Louis Rougier and the Fundamental Political Problem

Louis Rougier says "freely granted obedience" is the "fundamental political problem." (Barbusse, in the epic novel Chains, also puts (an absurd?) obedience at the center of the human conundrum.)


"Since all the citizens are considered by their representatives to participate in the establishment of the law, the law seems to be the expression of the general will. Everyone submits to it willingly because everyone has the illusion that he has participated in its formation and that, obeying everybody, he obeys himself. The fundamental political problem, that of freely granted obedience, is, in a way, solved by definition. This is where the great strength of democracies comes from. Never has any form of government exercised such extensive discretionary power over the governed without the apparatus of coercion.

Let us compare the ease with which the democracies have established general [military] conscription or have taken away up to 80 percent of the wealth of their citizens without provoking a revolt with the difficulty the monarchies under the old regime had in raising soldiers and taxes. By making the sovereign and the subject one, the democratic mystique has brought about the maximum of authority with the minimum of constraint."

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/political-economic-mystiques-state-power/