L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution by Thomas Fleming • January 20, 2011 • Printer-friendly

This is a call for reading and comments for a discussion of Tocqueville’s masterful analysis of the French monarchy and the French Revolution.  Since Tocqueville is so clear and explicit in his argument, I intend only to present the briefest of introductions to each section.  I hope that, in addition to gaining some knowledge of the Revolution, participants will be able to reflect on the implications for the way we live now. I shall be using the Penguin translation as a point of reference, though I shall also be referring where necessary to the French text.  I believe there are other translations available on the Internet, which means we can begin talking about his brilliant introduction tomorrow, Friday January 21, 2011.

I am going to postpone any discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville’s life, career, and general approach until we have got into his book.  At this point let me just say that was born in 1804, 15 years after the FR began, to a noble family in Normandy.  His family were not really emigres, but they were loyal to the Bourbons.  He was connected both to the philosophe Malesherbes and to the romantic reactionary Chateaubriand.  Coming from such a background, Tocqueville grew up as a pious Catholic and staunch reactionary, but he lost his faith in his teens and came partly under the influence of conservative liberals like Guizot.  A defender of liberty and opponent of equality, he found great merit in the English and American political systems, but he feared radical democracy.  Although the Ancien Regime is written in an essayistic manner, it is rooted in documentary research.  I am not undertaking this discussion because I think Tocqueville  is right about everything but because a) he is a shrewd and correct interpreter of many aspects of the Revolution and b) his book is one of the few conservative treatments of the FR that have been widely read.

His general thesis is this:  Once cannot understand the FR without understanding the previous regime, and, a close inspection of that regime reveals important continuities with post-revolutionary France.

The author’s foreword is a brilliant summary of much of his argument.  Going over the documentary evidence of the Ancien Régine (AR), Tocqueville says he came to understand the nature of Bourbon France and the spirit of the FR, which had two phases: the first, which was an attempt to annihilate the past, and the second, which aimed at recovering “a vestige of what they had abandoned.”  As a result, many laws and customs overturned in 1789 resurfaced a few years later.
I am going to postpone any discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville’s life, career, and general approach until we have got into his book. At this point let me just say that was born in 1804, 15 years after the FR began, to a noble family in Normandy. His family were not really emigres, but they were loyal to the Bourbons. He was connected both to the philosophe Malesherbes and to the romantic reactionary Chateaubriand. Coming from such a background, Tocqueville grew up as a pious Catholic and staunch reactionary, but he lost his faith in his teens and came partly under the influence of conservative liberals like Guizot. A defender of liberty and opponent of equality, he found great merit in the English and American political systems, but he feared radical democracy. Although the Ancien Regime is written in an essayistic manner, it is rooted in documentary research. I am not undertaking this discussion because I think Tocqueville is right about everything but because a) he is a shrewd and correct interpreter of many aspects of the Revolution and b) his book is one of the few conservative treatments of the FR that have been widely read.

His general thesis is this: Once cannot understand the FR without understanding the previous regime, and, a close inspection of that regime reveals important continuities with post-revolutionary France.

The author’s foreword is a brilliant summary of much of his argument. Going over the documentary evidence of the Ancien Régine (AR), Tocqueville says he came to understand the nature of Bourbon France and the spirit of the FR, which had two phases: the first, which was an attempt to annihilate the past, and the second, which aimed at recovering “a vestige of what they had abandoned.” As a result, many laws and customs overturned in 1789 resurfaced a few years later.

T believes he will be accused of having an excess of zeal for liberty, but he points out that he has never changed his position. In the future, he says, three truths can be discerned: First, that an unknown force is driving a revolution that one might hope to moderate but not repress. The object is the destruction of aristocracy. As an aside, I might point out that the Revolution begins by picking on the King and the Church, moves on to aristocracy, then attacks private property and wealth before taking on a broader social agenda of eliminating sexual distinctions and the distinctions between human and non-human. At bottom, it seems to me, are two compatible urges, the one the hatred of all distinctions, the other the hatred of the Christian West. His second principle is that the societies least able to resist the revolution are societies in which aristocracies have disappeared. The third, is that in such societies, despotism is the most successfully destructive.

“In such communities, where men are no longer tied to each other by race, class, craft guilds or family, they are only too ready to think merely of their own interests, ever too predisposed to consider no one but themselves and to withdraw into a narrow individualism where all public good is snuffed out.” Despotism makes such tendencies irresistible. “In such kinds of society where nothing is settled, every man feels endlessly goaded on by his fear of sinking or by his passion to rise in that society. Just as money has become the principal sign of social class and the means of distinguishing men’s position, it has acquired an unusual mobility, passing as it does from hand to hand, altering the social condition of individuals and raising or lowering the status of families… THE DESIRE TO GROW RICH AT ALL COSTS, THE TASTE FOR BUSINESS, THE PASSION FOR GAIN, THE PURSUIT OF COMFORT AND MATERIAL ENJOYMENT ARE THUS THE MOST COMMON PREOCCUPATIONS IN DESPOTISMS.

Any of this seem familiar or relevant?

Only liberty–AT’s ultimate point of reference-can rescue a society that has fallen into the materialist despotism of democratic capitalism, but since aristocrats are the greatest lovers and defenders of liberty, the war against aristocracy bodes ill for the future.  Do not be fooled by the apparent success of democratic societies that eschew liberty:

“Democratic societies which lack freedom can still be wealthy, sophisticated, attractive, even impressive, deriving power from the influence of their like-minded citizens.  In such societies we encounter private virtues, kindly fathers, honest businessmen, exemplary landowners, and even good Christians whose home country is not of this world and the glory of whose faith fosters people like that in the midst of the deepest moral corruption and the most depraved government.”  He cites imperial Rome, though the American 1950s would be a better example.  What you will not find in such a society, he says, is either a a great citizen or a great nation.

Again, think of the otherwise decent, if uncreative America that could vote for Harry Truman or Eisenhower .  At the end of the foreword, he reiterates his belief that “Our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but teh relative value which we place on our fellow man.  We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

Put this proposition to the  Democrats who support Obama or the Republican Bushies who let their leader destroy the country in two economically ruinous wars for nothing.

More to come this afternoon

Tagged as: Ancien Regime, Tocqueville abc123″>65 Responses<a href="#respond"