<P> Early critics of Rousseau included Benjamin Constant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Hegel argued that, because it lacked any grounding in an objective ideal of reason, Rousseau's account of the general will ineluctably lead to the Reign of Terror . Constant also blamed Rousseau for the excesses of the French Revolution, and he rejected the total subordination of the citizen - subjects to the determinations of the general will . </P> <P> In 1952 Jacob Talmon characterized Rousseau's "general will" as leading to a totalitarian democracy because, Talmon argued, the state subjected its citizens to the supposedly infallible will of the majority . Another writer of the period, liberal theorist Karl Popper, also interpreted Rousseau in this way, while Bertrand Russell warned that "the doctrine of general will...made possible the mystic identification of a leader with its people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot box ." Other prominent critics include Isaiah Berlin who argued that Rousseau's association of freedom with obedience to the General Will allowed totalitarian leaders to defend oppression in the name of freedom, and made Rousseau "one of the most sinister and formidable enemies of liberty in the whole history of human thought ." </P> <P> Some Rousseau scholars, however, such as his biographer and editor Maurice Cranston, and Ralph Leigh, editor of Rousseau's correspondence, do not consider Talmon's 1950s "totalitarian thesis" as sustainable . </P> <P> Supporters of Rousseau argued that Rousseau was not alone among republican political theorists in thinking that small, homogeneous states were best suited to maintaining the freedom of their citizens . Montesquieu and Machiavelli were also of this opinion . Furthermore, Rousseau envisioned his Social Contract as part of a projected larger work on political philosophy, which would have dealt with issues in larger states . Some of his later writings, such as his Discourse on Political Economy, his proposals for a Constitution of Poland, and his essay on maintaining perpetual peace, in which he recommends a federated European Union, gave an idea of the future direction of his thought . </P>

Who is associated with the concept of general will