“The problem is to find a norm of association which will defend and protect with all common force the person and property of each associate, and in which each, while uniting with all , will still be able to obey him alone and remain as free as before. » Rousseau (1762)a, ll. 5–7bSo Jean-Jacques Rousseau lays out his goal, and it is a truly formidable goal. It hopes to establish a proper "norm of association" (i.e., the relationship between the individual and the state) in which all individuals and their property are protected, to the greatest extent possible, by the 'State (or the body politic); each individual gives himself entirely to the general cause of the State; and all individuals act freely and of their own accord. It should be noted here that the State, in Rousseau's vision of things, is made up entirely and exclusively of individuals subject to these criteria. There is no separate institutional government whose members bear materially different relationships to the whole; the people are therefore both holders of power and subject of rights in the body politic. In the first case, Rousseau designates them as citizens, and the active group they compose is called the sovereign, a “public person, [formed] by the union of all other persons” (l. 41). Rousseau summarizes the terms of his solution succinctly as follows: “the total alienation of each associate, with all his rights, with regard to the entire community” (ll. 17-18). This measure is not as one-sided as it may seem. The key concept that brings together Rousseau's social contract theory is the bifurcation of the determination of each member state into general will and individual will; the distinction above all being that g...... middle of paper ......es with Rousseauist characteristics have existed historically does not shift the debate, since these societies generally confirm rather than alleviate my doubts. The groups that existed before Rousseau's time were invariably small, even very small, this is the only environment in which I find his proposals feasible. In larger-scale political systems influenced by Rousseau, such as Marxist communism and the totalitarianism of Adolf Hitlerg's Nazi Party, there is evidence of some of the flaws mentioned above coming to the fore - the propagandist rallies of Nuremberg, for example, could be seen as a broad manipulation of the general will – and little justification for the claim that each member of such societies "[obeys] himself alone and [remains] as free as before" . At least, not free in the sense in which we would understand this term in the 21st century..