9.
This refusal to give due weight to the trends that endanger his own political
dreams is also evident in his reaction to the 1848 revolution, the emergence of
working class politics and a socialist movement. At this time, Tocqueville was
both a prominent political actor and a member of the committee charged with
drawing up the new republican constitution. In the period after 1830 the
bourgeoisie had emerged as the dominant economic class but, to Tocqueville’s
mind, had yet to reveal the capacity to be the leading political class. It was
too interested in prosecuting its own class interest to develop the
disinterested perspective of political leadership. The revolution was at least
in part a reaction to bourgeois interest politics of the Louis Phillip and an
attempt to further extend political rights with a new republican Constitution.
In France, workers had neither political rights nor the opportunities to
acquire property that were available to their counterparts in America. In 1848
they seized their opportunity to extend their political rights, to struggle to
extend the boundaries of the political and to address their social
disadvantage. For the workers, the “social question” was the question of
structural disadvantage and poverty and the designation “social” connoted the
project of dealing with this question collectively. Tocqueville refuses to
concede this collective action the status of political action in the truest
sense. The revolutionaries are not heroic actors attempting to contest and reshape
the limits of the political but indistinguishable, anonymous agents of a
formless mass. He sees behind the worker’s demand for equality of political
rights, the mass passion of an amorphous social force those demands are without
limit. He fails to offer a theory of justice and hides behind the
conventionalities of bourgeois political economy rather than really attempting
to answer the question of whether the bourgeois economy is to be subject to
considerations of justice. He displays an instinctive fear of the masses and
abhors collective action because he believes inflamed passions and lack of
political experience make the masses prone to violence. He invokes the
distinction between the political and the social where the latter is encumbered
by connotations of material interest, private property, class distinctions,
while the former stands for the ideal, legal, civic spirited and all that it
encourages. In this respect, he remains completely dismissive of the role that
interests might legitimately play in politics. But in reacting in this way, he
also overlooks the political possibilities of social conflict and the changing
nature of the political that follows in the wake of the French Revolution. The
politics of the future will be less a politics of individuals and their actions
and more one of masses, classes and large social and economic interests and
forces. In doing so, he narrows the meaning of political participation and the
circle of its participants. Paradoxically, his ideal of participatory politics
dims just at the moment when comparable developments emerge in this new working
class form and acquire a crucial importance in contemporary France.
10. Nevertheless, of all the great 19th century diagnosticians, Tocqueville might still seem the least dogmatic and strangely the most prescient. His image of egalitarian society, for all its idealisation and symptomatic lacunae, most closely approximates the social condition of the majority in the developed West. For example, take this quote from a article in the Herald by John McDonald: Spectrum April 6/7/02 pp4/5 Quoting from Democracy in America:
‘ “There is little energy of character but laws are more humane. Life is not adorned with brilliant trophies, but it is easy and tranquil. Genius becomes more rare, information more diffused. There is less perfection, but more abundance, in all the productions of the arts”
Tocqueville’s diagnosis could serve as an accurate summary of Western democracy at the dawn of the 21st century. Despite our ongoing problems, for the great majority life is much easier in these societies than it is for those living under more repressive regimes. The price, perhaps, is solipsism and complacency—A sense that the rest of the world doesn’t impinge on one’s consciousness for longer than the duration of the evening’s news. This kind of complacency had drawn some of the blame for the events of Sept 11. The subsequent hysteria is a measure of how deeply we were immersed in this more comfortable and stable view of the world. Tocqueville’s point about democracy leading to 'little energy of character' is borne out by the political and cultural landscape of Australia, which may claim to be the world’s most agreeable and stable society. Regardless of whether our leaders demonstrate little energy, their characters seem to have undergone a form of moral atrophy. The treatment of asylum seekers, the shameless political exploitation of public xenophobia, the Governor General’s reluctance to take the tap for his own moral cowardice—these are all signs of a society that has lost touch with civilised, humane qualities. “Character”, per se has been replaced by a set of expedient norms: admit nothing, mouth empty slogan, be dispassionate.’
11. After an initial period in the first part of the 20th century when his worst fears regarding the future were vastly surpassed and his own ideas subsequently went into relative neglect, it seems like we might have entered a time when just these fears appear to have some basis. Yet, while Tocqueville often speaks with a prophetic tone, he never claimed to provide a philosophy of history. As we have seen, he is generally suspicious of grand intellectual constructions being imposed on socio-political life and hopes rational political action can avoid dangers and build on strengths. Nevertheless, because he studied modernity from the standpoint of difference and of loss, he was supremely sensitive to the inhospitable aspects of the modern world and able to see further into it than most.
12. To the extent Tocqueville got it wrong, his image of modernity is too backward looking and rests on too narrow a foundation. In his account of both democracy and equality: there is no poverty and little inequality. As we have seen, he ignores the “social question”. Because his political vision of the future has stark poles--independent individuals and dependent masses, he found it difficult to integrate the working class, Tocqueville abstracted democracy out of modernity and constituted it as the historical process. In this respect, he is like Marx who will make a similar move with capitalism. By contrast, for Tocqueville, the bourgeois revolution is a political revolution. Politics always takes priority over economics. This lack of attention to the other forces of dynamism levels out his understanding of bourgeois social life in terms of uniformity and accentuates his fears of social ossification.
13. Yet, despite these failings, today Tocqueville is even more contemporary than ever. After the Cold War, liberal democracy appears as the last remaining viable socio-political model in the West. Here Tocqueville is our master: he offers us a glimpse of a post-political democratic world. A culture of political participation is replaced by one of privatism, isolation and consumerism. Without an engaged citizenry and disinterested politics, democracy can become all-purpose and infinitely plastic, a new form of despotism where the leading question is: Who controls the meaning of democracy and thereby its fate? Increasingly as the economic discourse of neo-liberalism gains ground, where the consumer is “sovereign” and we “vote” through our consumption choices, there is a commensurate translation of the political into economic terms. The concept of popular sovereignty easily collapses into theories of “rational choice”, “voter preference” and “consumer opportunity”. The question that seems to be emerging today is whether the political moment in democracy can be preserved or whether democracy will gradually shed its civic potentialities to be transformed into a cultural ideology and myth that serves merely as an instrument in the functional reproduction of modern power. Tocqueville provides us with a provocative and troubling hypothesis and an investigatory template. He placed the careful analysis the liberal democratic social condition at the top of our critical agenda and this remains, even for us, a burning issue.
10. Nevertheless, of all the great 19th century diagnosticians, Tocqueville might still seem the least dogmatic and strangely the most prescient. His image of egalitarian society, for all its idealisation and symptomatic lacunae, most closely approximates the social condition of the majority in the developed West. For example, take this quote from a article in the Herald by John McDonald: Spectrum April 6/7/02 pp4/5 Quoting from Democracy in America:
‘ “There is little energy of character but laws are more humane. Life is not adorned with brilliant trophies, but it is easy and tranquil. Genius becomes more rare, information more diffused. There is less perfection, but more abundance, in all the productions of the arts”
Tocqueville’s diagnosis could serve as an accurate summary of Western democracy at the dawn of the 21st century. Despite our ongoing problems, for the great majority life is much easier in these societies than it is for those living under more repressive regimes. The price, perhaps, is solipsism and complacency—A sense that the rest of the world doesn’t impinge on one’s consciousness for longer than the duration of the evening’s news. This kind of complacency had drawn some of the blame for the events of Sept 11. The subsequent hysteria is a measure of how deeply we were immersed in this more comfortable and stable view of the world. Tocqueville’s point about democracy leading to 'little energy of character' is borne out by the political and cultural landscape of Australia, which may claim to be the world’s most agreeable and stable society. Regardless of whether our leaders demonstrate little energy, their characters seem to have undergone a form of moral atrophy. The treatment of asylum seekers, the shameless political exploitation of public xenophobia, the Governor General’s reluctance to take the tap for his own moral cowardice—these are all signs of a society that has lost touch with civilised, humane qualities. “Character”, per se has been replaced by a set of expedient norms: admit nothing, mouth empty slogan, be dispassionate.’
11. After an initial period in the first part of the 20th century when his worst fears regarding the future were vastly surpassed and his own ideas subsequently went into relative neglect, it seems like we might have entered a time when just these fears appear to have some basis. Yet, while Tocqueville often speaks with a prophetic tone, he never claimed to provide a philosophy of history. As we have seen, he is generally suspicious of grand intellectual constructions being imposed on socio-political life and hopes rational political action can avoid dangers and build on strengths. Nevertheless, because he studied modernity from the standpoint of difference and of loss, he was supremely sensitive to the inhospitable aspects of the modern world and able to see further into it than most.
12. To the extent Tocqueville got it wrong, his image of modernity is too backward looking and rests on too narrow a foundation. In his account of both democracy and equality: there is no poverty and little inequality. As we have seen, he ignores the “social question”. Because his political vision of the future has stark poles--independent individuals and dependent masses, he found it difficult to integrate the working class, Tocqueville abstracted democracy out of modernity and constituted it as the historical process. In this respect, he is like Marx who will make a similar move with capitalism. By contrast, for Tocqueville, the bourgeois revolution is a political revolution. Politics always takes priority over economics. This lack of attention to the other forces of dynamism levels out his understanding of bourgeois social life in terms of uniformity and accentuates his fears of social ossification.
13. Yet, despite these failings, today Tocqueville is even more contemporary than ever. After the Cold War, liberal democracy appears as the last remaining viable socio-political model in the West. Here Tocqueville is our master: he offers us a glimpse of a post-political democratic world. A culture of political participation is replaced by one of privatism, isolation and consumerism. Without an engaged citizenry and disinterested politics, democracy can become all-purpose and infinitely plastic, a new form of despotism where the leading question is: Who controls the meaning of democracy and thereby its fate? Increasingly as the economic discourse of neo-liberalism gains ground, where the consumer is “sovereign” and we “vote” through our consumption choices, there is a commensurate translation of the political into economic terms. The concept of popular sovereignty easily collapses into theories of “rational choice”, “voter preference” and “consumer opportunity”. The question that seems to be emerging today is whether the political moment in democracy can be preserved or whether democracy will gradually shed its civic potentialities to be transformed into a cultural ideology and myth that serves merely as an instrument in the functional reproduction of modern power. Tocqueville provides us with a provocative and troubling hypothesis and an investigatory template. He placed the careful analysis the liberal democratic social condition at the top of our critical agenda and this remains, even for us, a burning issue.
Lecture: Marx (1818-1882)
1.
Marx rejects Hegel’s view of modernity as the realisation of reason and freedom
or Tocqueville’s equation of it with the institutions of bourgeois
republicanism. Contemporary society is not the “end of history” but the arena
of a monumental social conflict that will decide the fate of the present: eliminate
class oppression and usher in the realm of freedom. Nor is theory either a
contemplative expression of its age in thought or the neutral instrument of the
art of politics. Marx is a revolutionary. His theory is not philosophical
reflection but the enlightened self-consciousness of historical actors: the
proletariat.
2. Marx’s biography. Born in Trier to an assimilated Jewish family, university educated, Young Hegelian, journalism, political exile, marriage, Paris where he meets Frederick Engels and the proletariat for the first time, Brussels, revolutionary activity in Brussels, Cologne and Paris until 1849. Further exile to London where he lived for the rest of his life engaged in theoretical work towards hi major work the unfinished Kapital (1867). For the early years in London he lived in poverty and relied on Engels for financial support. He was also the major theoretical force behind the International Working Men’s Association (1864-1872).
3. To understand Marx, we must begin with his critique of Hegel. Hegel equates existing institutions with rationality. But these institutions are irrational. Thus Hegel is 1/ ideological 2/ impotent. Criticism must become a material force, seize the masses. Hegel critiques Kant, Feuerbach Hegel, Marx Feuerbach, each successively charged his predecessor with philosophical abstraction. The only really concrete historical actors are the social classes of capitalist society. But Marx only finds the proletariat in 1844. Already he had defined the task of his own critical theory. Reason exists in the world and the task of philosophy is to clarify for the social actors this rational meaning and its immanent direction. Marx then only had to align this immanent rationality with an existing social force. Aligned to the proletariat his theory becomes the enlightened expression of the consciousness of the working class.
4.The fundamental contradiction of modernity is the struggle between capital and labour. This is an exploitative relation of mutual need and antagonism. These classes have opposed interests. But the working class is growing in functional importance and in numbers. This situation of structural disadvantage but growing power provides both the motive and the capacity to radically challenge this order. In their struggles, the workers gain in solidarity and self-consciousness. This would lead to trade unionism and then on finally to abolish class society.
5. This account is striking in its sociological radicalism. The dynamic of modernity quickly refines bourgeois society into only two classes. Of course, other classes continue to exist and can even play a decisive role in deciding the political outcome of historical struggles. However, these classes are anchored in the social relations of the past and can offer no fully coherent perspective for the comprehending the contemporary dynamics of bourgeois society. Membership of these bourgeois classes is determined not by birth but by function. This means that their significance is not obscured by tradition and religious interpretation. It therefore becomes possible to perceive their social foundations and contemplate the possibility of their social reconstruction. Of course, the very radicalism of Marx’s sociological reconstruction of capitalist society soon generated criticism that it might be too simplified. Probably the most significant critique came from Eduard Bernstein in the 1890’s who used contemporary sociological observations to suggest that Marx’s projected class polarisation of bourgeois society has not occurred and, in fact, contemporary societies were beginning to evidence a growing middle class.
6. While underlining its antagonistic character, Marx acknowledges the historically progressive character of Capitalism. This society is insatiable and future-orientated; it has destroyed tradition but is inherently dynamic creating both new productive forces and values; (Quote p476 Marx/Engels Reader). Bourgeois society tolerates no limitation either externally or internally. The world market is formed and individual need structures expanded and characteristics transformed. Human richness and freedom are Marx’s highest values. Like Tocqueville, he accepts European imperialism on this basis while remaining completely skeptical as to its claims to a higher civilisatory mission. For all its brutality and hypocrisy, the destruction of parochial worlds engenders gains in universality and freedom. It is common misinterpretation to think of Marx as a champion of equality alone. In fact, he rejected contemporary versions of Socialism that maintained substantive equality as its overriding goal was ascetic and backward looking. He endorses modern individualism insofar as it is an expression of freedom and human many-sidedness. However, he rejects its bourgeois form that requires exclusively one-sided development and the dehumanisation of the great majority.
2. Marx’s biography. Born in Trier to an assimilated Jewish family, university educated, Young Hegelian, journalism, political exile, marriage, Paris where he meets Frederick Engels and the proletariat for the first time, Brussels, revolutionary activity in Brussels, Cologne and Paris until 1849. Further exile to London where he lived for the rest of his life engaged in theoretical work towards hi major work the unfinished Kapital (1867). For the early years in London he lived in poverty and relied on Engels for financial support. He was also the major theoretical force behind the International Working Men’s Association (1864-1872).
3. To understand Marx, we must begin with his critique of Hegel. Hegel equates existing institutions with rationality. But these institutions are irrational. Thus Hegel is 1/ ideological 2/ impotent. Criticism must become a material force, seize the masses. Hegel critiques Kant, Feuerbach Hegel, Marx Feuerbach, each successively charged his predecessor with philosophical abstraction. The only really concrete historical actors are the social classes of capitalist society. But Marx only finds the proletariat in 1844. Already he had defined the task of his own critical theory. Reason exists in the world and the task of philosophy is to clarify for the social actors this rational meaning and its immanent direction. Marx then only had to align this immanent rationality with an existing social force. Aligned to the proletariat his theory becomes the enlightened expression of the consciousness of the working class.
4.The fundamental contradiction of modernity is the struggle between capital and labour. This is an exploitative relation of mutual need and antagonism. These classes have opposed interests. But the working class is growing in functional importance and in numbers. This situation of structural disadvantage but growing power provides both the motive and the capacity to radically challenge this order. In their struggles, the workers gain in solidarity and self-consciousness. This would lead to trade unionism and then on finally to abolish class society.
5. This account is striking in its sociological radicalism. The dynamic of modernity quickly refines bourgeois society into only two classes. Of course, other classes continue to exist and can even play a decisive role in deciding the political outcome of historical struggles. However, these classes are anchored in the social relations of the past and can offer no fully coherent perspective for the comprehending the contemporary dynamics of bourgeois society. Membership of these bourgeois classes is determined not by birth but by function. This means that their significance is not obscured by tradition and religious interpretation. It therefore becomes possible to perceive their social foundations and contemplate the possibility of their social reconstruction. Of course, the very radicalism of Marx’s sociological reconstruction of capitalist society soon generated criticism that it might be too simplified. Probably the most significant critique came from Eduard Bernstein in the 1890’s who used contemporary sociological observations to suggest that Marx’s projected class polarisation of bourgeois society has not occurred and, in fact, contemporary societies were beginning to evidence a growing middle class.
6. While underlining its antagonistic character, Marx acknowledges the historically progressive character of Capitalism. This society is insatiable and future-orientated; it has destroyed tradition but is inherently dynamic creating both new productive forces and values; (Quote p476 Marx/Engels Reader). Bourgeois society tolerates no limitation either externally or internally. The world market is formed and individual need structures expanded and characteristics transformed. Human richness and freedom are Marx’s highest values. Like Tocqueville, he accepts European imperialism on this basis while remaining completely skeptical as to its claims to a higher civilisatory mission. For all its brutality and hypocrisy, the destruction of parochial worlds engenders gains in universality and freedom. It is common misinterpretation to think of Marx as a champion of equality alone. In fact, he rejected contemporary versions of Socialism that maintained substantive equality as its overriding goal was ascetic and backward looking. He endorses modern individualism insofar as it is an expression of freedom and human many-sidedness. However, he rejects its bourgeois form that requires exclusively one-sided development and the dehumanisation of the great majority.
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