阅读亚历西斯·德·托克维尔 Alexis de Tocqueville在历史大观的作品!!! | |||
传记
托克维尔的家庭是在诺曼底一处的地主贵族，当地许多地方都以托克维尔家庭为名。在取得法律的学位后，托克维尔获得任命为凡尔赛法庭的实习文官。他在那里认识了担任检察官的古斯塔夫·德·博蒙（Gustave de Beaumont），两人成为了亲密的好友，并且在之后合作写下了许多著作。在1831年两人被一同送到美国以考察美国的刑法和监狱制度。在这趟旅程中，他们两人写下了Du système pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis et de son application（论美国的形事制度及其对法国的应用, 1832）。回到法国之后，托克维尔成为了一名律师，并且将他游历美国的见闻记载成书，于1835年发表了这本经典的著作—《论美国的民主》（De la démocratie en Amérique）。这本书受到空前的好评，不久后也被译为英文，使托克维尔在美法两地都大为知名。这本书也成为社会学的早期模型，使他于1937年获得了chevalier de la Légion d'honneur（荣誉军团勋章）的殊荣，并且在1841年被选为法兰西学院的院士。
托克维尔相当鄙视当时的七月王朝（1830-1848），于是在同一时期开跨入政界。他当选了芒什省的议员，并一直担任这个职位到1851年为止。在议会里，他大力替废除主义和自由贸易的观点辩护，但他同时也支持路易·菲利普政权对于阿尔及利亚的殖民化。托克维尔在1842年也当选为芒什省的总参事。
除了美国之外，托克维尔还曾前往英格兰考察，写下了Memoir on Pauperism一书。在1841年至1846年之间他也游历了阿尔及利亚，在阿尔及利亚的第一趟旅程使他写下了Travail sur l'Algérie，在书中他批评法国的殖民化模型。身为废除主义者，他主张应以英国的非直接统治的模型来管理殖民地，而不是将不同的人口混合在一起。他甚至主张应该在欧洲殖民者与阿拉伯人之间实行种族分离，让两边都有独立的立法体制以实行自治（他的主张在半世纪后的1881年原住民法里被实行）。
在七月王朝于1848年的2月革命中垮台后，托克维尔于同年当选了国民议会的议员，他在议会里参与了第二共和国新宪法的起草（1848-1851）。他也支持两院制以及对共和国总统的选举普选权，因为乡村地区的广大农业人口通常支持保守的政治立场，能够抗衡巴黎都市地区的劳工人口，以免巴黎市的革命情绪影响全国政治，普选权的扩张同时使托克维尔的选票从原本的700大幅增加至160,000人。
在第二共和国里，托克维尔与保守派的parti de l'Ordre 结盟，对抗激进的社会主义者和劳工。在二月革命的骚乱后不久，他认为一场处于支持“民主和社会共和国”的劳工人口与由乡村人口和贵族构成的保守派之间的血腥冲突是难以避免了。如同他所预见的，两大社会群体间的紧绷关系最后爆发了1848年的6月大暴动。托克维尔选择支持路易斯·卡芬雅克（Louis Eugène Cavaignac）将军所领导的镇暴行动，卡芬雅克最后宣布了紧急状态并且暂时冻结了宪法的法条。尽管身为卡芬雅克以及保守派的支持者，托克维尔仍然接受了奥迪隆·巴罗（Odilon Barrot）政府的邀请，在1849年6月至10月间担任法国外交部的部长。由于与总统拿破仑三世理念不合，他在就任后数个月便辞职而去，但仍担任国民议会议员。
托克维尔支持波旁王朝的复位，反对拿破仑家族的第二帝国（1851-1871）。他在1851年的总统选举中支持路易斯·卡芬雅克对抗拿破仑三世。在选举之后，新当选的拿破仑于1851年12月2日发动政变，下令解散国民议会。托克维尔与其他议会代表一同在巴黎聚集以对抗政变，但却被拿破仑以“叛国罪”为名逮捕。在遭拘禁一小段时间后托克维尔获得释放，接着他完全退出了政坛，与他的英裔妻子Marie Mottley一同隐居于乡间的城堡（château de Tocqueville）。在那里他也开始撰写《旧制度与大革命》（L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution），在1856年出版了全书的第一卷，但在撰写第二卷的期间因病去世。
论美国的民主
托克维尔在1835年出版的《民主与美国》是最早开始探讨美国政治和文化的主要作品之一，并且也成为研究这方面领域的经典作品之一。在书中托克维尔以他敏锐的观察力，从一名第三者的角度观察新大陆的民主制度。他赞扬了民主制度在美国的成功发展，但他同时也对于民主制度下出现多数暴政的可能性提出了警告—他将那称为是“温和的暴政”。这本书是托克维尔在19世纪初期以游历美国的经验所写成的，那时正是美国刚经历了自由市场革命、西部扩展、以及杰克逊民主的快速发展，完全改变了美国生活面貌的时候。托克维尔认为民主可以适当的平衡自由与平等两者，在照顾个人的同时也顾及社会的发展。托克维尔认为过度的社会平等会导致人与人之间的孤立，造成更多的政府干预、以及自由遭到侵蚀。托克维尔也批评了个人主义，他认为人与人之间根基于相同目标的团结合作，能将美国建立为一个更理想的国家，也能因此而建立起一个公民社会，从而避免过度依赖政府的干预。
从柏拉图的《理想国》和《法律篇》开始，许许多多思想家的一贯主张是：为了避免邪恶和贪婪，私人财产必须被废除；只有当财产的力量被完全消除后，知识份子精英的“哲学家国王”才能浮现，并对社会进行统治。只有当美德成为唯一的权力基础时，人类社会才能达成理想的目标。而早期的现代思想家从托马斯·莫尔开始，也采取了柏拉图对于私人财产的批判姿态。柏拉图和莫尔都认为财产的平衡和权力的平衡是一致的，如果财产的持有出现不平等，那么那些拥有财产的人必然也会掌握权力。而18世纪的孟德斯鸠也认同这种观点，认为只有当财产被平均分配时，真正的美德才能浮现并领导政治。这些思想家都主张社会的平等是一个共和国的必要条件，因为这样才能保证统治者是最杰出而最优秀的。
托克维尔最初也认同财产平衡等于权力平衡这种观点，但在《论美国的民主》一书里，托克维尔考察美国所得出的结论却彻底脱离了这些思想家，成为惊人的转变。托克维尔起初试着探索为何美国能够发展的如此繁荣，他见证到了美国社会与老旧的欧洲世界有着显著的差异，与欧洲相反的是，美国社会将赚取金钱视为是一种最主要的道德，结果使美国的一般百姓得以享受人类史上空前的自尊和自由。在美国社会里，几乎所有人都抱持勤劳工作和超越他人的理想，一般百姓从不服从精英的权威，同时激进的个人主义与市场资本主义发展至了前所未见的地步。
托克维尔主张，正是这种独特的美国精神和道德观，使得美国脱离了欧洲社会的局限和牵绊。与欧洲不同的是，前往美国的新移民发现了有广大而无人居住的土地可以拓垦，所有到达美国的人都可以拥有他们自己的土地、并且独立经营自己的生活。托克维尔指出，数量稀少的旧精英以及地主贵族的确存在，但他们完全没有机会抵挡因为广大土地的所有权而衍生出的资本主义价值观。在这样一个开放社会里，迈向富裕的机会多的数不尽，所有人都开始建立属于他们自己的世界：勤劳而具创新精神的企业家成为社会的主流。
而这种先天条件也孕育出了美国独特的政治和社会价值观，决定了殖民地和后来的地方州会通过的法案。到了18世纪末期，崇尚赚钱、勤劳工作、以及个人主义的民主价值已经支配美国北部，消除了大多数旧世界遗留的贵族及其价值观。不过，要在美国南部消除这些事物则显得较为困难，因为奴隶制度产生了地主贵族以及类似于旧世界的从属关系，这种现象一直要到南北战争的战前时期为止。
托克维尔指出正是这些在北部（以及稍后在南部）出现的资本主义价值观，超越了旧世界的道德观和社会机制。立法机构进一步废止了来自旧世界的长子遗产继承权和其他遗产继承的限制，使得土地的所有权得以广泛的分配。地主精英失去了将所有财产分配给单一长子的特权，因此财富变的更难以巩固，更多人也因此会努力的替自己的未来奋斗。
托克维尔主张，在这样快速民主化的社会里，人们往往没有什么特别“杰出”的道德观念，而是会希望透过勤劳工作来累积庞大的财富。在托克维尔看来，美国在这种独特的民族特质上跳脱了传统的欧洲。在欧洲，没有人对赚钱有太大的兴趣，最底层的社会阶级对于赚取足以温饱以外的财富并不抱希望，而上层阶级则认为赚钱是粗鲁的、下流的、而且与他们的贵族身分不相搭配的。托克维尔所指出的这些在文化上的差异也被后来许多思想家和学者所采纳，解释了为何欧洲在19世纪会出现一群穿着豪华服装、却走上街头企图利用劳工发起阶级战争和革命的菁英阶级；然而在美国，当劳工看到穿着豪华服装的有钱人时，他们所想的却是透过更努力工作的方式来累积财富，认为他们只要肯奋斗和创新，终有一日也可以穿着到更豪华的衣服。
因此这些独特的美国价值，在许多人看来，便解释了美国例外主义的成因，同时也能解释许多美国独有的神秘现象，例如美国从来没有像其他西方国家一样如此彻底的拥抱社会主义。对托克维尔而言，美国与欧洲最大的差异也就是这些独特的民主价值观。尽管他最初认同柏拉图、托马斯·莫尔、和孟德斯鸠所主张的财富平衡才能确保权力平衡的概念，但托克维尔最后得出了完全不同的结论。他主张就如同他对美国的观察所显示的，财富的平衡并无法确保统治者便会是最好的人选，事实上结果反而颠倒过来了。广泛的、而且程序公正的财产所有权成为美国的独特现象，这不但决定了美国社会的独特价值观和精神，同时也能解释为何美国大众对于精英文化抱持如此轻视的态度。
托克维尔并指出，除了消除掉一切旧世界的贵族影响外，美国平常百姓也拒绝服从那些拥有较多财富、或拥有较多天资和智慧的人。托克维尔认为，尽管这些知识份子精英都是在美国社会里正当脱颖而出的，但他们并无法享受与在欧洲一样程度政治权力。平常的美国百姓享受极大的自主权力，并且拒绝服从精英知识份子的领导。这样的民主文化促成了一种明显而独特的平等观念，但如同托克维尔主张的，巩固这种道德观和精神的根基，也使得美国社会有着平凡庸俗的风气。
至于那些天生具有道德和天资的人，则无法像在欧洲那样拥有众多的权利和地位，而是必须迎合当前美国社会的需求才能生存。托克维尔预言指出，那些拥有最好教育背景和天资的人只有两种生涯途径可以选择，要不就是加入知识份子的小圈圈，替社会所面临的平凡问题研究解决办法—这些小圈圈则成为了美国的学术界；又或者，利用他们的天资和才能，从事私人企业的牟利生涯，替自己赚取庞大的财富。托克维尔于《论美国的民主》一书里的最后得出了这个结论，以19世纪初的美国历史为根基，解释了美国社会文化和价值观的本质，并且也解释了为何美国能发展成熟至今天的面貌。
名言
民主与社会主义除了平等这一词以外，没有任何相同的地方。但注意两者间的差异：民主是为了自由而追求平等，社会主义则是为了压迫和奴役而追求平等。
我会说当前世界上只剩下两个伟大的国家—俄罗斯和美国；除了这两个国家以外，其他所有国家似乎都已经面临他们的极限，并且都只能试图维持他们的力量，而他们的力量逐渐衰退的程度则是没有底限的。
暴政可以在没有信念的情况下进行统治，但自由则不能。
他们（皇帝们）经常滥用权力剥夺人民的财产和生命：他们其中几个人的暴政也达到了空前的地步，但其数量依然不多……如果暴政是在我们今天的民主国家里浮现，那它将会改变为另一副面貌；这样的暴政将会更为广泛、但却同时带有温和的色彩，它将会在奴役人民的同时，却不让他们感觉半点痛苦。
那些要求得到自由以外的任何东西的人，注定生而为奴。
我还不晓得有哪个国家像美国一样，人民是如此的热爱财富，而维持财富平等的理论则被人民所强烈藐视。
至于说到我，我是一个民主主义者；这就是为什么我不可能是一个社会主义者。民主和社会主义是不可能并存的，你不可能将两者混在一起。
所有希望摧毁民主国家的自由的人都该知道，发动战争是最快而又最可靠的手段。
美国之伟大不在于她比其他国家更为聪明，而在于她有更多能力修补自己犯下的错误。
一个美国人的一生，就好像一场赌注机会的游戏一般、一场革命舞台、或一场战役。
民主最重要的原则不在于应该消除庞大的财富，而是在于财富不应该聚集于同一个人手上。因此民主制度里会出现拥有庞大财富的有钱人，但他们本身无法构成一个社会阶级。
如果想要获得新闻自由所带来的大量优点，我们也必须忍受它所创造出的各种邪恶……
在一个拥有集会自由的国家，秘密结社是不会出现的。美国拥有许多不同的团体派系，但却没有阴谋集团存在。
外交不需要民主特质，它需要的是民主之外的东西。民主国家倾向于服从冲动而非谨慎，为满足一时冲动而放弃长远大计。法国大革命后，美国国内即表现了这种倾向；全赖华盛顿坚毅不屈的性格与他享有的威望，才阻止了国人群情激愤的冒失冲动，避免对英宣战（因为当时美国无力挑衅，需要和平）。（《论美国的民主》）
著作
Du système pénitentaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France (1833年)—《论美国的形事制度及其对法国的应用》，与古斯塔夫·德·博蒙合著
De la démocratie en Amerique (1835年/1840年)—《论美国的民主》，原本分为两卷出版，第一卷在1835年，第二卷在1840年
L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856年)—《旧制度与大革命》，托克维尔第二知名的著作
Recollections (1893年)—《回忆录》，这是经历1848年革命而写下的纪录，托克维尔生前从没想过要将其公诸于世；在他死后他的妻子和古斯塔夫·德·博蒙将其出版
Journey to America (1831年 – 1832年)—《美国游记》，托克维尔游历美国时的旅行游记，由George Lawrence翻译为英文，1960年由耶鲁大学出版社出版
An eminent representative of the classical liberal political tradition, Tocqueville was an active participant in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849–1851) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup, and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume I.
Life
Alexis de Tocqueville came from an old Norman aristocratic family with ancestors who participated in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. His parents, Hervé Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville, an officer of the Constitutional Guard of King Louis XVI, and Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo, narrowly avoided the guillotine due to the fall of Robespierre in 1794. After an exile in England, they returned to France during the reign of Napoleon. Under the Bourbon Restoration, his father became a noble peer and prefect.
Tocqueville attended the Lycée Fabert in Metz.
Tocqueville, who despised the July Monarchy (1830–1848), began his political career at the start of the same period, 1830. Thus, he became deputy of the Manche department (Valognes), a position which he maintained until 1851. In parliament, he defended abolitionist views and upheld free trade, while supporting the colonisation of Algeria carried on by Louis-Philippe's regime. Tocqueville was also elected general counsellor of the Manche in 1842, and became the president of the department's conseil général between 1849 and 1851.
In 1831, he obtained from the July Monarchy a mission to examine prisons and penitentiaries in America, and proceeded there with his life-long friend Gustave de Beaumont. He returned in less than two years, and published a report, but the real result of his tour was the famous De la Démocratie en Amerique, which appeared in 1835.
Apart from America, Tocqueville also made an observational tour of England, producing Memoir on Pauperism. In 1841 and 1846, he traveled to Algeria. His first travel inspired his Travail sur l'Algérie, in which he criticized the French model of colonisation, which was based on an assimilationist view, preferring instead the British model of indirect rule, which avoided mixing different populations together. He went as far as openly advocating racial segregation between the European colonists and the "Arabs" through the implementation of two different legislative systems (a half century before implementation of the 1881 Indigenous code based on religion). In 1835 de Tocqueville made a journey through Ireland. His observations provide one of the best pictures of how Ireland stood before the Great Famine 1845-1849. The observations chronicle the growing Catholic middle-class and the appalling conditions in which most Catholic tenant farmers lived. De Tocqueville's libertarian sympathies and his affinity for his Irish co-religionists are made clear.
After the fall of the July Monarchy during the February 1848 Revolution, Tocqueville was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848, where he became a member of the Commission charged with the drafting of the new Constitution of the Second Republic (1848–1851). He defended bicameralism (the existence of two parliamentary chambers) and the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage. As the countryside was thought to be more conservative than the labouring population of Paris, universal suffrage was conceived as a means to counteract the revolutionary spirit of Paris.
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During the Second Republic, Tocqueville sided with the parti de l'Ordre against the socialists. A few days after the February insurrection, he believed that a violent clash between the Parisian workers' population led by socialists agitating in favor of a "Democratic and Social Republic" and the conservatives, which included the aristocracy and the rural population, was inescapable. As Tocqueville had foreseen, these social tensions eventually exploded during the June Days Uprising of 1848. Led by General Cavaignac, the repression was supported by Tocqueville, who advocated the "regularization" of the state of siege declared by Cavaignac, and other measures promoting suspension of the constitutional order. Between May and September, Tocqueville participated in the Constitutional Commission which Wrote the new Constitution. His proposals underlined the importance of his American experience, as his amendment about the President and his reelection.
A supporter of Cavaignac and of the parti de l'Ordre, Tocqueville, however, accepted an invitation to enter Odilon Barrot's government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 3 June to 31 October 1849. There, during the troubled days of June 1849, he pleaded with Jules Dufaure, Interior Minister, for the reestablishment of the state of siege in the capital and approved the arrest of demonstrators. Tocqueville, who since February 1848 had supported laws restricting political freedoms, approved the two laws voted immediately after the June 1849 days, which restricted the liberty of clubs and freedom of the press. This active support in favor of laws restricting political freedoms stands in contrast of his defense of freedoms in Democracy in America. A closer analysis reveals, however, that Tocqueville favored order as "the sine qua non for the conduct of serious politics. He [hoped] to bring the kind of stability to French political life that would permit the steady growth of liberty unimpeded by the regular rumblings of the earthquakes of revolutionary change.″
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte for the presidential election of 1848. Opposed to Louis Napoléon's 2 December 1851 coup which followed his election, Tocqueville was among the deputies who gathered at the 10th arrondissement of Paris in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoleon III judged for "high treason," as he had violated the constitutional limit on terms of office. Detained at Vincennes and then released, Tocqueville, who supported the Restoration of the Bourbons against Bonaparte's Second Empire (1851–1871), quit political life and retreated to his castle (Château de Tocqueville). Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein has concluded: "Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed—had given it, in all, thirteen years of his life [....] He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, archives, and his own desk." There, he began the draft of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, publishing the first tome in 1856, but leaving the second one unfinished.
Tocqueville's professed religion was Roman Catholicism.
Translated Versions of Democracy in America and Effects on Meaning
Henry Reeve, translated circa 1839 This translation was completed by Reeve with work from Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradely. Tocqueville provided a critique of the translation as follows "Without wishing to do so and by following the instinct of your opinions, you have quite vividly colored what was contrary to Democracy and almost erased what could do harm to Aristocracy." Although it is not exactly clear what is meant, there are two general thoughts on its meaning. First, that Tocqueville believed the translation to be defective, or second, that Tocqueville was startled by his own voice.
Richard D. Heffner, translated circa 1956
Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, translated circa 2000
Arthur Goldhammer, translated circa 2004 The most recent translation of the text by Tocqueville, the translation stresses to require the reader to think more about the text instead of relying on "instant opinions" provided by previous translations. A speech from the translator given at Harvard University provides a keen insight into the development of his translation:
To shed light on the possible inaccuracies of the original translation, the title of the text should be "On Democracy in America", however this was changed by Reeve. Although not a complete rewrite, the clarity that Tocqueville wrote with depended on its concreteness and by making words interchangeable at will, it does have an effect on the meaning especially to readers who do not put the effort to research the text or read it in its native French.
Democracy in America
In Democracy in America, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through America in the early 19th Century when the market revolution, Western expansion, and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life. He saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. Tocqueville's impressions of American religion and its relationship to the broader national culture are likewise notable:
"Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337, respectively.
Tocqueville wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom" in Volumes One, Part I, Chapter 3. He further comments on equality by saying "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence.". The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote due to previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation from Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet, the actual text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere in the text.
Page from original working manuscript of Democracy in America, ca. 1840
Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for poor to become rich, and notes that it is not often two generations within a family maintain success, and that it is inheritance laws that split and eventually break apart someone's estate that cause a constant cycle of churn between the poor and rich, thereby over generations making the poor rich and rich poor. He cites protective laws in France at the time that protected an estate from being split apart amongst heirs, thereby preserving wealth and preventing a churn of wealth such as was perceived by him in 1835 within in the United States of America.
Tocqueville's main purpose was to analyze the functioning of political society and various forms of political associations, although he brought some reflections on civil society too (and relations between political and civil society). For Tocqueville as for Hegel and Marx, civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by civil code. As a critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating, the coming together of people for mutual purpose, both in public and private, Americans are able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active political society and a vibrant civil society functioning independently from the state.
Tocqueville's penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of American political life. In describing America, he agreed with thinkers such as Aristotle and Montesquieu that the balance of property determined the balance of political power, but his conclusions after that differed radically from those of his predecessors. Tocqueville tried to understand why America was so different from Europe in the last throes of aristocracy. America, in contrast to the aristocratic ethic, was a society where hard work and money-making was the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites, and where what he described as crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.
Tocqueville expressed interest in the unique American condition of equality in terms of income, using the 90/10 inequality ratio. His hypothetical analysis could later be applied to the Kuznets Curve. Tocqueville's data is consistent with the early stages of income equality of a developing country, which is not surprising considering America's heavy reliance on agriculture in the early nineteenth century. Tocqueville writes "Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living...Labor is held in honor; the prejudice is not against but in its favor."
This equality of social conditions bred political and civilian values which determined the type of legislation passed in the colonies and later in the states. By the late 18th Century, democratic values which championed money-making, hard work, and individualism had eradicated, in the North, most remaining vestiges of old world aristocracy and values. Eliminating them in the South proved more difficult, for slavery had produced a landed aristocracy and web of patronage and dependence similar to the old world, which would last until the antebellum period before the Civil War.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville asserted that the values that had triumphed in the North and were present in the South had begun to suffocate old-world ethics and social arrangements. Legislatures abolished primogeniture and entails, resulting in more widely distributed land holdings. Landed elites lost the ability to pass on fortunes to single individuals. Hereditary fortunes became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.
This rapidly democratizing society, as Tocqueville understood it, had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass, through hard work, vast fortunes. In Tocqueville's mind, this explained why America was so different from Europe. In Europe, he claimed, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth, while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar, and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money; many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in America workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries.
But, despite maintaining with Aristotle, Montesquieu, and others that the balance of property determined the balance of power, Tocqueville argued that, as America showed, equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In fact, it did quite the opposite. The widespread, relatively equitable property ownership which distinguished America and determined its mores and values also explained why the American masses held elites in such contempt.
More than just imploding any traces of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior talent and intelligence. These natural elites, who Tocqueville asserted were the lone virtuous members of American society, could not enjoy much share in the political sphere as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too much power, claimed too great a voice in the public sphere, to defer to intellectual superiors. This culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, Tocqueville argued, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted, as he put it, a middling mediocrity.
Those who possessed true virtue and talent would be left with limited choices. Those with the most education and intelligence would either, Tocqueville prognosticated, join limited intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing society which have today become the academic or contemplative realms, or use their superior talents to take advantage of America's growing obsession with money-making and amass vast fortunes in the private sector. Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American History, Tocqueville's Democracy in America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values.
Though a supporter of colonialism, Tocqueville could clearly perceive the evils that blacks and Indians had been subjected to in America. Tocqueville notes that among the races that exist in America:
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.
Tocqueville contrasted the settlers of Virginia with the middle-class, religious Puritans who founded New England, and analyzed the debasing influence of slavery:
"The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony...Artisans and agriculturalists arrived afterwards...hardly in any respect above the level of the inferior classes in England. No lofty views, no spiritual conception presided over the foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced; this was the capital fact which was to exercise an immense influence on the character, the laws and the whole future of the South. Slavery...dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man. On this same English foundation there developed in the North very different characteristics.
Tocqueville concluded that removal of the Negro population from America could not resolve the problem as he writes at the end of the first Democracy:
If the colony of Liberia were able to receive thousands of new inhabitants every year, and if the Negroes were in a state to be sent thither with advantage; if the Union were to supply the society with annual subsidies, and to transport the Negroes to Africa in government vessels, it would still be unable to counterpoise the natural increase of population among the blacks; and as it could not remove as many men in a year as are born upon its territory within that time, it could not prevent the growth of the evil which is daily increasing in the states. The Negro race will never leave those shores of the American continent to which it was brought by the passions and the vices of Europeans; and it will not disappear from the New World as long as it continues to exist. The inhabitants of the United States may retard the calamities which they apprehend, but they cannot now destroy their efficient cause.
In 1855, he wrote the following text published by Maria Weston Chapman in the Liberty Bell: Testimony against Slavery
I do not think it is for me, a foreigner, to indicate to the United States the time, the measures, or the men by whom Slavery shall be abolished.
Still, as the persevering enemy of despotism everywhere, and under all its forms, I am pained and astonished by the fact that the freest people in the world is, at the present time, almost the only one among civilized and Christian nations which yet maintains personal servitude; and this while serfdom itself is about disappearing, where it has not already disappeared, from the most degraded nations of Europe.
An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing Slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her detractors, compromise the future career of the Union which is the guaranty of her safety and greatness, and point out beforehand to her, to all her enemies, the spot where they are to strike. As a man, too, I am moved at the spectacle of man's degradation by man, and I hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction, to the dwellers upon earth.
According to him assimilation of blacks would be almost impossible and this was already being demonstrated in the Northern states. As Tocqueville predicted, formal freedom and equality and segregation would become this population's reality after the Civil War and during Reconstruction — as would the bumpy road to true integration of blacks.
Assimilation, however, was the best solution for Native Americans. But since they were too proud to assimilate, they would inevitably become extinct. Displacement was another part of America's Indian policy. Both populations were "undemocratic", or without the qualities, intellectual and otherwise, needed to live in a democracy. Tocqueville shared many views on assimilation and segregation of his and the coming epochs, but he opposed Gobineau's scientific racism theories as found in The Inequality of Human Races (1853–1855).
Toqueville was also something of a forward thinking prophet when, in his Democracy In America he almost seems to predict the future of the world in the Cold War saying "There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans... Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.".
When Tocqueville toured the United States from 1831 to 1832 the Naturalization Act of 1790, signed into law by George Washington, prohibited persons of color from becoming citizens. Only persons who were "white" of "good moral character" could become citizens; while freed blacks, Asians, and Native Americans were denied citizenship. The citizens mentioned in Tocqueville's book, Democracy in America, were all of the white race.
The 1841 discourse on the Conquest of Algeria
French historian of colonialism Olivier LeCour Grandmaison has underlined how Tocqueville (as well as Michelet) used the term "extermination" to describe what was happening during the colonization of Western United States and the Indian removal period. Tocqueville thus expressed himself, in 1841, concerning the conquest of Algeria:
As far as I am concerned, I came back from Africa with the pathetic notion that at present in our way of waging war we are far more barbaric than the Arabs themselves. These days, they represent civilization, we do not. This way of waging war seems to me as stupid as it is cruel. It can only be found in the head of a coarse and brutal soldier. Indeed, it was pointless to replace the Turks only to reproduce what the world rightly found so hateful in them. This, even for the sake of interest is more noxious than useful; for, as another officer was telling me, if our sole aim is to equal the Turks, in fact we shall be in a far lower position than theirs: barbarians for barbarians, the Turks will always outdo us because they are Muslim barbarians.
In France, I have often heard men I respect but do not approve of, deplore that crops should be burnt and granaries emptied and finally that unarmed men, women and children should be seized. In my view these are unfortunate circumstances that any people wishing to wage war against the Arabs must accept. I think that all the means available to wreck tribes must be used, barring those that the human kind and the right of nations condemn. I personally believe that the laws of war enable us to ravage the country and that we must do so either by destroying the crops at harvest time or any time by making fast forays also known as raids the aim of which it to get hold of men or flocks.
Whatever the case, we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria.
Tocqueville thought the conquest of Algeria was important for two reasons: first, his understanding of the international situation and France's position in the world, and, second, changes in French society. Tocqueville believed that war and colonization would "restore national pride, threatened," he believed, by "the gradual softening of social mores" in the middle classes. Their taste for "material pleasures" was spreading to the whole of society, giving it "an example of weakness and egotism"." Applauding the methods of General Bugeaud, Tocqueville went as far as saying that "war in Africa" had become a science: "war in Africa is a science. Everyone is familiar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of the greatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and made everyone aware of this new science."
Tocqueville advocated racial segregation in Algeria with two distinct legislations, one for each very separate communities. Such legislation would eventually be enacted with the Crémieux decrees and the 1881 Indigenous Code, which gave French citizenship only to European settlers and Algerian Jews, while Muslim Algerians were confined to a second-grade citizenship.
Tocqueville's opposition to the invasion of Kabylia
In opposition to Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Jean-Louis Benoît claimed that given the extent of racial prejudices during the colonization of Algeria, Tocqueville was one of its "most moderate supporters." Benoît claimed that it was wrong to assume Tocqueville was a supporter of Bugeaud, despite his 1841 apologetic discourse. It seems that Tocqueville changed viewpoint in particular after his second travel to Algeria in 1846. Hereafter, he criticized Bugeaud's desire to invade Kabylia (home of the Berbers) in a 1847 speech to the Assembly. Tocqueville, who did advocate racial segregation between Europeans and Arabs, judged otherwise the Berbers. In an August 22, 1837 proposal, Tocqueville distinguished the Berbers from the Arabs. He considered that these last ones should have a self-government (a bit on the model of British indirect rule, thus going against the French assimiliationist stance).
Tocqueville's views on the matter were complex, and evolved over time. Even though in his 1841 report on Algeria Tocqueville admitted that Bugeaud succeeded in implementing a technique of war that enabled him to defeat Abd al-Qadir's resistance and applauded him on one hand, he opposed on the other hand the conquest of Kabylia in his first Letter about Algeria (1837). In this document, he advocated that France and the French military leave Kabylia apart to preserve a peaceful zone so as to try and develop commercial links. In all his subsequent speeches and writings he kept on being against any attempt towards intrusion into Kabylia.
During the debate concerning the 1846 extraordinary funds, Tocqueville denounced Bugeaud's conduct of military operations, and succeeded in convincing the Assembly of not voting the funds in support of Bugeaud's military columns. Tocqueville considered Bugeaud's will to invade Kabylia, despite the opposition of the Assembly, as a seditious move in front of which the government opted for cowardice.
Report on Algeria (1847)
In his 1847 Report on Algeria, Tocqueville declared that Europe should avoid making the same mistake they made with the European colonization of the Americas in order to avoid the bloody consequences. More particularly he reminds his countrymen of a solemn caution whereby he warns them that if the methods used towards the Algerian people remain unchanged, colonization will end in a blood bath. The 1847 caution went unheeded and the heralded tragedy did happen.
Tocqueville includes in his report on Algeria that the fate of their soldiers and finances depended on how they treated the natives and established a sound government. Creating peace in the country would reduce the number of soldiers. However, by treating the inhabitants of Algeria as an obstacle then the two sides would be subject to much conflict and strife.
References in popular literature
Tocqueville was quoted in several chapters of the Toby Young's memoirs, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People to explain his observation of widespread homogeneity of thought even amongst intellectual elites at Harvard University, during his time spent there. He is frequently quoted and studied in American history classes. Tocqueville is the inspiration for Australian novelist Peter Carey in his 2009 novel, Parrot and Olivier in America.
In 24:Redemption, President Allison Taylor quotes de Tocqueville saying, "in every democracy, the people get the government they deserve". She uses this quote in her inaugural speech to the nation.