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4. We must
now see how he comes to this view by examining his account of the historical
transition to modernity. Contemporary society sees a struggle between two
ideals (aristocracy/democracy) and two political tendencies (centralisation/
revolution). The feudal world collapses under the impact centralisation and
social revolution. Since the revolution, France has been unable to choose
effectively between the democracy (the destined future) and aristocracy (the
irretrievable past).
5. The French Revolution is the product of a long process of the decay of the
nobility. They were the bulwark of a decentred, regional and heterogeneous
regime. But the nobility had gradually forfeited its political functionality
and power. The monarch divided in order to rule and created a growing state
bureaucracy to displace the nobility and centralise power. This was accompanied
be economic changes that undermined the strategic economic resources of the
nobility. This economic/politico dynamism along with the accompanying questioning
of tradition undermines the old order. Tocqueville views this transfomation as
an expression of a deep-seated human aspiration to freedom and equality. He
accepts the political economist’s view of history as evolutionary progress but
rejects historical necessity and the idea of unilinear progress without losses.
This is all part of his resistance to modern attempts to subordinate politics
to science. The political domain is interminably ambiguous and weighted down by
historical and cultural burdens. It cannot be liberated from this past and made
transparent. This is a domain not for science but for prudent action and
Tocqueville views his task as to revive the modern taste for the political.
Yet, unlike Marx who will directly attach his theory to the proletariat and its
interest, he is not aligned with the demos, nor does he view it as his task to
educate the people. He sees his own virtue as one of non-alignment and
neutrality in the struggle between democracy and aristocracy. This independence
allows him to offer a discourse on cultural beliefs and values that may
convince the old elites of the necessities of the modern age while restraining
the people and the potential excesses of democracy.
6. Tocqueville admires important aspects of the aristocratic world built on
privilege and inequality. This is a world of quality ultimately founded in
birth. The populace is of no account and the masses are simply sacrificed to
the individual. This is a society of social hierarchy where castes live in
different worlds. These reflect collective identities and a society of
decentralised intermediate power. This power is based not on economic but
political control; the whole social structure is unified by traditional
reciprocal duties and bonds. This interwoven but diffuse power sustains local
freedom, identity and distinctiveness.
7. This aristocratic personality is independent, ambitious and aloof. Identity
is secure and detached from materialism and concerned for continuity, for the
past and future. These aristocratic qualities colour Tocqueville’s concept of
freedom. While a liberal and strong advocate of private property as the basis
for individual independence, he has nothing but contempt for the modern
bourgeois notion of freedom reduced to acquisition of wealth and free trade.
Public life shrinks before selfishness and preoccupation with private life. The
result is atomisation and not being able to count on others. Tocqueville links
freedom with virtue and choosing the common good. Aristocratic freedom signifies
a sense of moral mastery: controlling the self and the estate, and
participating in a way of life. This provides purpose and a sense of membership
in a community. Such patrician participation promotes self-confidence, a sense
of self-reliance and community responsibility. This is the legacy that the
aristocracy passed on to the modern world. In Tocqueville’s idealised analysis,
the concept of aristocracy is still ambiguous, serving multiple functions.
Firstly, this is a fallen class that was politically deficient and now as a
social force effectively obsolete. However, it is also an evaluative category
that serves as a reference point conveying the awesome dynamism of the modern
world. It reminds us of the price paid for modern revolution and provides a measure
of the excesses that need to be combated. The aristocrat may be politically
dead but it is hermeneutically alive as an ideal of noble character and public
virtue.
8. Tocqueville’s concept of democracy is not clearly fixed as it would if it
were primarily bound to specific constitutional forms. This is a multivalent
concept and he wants to exploit the ambiguity in its meaning. This is necessary
because the French audience he is most interested in reaching brings a whole
range of prejudices and prejudgements to the issue of democracy. In
Tocqueville’s writings democracy can connote: political equality, majority
rule, no fixed estates, social homogenisation, uniformity of life experience
and motivations, predominance of economic motives and materialism, oppressive
public opinion, stability and even ossification. Each has its own value accent
and this leads to ambiguities. Democracy is a living well--defined primarily in
egalitarian and materialistic terms. But the key meaning is the equalisation of
condition. This refers to an expectation that in the future I may be as rich as
you. In the increasingly commercial world prosperity is contingent and the
individual’s fate is mobile. Equality is the guiding social ideal of democracy
and this equality induces the desire for more equality and dissatisfactions
with the slightest differences. But this is also a metaphor for a new kind of
power; that of the quantitative and the mass who will no longer tolerate
exclusion. The explosive force of the slogan of equality is that nobody should
be excluded and even further that the political should provide the means of
redressing the inequalities and evils that were previously viewed as natural
and irredeemable. Democracy eliminates privileges and immunities. This is a
society of equal membership, where neither status nor tradition counts. The
justification for the system is the will of the people defined as the majority.
To express the needs of this majority, which is always fluctuating, politics
must also be dynamic and mobile, reacting to, and expressing the needs of the
people. Obviously this also entails discontinuity in policy. The public not
only cannot be safely neglected but they are also fickle and therefore must be
feted, flattered and manipulated. This leads to favours, mediocrity and
corruption in the competition for office and the rejection of those with
uncompromising leadership qualities. This power of the people can also lead, as
already anticipated to the “tyranny of the majority”. The quantitative mass of
shared beliefs, opinions and values constitutes a social, moral or political
pressure that can weigh down on individuals and minorities leaving them with
little or no relief or protection. For Tocqueville, the most benign dimension
of the desire for equality is in the domain of the economic but it endangers
liberty when it plays too large a role in the domain of the political and the
cultural. With his emphasis on the oppressive and conformist potential of
cultural equality Tocqueville anticipates some of the key ideas of the
Frankfurt School and their concept of the culture industry.
9. Coupled to this idea of majority pressure is the associated key idea:
centralisation. Equality means the elimination of all intermediate power. The
collective power of the equally atomised individuals is channelled into the
central and potentially absolute power of the state. With the demise of
aristocracy, government assumes its former tasks but this involves an
increasing volume and spectrum of administrative business. With this idea of
the creeping encroachment of the state and its increased concern with citizen’s
material welfare, Tocqueville anticipates Weber. The increased administrative
load requires more bureaucracy. However, this increasing bureaucratic power can
neither be arbitrary or traditional but must be based on equality of access.
This means that the new ubiquitous and centralised will be fully regulated,
rational and impersonal. Against such a centralised and all-powerful state
without mediating intermediate powers, the individual is atomised and impotent,
dwarfed and increasingly administered more as a client rather than as an active
citizen.
10. Democracy also engenders a new form of individuality. Loss of caste and
tradition leads to the breakdown of community. This compounds bourgeois
individualism and self-interest. The bourgeois individual as an economic actor
thinks neither of ancestors or distant successors. This lost sense of temporal
continuity is also augmented by the social dimension of a loss of community as
they live as strangers to their contemporaries. Without intermediate powers,
tradition and the religious community, without the previous strong social
bands, the individual is formed by deeply ambiguous tendencies. On the one
hand, they gain an unprecedented importance: they are the only solid point in
an increasingly dynamic universe. This requires resilience, resourcefulness and
independence. On the other, the concrete outcome is very often an increasing
atomisation and powerlessness of the individual. The weight of the mass
increases government power while the individual becomes insignificant. The
dangers are diminished community and social solidarity, increasing importance
of bourgeois competition and focus on private interest. Traditional ties
directed the individual outwards. Their breakdown leads to privatisation. This
tendency is intensified by the erosion of religious community, which we have
seen, Tocqueville views as a social cement and moral insurance directing the
individual towards community and the future.
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