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Alexis de Tocqueville's Reluctant “Democratic Language”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Salih Emre Gerçek Open the ORCID record for Salih Emre Gerçek [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Many readers of Alexis de Tocqueville have noted the ambiguity in his formulation of the term “democracy.” This essay suggests that this ambiguity can be clarified by considering what Tocqueville calls “democratic language”—i.e., the use of generalizations, abstractions, and personifications in writing and speech. Tocqueville investigates these novel linguistic devices to understand the transformation of language in democratic times. More importantly, he employs them to appropriate the Doctrinaires’ formulation of democracy and to criticize their legitimation of the July Monarchy's exclusive government. Yet Tocqueville's use of democratic language is a reluctant one. He finds that the tendency to use abstract and personified concepts obfuscates the political agency of citizens. Wary of the despotic effects of such obfuscation, Tocqueville argues that individuals must practice their concepts. In the context of the July Monarchy, this becomes a call for the extension of democratic rights and institutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 83 , Issue 1 , Winter 2021 , pp. 21 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame.

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Mary Dietz, Kevin Duong, Gianna Englert, Samuel Hayat, Boris Litvin, Sarah Maza, Jane Pryma, Jade Schiff, and Blake Smith for their comments, as well as Christopher Meckstroth and Richard Boyd for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper presented at the 2018 APSA meeting.

References

1 Guillemon, “Sur le livre De la démocratie (Tome 3 et 4) par M. Alexis de Tocqueville,” L'Univers 409 (1840).

2 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (New York: Library of America, 2004)Google Scholar. Cited parenthetically in-text as DA hereafter. I use the bilingual, historical-critical edition when I discuss Tocqueville's drafts: De la démocratie en Amérique / Democracy in America, Historical-Critical Edition, ed. Eduardo Nolla (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2010). I cite this edition in-text parenthetically as DA-HC.

3 Guillemon, “Sur le livre De la démocratie.”

4 Mill, John Stuart, “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II],” in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Robson, John M., vol. 18 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 191Google Scholar.

5 James Schleifer remarks that “perhaps the most disconcerting feature of Tocqueville's thought has always been his failure to pinpoint the meaning of démocratie.” Schleifer, James T., The Making of Tocqueville's “Democracy in America” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 263Google Scholar. See also Furet, François, In the Workshop of History, trans. Mandelbaum, Jonathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 167–96Google Scholar; Wolin, Sheldon S., Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 277, 311–13Google Scholar.

6 In contrast to Democracy in America, Tocqueville's historical writings suggest that “equality of conditions” emerged prior to democracy. The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, ed. Jon Elster, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 82. Hereafter cited in-text parenthetically as AR.

7 Schleifer, Making of “Democracy in America,” 263–74.

8 Richter, Melvin, “Tocqueville and Guizot on Democracy: From a Type of Society to a Political Regime,” History of European Ideas 30, no. 1 (March 2004): 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Welch, Cheryl B., “Tocqueville's Resistance to the Social,” History of European Ideas 30, no. 1 (March 2004): 83–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 Avramenko, Richard, “The Grammar of Indifference: Tocqueville and the Language of Democracy,” Political Theory 45, no. 4 (August 2017): 495–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This work provides an insightful reading of democratic language's tendencies to abstract, generalize, and personify. But I disagree with its suggestion that Tocqueville's own democratic language is a sign of failure in his writing. Situating Tocqueville's works in the context of the July Monarchy, I show the ways Tocqueville reluctantly develops his own critical version of democratic language.

13 Jaume, Lucien, Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 193–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Notable exceptions are Guellec, Laurence, Tocqueville et les langages de la démocratie (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004)Google Scholar, and Jaume, Tocqueville, 219–22. Laurence Guellec's work is perhaps the most comprehensive work on Tocqueville's analysis and performance of democratic language. I build on many of its insights, but I also advance one distinct point: while Tocqueville criticizes the proponents of the July regime (chiefly, the Doctrinaires) for manipulating language to legitimize their exclusive politics, he also locates a bigger problem that goes beyond the control of the Doctrinaires—namely, the tendency of the democratic language to create abstract and absolute agents that foment revolutionary or despotic politics. I also engage with Lucien Jaume's work by offering a modification to its characterization of democratic language.

15 There is a rich scholarship on the affinities and disagreements between the Doctrinaires and Tocqueville. See the works cited in notes 8, 13, and 16. However, this scholarship pays less attention to Tocqueville's use of the Doctrinaires’ democratic language against themselves. One exception here is Guellec's work (see note 14).

16 Larry Siedentop, “Two Liberal Traditions,” in French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present-Day, ed. Raf Geneens and Helena Rosenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 5–35; Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot (Paris: Gallimard, 1985); Aurelian Crăiuțu, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003); Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), chap. 5; Annelien de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chaps. 5–6.

17 Maza, Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 142.

18 Siedentop, “Two Liberal Traditions,” 18–20.

19 Joanna Innes and Mark Philp, ‘“Democracy from Book to Life: The Emergence of the Term in Active Political Debate, to 1848,” in Democracy in Modern Europe: A Conceptual History, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki, Jeppe Nevers, and Henk te Velde (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 16–34.

20 Palmer, R. R. “Notes on the Use of the Word ‘Democracy’ 1789–1799,” Political Science Quarterly 68, no. 2 (June 1953): 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2005), 123–26.

22 Bourke, Richard, “Enlightenment, Revolution and Democracy,” Constellations 15, no. 1 (March 2008): 10–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Crăiuțu, Liberalism under Siege, 75–81.

24 J. Madival and M. Laurent, eds., Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860: Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises, series 2, vol. 34 (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1876), 131–34. Hereafter AP, followed by series/volume and page. The Doctrinaires often used the terms “middle class” and “bourgeoisie” interchangeably because they linked the emergence of the middle class to the emancipation of towns and burghers (Maza, Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 131–60). As Crăiuțu observes, Guizot distinguishes the terms only when he wants to separate the middle class of his time from the historical bourgeoisie (Liberalism under Siege, 229). Tocqueville also follows this pattern.

25 François Guizot, History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe, trans. Andrew R. Scoble (London: Bohn, 1852), 66.

26 AP 2/4, 133.

27 Ibid.

28 AP 2/110, 496.

29 Pilbeam, Pamela, “The ‘Liberal’ Revolution of 1830,” Historical Research 63, no. 151 (1990): 162–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Janara, Laura, “Commercial Capitalism and the Democratic Psyche: The Threat to Tocquevillean Citizenship,” History of Political Thought 22, no. 2 (Feb. 2001): 326Google Scholar; Stauffer, Dana Jalbert, “‘The Most Common Sickness of Our Time’: Tocqueville on Democratic Restlessness,” Review of Politics 80, no. 3 (2018): 439–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Jaume, Tocqueville, 220–21.

32 Avramenko “Grammar of Indifference,” 4, 16–20.

33 Ibid., 16.

34 Jaume, Tocqueville, 204.

35 Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory, trans. David Macey (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), 19.

36 Mélonio, Tocqueville and the French, 27; Nestor Capdevila, “Democracy and Revolution in Tocqueville: Frontiers of Democracy,” in Tocqueville and the Frontiers of Democracy, ed. Ewa Atanassow and Richard Boyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 42.

37 Édouard Alletz, De la démocratie nouvelle; ou, des moeurs et de la puissance des classes moyennes en France, 2nd ed. (Paris: Lequin, 1838 [1837]).

38 François Guizot, “De la démocratie dans les sociétés modernes,” Revue française (1837): 193–225.

39 Alletz, De la démocratie nouvelle, ix.

40 Ibid., viij.

41 Ibid., 6.

42 Ibid., ix–xiij.

43 Ibid., viij.

44 Guizot, “De la démocratie dans les sociétés modernes,” 222–24.

45 Guellec, Tocqueville et les langages, 203. Tocqueville's letter can be found in Œuvres complètes, ed. André Jardin, vol. 11 (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 33–36.

46 AP 2/110, 494–95.

47 Guellec, Tocqueville et les langages, 201.

48 Letter to Le siècle, January 3, 1843, in Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, ed. and trans. Seymour Drescher (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 195.

49 Duong, Kevin, “The Demands of Glory: Tocqueville and Terror in Algeria,” Review of Politics 80, no. 1 (2018): 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Souvenirs de Alexis de Tocqueville, ed. de, Comte Tocqueville (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1893), 6–7Google Scholar.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid., 12.

53 AP 2/113.

54 Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds, 347–48.

55 Also see Welch, “Colonial Violence,” 255.

56 See respectively DA, 581, 55, 62–63, 583.

57 E.g., Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, editors’ introduction to Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), lxxii.

58 Tocqueville, Alexis de, “De la classe moyenne et du peuple,” in Études économiques, politiques et littéraires, ed. Lévy, Michel (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1866), 514–19Google Scholar.

59 Ibid., 514.

60 Ibid., 515.

61 Ibid., 518–19.

62 E. Lièvre, A bas Guizot! . . . ou la mort (1848), Bibliothèque National de France, Paris, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53013783v.item.

63 Hayat, Samuel, “The Revolution of 1848 in the History of French Republicanism,” History of Political Thought 36, no. 2 (2015): 331–53Google Scholar.

64 Mélonio, Tocqueville and the French, 49–52.

65 Tocqueville, Souvenirs, 144–61, 238–86.

66 For instance, Tocqueville did not attend the banquet campaigns that led to the fall of the July Monarchy (ibid., 22–36, 135–38).

67 Hazareesingh, Sudhir, The Saint-Napoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004) 13–14Google Scholar. There is another reason why Tocqueville depicts France as a stagnant society: his support for colonialism in Algeria. Tocqueville thought that a Napoleonic campaign into Algeria would rekindle political passions in France. On this topic, see Welch, “Colonial Violence and the Rhetoric of Evasion”; Pitts, Jennifer, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar, chap. 7; Duong, “The Demands of Glory.”

68 Tocqueville, Alexis de, “Discours prononcé à l'Assemblée Constituante dans la discussion du projet de Constitution sur la question du droit au travail,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, André, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 169–70Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., 174.

70 Sewell, William H., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hayat, Samuel, Quand la république était révolutionnaire: Citoyenneté et représentation en 1848 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2014), 51–56Google Scholar.

71 Capdevila, “Democracy and Revolution in Tocqueville,” 48.

72 Tocqueville, Souvenirs, 160–61.

73 Hayat, “Revolution of 1848,” 342–53.

74 Tocqueville briefly explores worker associations in his “Second Memoir on Pauperism” of 1837 (“Second mémoire sur le paupérisme,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. Françoise Mélonio, vol. 16 [Paris: Gallimard, 1989], 140–57). Although Tocqueville's “Memoir” is inconclusive, his turn to associations is telling: instead of seeking market-based or administrative measures, he asks how citizens can solve their social problems through collective action. See Englert, Gianna, “‘The Idea of Rights’: Tocqueville on the Social Question,” Review of Politics 79, no. 4 (2017): 649–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.