau before him, there could be no legiti–
mate role for dissenting individuals or minority factions to play in
self-government. Sieyes contended that all citizens, by virtue of having
accepted and entered into their society's social contract, agree to be
bound by the will of the majority. A citizen has the obligation to "view
the common will as his own." Should he refuse to yield to the major–
ity, his only alternative is to leave the polity. Thus the sole solution
envisaged by Sieyes to the problem of possible political conflict
between an individual and the group was expatriation. Similarly, a
minority faction had no right to oppose the majority, since the major–
ity could be assumed to speak for the General Will. Ever the
accommodating teacher, Sieyes insisted that if someone could not
clearly see that the General Will was the will of the majority and not
the will of the minority, well, then "there is no point in trying to rea–
son with him." The minority must simply join the majority. So much
for opposition!
Patriotic citizens would always place the public interest above their pri–
vate interest. "Everyone must forget his own interest and pride," instructed
Saint-Just, the most radical ideologue among the Jacobins. "Private happi–
ness and interest are a violence against the social order. You must forget
yourselves....Your interest demands that you forget your interest; the only
salvation is through the public good." Life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap–
piness were thus conceived in collective terms. "The social union has as its
object not just the freedom of one or several individuals," Sieyes declared
to the National Assembly in July 1789, "but the freedom of all." Similarly,
the goal of society was the "common happiness" of all, not individuals'
pursuit of their own personal happiness.
In the United States, the concept of "we the people," as expressed in
the Preamble to the Constitution, signified no more than the diverse
inhabitants of the land and the future citizens of the federal republic, but
in France, the "people"-conceived as one and indivisible, an organic col–
lective being-became the object of a revolutionary cult. Over and over
