The issue of the applicability of Rousseau’s simple model to complex modern societies

As Rousseau portrays them, both the simple family members and the Spartans directly derived a sense of communality from the sameness of their common experience. To differing degrees, the two social organisations required their members to have a common set of skills for collective survival, and both provided strong and uniform normative cultures, which ensured that group members gave a common evaluation to their common experience. The problem in using such communities as models for modern polities is that they are so unlike larger and much more complex national societies.