213th birthday of Alexis-Charles-Henri Clairel de Tocqueville, the joy of every classical liberal (de Tocqueville was born on July 29, 1805). Everything I wrote about the great contract of political thought two years ago is still relevant.
Beyond the great admiration for his character, his honesty, his writing talent, and the man's heroic depth, I, like many others, was amazed by his prophetic senses, certainly in light of the fact that predictions are the most ridiculed field in the study of history, and rightly so.
Alexis de Tocqueville talks about the USA
Thus, when I traveled to the United States for the second time at the end of the first decade of the 1835s, armed with his seminal book, which is, as is well known, the best book both about democracy and about America, I had a very hard time finding any fundamental error in the work published in 2010 about the society I saw before my eyes in XNUMX. Tocqueville was right about everything, or almost everything, and his rightness has not been significantly impaired even in the face of the changes that have occurred in the last hundred and fifty years.
Another example? Please:
Democracy expands the scope of individual freedom, socialism limits it. Democracy attributes the full possible value to each and every person; socialism reduces each and every person to a mere factor, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have only one thing in common: the word equality. But go out and see the difference: while democracy strives for equality out of freedom, socialism strives for equality out of restraint and servitude.
(From a speech before the Legislative Assembly, September 12, 1848).
Between Christianity and Islam
Another one, on a different topic? Just kidding:
If Christianity does indeed disappear, as many are so quick to predict, it will fall upon us, as it did upon the ancients before its arrival, a prolonged moral exhaustion, a poisoned age of old age, which will end, I know not how or when, at the beginning of a fresh renewal. […] I have studied the Koran carefully, especially in view of our situation in relation to the Muslim populations of Algeria and throughout the East. I confess that this study has convinced me that, on the whole, there have been few religions in the world that have been more terrible to mankind than the religion of Mohammed. This is, I believe, the main cause of the backwardness which is so conspicuous today in the Muslim world, and although it is less absurd than the ancient idolatry, its social and political tendencies give, in my opinion, innumerable more reasons for apprehension. Compared to paganism, I see in it more backwardness than progress.
(From the polemical correspondence with the father of racial theory, Arthur de Gobineau. Letter from October 22, 1843. De Tocqueville's conclusions are based not only on a careful reading of the Quran and a summary of the first 18 surahs, but also on the research trip to Algeria in 1841.)
Between Russia and the USA
And the most famous prophecy of all, and the most astonishing of all, considering that it came from an Anglophile Frenchman – the two leading countries of the era:
There are two great nations in the world today, who emerged from different points, but who seem to be marching toward the same goal: these are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.
Both grew up unnoticed; and while men turned their eyes elsewhere, they suddenly took their place in the first rank among the nations, and at one and the same time the world almost stood by their existence and greatness.
All other nations seem to have more or less reached the limits set for them by nature, and need only maintain their strength; but these are still growing. All the rest have stopped, or are still making progress with great difficulty; these alone are marching easily and swiftly along a path whose end is not yet in sight.
The American struggles with the obstacles that nature places against him; the Russian's opponents are men. The former fights wilderness and savagery; the latter - with civilization by any means of weapon. The American's conquests are thus achieved by the power of the plow; those of the Russian - by the power of the sword.
The first relies on private interest to achieve its goal and calls upon the strength and common sense of people without guiding them.
In a sense, it concentrates all the power of society in the hands of one person.
The primary means of action of the former is freedom; that of the latter is slavery.
Their starting points are different, and so are their paths; nevertheless, it seems as if, by some hidden plan, Providence has chosen to place the fate of half the earth in the hands of each of them.
(“Democracy in America”, translated by Aharon Amir, Shalem Publishing House 439, p. XNUMX.)
Between Tocqueville and Alexander Herzen
Alexander Herzen, the hero of Isaiah Berlin and (therefore) an important figure in my doctorate, read these lines with irritation:
…Tocqueville’s work brought me melancholy and sorrow. In conclusion, he says: “Two countries hold the future: America and Russia.” But where in America do you see the beginning of future development? A cold and calculating country. While the future of Russia – it has no limits, – oh, I believe in its progressiveness.
(From the letter to Nikolai Kutcher, 20/8/1838).
Herzen was a noble, talented, and wise man, but where are his predictions, and where is Tocqueville?
Incidentally, the two met. In the riots that accompanied the overthrow of Louis-Philippe in June 1848, Herzen and his radical friends were arrested in the street by a patrol of the National Guard. On the way to the police station, Herzen saw Tocqueville, who had just been elected to the Legislative Assembly. Fearing for his fate, he turned to him for help. “Tocqueville did not even ask who we were; he returned a polite bow and uttered the following disgusting sentence:
A legislative branch has no right to interfere with the instructions of the executive branch.” So how could he not become a minister in Bonaparte’s government?
(“The Past and Thoughts”, Part Five: “Paris"Italy-Paris".)
Everything in the quoted passage testifies to Herzen's condemnation: the Russian revolutionary, who supported the deepening of the revolution in France, does not exactly act here with the courage befitting his radical beliefs. Moreover, his intense fears of a trial by jury and execution in the cellars of the Tuileries did not exactly materialize - after a brief inquiry, the foreign subjects were respectfully sent back to their hotel. As for the Bonaparte administration - Tocqueville supported the second presidential candidate, openly detested Louis, served as foreign minister for less than five months, and during Bonaparte's second coup d'état demanded his arrest for treason against the republic and was himself arrested.
And of course, the Russian revolutionary simply couldn’t understand the separation of powers and thought it was “disgusting.” It’s no surprise that Russia looks the way it does.