Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America
- Series page
- The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Abbreviations of Tocqueville’s Major Works
- Introduction
- Part I Sources and Contexts
- Part II Receptions and Applications
- 4 Tocqueville’s Conservatism and the Conservative’s Tocqueville
- 5 Tocqueville and the Political Left in America
- 6 Tocqueville and Anti-Americanism
- 7 Democracy in the (Other) America
- 8 Tocqueville in Japan and China
- Part III Genres and Themes
- Part IV Democracy’s Enduring Challenges
- References
- Index
- Series page
5 - Tocqueville and the Political Left in America
Heeding a Call for Decisive Action
from Part II - Receptions and Applications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America
- Series page
- The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Abbreviations of Tocqueville’s Major Works
- Introduction
- Part I Sources and Contexts
- Part II Receptions and Applications
- 4 Tocqueville’s Conservatism and the Conservative’s Tocqueville
- 5 Tocqueville and the Political Left in America
- 6 Tocqueville and Anti-Americanism
- 7 Democracy in the (Other) America
- 8 Tocqueville in Japan and China
- Part III Genres and Themes
- Part IV Democracy’s Enduring Challenges
- References
- Index
- Series page
Summary
Notwithstanding his reputation in the contemporary United States as a sort of political conservative, Tocqueville in his own lifetime was very much a figure of the centrist-left. In the French politics of his day, Tocqueville was closely associated with various causes of reform, most notably the abolition of slavery. In this chapter, Robert T. Gannett, Jr. reminds us that Tocqueville’s calls for decisive action and concerns with social reform were appreciated by many figures on the political Left in the twentieth century. These Left interpreters of Tocqueville range from postwar intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt and Albert Salomon to latter-day communitarian thinkers such as Robert Putnam and William Galston to community organizers such as Saul Alinsky and Gene Sharp. Gannett reveals how Tocqueville plays a major role in the writings of Alinsky and Sharp and thus indirectly shaped the theory and practice of community organizing as it has come to be known in the United States and throughout the world.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America , pp. 157 - 177Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022