The General Will Is Not Merely Reducible To The Will Of All People Combined.

The general will is not merely reducible to the will of all people combined. No, it is the right will which ever seeks the good of the whole State and never acts in a merely self-interested way. It is basically the will of God then, which must ever be right and, since God is omnibenevolent and always has the interests of everyone in mind, this is in line with the general will as Rousseau explicates it here. He writes, Afin donc que le pacte social ne soit pas un vain formulaire, il renferme tacitement cet engagement qui seul peut donner de la force aux autres, que quiconque refusera d'obéir à la volonté générale y sera contraint par tout le corps: ce qui ne signifie autre chose sinon qu'on le forcera d'être libre. This is the key to the whole enterprise. It prevents the social contract from becoming, as he says, un vain formulaire (an empty formula). But, of course, although such an aspect of the overall contract is certainly sensible, how it is appropriated lends itself to fragility. The line is not always so clear when one is acting merely in his own self-interest and when he is acting in respect to the common good (or both simultaneously, which would apparently not violate the general will). It is not necessarily contradictory in its premise, but it is certainly paradoxical, as Rousseau surely felt.
Conclusion
Both Montesquieu and Rousseau in their respective days were vastly aware with the attending problems associated with the reintroduction of the ancient ideas of the republic and egalitarianism. However, they each firmly believed that whatever problems may accompany the advent of such in Modernity, it would certainly be worth it. For both of them, as most Westerners today would greatly sympathize, any form of egalitarianism via a republic, whatever fragility may accompany it, would be greatly preferable to either a monarchy or (especially) a despotic State.
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