Tocqueville and Communal Liberalism (1830–1851)

Takeda, Chinatsu

doi:10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_10

Chinatsu Takeda²

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Abstract

This chapter maintains that aspects of communal liberalism influenced Tocqueville’s political thought in Democracy in America. Without pretending that Tocqueville belongs to this brand of French liberals, I assert that he tried to transfer the substance of aristocracy into democracy and, in this process, was inspired by the liberal discourse on local liberty of the 1820s, prompted by the sixth part of Considerations. Consequently, Tocqueville discusses American democracy by finding equivalents in its republicanism of components of communal liberalism, such as hereditary peerage, citizens’ ethical independence from the state, and morality in politics.

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Notes

1.
I consider this concept to be constitutive of what Siedentop calls “the Great Debate of the Restoration.” Siedentop, Tocqueville, 20–40.
2.
Tocqueville, D.A. II-IV-3, 793–796.
3.
Ibid., II-II-5, 596.
4.
Ibid., II-II-5, 596.
5.
Ibid., II-IV-5, 804.
6.
Ibid. , vol. I, “introduction,” 10 and I-II-4, 220.
7.
Nisebet writes that Bonald’s contribution consists in recognizing in “the social group, the sphere of association intermediate between the individual and the state.” Robert Nisebet, “De Bonald and the Concept of the Group,” Journal of the History of Ideas, June 1944, 316. See also 318–319. Louis de Bonald, Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux dans la société civile, démontrée par le raisonnement par l’histoire, (Constance: Barbier, 1796), vol. I, 377.
8.
Royer-Collard , La vie politique, vol. II, 131; Craiutu, Tocqueville and the doctriniares, 480.
9.
Tocqueville. D.A. I-I-5, 96.
10.
Ibid., I-II-6, 273.
11.
Ibid., I-I-5, 95.
12.
Ibid., I-I-5, 83.
13.
Ibid., 1-1-8, 134.
14.
Ibid., I-I-8, 134.
15.
Ibid., I-II-5, 227–230.
16.
Ibid., I-II-5, 229–230.
17.
Ibid., I-II-5, 229–230.
18.
Ibid., I-II-5, 229–230.
19.
Ibid., I-II-5, 229.
20.
Arthur Goldhammer, “Tocqueville, Associations and the law of 1834,” unpublished article for SFHS panel Houston, March 2007, www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~agoldham/articles/TocqAssoc.pdf, 6.
21.
Tocqueville, D.A., II-II-7, 608. A typical example is Lefort’s interpretation of Tocqueville’s political thought. Claude Lefort, “libéralisme et démocratie,” Le Temps present, (Paris: Belin, 2007), 754–759.
22.
Tocqueville , Souvenirs, II–XI (commission de constitution), 875–876, Lettres choisies: Souvenirs 1814–1859, ed. François Mélonio and Laurence Guellec, (Paris: Gallimard, 2003).
23.
Ibid., 875–876.
24.
Ibid., 875. See also Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Jacob Peter Mayer et al., (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), vol. III-3, 82–84.
25.
Tocqueville, Souvenirs. II–XI (commission de constitution), 876–877.
26.
“Apart from those permanent associations established by law and known as towns, cities, and counties, a host of others would never have existed or flourished but for the initiative of individuals.” Tocqueville, D.A., I-II-4, 215–216.
27.
Shigeki Uno, Tocqueville: A Theorist, 2007, 129.
28.
Tocqueville, D.A., I-II-4, 220.
29.
Goldhammer, “Tocqueville,” 9; Tocqueville, D.A. I-II-4, 216.
30.
“le raisonnement et l’éloquence sont les liens naturels d’une association républicaine.” Staël, De la littérature, oeuvres complètes(b), vol. III-II, 122.
31.
Goldhammer, “Tocqueville,” 3.
32.
James Smith Allen, In the Public Eye: A History of Reading in Modern France 1800–1940, (Princeton, Princeton U.P., 1991), 87–88.
33.
Tocqueville, D.A., I-II-4, 216. Uno, Tocqueville.
34.
Ibid., I-II-4. 218.
35.
Uno, Tocqueville, 131.
36.
“what can public opinion itself accomplish when there are not twenty people united by a common bond? When there is no person, family, body, class, or free association capable of representing that opinion and enabling it to act?” Quotation from Goldhammer, “Tocqueville, Associations,” 3, 18 (footnotes 3 and 4). Tocqueville, D.A., I-II-9, 362–3.
37.
Tocqueville, “Correspondance Anglaise,” O.C., VI-I, 303.
38.
Tocqueville, D.A., I-I-5, 68.
39.
“The New England is midway between the canton and the commune of France … The population generally ranges between two and three thousand … the interests of all the inhabitants are not more or less the same, yet populous enough to be sure of finding among its citizens the qualities necessary for good administration.” Ibid., 69.
40.
Lucien Jaume, Tocqueville, 47; Emmanuel de Waresquiel, “Du pouvoir politique à la puissance sociale. Fusion des élites et noblesse départementale,” Un groupe d’hommes considérables. Les pairs de France et la chambre des pairs héréditaires de la Restauration, 1814–1831, (Paris: Fayard, 2006), 213–305.
41.
François Mélonio, Tocqueville and the French, (Charlottesville and London: Vrginia U.P., 1998), 143–148.
42.
“I am a very long way from believing that we ought to follow the example set by American democracy.” Tocqueville, D.A., II-IV-5, 803.
43.
Ibid., II-IV-5, 803.
44.
Dijn, French Political, 143.
45.
Tocqueville, D.A., II-II-5.
46.
Ibid., I-II-9, 360–361; II-II-5, 622.
47.
Ibid., II-II-7, 606.
48.
Drescher, Tocqueville and England, 91.
49.
Dana Villa, “Tocqueville and Civil Society,” The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, 219.
50.
Tocqueville, D.A., I-II-9, 363.
51.
Quotation from Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville and the Two Democracies, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1989), 152.
52.
“We rely on each other when we must act; in any other circumstance, on the contrary, it closes in oneself, it is the reign of selfishness.” Craiutu, “Tocqueville,” 476.
53.
Peter L. Callero, The Myth of Individualism: How Social Forces Shape our Individualism. (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 4.
54.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, 353; Tocqueville, D.A., II-II-1, 585.
55.
Tocqueville, D.A., II-IV-5, 805.
56.
Ibid., 805.
57.
Ibid., 805.
58.
Ibid., II-IV-6, 818.
59.
Ibid., II-IV-6, 820.
60.
“Why not relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and the difficulty of living?” Ibid., II-IV-6, 8181.
61.
Scholars agree that a powerful reflection in the second volume of D.A. consists in Tocqueville’s discussion on the “power of the majority over thought.” In this regard, Lamberti claims Tocqueville’s uniqueness, assuming that he “went beyond the liberals of his day to explore the social roots of liberty.” This chapter shows that Tocqueville actually reacted to the pre-existing discourse on social dissolution, even if he elaborated on it as his original reflection. Lamberti, Tocqueville and the Two Democracies, 119–120.
62.
Ibid., 119.
63.
Sarah Maza, “The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution,” A Companion to the French Revolution, 46–47.
64.
Tocqueville , “How Equality of Conditions helps to Maintain Good Morals in America?” D.A., II-III-11.
65.
Roberto Romani, National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France, 1750–1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002).
66.
Rieno Virtanen, “Tocqueville and the Romantics,” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 13-2, 1959, 132–136; Martin J. Bergin, Tocqueville as Historian: An Examination of the Influences on His Thought and His Approach to History, PhD dissertation to Gergetown Uninversity, 1985, 132–136.
67.
Bergin, Tocqueville as Historian, 132–133.
68.
Tocqueville, D.A., I-I-2, 37. Drescher attributes the religious origin of democratic liberty to puritanism. Drescher, Tocqueville and England, 74–104. By contrast, Lamberti primarily identifies Tocqueville’s opinion of democratic liberty with the liberty of the Ancients comparable to Constant’s. Lamberti, Tocqueville and the Two Democracies, 53–60.
69.
Tocqueville, “Etat social et politique de la France avant et depuis 1789,” Oeuvres, ed. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, vol. III, 364.
70.
Tocqueville, D.A., I-II-9, 362.
71.
Ibid., 704.
72.
“Tocqueville’s Critique of Socialism in 1848,” Online Library of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848.
73.
Ibid.
74.
Ibid.
75.
Ibid.
76.
Ibid.
77.
This can be inferred from Tocqueville’s reference to Babeuf in his parliamentary speech against socialism in 1848. Ibid.
78.
Tocqueville, Souvenirs, 829. (English translation from Tocqueville, Recollections, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, (New York: Columba U.P., 1949)).
79.
Tocqueville, “Sunday, December 7, 1851,” Souvenirs, 727–723.
80.
Tocqueville, “Political and Social Condition of France, First Article,” London and Westminster Review, III and XXV (April 1836), 137–169; “Etat social et politique de la France,” Oeuvres, vol. II, 3–40. Hereafter, I refer to Alexis de Tocqueville, On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789: and on the Course which led to that Event.... trans. Henry Reeve, (London: The British Library, 2010).
81.
Ibid., 33, 39.
82.
“This complete division that existed between the Third Estate and the nobles threatened to destroy all aristocracy in France.” Ibid., 16.
83.
Tocqueville, Souvenirs, 811.

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Faculty of Comparative Culture, Otsuma Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan
Chinatsu Takeda

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Takeda, C. (2018). Tocqueville and Communal Liberalism (1830–1851). In: Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_10

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_10
Published: 01 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
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