ABSTRACT
The common good becomes the consensus on what is the common good, for if it is right that all should decide issues, a decision reached in any other way would be wrong. The emphasis on personal salvation and personal sin within this tradition has made it difficult to accept the idea that institutions of any kind may have an existence separate from that of their members. The attempt to find parallels between Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s General Will and marxist-communist theory must result in a misleading analysis of the basic differences between democracy and communism. An important part in reviving interest in the legitimating possibilities of concepts related to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s General Will has been the need to harmonize traditional democratic theory with the concept of responsible government under the stimulus of defending the system against the theory of communism.
