Revue Tocqueville-Janvier2017 PDF

THE TOCQUEVILLE REVIEW
LA REVUE TOCQUEVILLE
publiée par les Presses de l’Université de Toronto pour
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de l’Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques
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VOL. XXXVII No. 2 – 2016
CONTENTS
From the “Passion for Equality” to the Struggle Against

Inequalities: Realities and Representations
7 Françoise MÉLONIO, and Stephen W. SAWYER – Introduction.
Investigating inequalities: A new Tocqueville
13 Michel FORSÉ, Simon LANGLOIS, and Maxime PARODI – Contrasting

sentiments of social justice in France and Quebec
35 Patrick SAVIDAN – Inégalités et domination: une nouvelle complication

démocratique
57 Thomas PIKETTY looks back on the success of Capital in the 21st

Century
77 Catherine AUDARD – L’Etat-providence face aux inégalités et la

« Démocratie de propriétaires » : une comparaison entre Meade, Rawls,
Ackerman et Piketty
103 Stuart WHITE – Republicanism and property-owning democracy: How are

they connected?
Tocquevilliana
127 Elie BARANETS – Guerre et paix : l’héritage méconnu de Tocqueville
Tocqueville, America, and Us

153 Marcel GAUCHET – Tocqueville, America, and Us. Preface written in 2016
159 Jacob HAMBURGER – Tocqueville, America, and Us. Avant-propos
163 Marcel GAUCHET – Tocqueville, America, and Us: On the genesis of

democratic societies
232 Contributors
From the “Passion for Equality” to the
Struggle Against Inequalities:
Realities and Representations
The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, Vol. XXXVII, n° 2 – 2016
INTRODUCTION
INVESTIGATING INEQUALITIES:
A NEW TOCQUEVILLE
Françoise MÉLONIO, and Stephen W. SAWYER
On February 5, 2016 we held the first jointly organized

symposium by the American University of Paris and The Tocqueville
Review. It has grown naturally out of the shared mission of an
international university and The Tocqueville Society, which has had
the association of Europe and United States as one of its fundamental
traits.
Great audacities generally make for short careers. But for more
than fifty years the American University of Paris, founded in 1962,
has offered higher education to students from all over the world. In
the tradition of American “liberal arts colleges,” the university is
today recognized internationally as an institution that educates
citizens of the world through interdisciplinary and intercultural
education. The Center for Critical Democracy, established with the
support of the Mellon Foundation at AUP, seeks to contribute to this
education of the world's citizens by promoting research and teaching
on critical issues faced by our democratic societies and states in the
past and today. The CCDS's partnership with The Tocqueville
Society and its review are at the heart of this mission.
Another audacious endeavor which has proven to last, The
Tocqueville Society and The Tocqueville Review are seventeen years
younger than the American University of Paris. The first issue in
1979, which included an article by Raymond Aron, established the
ambition of the review to explore democracy and its characteristics.
The project has been marked by its bilingualism and its
8 Françoise Mélonio, and Stephen W. Sawyer
interdisciplinarity since. Bilingualism was already a risky bet in a

scientific world where English has tended to become the dominant
language. But the founders of the journal were convinced that the
democratic phenomenon could not be understood without recourse
to comparativism and, of course, one does not come to terms with
similar problems in the same way in different languages. As for
interdisciplinarity, we are inundated with its praises while its actual
pursuit seems systematically challenged: rankings, classifications,
career management, habits of language and thought have made it
difficult to practice in spite of the constant ambitions to do so. And
yet, the journal has been transmitted from generation to generation
and from continent to continent, under the presidencies of Ted
Caplow, David Riesman, Daniel Bell, Henri Mendras, and Olivier
Zunz. A very active editorial committee, several of whom have
prepared this symposium, such as Catherine Audard, Michel Forsé,
Arthur Goldhammer, Alan Kahan, Simon Langlois and Jennifer
Merchant, not to mention Laurence Duboys Fresney who has literally
carried the journal since the presidency of Henri Mendras and played
a major role in the organization of this symposium.
The colloquium presented in this issue is entitled: “From the
‘Passion for Equality’ to the Struggles Against Inequalities: Realities
and Representations.” It is faithful to the spirit of the journal and the
Center for Critical Democracy Studies in its ambition to clarify the
present through the past, its trans-Atlantic comparisons,
interdisciplinarity, and exploration of the relationship between
practices and representations.
Coming to terms with the present through the past applies to
interpretations of Tocqueville’s work itself as much as the problem of
inequality. We are all widely familiar with a reading of Tocqueville
that takes as its point of departure a reflection on the passion for
equality and the risk of liberticidal government. Such an interpretation
is, of course, undeniably present in portions of Tocqueville’s work. It
has played a considerable role in the reflection on democracy since
the 1970s and in Tocqueville’s resurgence in the decades that
followed. But, as the following papers clearly show, such a reading of
Tocqueville does not exhaust the question of equality in Tocqueville,
far from it. For there is also the question of inequality and the
discussion of how, in what ways, and under what conditions it can be
remedied. Tocqueville was far from a monochromatic thinker, who
Investigating inequalities: A new Tocqueville 9
repeated the same theses without nuance or qualification. It would be

impossible to erect him as a theorist with a permanent fear of any
intervention by public authorities to tackle problems such as
inequality.
Let us give merely one example of such modalities of public
intervention, which he recognized. Tocqueville, who was fascinated
by the American selectmen, did not promote a withered state. While
he was a fervent critic of a centralized administration, he also praised
French public officials, state regulation of transport or education, and
even state intervention in times of crisis, including crises of economic
inequality. His American investigations pushed him to think in new
ways about the relationship between elected and public officials or
between elected officials and experts. The notes to his chapter on
New England administration in Democracy in America reveal a kind of
fascination with the effective regulation of daily life in New England.
“Observe the Town Officer,” remarked Tocqueville, adding the
extraordinary display of administrators in the smallest county
including “Select men, Assessors, Collectors, Schools, Surveyors of
highways.” Amidst this list of administrators, what struck
Tocqueville, was not their incapacity to act, but their extraordinary
penetration into everyday American life: “law descends into the most
minute details,” noted Tocqueville, “it determines both the principles
and the means of their application ; it encloses the secondary bodies
and their administrators in a multitude of obligations tightly and
rigorously defined.”1 He then provided a series of examples: “the
State forbids traveling on Sundays without motive… the selectmen
authorize the construction of sewers, designate places for building
slaughterhouses, and where it is acceptable to build certain types of
commerce that may be harmful for the neighborhood.”2
The selectmen shared commonalities with local French
councilmen in their connection with the local population, and their
electoral base. In Normandy, Tocqueville thus pursued projects in the
fashion of the American selectmen: President of the General Council
of the Manche, he wrote reports on orphans, railways, the breeding of
horses, forage, and stabilizing river banks. All of these things that,
from the point of view of the history of thought, one might judge a
waste of time, but which were quite the opposite: it was here that he
practiced the theory found throughout his work. That is, here he
showed the importance of the concrete modes of interventionist
10 Françoise Mélonio, and Stephen W. Sawyer
administration in the interest of managing specific social problems.

The Tocquevillian nightmare of an overwhelming state administration
that transformed society into a vast barracks, was in this sense only a
portion of the Tocquevillian project on government. It was
accompanied by a parallel reflection on what kind of effective public
intervention was possible. In particular, there was an interest in the
question of inequality and the best ways of remedying it in a country
in the process of democratization.
The following articles thus push us more toward a recognition of
how things have changed rather than stayed the same. And in this
sense, they are part of an investigation which obliges us to discover
this other Tocqueville: less the critic of the centralizing administration
than the one who opened the question – without necessarily reaching
a solution – of how to think democracy and administrative power
together instead of in opposition. As the critique of centralized
administration has become so generalized in recent decades that it
seems that we can only find a call for public authority and state power
in the darkest realms of our democracies, the administrative critique
of democracy has become the old regime of our unequal world. It
would seem that Tocqueville’s practical interest in a democratic
administration is more urgent than ever.
This “new” Tocqueville ties together the passion for equality and
the extension of the middle classes, but he also offers tools to
understand our common experience in Europe and the United States
marked by the rise of inequalities and the perils of a new oligarchy.
Tocqueville certainly dreaded the emergence of an industrial oligarchy
and was indignant under the Second Empire of the influence of a
new industrial and banking ruling class. In the same way, the old
regime showed that it was in the richest regions that the revolution
took hold, for the passion for equality was increased by the very
progress of equality. The growth of inequalities today seems to be
accompanied by conservatism or at least a discouragement to act.
The following papers also show how the issue of equality can be
embraced by diverse disciplines. The economy of inequalities cannot
do without the contribution of a study of representations. How to
deal with taxation without taking into account fiscal consent? There is
hardly anyone in France today who finds it morally gratifying to pay
his or her public “contributions,” which many now simply refer to as
Investigating inequalities: A new Tocqueville 11
a “tax.” This may be because until 1914 it was considered

unnecessary to introduce a tax on income since the Revolution’s
promise of equality and universal suffrage were supposed to resolve
conflicts and limit inequalities. These inequalities are shown to be felt
more widely in France even though they are less extreme than in
other comparable countries, no doubt as a partial result of the
revolutionary legacy. That the imaginaries of equality do not map
directly onto their actual measure must not hide from view that
imaginaries are also realities, with major social consequences, since
representations are also social facts.
Tocqueville’s thought and the global vision of democracy he
proposes, or to be more precise his anthropology of the practice of
power and the democratic individual, remains peculiarly relevant. Like
Balzac, he attributes to the democratic individual an anxiety
inseparable from the volatility of fortunes. In a democracy the rich
aspire to become richer and all work for a salary, even the President
of the United States and public officials (though the aristocratic ethos
is still alive through work which is solely remunerated symbolically).
Tocqueville therefore considered self-development, the demand for
autonomy, and the construction of a capacity to solve problems as a
community to be characteristic of democracy. While he remained
attached to the model of notables, he recognized the need to
confront the problem of durable inequalities and to remedy them in
their specificity. He considered the desire for distinction, not the
collective preference for inequality; he sought to understand and
confront concrete problems of inequality, not the construction of a
centralized administration that could only foster formal and abstract
notions of equality. The articles that follow show how the shadow of
the past allows us to think about the specificity of our moment and
confront these problems. They also reveal the necessity of developing
new tools and interpretations for coming to terms with them.
NOTES
[1] De la démocratie… [La Pléiade], 80.
[2] Ibid., 79n.
CONTRASTING SENTIMENTS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

IN FRANCE AND QUEBEC
Michel FORSÉ, Simon LANGLOIS, and Maxime PARODI*
Sociologists from many countries have recently paid attention to

measures of social justice sentiments. In doing so, they are following
the lead of philosophers like John Rawls (1971) or Michael Walzer
(1983), among many others, and are now studying the question of
justice empirically. Do individuals evaluate justice from the
perspective of equity (or fairness) like Rawls proposed? Do they
conceptualize different spheres of justice like Walzer argued? Only
empirical studies can provide answers to these questions and offer
“grounded knowledge”1 (Boudon 2012) that is knowledge that
connects philosophical concepts with the actions and thoughts of
social actors, at least in contemporary democratic societies. Thus, as
Michel Forsé and Maxime Parodi (2005) have shown – with survey
data – social actors give priority to the just over the good.
From this perspective, the analysis of sentiments of social justice
is justified as a complement to the works on social inequalities and
poverty, measured objectively (Gini coefficients, poverty rates, etc.)
or subjectively (sentiments and perceptions of inequalities). The
sentiment of justice defines the normative frame of reference by
which social actors elaborate the social representations of inequalities.
Are these inequalities at the societal level accepted and considered
just or, on the contrary, are they contested and challenged? It is not
sufficient to analyze only the determinant factors of inequalities (such
as age, social position, gender, etc.), or the context (period, cohort,
generation, etc.) to understand the representations and judgments
that individuals make. One must also analyze the sentiments of justice
14 Michel Forsé, Simon Langlois, and Maxime Parodi
that allow social inequalities to be considered normal, justified, and

legitimate, or their very opposites. This contribution will study the
relationship between the sentiment of social justice and the
representations of inequalities. We shall ask ourselves, of course,
whether the perception of inequalities is in relation with the objective
inequalities and, if so, what role does reality and perception play on
the sentiment of justice. Since inequalities are part of everyday living,
we shall first examine how justice is generally perceived in society.
This is what we will refer to as macro-justice. But we shall also
examine micro-justice that is the sentiment of justice felt by an
individual in relation to his own situation. We shall ask ourselves what
relationship exists between the subjective sentiment of being
personally treated justly or unjustly (as it pertains to income), and
one’s judgment of society as a whole.
In order to do this, it is important to recognize that while social
representations of poverty and inequalities have been studied
extensively, investigations on subjective judgments of social justice
have barely scratched the surface of the topic. It is for this specific
reason that a French research group created the Survey of subjective
inequality and sentiments of justice (SSISJ) in June 2009 with a
representative sample (n = 1711) of the French population (Forsé
and Galland 2011; Forsé, Galland, Guibet-Lafaye and Parodi 2013).2
A recent research group in Quebec also ran a similar survey that
included a number of identical questions. The Survey of the social
representations of inequalities and poverty (SSRIP) was conducted in April
2013 with a representative sample of the Quebec population (n =
2727).3
As it is always the case with this type of comparison, the results
from these two surveys will allow us to differentiate between a
singular from a general characteristic. From this point of view, given
that France and Quebec have, as we know, many similar cultural and
economic elements, it should come as no surprise that the results
between both surveys were also quite similar. There are certainly
differences but they are rarely extremely important or, at the very
least, they do not prevent the majority of survey respondents from
having similar orientations. There is, however, one crucial exception.
While the majority of the French population consider their society as
“rather unjust” (59%), a stronger majority of the Quebec population
(70%) consider their society to be “rather just” (Table 1). How can
Contrasting sentiments of social justice in France and Quebec 15
one explain such a disparity between two very comparable societies? 4

Their relation to objective inequalities notwithstanding, what role
does perception of inequalities play in these divergent sentiments of
justice?
Table 1 – Macro-justice sentiments in France and Quebec
… rather just … rather unjust
France is a society … 41 % 59 %
Quebec is a society … 70 % 30 %
Source: SSISJ and SSRIP.
1. SIMILAR EFFECTS OF SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES

In both cases, social-demographic categories tend to have similar
opinions and judgments. In France, just as in Quebec, women have a
stronger tendency than men to see society as unjust. This tendency is
also stronger in the lower classes (blue collar workers and employees),
as it is among those who have a low level of education or a low
income. This applies to those who report having difficulties in
making ends meet. Also, globally speaking, the more one is
unsatisfied with one’s life the more one considers society unjust.
Among the typical socio-demographic categories, only age has a
slightly different effect. In France, it is firstly within the 50–59 age
category (and then the young) that we observed the most opposition
to the idea that society is just, while in Quebec it was individuals aged
between 18 and 35 years of age; whereas a greater proportion of the
50 to 59 age category actually considered society to be just compared
to the global average. Without a doubt, the student movement that
took place in 2012 against the university tuition hike, one year before
the data collection for the Quebec survey, influenced the results. That
year, Quebec experienced a long student strike that will be known
forever as the “Maple Spring”.5 The strike actually became a social
movement that attracted support and sympathy outside of the
university circle. Many social demonstrations—some quite violent—
that took place in this period certainly captured the imagination of the
youth, regardless of their allegiance in this matter. The Quebec
government eventually abolished their initial proposal to raise
university tuition—thus maintaining the lowest tuition fees in Canada.
This social movement certainly increased Quebec youth’s awareness
of the politics of university tuition.
It is noteworthy that in Quebec the disparity of the observed

averages between the different socio-demographic categories does
not lead to an inversion of the majority. As an illustration, while the
working class is the harshest when judging their macro-justice, the
majority still see Quebec as a just society. While in France the
disparity in the averages can be so wide that it may overturn the
opinion of the majority. For instance, in the case of socio-
professional categories, among executive managers, the majority of
them (55%), as opposed to the French majority, consider their society
to be fairly just.
All in all, in relative terms, the same categories basically manifest
the same tendencies. However, in absolute terms, the judgments
diverge between both societies, except when, such as in the last
example, this leads in France to an inversion of the majority and
therefore closer to the Quebec averages. This is the case for the
higher education categories (undergraduate degree or higher)—liberal
professions, executive managers and higher intellectual professions,
freelancers, and the highest income category (more than a €3000 net
monthly income)—or immigrants (with either one or both parents
born in foreign countries). That being said, while more than 50% of
those in the categories just mentioned believe French society to be
rather just, the average in all those categories never reach the 70%
level observed in Quebec’s population (except for manufacturers and
wholesalers).
The explanation of the divergence between France and Quebec
does not lie in the difference of opinions in the usual socio-
demographic categories because they are rather similar in both
societies.
There is, however, in Quebec, an exception that leads to the
inversion of the majority. Even though the same is not observed in
France, the fact deserves to be examined as it is rather substantial.
The language chosen by individual respondents (English or French)
to answer the questionnaire allows us to distinguish between
Anglophones and Francophones. While the latter is more likely to
consider their society to be just (75%) than the societal average
(70%), the majority of Anglophones (58%) considers it rather unjust
(that is, only 42% of them consider it just). Two main reasons explain
the macro-justice discontent of Anglophones. A wide majority of
Anglophones in the province do not appreciate the language laws

voted by the government because they restrict their individual
liberties (liberty of advertising, liberty for immigrants to choose the
language of their children’s education, etc.). Moreover, the Quebec
survey was actually carried out shortly after a proposal was presented
to the provincial legislature to reinforce the language laws, a political
move that undoubtedly stirred up old animosities.
This second reason concerns the difficulties of living in a society
of French tradition. Thus, on a scale of life satisfaction (1 to 10),
Anglophones scored lower (6.43) than Francophones (6.98). We also
observed that Anglophones declared slightly lower incomes and many
of them declared having difficulties making ends meet even though
they generally had a better education. The convergence of both
observations suggests that the Anglophone population is younger
than the Francophone one, and that is exactly what we observed: the
18 to 35-year-old category Francophones count for only 26% while
Anglophones count for 41%. As we have seen, the younger categories
are the most sensitive to social injustices, also, since there are many
students in the Anglophone population, the student movement we
mentioned earlier definitely served to reinforce their sentiment of
injustice.
2. THE ROLE OF MICRO-JUSTICE

That being said, other aspects, this time comparable, have an
influence on one’s perception of macro-justice, and we can ask
ourselves whether they can better explain the main divergence that we
observed between the two societies. Let us first examine micro-
justice, which refers to how individuals feel about being justly or
unjustly remunerated. The questions were not formulated identically
in both surveys, but we observe the same effect. In France, those
who reported earning less than what they considered just (68%) also
considered society to be unjust, and vice versa. In Quebec, those who
considered that their earnings corresponded wholly or partially to
their competence tended to perceive society as being more just, while
the opposite was observed for those who do not believe that their
salary reflected their true value as an employee. This also holds true
for those who claim that their salary is slightly or not at all
appropriate (41%), while those who consider it very or slightly so are
more susceptible to see their society as just. Contrary to what is
observed in France, in Quebec this does not lead to an inversion of

the majority since the majority (54%) of those that consider
themselves to be justly remunerated consider society just. However,
in France, we remain again far below the Quebec score (70 %),
including when respondents say that their income is very or quite fair,
since in that case 77 % consider the Quebec society just.
A log-linear model with the following three variables, country,
micro-justice and macro-justice, demonstrates that the third order
interaction is not significant while all second order interactions are
indeed significant (Table 2). This means that the relation between
micro- and macro-justice does not vary between both countries, it is
of similar intensity in France and in Quebec. The difference between
the two societies does not appear to stem from there; it comes most
probably from the margins which vary significantly between both
societies in terms of both micro- and macro-justice. There are more
dissatisfied individuals with their salary in France (68%) than in
Quebec (41%) and, given the strong and identical relation between
micro- and macro-justice, a more severe judgment is reserved for
macro-justice in France (59%) than in Quebec (30%). However, the
model does show that the disparity between these two proportions is
such that this rationale does not explain everything.
How might we account for this strong discrepancy in the
appreciation of justice regarding one’s own salary? From an objective
standpoint, according to OECD data, in 2013, the average annual
income in France (US$40,530) was lower than in Canada
(US$47,794). The average income in Quebec is difficult to evaluate
on the same basis, but, according to Statistics Canada (from corporate
data submitted to Canada Revenue Agency), it should be inferior to
the national average by about 10.35%, therefore approximately
US$43,311. Thus the average income in France was 6% lower than in
Quebec. Certainly, we must not draw hasty conclusions according to
their gross disparity since it does not take into account local contexts
of transfers and redistribution, etc. That being said, it is on the whole
understandable that a greater proportion of the French population
complain about their income levels. The relation between self-
declared income and the sentiment of micro-injustice did prove itself
to be valid in both surveys.
Table 2: Summary of the log-linear analysis of the relationship between micro-justice,

macro-justice and society (France/Quebec)
Stepsa Effects Chi- df Sig. Number of
squarec iterations
0 Generating classb Macro*micro*society 0.000 0
Deleted effect 1 Macro*micro*society 0.485 1 0.486 4
1 Generating classb Macro*micro, macro* 0.485 1 0.486
Society, micro*society
Deleted effect 1 Macro*micro* 113.174 1 0.000 2
2 Macro*society 261.371 1 0.000 2
3 Micro*society 176.970 1 0.000 2
2 Final model b Macro*micro
Macro*society 0.485 1 0.486d
Micro*society
a. At each step, the effect with the largest significance level for the Likelihood Ratio
Change is deleted, provided the significance level is larger than .05.
b. Statistics are displayed for the best model at each step after step 0.
c. For 'Deleted Effect', this is the change in the Chi-Square after the effect is deleted
from the model.
d. This number also assesses the goodness-of-fit of the model. Here, the gap with the
data is not significant.
A subjective finding goes in the same direction. There is a 7 point

variation—65% in France and 58% in Quebec—in the proportion of
respondents who declared having occasional or frequent budget
difficulties at the end of the month. Of course, in both societies,
those that are in this situation tend to perceive their society and their
income as unjust. However, the effect of an insufficient income on
the macro-justice sentiment is about of the same intensity in France
and in Quebec. Once again, we have not observed a significant
difference in this regard. However, since there are more dissatisfied
people with their budget in France, it is reasonable to find greater
dissatisfaction as to the sentiment of macro-justice.
3. AUTO-EVALUATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY
In this same perspective of subjective appreciation, we can
suppose that the social position in which one evaluates one’s self has
consequences on one’s sentiment of micro- and macro-justice, since
each time these questions are asked in surveys, this self-position is
correlated either with the level of income or subjective social

positions (itself being in relation to one’s objective socio-professional
category), of which we have already seen its effect on the sentiment
of social justice. In both surveys, the respondents were asked to
position themselves on a ten-point status scale from 1 to 10 (10 being
the highest). They were also asked where they positioned themselves
on the same scale ten years earlier. Globally, we observed that people
in Quebec positioned themselves a little higher (5.4) than in France
(4.7) and that the comparison with their score from ten years earlier
demonstrated a very low intra-generational mobility. The average
difference between the two scores ten years apart is actually negative
in France (-0.3) while it is nearly zero in Quebec. While these
averages differ significantly between both countries, their effects on
micro- and macro-justice are similar.
The more people rated themselves higher on the status scale or
the more they declared an important upward mobility, the more they
tended to consider not only society but also their own income as just.
This relation with self-reported status is in phase with the effect of
income noted above (the higher it is the stronger the tendency to
evaluate society as just). Table 3 shows that those who considered
society or their income as unjust had on average experienced a
downward mobility and rated themselves lower on the status scale
than ten years prior. The diagnostic is the same when, instead of
absolute mobility, we examine relative mobility, which is the average
reported mobility of a category in relation to the global average.
Technically, this relative mobility is equal to the residuals in a linear
regression of the actual status position by the one from ten years ago.
A positive number signifies a stronger mobility than the average while
a negative signifies a less than average mobility. We can suppose that
this can cause some frustration. In any case it has the same effects in
France as it has in Quebec, which are the two societies that have been
observed for absolute mobility. These effects are simply more
apparent than they were for absolute mobility. If we accept an
interpretation in terms of relative frustration, it is clear that the deeper
the frustration, the more one will judge society or its remuneration as
unjust. All these effects relating to the self-reported status, absolute
and relative mobility on macro- and micro-justice are significant
(according to analyses of variance) in France and in Quebec. By
considering relative mobility, we observed that its impact is not
significantly different in France and in Quebec as it pertains to

macro-justice (p = 0.76), but it is significant as it pertains to micro-
justice (p = 0.02). And in this case, it is slightly more pronounced in
Quebec.
Table 3: The effects of self-reported status, subjective intragenerational mobility both

absolute and relative, and sentiments of micro- and macro-justice
in France and Quebec
Absolute Relative
Autoposition
France mobility mobility
Average
Average Average
Personal income Just 5.21 +0.12 +0.45
Unjust 4.47 -0.47 -0.24
Society Just 5.02 -0.03 +0.29
Unjust 4.5 -0.45 -0.21
Absolute Relative
Autoposition
Mobility mobility
Quebec Average
Average Average
Personal income Just 5.88 +0.37 +0.44
Unjust 4.73 -0.23 -0.48
Society Just 5.58 +0.12 +0.16
Unjust 4.88 -0.18 -0.38
4. THE IMPACT OF INEQUALITIES

From what has been analyzed so far, one feels that the sentiments
of justice are related to inequalities, but they are not a mere replica of
those inequalities. The inequalities in this particular case are, of
course, perceived or subjective inequalities. While these subjective
inequalities have a relation with their objective counterpart, they are
not its mere reflection of them. They are often underestimated
especially in the recent past where there has been a substantial rise in
high incomes, which, in turn, has increased income inequality; a
phenomenon that has not been fully understood by the general public
(Forsé and Parodi 2011). In general, it appears that mid and low
incomes are relatively well known, in fact the higher the incomes are,
the more they are underestimated. Therefore, on the whole, inequality
tends to be underestimated, and it appears to be even more so as the
disparity between low and high incomes becomes wider. From an

objective point of view, let us now look at a few key indicators to
compare France and Quebec – while keeping in mind the latter’s
relationship to Canada.
4.1 Indicators of inequality in France, Quebec, and Canada

The Gini coefficient, when applied to disposable income after tax
and transfers, is higher in Canada than in France (0.315 against 0.309
in 2011 according to the OECD), but it is systematically lower in
Quebec than in the rest of Canada since 1990 according to a recent
study by Simon Langlois and Mathieu Lizotte (2014) as well as a study
by the Centre d’étude sur la pauvreté et l’exclusion (CEPE 2014). The
CEPE (2014, table 21) estimated the Gini coefficient after tax and
adjusted it to the size of the family unit. On this basis, in 2011, the
Gini coefficient was at 0.313 in Canada, 0.291 in Quebec and 0.308 in
France. Income inequality is thus lower in Quebec than in France, but
also lower than in the rest of Canada.
Concerning this comparison with Canada, Stéphane Crespo and
Sylvie Rheault (2014, p. 7) noted that “after a slight decrease between
1976 and 1990, income inequality increased significantly from 1990
on, but stabilized in the 2000s. In the last three decades, [disposable
income] inequality was lower in Quebec than in the rest of Canada.”
In fact, within the Canadian Federation, Quebec has the best
beneficial fiscal and redistributive policies than any other province,
but it is at the cost of a higher income tax rate.
It is true that all these Gini estimations are not very different, but
as far as the French and Quebec comparison goes there is a major
difference when we consider the evolution of inequalities between
2000 and 2011 (see Graph 1). In France, the coefficient was rather
stable until 2007 (0.293), after which it rose to 0.309 in 2011
(according to OECD data)—or 0.308 for French income when
adjusted in the manner as the Quebec CEPE estimates. Both
measures for France come from different sources, but the second
estimate allows a direct comparison to the situation in Quebec. In
Quebec, however, the same measure of inequality was marked by a
relative stability during the same period (0.294 in 2000, 0.293 in 2010
and 0.291 in 2011). Overall, while the level of income inequality was
not as high in France as in Quebec until 2007, their paths crossed in
2008, and it is now higher in France.
Graph 1: The evolution of individual disposable income inequality (adjusted by

family unit) in France and in Quebec
Source: data from CEPE 2014; graph by authors.
As for the poverty rate, the proportion of the population below

50% of the median income is clearly higher in Canada than in France
(0.112 against 0.072 according to OECD 2006); however, the poverty
rate (according to various measures) is lower in Quebec than in
Canada. Quebec implemented various policies to fight against poverty
in 2005 and it is a known fact that various fiscal and redistributive
policies have been quite successful to alleviate poverty. It should be
emphasized that the poverty rate in Canada as well as in Quebec has
been on a structural decline over the past thirty years, although this
decline has slowed down since the financial crises of 2008—a crisis
that has not affected Canada as much as other developed countries.
That being said, the CEPE (2014, table 9) study allows us to directly
compare the poverty rates between France and Quebec. The poverty
rate of individuals whose income was below 60% of the adjusted
median after tax was lower in France (13.3%) than in Quebec (15.2%)
and in Canada (18.3%).6
According to the OECD harmonized definition, the
unemployment rate has been higher in France than in Canada since
1993. The unemployment rate is slightly higher in Quebec than in

Canada, although it is clearly lower than in France. Thus, in 2008,
when the unemployment rate in France was at 7.4%, the lowest
according to the harmonized estimates of the OECD, it was 7.2% in
Quebec and 6.1% in Canada. Following the global financial crisis of
2008, unemployment rate increased everywhere, but the increase was
much more substantial in France. In 2012, the rate was at 9.8% in
France, 7.7% in Quebec and 7.3% in Canada. While the rate tends to
decline in Quebec and in Canada since 2010, it continues to rise in
France up until today. The higher rates of unemployment in France
compared to those in both Canada and Quebec is mostly due to their
poor economic performance that strongly affects the 15-24 and 55-64
age categories. Overall, the problem of unemployment is more
prominent in France than in Quebec. The long-term unemployment
rate illustrates this clearly: in France, this rate reached 40.4% in 2012
(it was 37.4% in 2008), while in Canada and Quebec the rate was at
12.7% and 12.2% respectively for the same period.
To conclude this objective overview of inequality and economic
conditions let us briefly look at the global standard of living as
measured by the GDP per capita. Despite fluctuations, the situation
has remained rather stable over the years. According to the IMF, in
2013, the GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity) was
US$43,253 in Canada, US$39,813 in France and, according to
Statistics Canada, US$35,552 in Quebec.
If we limit our analysis to the comparison of France and Quebec,
we observe that France is in a better situation regarding the standard
of living or poverty, however, it is worse off when it comes to income
inequality and especially unemployment.
In light of these findings, a major difference between France and
Quebec appears. The different objective indicators examined show
that the long-term tendencies have evolved rather positively in
Quebec—despite the slowing down of these trends since 2008—
while they have evolved rather negatively in France, particularly with
respect to unemployment. Without a doubt, this worsening of the
labour market—that tends to increase income inequality—is one of
the main reasons why sentiments of micro- and macro-injustice are
stronger in France. In fact, many surveys have already documented
how unemployment is a key economic concern amongst the French

population (for example see Bigot et al. 2014, p. 79).
4.2 The perception of inequalities

Among a list of twelve possible types of inequalities in the SSISJ
survey it was those concerning economic matters that were
considered to be crucial in the French society. In this ranking of
preoccupations, income inequality was the first concern, living and
working conditions the second, and finally concerns relating to
employment and job security (precariousness). Even so, economic
inequalities are not those that are considered the most unacceptable.
It was found that inequalities relating to social identity, such as those
relating to sexual orientation, ethnic origin and age for instance, were
judged to be clearly inappropriate.
Furthermore, the sentiment of macro-social injustice proved itself
to be strongly tied to the perception of income inequality and high
unemployment. This correlation also applied to micro-justice, but it
was not as strong (although it remained highly significant according
to ANOVA analyses). The more the French people attach particular
importance to economic inequalities, the more they tend to consider
not only their society, but also their own remuneration as unjust.
Despite these undeniable correlations, it appears that the various
perceptions of inequalities cannot be explained in the same way as
they are towards injustice. While the latter relate to socio-
demographic categories (workers, employees, etc.) as we have already
discussed, the perception of extreme economic inequalities is actually
the result of a consensus that transcends those categories (Galland
and Lemel 2013). There were no notable effects relating to socio-
professional categories, to the level of income or to education. Other
studies have shown that this is also the case in many other countries.
Unfortunately, the comparison with the Quebec survey is not
possible since no direct questions were asked on the perceptions of
inequalities.
Nevertheless, in the Quebec survey it is possible to analyze
questions that can be seen as indirect measures of inequality
perceptions that are comparable to the French survey. Such is the
case for the following question: “should the differences between high
and low incomes be reduced in Quebec / in France?” Respondents
were asked to answer according to what they considered “ideal or

just” from the following choices: “wholly agree”, “rather agree”,
“rather disagree” and “wholly disagree”. While the responses have a
normative dimension, it is plausible that the higher one assesses the
level of inequalities, the more one will wish to reduce them. The
assumption being that perceptions of the level of inequalities can be
measured indirectly through this question and can actually be
compared to the French survey since it has a direct question on the
perceptions of the level of inequalities. An analysis of variance shows
without any ambiguity (F=33.92, df=3, p<0.0001) that the more one
believes income inequality to be high, the more one believes it should
be reduced. It is thus reasonable to believe that this relationship also
applies in Quebec.
We then observed a substantive difference between France and
Quebec. Those who agree (wholly agree or rather agree) to reduce
income inequalities represent 75% of the population in Quebec and
89% of the population in France. Such a disparity cannot be
explained by a simple sampling error. We can safely conclude that the
French perceived higher levels of inequalities in their society than did
the Quebecers. Yet this perception is not without relation to the
sentiment of macro-justice since in both societies this relation is of
comparable strength and statistical significance (see Table 4). In
France as in Quebec, those who believe it is necessary to reduce
inequalities judge their society to be unjust and vice versa. A log-
linear model confirms the interaction between the three following
variables (country/society, the opinion on the reduction of
inequalities and the sentiment of macro-justice) is not significant
(p=0.295), while all combinations of second order interactions were
significant. Since the strength of the relation between the perceptions
of inequalities and the sentiment of injustice is the same in both
societies, the Atlantic disparity in these sentiments is probably due to
the fact that the Quebec population see their society as more equal,
and this in turn leads to a lesser sentiment of injustice.
Of course, this sentiment of injustice is not solely explained by the
disparity of income; and this is also why it is not a simple replica of
economic inequality. It could be due to a level of poverty that is
considered too high. From this point of view, respondents were asked
in France and in Quebec if one’s basic needs (housing, food, clothing,
health and education) were met in each society. The respondents
were asked to answer these questions according to the same four-

point scale as previously. Once again, the answers were quite
different: 51% of the Quebec population think that their basic needs
are met against only 31% in the French population. One must be
aware that this does not correspond to the objective situation, as the
poverty rate is higher in Quebec. Nonetheless, this perception is
strongly and significantly correlated to the sentiment of injustice. In
France as in Quebec, the more people estimate that their basic needs
as unmet, the more they consider society unjust (see Table 5). A log-
linear model shows again that the interaction between “country”,
“basic necessities” and “sentiment of macro-justice” is not significant
(p = 0.127), while all the second order interactions are. Thus it is not
the intensity of the relationship between the perception of absolute
poverty and the sentiment of injustice that varies between both
societies. The disparity between these sentiments arises rather from a
perception that poverty is lesser in Quebec than in France, which
then leads to a less intense sentiment of injustice.
A third question can serve to approximate the perception of
inequalities. The respondents were asked to assess whether or not the
inequalities in their own country were higher than in other developed
countries. The responses were done on the same four-point scale
than the previous two questions. Half of the French population
(49%) did not agree, as did a sizeable majority for the Quebec
population (58%). When people think that there is more income
inequality in one’s society than in other comparable societies, they are
inclined to consider one’s society as unjust. However, this
relationship is significant in Quebec but not in France (see Table 6).
A log-linear model shows this time that the interaction between the
three variables (comparative inequality, the sentiment of macro-justice
and country/society) is significant. The relation between the
perception of comparative inequality and the sentiment of injustice is
significantly more important in Quebec than in France. But it goes in
the direction of an inequality less strongly felt and thus results in a
sentiment of more justice rather than less. The frame of reference is
nonetheless not the same. The Quebecers compare their level of
inequality much more to the situation in the United States than do the
French.
Table 4: The association between opinions on macro-justice and the belief that
income inequality should be reduced
Income inequality should be reduced
Average
French society is … Rather just 1.76
Rather unjust 1.53
(F = 35.11, df = 1, p<0.0001)
Quebec society is … Rather just 2.05

Rather unjust 1.85
(F = 30.42, df = 1, p<0.0001)
Table 5: The relation between opinions on macro-justice and the sentiment that
one’s basic necessities are met in France and in Quebec
Satisfaction with one’s basic necessities

Average
Rather unjust 3.11
(F = 60.77, df = 1, p<0.0001)

Rather unjust 2.76
(F = 121.21, df = 1, p<0.0001)
Table 6: Relation between the opinion of macro-justice and the sentiment of a

difference of income inequality with other developed countries,
in France and in Quebec
Income inequality in my country is
higher than in other developed
countries
Average
Rather unjust 2.49
(F = 1.37, df = 1, p<0.24)

Rather unjust 2.41
(F = 58.85, df = 1, p<0.0001)
Based on this premise, it should be noted that Canada (and

Quebec) is a country with a social-democratic orientation. Unlike the
United States, Canada has implemented a great number of
programmes such as public health care, pension plan, social
assistance, etc. Canada is clearly different from the United States
regarding state intervention in the field of fiscal policies and the
redistribution of income—these differences have notably been
documented in Seymour Lipset’s Continental Divide (1990). Canada has
also developed an equalization payment system that redistributes
parts of the national wealth from the richer provinces to the poorer
provinces—a system that contributes to reducing inequalities between
the vast regions of the country. Moreover, within Canada, Quebec is
known to be even more in favour of state interventions with
programmes such as affordable daycare centres. Without a doubt,
these various measures have an impact on the sentiment of macro-
justice in Quebec, notably when the Quebecers compare themselves
to the United States.
It is therefore not surprising that there is less pessimism in
Quebec than in France regarding social inequalities. The French are
clearly more concerned than are the Quebecers about the evolution
of inequalities in the next five years (see Table 7). In fact, 42% of the
French population expect that inequalities will strongly increase as
opposed to 27% of the Quebec population. Furthermore, Quebecers

are only slightly preoccupied with income inequality as 43 %
anticipate a slight increase against 32% of the French population. Yet,
the highly significant relationship between this question and that of
macro-justice is identical in France and in Quebec (once again, in a
log-linear model with the three following variables, “society”,
“macro-justice” and “pessimism”, all of the second order interactions
are significant and the third order interaction are not, p = 17%). In
France as in Quebec, it is thought that society is just when income
inequality is remains stable or experiences a slight increase. It is only
when people anticipate a strong increase in income inequality that
they tend to consider society as unjust. The very pessimistic do not
have the same opinion as others, be it in France or in Quebec, but
they are more in number in France.
Other surveys have already demonstrated, such as the Dynegal
survey in France, that there is a strong correlation between past or
present judgments of inequalities and future judgments. As a result,
people tend to see the future as it seemed to be in the past and as
they perceive it to be today. This theory is coherent with why the
level of inequalities are perceived as lower in Quebec than in France,
and also explains why the Quebec population is more satisfied with
the current state of social justice than the French population.
Table 7: In the next five years, do you believe that income inequality will...
In France In Quebec
% %
… strongly increase 41.7 27.0
… slightly increase 32.0 42.5
… remain stable 19.5 24.9
… slightly decrease 5.6 4.5
… strongly decrease 1.1 1.1
Total 100 100
CONCLUSION
These surveys have not only allowed us to measure the
perceptions of inequalities, but we have also become aware of a
relationship between these perceptions and the sentiment of macro-
injustice. This relation is of the same intensity in France and in
Quebec, however, since income inequality and poverty are perceived
as greater in France, it follows that they arouse a stronger sentiment
of injustice.
The same reasoning applies to micro-justice and its relation to
macro-justice. This relation is significant in both societies and at the
same degree of intensity. In both cases, those who feel that they are
unjustly remunerated tend to consider their society unjust. However,
since there is a greater proportion of people in France who are
dissatisfied with their income, there is consequently a greater
sentiment of macro-injustice. It should be noted that the average
income in France is lower than in Quebec.
It was found that the same principle applies to status (as self-
reported) and subjective intra-generational mobility either absolute or
relative. The more one positions oneself lower on a ten-point status
scale or the more one reports a low upward mobility (absolute or
relative), the more one sees his society as unjust. Curiously this
significant relationship between the three variables and the sentiment
of macro-justice is as strong in France as it is in Quebec. The reason
lies in the fact that the French population positions itself significantly
lower than the Quebec population and reports less upward mobility
that they tend to consider their society unjust. Moreover, the same
socio-demographic categories in both populations, namely the most
disadvantaged, tend to consider their society as unjust.
The global context of economic wealth does not intervene in the
expected way. The standard of living (as measured by the GDP per
capital in purchasing power parity), being higher in France than in
Quebec, we might have expected that this would cause a greater
sentiment of injustice in Quebec. Yet, we actually observed the
opposite. The same applies to the poverty rate. However, we must
emphasize that income inequality (as measured by the Gini index)
increased in the 2000s in France (even more so after the 2008 crisis),
while this is not the case in Quebec, at least until 2011 (latest available
data in the studies cited above). This is without a doubt one of the
reasons that explains why perceptions of inequalities are less

important in Quebec.
Finally, it is unemployment that appears to be the key contextual
factor to understand the divergence observed between France and
Quebec. In Quebec unemployment decreased to relatively minor
levels, to the point that it probably was not a determining factor in
Quebecers’ appraisal of societal justice in 2013. On the contrary, in
France the continued decline of the employment rate that has lasted
many years – and continues to this day – definitely affected the
morale of many households as the employment issue is their most
important socio-economic concern. Accordingly, the difficult
employment situation is an important reason why the French
population tends to cast a negative judgment on the state of social
justice in their society.
While the various perceptions do not perfectly or exactly match
the objective indicators (such is the case with poverty in this study),
they lead nonetheless to an appreciation of the global state of the
situation and the tendencies of inequalities, which are not
disconnected from reality.
NOTES
[1] Our translation of « savoirs fondés ».

[2] This is our translation of the Perception des inégalités et les sentiments de justice
(PISJ) survey.
[3] This is our translation of the Représentations sociales des inégalités et de la
pauvreté (RSIP) survey.
[4] It should be noted that the question of whether society is just or unjust
was not asked in the same order in both surveys. In the Quebec survey,
this is the first question that was asked while it is one of the last in the
French survey. Also, in France, this question is asked annually in the
DREES survey as the opening question (more details on this web site:
http://www.drees.sante.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/synthese_bva2009.pdf). This
allows us to test whether or not the question order has any effect on the
response. This effect is actually minor and shows that the French tend to
be more severe when the question is asked as the first question. It
appears that when the question is preceded by a summary of social ills,
the French usually put the term injustice in perspective. In short, as it
concerns our present study, the question order effect tends to minimize
the difference in the judgement of social injustice between the
populations of France and Quebec.
[5] This is the translation that was often used by the Globe and Mail,
Canada’s largest Anglophone newspaper, to refer to the “Printemps
érable”. The name itself is a variation of the “Arab Spring”, the term
used to refer to the wave of revolutionary demonstrations that took place
in several Muslim countries starting in the late 2010.
[6] Excluding Quebec, the federal average is higher at 19.5%.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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PUF.
CEPE, 2014, La pauvreté, les inégalités et l’exclusion au Québec : État de situation
2013, Québec, Centre d’étude sur la pauvreté et l’exclusion.
Crespo S., Rheault S., 2014, “L’inégalité du revenu des ménages au Québec
et dans le reste du Canada : bilan de 35 années,” Données
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numéro 1.
Forsé M., Galland O., Guibet Lafaye C., Parodi M., 2013, L’égalité, une passion
française ?, Paris, Armand Colin.
Forsé M., Galland O. (dir.), 2011, Les Français face aux inégalités et à la justice
sociale, Paris, Armand Colin.
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dix ans,” La Revue de l’OFCE, Presses de Sciences Po, n° 118, 5-32.
Forsé M., Parodi M., 2005, The Priority of Justice. Elements for a Sociology of Moral
Choices, Bern, Peter Lang.
Galland O., Lemel Y., 2013, “La perception des inégalités en France. Essai
d’explication,” Revue européenne des sciences sociales, Vol. 51, n° 1, 179-211.
Langlois S., Lizotte M., 2014, “L’indice de Palma, nouvelle mesure des
inégalités au Québec et au Canada,” Revue Vie Economique, vol. 6, no. 1,
15-21.
Lipset S. M., 1990, Continental Divide. The Values and Institutions of the United
States and Canada, New York, Routledge.
Rawls J., 1971, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Walzer M., 1983, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, New
York, Basic Books.
ABSTRACT
Quebecers see their society as being more just than that of the French. This
finding cannot be explained by the relations – which might have been
different in each of these two societies – between the micro- and macro-
justice, nor by a different effect of self-positioning or subjective mobility on
the sentiment of justice in society. These relations are similar in both
societies. However, the French position themselves much lower than the
Quebecers, they have less confidence in their chances for upward mobility
and are much more pessimistic. Unemployment, which is much higher in
France, is without a doubt one element that influences these judgments.
***
* The authors wish to thank the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation of the Institut
de France and Quebec’s Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (FRSC) for their
financial support as well as David Gaudreault, a master’s student at the Department of
sociology of Laval University, for his help in the preparation of the Quebec data. We
would also like to thank Mathieu Lizotte for the English translation and Jeanne Valois
for the final revision of the text.
INÉGALITÉS ET DOMINATION : UNE NOUVELLE

COMPLICATION DÉMOCRATIQUE
Patrick SAVIDAN
Au cours de ces dernières années, il a été beaucoup question de la

remarquable capacité des plus riches à faire face à la crise. Dans un
contexte économique et financier très dégradé, avec une
augmentation de la précarité et des inégalités qu’il n’est pas besoin de
documenter tant le phénomène est de notoriété publique, les plus
riches ont vu leur nombre croître et leurs fortunes s’étendre. Le
classement Forbes des fortunes indiquait ainsi que le nombre total
des milliardaires avait franchi un seuil historique en 2011, alors que
dans la plupart des pays développés la croissance était encore en
berne1. Thomas Piketty a établi de manière décisive qu’au vu des
tendances observées au long du XXe siècle, nous avons tout lieu de
croire que les inégalités pourraient revenir au XXIe siècle à des
niveaux au moins équivalents à ceux du XIXe siècle et du début du
XXe siècle. Ce type de constat s’accompagne de multiples études
consacrées aux « rémunérations obscènes2 » des plus privilégiés. Une
vaste littérature s’est développée pour dévoiler l’étendue du
phénomène, les visages et les modes de vie qui y sont attachés.
Dans le même temps, et de manière plus marquée depuis la crise
de 2008, la situation des classes moyennes et défavorisées s’est
nettement dégradée. C'est inédit depuis les années 1970 : de cette
époque jusqu’en 1983-1984, les inégalités de revenus (après impôts et
prestations sociales) ont en effet diminué (rapport interdécile : de 4,6
à 3,4). De 1985 à 2008, elles se sont maintenues approximativement
au même niveau. Depuis 2008, elles sont reparties à la hausse.
Depuis 2008, 60% des Français ont vu leur niveau de vie plus ou
moins diminuer. Plus on descend dans l’échelle des niveaux de vie et
36 Patrick Savidan
plus la baisse est nette : –6,3% (–541 euros) pour le premier décile ;
–3,3% environ pour les 2 déciles suivants (entre –481 et –420 euros) ;
–2,2% pour celui du dessus (–371 euros). En 2002, les 10% les plus
riches avaient un revenu 6 fois supérieur aux 10% les plus pauvres.
En 2012, cet écart relatif s’est creusé : 7,2 fois plus. En valeur
absolue : l’écart relatif est passé de 42 780 à 49 371 euros. Et la
situation, du fait de la progression du chômage, s’est sans doute
encore dégradée. D’autres méthodes de mesure confirment ce
constat : en s’appuyant sur l’indice Gini, on voit que les inégalités ont
nettement diminué entre 1970 et la fin des années 1980. Depuis elles
sont reparties à la hausse, pour retrouver à peu près le niveau qui était
le leur au début des années 1970.
Les conséquences ne sont pas seulement d’ordre économique. Il
n’est pas simplement question de revenus et de patrimoines, mais
aussi de pouvoir. Cette ouverture de la focale à partir de laquelle
appréhender la situation d’ensemble a donné prise à tout un ensemble
de préoccupations plus directement politiques, se rassemblant autour
d’une interrogation : où va la démocratie ?
Tocqueville s’inquiétait, dans les dernières pages de La démocratie en
Amérique de voir surgir au-dessus des hommes, du cœur même de la
démocratie, un nouveau despotisme, celui d’un État devenu tout
puissant, « un pouvoir immense et tutélaire » au-dessus des citoyens
qui se chargerait « seul d’assurer leur jouissance et de veiller sur leur
sort ». « Absolu, détaillé, régulier, prévoyant et doux », il fixerait les
hommes dans l’enfance. Selon toute évidence, les sociétés
démocratiques contemporaines n’emprunteraient pas ce chemin-là.
Pour de nombreux analystes et observateurs, elle prendrait plutôt
celui de l’oligarchie.
Il existe bien des manières de distinguer les différentes formes
d’organisation du pouvoir politique – Montesquieu pour sa part
proposait de considérer l’état de la séparation des pouvoirs dans l’État
pour les caractériser – mais il semble bien que ce soit, dans le
contexte présent, la typologie des anciens qui retienne surtout
l’attention, et en particulier cette notion d’oligarchie : il s’agit, à travers
elle, de dénoncer la concentration des pouvoirs et leur confiscation au
bénéfice d’un petit nombre3.
Inégalités et domination 37
DE L’OLIGARCHIE EN AMÉRIQUE
Assistons-nous au retour des oligarchies ?
Pour répondre positivement, il faudrait établir l’existence d’une
nette corrélation entre le niveau des inégalités et l’orientation des
politiques publiques. Aux États-Unis, et pour ce pays, Martin Gilens
(Princeton) a mené ce type de recherches, dont il a consigné certains
des résultats les plus frappants dans un ouvrage très remarqué qui ne
laisse planer aucune ambiguïté : les riches gouvernent4 !
Ce qu’il démontre de manière éloquente, c’est que, depuis
plusieurs décennies, les politiques publiques dans ce pays prennent
principalement en compte les préférences des plus privilégiés.
On voit ainsi très bien comment ces politiques ont pu dès lors
renforcer ces inégalités, en un mouvement qui tend à s’alimenter lui-
même. La méthode mise en œuvre par ce chercheur est assez simple :
il a pris un bon millier de politiques publiques et s’est intéressé aux
ancrages sociaux de ceux qui y adhèrent.
Ce qu’il observe est assez net : quand les préférences des milieux
les plus défavorisés et des classes moyennes divergent de celles des
classes privilégiées, elles ne sont absolument pas prises en compte. En
revanche, les désirs et préférences des plus aisés sont
systématiquement pris en charge par les politiques publiques.
Dans la mesure où les préférences du public, aussi imparfaites
soient-elles, sont manifestement suffisamment raisonnables pour
constituer le fondement d’une politique démocratique, le fait que la
« démocratie » américaine soit à ce point indifférente aux préférences
du plus grand nombre pose un sérieux problème.
Martin Gilens n’a pas œuvré seul à cette entreprise de
dévoilement. L’inquiétude est aux États-Unis si vive que l’Association
de science politique américaine a mis en place au début des années
2000 une « task force » dont l’objectif affiché était de « rassembler ce
que les politologues et autres chercheurs en sciences sociales savent
des façons dont les évolutions récentes des inégalités affectent la
participation et la gouvernance démocratiques aux États-Unis et
d’envisager la manière dont les modes de participation et les
politiques influent sur les différentes dimensions de l’inégalité »5.
38 Patrick Savidan
Dans un tel contexte, on peut aisément comprendre le succès qu’y

remporta le livre de Thomas Piketty – bien préparé par les travaux
qu’il avait déjà menés avec Emmanuel Saez sur l’évolution des
inégalités aux États-Unis6.
Nous avions De la démocratie en Amérique, nous aurions maintenant
également De l’oligarchie en Amérique.
Le prix Nobel d’économie Robert Solow, dans un retentissant
article publié en avril 2014, a apporté un soutien très net aux thèses de
Thomas Piketty.
Il a aussi été très clair sur l’alternative qui s’offre à nous : puisque
la part du revenu national qui va au travail correspond
arithmétiquement aux salaires réels divisés par la productivité du
travail, que préférons-nous : vivre dans une société où les salaires
réels augmentent mais où la part du revenu national revenant au
travail diminue (en raison de l’augmentation de la productivité) ou
bien dans une société où l’on maintient la part du revenu national
réservée aux revenus réels (en contenant la part des revenus revenant
au capital) en s’exposant au risque de les voir stagner, et avec eux la
productivité ?
Pour Solow, on peut avoir des raisons économiques de privilégier
le premier terme de l’alternative, mais il faut comprendre le risque
politique réel que cela fait courir à la société : celui de voir se former
une oligarchie qui, de plus en plus puissante, pourrait accroître sa
domination sur le plus grand nombre. Il écrit : « Si une petite classe
de propriétaires de la richesse – et elle est peu nombreuse – en vient à
s’approprier une part croissante du revenu national, il est probable
qu’elle exercera sa domination sur la société dans d’autres domaines
également7. »
Rousseau nous avait déjà alerté sur le problème, lui qui, dans son
Projet de constitution pour la Corse, nous alertait contre l’illégitimité de la
puissance civile lorsqu’elle est exercée par les riches : « Partout où les
richesses dominent » écrivait-il, « la puissance apparente est dans les
mains des magistrats et la puissance réelle est dans celle des riches.
Dans un tel gouvernement tout marche au gré des passions des
hommes, rien ne tend au but de l’institution8. »
Rousseau avait déjà compris que le pouvoir économique se mue

immédiatement en pouvoir politique et que le pouvoir politique ainsi
indexé sur le pouvoir économique renforce également ce dernier.
Telle est la raison pour laquelle la dynamique que permet de
mesurer le travail de Piketty et que Solow renomme la « rich-get-richer
dynamic » doit être enrayée. « Si la concentration de la richesse
continue de croître au XXIe siècle, la perspective est peu réjouissante,
à moins d’aimer l’oligarchie » écrit Robert Solow.
Le problème est bien l’intense concentration du capital, ainsi que
sa pérennité.
Mais comment expliquer que le pouvoir économique et politique
du plus petit nombre se maintienne, voire qu’il se renforce ?
Constater qu’une classe cherche à promouvoir les intérêts de ses
membres et du groupe lui-même, c’est une chose. Mais cela ne suffit
pas à établir qu’il existe un lien de causalité direct entre les
préférences des plus riches et les politiques décidées, votées, mises
plus ou moins en œuvre.
Que font ceux dont les intérêts ne sont nullement pris en compte
par ces politiques ? Comment expliquer cette domination du plus
petit nombre ?
On peut me répondre que cette domination passe par la maîtrise
de l’agenda politique et le recours à des outils symboliques,
idéologiques, dans un long travail de propagande. Mais que vaut-elle ?
Cette solution, qu’implique-t-elle surtout ? Que les gens, dans leur
immense majorité, se font plus ou moins manipuler, qu’ils n’ont pas
une vision adéquate de leurs intérêts ? Qu’on les oblige à adhérer à
des tendances sociales et à des politiques qui desservent leurs intérêts
propres, qu’ils n’ont pas – pour telles ou telles raisons : absence de
sens critique, ignorance, abrutissement idéologique, aveuglement – la
capacité à voir la nature véritable du problème, ni a fortiori celle de s’en
extraire ? Derrière cette forme de servitude volontaire, il y aurait une
sorte d’apathie populaire, totalement incompréhensible et désolante,
étant donné l’ampleur des injustices et des dégâts sociaux dont pâtit le
plus grand nombre.
On brandira à cette occasion l’idée de conditionnement mental et
politique, en désignant éventuellement la jeunesse comme cible rêvée,
40 Patrick Savidan
décervelée, seulement scotchée à ses écrans divers et variés, ou l’âge

mûr et son cynisme, mais en exceptant personne a priori ; on
invoquera le fatalisme, ce mal qui serait à notre époque ce que la
mélancolie ou le spleen fut au XIXe siècle ; on incriminera le
sentiment d’impuissance ou le manque de courage.
Cette perspective possède un fond de vérité (la raison a ses limites,
et peut connaître des intermittences, des moments de brève
suspension, des hésitations), mais elle s’arrête trop tôt en chemin et
s’expose au risque de se réduire elle-même à n’être que la simple
recherche d’un bouc émissaire.
Qu’il y ait des intérêts sociaux concurrents et que l’un d’entre eux,
disposant de plus de moyens, puisse tenir la corde, ne signifie pas que
ce modèle soit intégralement valide. Oui, il y a des privilégiés, mais il
est inconcevable que le modèle social et les schémas éthiques qui
l’alimentent puissent tenir durablement par le seul effet des stratégies
et dispositifs mis au point par une unique classe sociale.
Si des politiques qui laissent en l’état des inégalités voire les
creusent sont possibles, c’est peut-être aussi parce qu’elles bénéficient
du soutien de ceux dont elle ne sert pas les intérêts. Si on s’oriente
dans cette direction, on peut alors comprendre que le renforcement
de la perception du creusement des inégalités puisse aussi contribuer
au creusement de ces mêmes inégalités.
LE SENS D’UNE DROITISATION
Dans une étude importante, publiée en 2010, deux chercheurs
américains, étudiant la situation dans leur pays entre 1952 et 2006, ont
établi que le creusement des inégalités est, de fait, une dynamique
qu’alimente aussi l’effet qui est le sien sur l’opinion publique9.
Leurs travaux s’appuient sur une méthode d’analyse grâce à
laquelle ils avaient déjà montré que l’augmentation des inégalités
entraînait presque mécaniquement une demande de baisse des
dépenses de l’État10.
L’étude de 2010 nous livre plusieurs enseignements
complémentaires : après avoir confirmé que les gens sont tout à fait
informés de l’évolution des inégalités – autrement dit, une
augmentation de la perception des inégalités correspond à une
augmentation réelle des inégalités ; ce qui est vrai aussi pour les plus
pauvres11 –, elle montre que, jusqu’à un certain point, lorsque la

perception des inégalités se renforce, les riches comme les pauvres
deviennent plus conservateurs sur le plan politique (ce qui se traduit
notamment par un soutien électoral plus fort apporté à des partis qui
souhaitent une diminution du rôle social de l’État)12 : « Les riches et
les pauvres réagissent de la même manière à l’évolution des
inégalités » ; ils « deviennent plus conservateurs à mesure que les
inégalités augmentent »13 : « L’inégalité économique se renforce elle-
même, non en raison d’une absence de réaction des pauvres, mais en
raison de la manière dont l’inégalité économique informe les
préférences exprimées par les riches autant que par les pauvres14. »
Ces travaux, aux résultats en partie contre-intuitifs, suscitent
immanquablement la perplexité, en particulier chez les progressistes
qui aimeraient bien pouvoir compter sur une sorte de rapport
mécanique entre la perception d’une injustice sociale et la mise en
branle politique de ceux qui en souffrent en premier lieu, pour y
mettre un terme.
Ce n’est pas toujours ce que l’on observe.
Il y a évidemment des différences importantes entre la France et
les États-Unis à cet égard. Aussi ne peut-on pas rabattre exactement
de tels résultats ni de telles discussions sur la situation française,
même si l’on s’accorde aussi à reconnaître une « droitisation » de la
société et des partis. Cette dernière oblige en un sens à développer
des hypothèses un peu différentes, précisément pour rendre compte
du fait que, un peu plus nettement qu’aux États-Unis, les gens en
France puissent, en connaissance de cause, en venir, à regret, à adopter
des comportements dont ils savent qu’ils contribuent à creuser les
inégalités.
Cette progression du conservatisme social prend notamment en
France la forme d’une tendance à privilégier de plus en plus les
formes électives, privées de la solidarité, au détriment de ses formes
publiques ; une tendance à renégocier le rapport à l’Etat-providence,
en défendant davantage le principe de réciprocité, en exigeant
davantage sur le plan de la conditionnalité des aides et en reculant sur
le terrain de l’universalité.
Quelques données rapides sur ce point :
42 Patrick Savidan
Depuis 2009, le rôle protecteur et stabilisateur de l’Etat-

providence s’est nettement affaibli. En France, comme dans tous les
pays européens, cet impact est devenu quasi inexistant en 2012.
(Causes probables : Essoufflement des composantes contra-cycliques
des prestations de protection sociale et les mesures plus structurelles
de consolidation budgétaire prises dans la plupart des pays. Austérité).
Alors même les Français continuent de penser que la protection
sociale joue un rôle important, on observe que « le soutien de
l’opinion à l’État-providence vacille15 ». Entre 2000 et 2013, on
enregistre une augmentation du nombre de Français jugeant qu’il est
excessif de consacrer un tiers du budget de la France à la protection
sociale (on passe de 14 à 21%) et ils sont moins nombreux à penser
que c’est insuffisant (on passe de 32% à 15%). Pour la première fois
depuis 35 ans, les Français estiment majoritairement que les aides
apportées aux familles sont suffisantes : ils étaient 31% à le penser en
2008, ils sont désormais 63%.
Dans le même ordre d’idées, la proportion de ceux qui souhaitent
une augmentation du RSA (490 euros en 2013) a diminué de 15
points entre 2009 et 2013, alors que celle-ci avait augmenté entre
2006 à 2009 (+ 12 points). Assez symptomatique de ce durcissement
des perceptions de l’assistance et de ceux qui en bénéficient : 78 %
des Français pensent qu’il faut privilégier les aides en nature plutôt
que les aides monétaires16.
Plus significatif encore : alors qu’en 2011, la majorité des Français
pensait que « le système de protection sociale permet d’atténuer les
conséquences de la crise économique en France », ils sont plus
nombreux, depuis 2012, à s’inquiéter davantage de la dette que du
financement de la protection sociale ; l’écart se creuse en 2013 (6
points) et selon toute probabilité, il s’est encore approfondi depuis17.
On observe également une tendance de plus en plus marquée à
expliquer par des facteurs individuels la pauvreté et l’exclusion ; s’y
manifeste aussi un durcissement des attitudes à l’égard de certaines
catégories de la population18 ; ce qu’enregistre d’ailleurs sans surprise
l’évolution des comportements électoraux. Il n’est pas anodin que,
dans ce contexte général, l’universalité de la protection sociale soit
davantage contestée. Le nombre de Français favorables à des
allocations chômage ou familiales universelles – des allocations qui ne
sont pas, autrement dit, seulement réservées aux plus pauvres ou aux
seuls cotisants, mais bénéficient à tous, sans distinction de catégorie

sociale et de statut professionnel – ne cesse de diminuer depuis 2008.
Cette tendance a été confirmée par une étude récente du Credoc19.
Comment comprendre cette mutation en cours intervenant dans
l’économie de la solidarité (plus de solidarité privée, moins de
solidarité publique ou un autre type, plus bismarckien que
beveridgien) ?
On observera, de ce point de vue, une sorte de convergence
inattendue entre la France et les Etats-Unis (inattendue dans la
mesure où la perception de la solidarité et du rôle de la puissance
publique à cet égard est si différente de part et d’autre) qui, à mon
sens s’explique par une forte défiance, croissante en France, à l’égard
des gouvernants et une croyance plus faible que jamais en la capacité
de ces derniers à trouver et mettre en œuvre des solutions
raisonnables aux problèmes sociaux.
Cela traduit, chez les Français, un sentiment, qui est aussi un
regret : que la situation soit telle désormais que l’individu doive
surtout compter sur lui-même et sur les ressources sociales qu’il est en
mesure de mobiliser, s’il veut pouvoir se procurer, non pas
simplement un certain niveau ou mode de vie, mais le type
d’assurance, d’aisance, auquel il aspire pour ses proches et pour lui-
même.
Cette défiance à l’égard des institutions publiques a pour effet de
renforcer les valeurs de la compétition et d’affaiblir celles de la
coopération (et les gouvernants ont contribué directement à cette
évolution) : les individus cherchent à sécuriser leurs positions mais
sont conduits à traiter cette sécurité comme un bien privé, non
comme un bien commun. C’est à mon sens ce qui contribue à
développer l’oligarchie en Franche, mais pas au sens où nos
démocraties deviendraient des oligarchies (c’est à mon avis plus
compliqué encore que cela), mais au sens où la tentation oligarchique
se démocratise : chacun aspire au type de sécurité et d’aisance dont
jouissent les oligarques du nouveau régime.
Dans la mesure où il apparaît que la sécurité ne saurait être donnée
à tout le monde, nous en sommes réduits à la revendiquer comme
une sorte d’ultime privilège, inaugurant ainsi ce qui s’apparente à son
troisième âge.
44 Patrick Savidan
TROISIÈME ÂGE DU PRIVILÈGE

Nous avions le privilège d’Ancien régime, qui marquait
l’institution d’un ordre social et politique fait de rangs, de droits et
d’exemptions spécifiques servant les intérêts de classe de la noblesse.
Dénoncé et abattu par la « vigoureuse génération » de 1789, il en est
resté un, profond, redoutable par les effets qu’il produit : la propriété.
Tocqueville voyait celle-ci jouer le même rôle que la naissance dans la
production de l’injustice telle que la percevaient ceux qui en étaient
privés. C’était pour lui le dernier privilège. Nous n’en sommes
cependant plus exactement là. Ou du moins il faut spécifier la place
qu’occupe désormais la propriété dans une configuration sociale et
normative plus englobante. Ce dernier privilège semble avoir pris
pour nous une autre signification. Il semble désormais désigner
d’abord une capacité, celle de se soustraire à l’arbitraire, à
l’incertitude, au risque négatif20.
La faillite politique de l’idéal d’égalité provient de là. Pourquoi ?
Parce qu’il s’agit de gagner des positions de contrôle qui permettent
d’amortir le choc de l’arbitraire et de la contingence, quitte à le faire
peser sur autrui. Les autres, dans une telle perspective, deviennent
ainsi de simples variables d’ajustement, un matériau, que l’on espère
point trop sonore, qui amortit les coups, en absorbe l’onde de choc
mais ne l’extériorise pas, a fortiori ne l’externalise pas.
Se met ainsi en place un mécanisme aux effets pervers. Dans le
contexte social, politique et économique actuel, nous désirons mieux
maîtriser nos conditions de vie. Pour y parvenir, il faut que nous nous
soustrayions autant que faire se peut à la domination. Dans une
perspective que le néo-républicanisme a contribué à actualiser, cela
implique de neutraliser autant que possible les forces qui peuvent
exercer sur nos vies des interférences arbitraires21. Or c’est là que le
bât blesse. Dans un contexte fortement individualisé, marqué par le
sentiment d’une certaine impuissance sociale et économique des
gouvernements, sans configuration collective, politique, du temps,
s’impose la conviction que, pour ne pas subir l’arbitraire, il faut
l’externaliser, pour ne pas être dominé, il faut détenir les leviers de la
domination.
Ainsi se généralise le goût de l’oligarchie, ainsi se démocratise ou
se diffuse la tentation oligarchique.
De cette évolution, est solidaire un déplacement dans les

représentations des divisions sociales en régime démocratique22.
Jusque dans les années 1970, la division sociale jugée la plus
déterminante, celle à partir de laquelle se structurait légitimement et
spontanément l’offre politique, était celle des intérêts socio-
économiques. Depuis, tendent à s’imposer comme formes de division
les plus problématiques, les désaccords moraux et le pluralisme
identitaire.
Plusieurs facteurs peuvent expliquer un tel déplacement ; d’un
côté, des facteurs liés à la question sociale : désindustrialisation,
affaiblissement du marxisme, désaffection pour les organisations
politiques d’obédience communistes, montée en puissance du
néolibéralisme23 et les mutations du capitalisme24 ; de l’autre, des
facteurs marquant le renforcement de préoccupations morales et
identitaires : décolonisation, émergence de nouveaux mouvements
sociaux, revendications en faveur de l’émancipation des femmes,
évolution des mœurs (sexualité, famille, etc.), questions de frontières,
d’immigration et d’intégration, développement de certaines
technologies dont l’application soulève des questionnements éthiques
dont des communautés de croyances ont pu se saisir.
Ces pluralismes-là débouchent sur des types de conflit qui sont
apparus progressivement plus importants, plus urgents, plus difficiles
à surmonter que les conflits socio-économiques traditionnels.
Ce déplacement dans l’ordre des préoccupations, de la question
des inégalités redistributives à celle de l’identité, me semble traduire
aussi une reconfiguration de la figure du conflit et des représentations
de la domination.
La tentation oligarchique passe par l’appropriation d’un régime
d’inégalités, par rapport auquel il s’agit de bien se « placer », pour
externaliser les facteurs de fragilisation sociale, selon un mouvement
dont les principales victimes, mais non pas les seules, sont des
populations repérées selon des critères identitaires. Le durcissement
de la société à l’égard des minorités peut ainsi se comprendre comme
une conséquence de la logique inégalitaire, tant du point de vue de la
protection sociale que dans les rapports au marché du travail25. Il
participe de cet effort constant de protection et d’externalisation.
46 Patrick Savidan
Aujourd’hui la lutte s’est en partie individualisée et le type de biens

visés par celle-ci a changé, mais quant au principe organisant un
partage inégal entre petit nombre et grand nombre, il reste inchangé.
Et la tolérance à l’égard de la tendance oligarchique de la société ne
peut se comprendre que parce que chacun aspire à cette condition
plus protectrice que les privilégiés possèdent. À ce titre, l’ampleur de
l’écart n’est pas un problème.
On se rappelle ce qu’en disait Tocqueville : ce n’est pas « l’excès de
ses privilèges » qui fait périr une aristocratie. « Si chacun croit pouvoir
un jour entrer dans un corps d’élite, l’étendue des droits de ce corps
sera ce qui le rendra cher à ceux-là même qui n’en font pas encore
partie. De cette manière, les vices mêmes de l’institution feront sa
force ; et ne dites pas que les chances sont faibles : il n’importe guère
si le but est élevé. Ce qui entraîne le cœur humain, c’est bien moins la
certitude d’un petit succès que la possibilité d’une haute fortune.
Augmentez la grandeur de l’objet à atteindre, et vous pourrez sans
crainte diminuer les chances de l’obtenir26 ». Les sociétés de loterie
nationale ne s’y sont pas trompées. Leurs stratégies commerciales ne
font qu’enregistrer cette particularité de la psychologie humaine à
l’âge démocratique encore, que corroborent aussi leurs succès
commerciaux27 !
Dans les circonstances présentes, ce dernier privilège dénoue ce
qui pourrait sembler une contradiction : la réprobation ne porte pas
tant sur la condition des plus riches que sur le fait que cette classe soit
parvenue à se barricader derrière ses avantages, à sécuriser sa position
culminante et à jouer serré. On leur reproche surtout d’avoir réussi à
obtenir ce que chacun semble vouloir pour soi et pour ses proches.
Ce qui doit nous conduire à penser que si le privilège en question se
maintient, c’est parce qu’une grande partie d’entre nous espère encore
pouvoir se mettre, par ses propres moyens, en position d’en
bénéficier soi-même.
UNE NOUVELLE COMPLICATION DÉMOCRATIQUE
Notre situation politique est ainsi des plus paradoxales. Pour
exprimer ce paradoxe, nous pouvons revenir à l’œuvre de Machiavel.
Le Florentin a mis en évidence, comme fait premier et irréductible,
une division sociale fondamentale qui oppose les Grands et le Peuple
et tient au désir des premiers de commander, d’opprimer et au désir
des seconds de n’être ni commandés, ni opprimés28. Bien loin de
condamner cependant un tel conflit et de souhaiter qu’il y soit mis un

terme, Machiavel choisit d’en souligner la dimension positive. On le
voit au chapitre IV du livre premier de ses Discours sur la première décade
de Tite-Live, lorsqu’il déclare que « les bonnes lois » sont en général « le
produit de ces agitations que la plupart condamnent si
inconsidérément. Quiconque examinera avec soin l’issue de ces
mouvements ne trouvera pas qu’ils aient été cause d’aucune violence
qui ait tourné au préjudice du bien public ; il se convaincra même
qu’ils ont fait naître des règlements à l’avantage de la liberté29 ». Dans
une telle perspective, le consensus serait le signe que la liberté vacille
ou a déjà sombré.
Mais Machiavel ne se contente pas de souligner les vertus de la
conflictualité sociale et des protestations ; il va plus loin encore et
attire notre attention sur les dangers du conservatisme : pour lui, « les
plus grands troubles » viennent souvent de ceux qui veulent
« conserver », et non pas tant de ceux qui veulent « acquérir », car
« l’homme ne croit s’assurer ce qu’il tient déjà qu’en acquérant de
nouveau ; et d’ailleurs ces nouvelles acquisitions sont autant de
moyens de force et de puissance pour abuser30 ».
L’impossibilité qu’il y a à fixer les choses dans une sorte
d’équilibre illusoire – qui n’est d’ailleurs pas même souhaitable –
permet de ne pas se méprendre sur la profondeur de la division
originaire du social qui continue d’alimenter le conflit dont la
république ne saurait faire l’économie. Le peuple, porté par le désir de
liberté qui le définit et le souci de ne pas subir l’arbitraire et la
domination, est voué à vouloir toujours l’incarner, contre le désir de
domination qui anime les Grands.
Qu’en est-il cependant de ce désir de liberté que Machiavel
attribue si généreusement au peuple ? L’histoire ne nous donne-t-elle
pas aussi l’exemple de peuples qui se soumettent parfois à un point
que l’on ne peut expliquer qu’en présupposant un certain désir de
servitude ? On sait combien cette « complication », pour reprendre la
formule de Claude Lefort31, a marqué les esprits. Elle permettait de
rendre en partie compte des expériences totalitaires bien sûr, mais
aussi, moins dramatiquement, d’expliquer l’inertie politique, l’absence
de résistance forte à la domination. Bien souvent, les critiques
contemporains du néolibéralisme puisent d’ailleurs encore dans cet
48 Patrick Savidan
arsenal de concepts. Est-il vrai que le Peuple puisse se retourner

contre lui-même, en cédant à la « fantasmagorie de l’Un32 » ?
L’histoire témoigne que cela a pu se produire. Ce qui suffit à
nourrir la crainte que cela puisse arriver encore. Comme le rappelle
Miguel Abensour, cette complication ne vaut toutefois pas
« résignation » : « Il ne s’agit pas de transformer l’énigme de la
servitude volontaire en destin, ni d’y voir l’effet de je ne sais quel
mystérieux ‘péché originel’ qui affecterait la condition humaine en
tant que condition politique. Replacée dans la dynamique du champ
politique, cette énigme prend sens en regard de la fragilité de la
condition ontologique de pluralité. » Et Miguel Abensour de conclure
sur ce point : « Telle est la complication avec laquelle les combattants
de la liberté et de l’émancipation doivent désormais apprendre à
compter33. »
Que les situations de servitude volontaire puissent être renversées,
nous pouvons certainement en convenir. Mais cette complication
peut-elle aussi éclairer le problème que prétend désigner l’idée de
démocratisation de tendances oligarchiques, telle que je l’ai analysée,
c’est-à-dire à partir des mutations survenant dans l’économie générale
de la solidarité ? Je ne le crois, et d’abord pour ces raisons multiples
que nous avons de ne pas aborder aujourd’hui la question des
inégalités, et par exemple celle des inégalités de revenus ou des
inégalités scolaires, à partir de l’idée de servitude volontaire. Dans ce
domaine, nous avons vu qu’il y a en effet conscience des injustices et
dénonciation des formes qu’elle prend.
La logique affectant l’économie générale de la solidarité et ses
effets politiques me donnent à penser que nous devrions peut-être
envisager la possibilité d’une complication autre : Machiavel soulignait
l’aspiration du peuple à ne pas être dominé, mais la domination ne
peut-elle pas être également envisagée comme un moyen de se
prémunir du risque d’être soi-même exposé à la domination ? À
travers cette possibilité, ce n’est pas simplement un désir d’être Grand
parmi les Grands qui, dans nos sociétés, s’affirmerait, mais celui –
parce que la médiation de l’État et de la loi ne joue plus de manière
adéquate à nos yeux dans le champ social – de résister à la
domination, par la domination. Nous consentons, en ce sens, à la
domination, mais selon une perspective qui ne correspond pas au
schéma de la servitude volontaire. Nous consentons à la domination,
certes, mais en tant que dominants ou en tant que nous aspirons à

l’être34.
On comprend alors qu’à la lumière de l’hypothèse d’une diffusion
de la tentation oligarchique, nous puissions parler, dans le cas qui
nous occupe, d’une manière de céder à l’oppression qui puisse se
muer en consentement des dominants (effectifs, potentiels ou
aspirants) à la domination. La clef de l’énigme de la démocratisation
de la tentation oligarchique se situerait là.
Cette thèse peut surprendre. Il faut donc en préciser le sens et la
portée.
Pour décrire la domination dans une perspective néo-républicaine,
Philip Pettit, un philosophe de l’université de Princeton, a proposé
d’exclure du nombre des interférences vectrices de domination, celles
qui ne sont pas intentionnelles, et s’avèrent liées au hasard, à nos
propres limites, aux effets non voulus de la concurrence en vue de
l’obtention de biens rares35. Ces spécifications sont importantes parce
qu’elles permettent de ne pas diluer la notion de domination, d’éviter
que toute interférence devienne, au seul motif qu’elle serait subie, une
forme expresse de domination. Dans cette perspective, seule peut être
tenue pour un acte de domination l’interférence intentionnelle, telle
qu’elle s’exprime par la contrainte exercée sur un corps, sur la volonté
(par des sanctions ou des menaces de sanction), par la manipulation
(fixation de l’agenda des questions prioritaires, formation non
rationnelle des croyances et des désirs des individus, altération des
effets de leurs actions).
Ce souci de conserver à la domination un sens suffisamment
déterminé pour être utile me semble tout à fait nécessaire, mais je me
demande toutefois si la notion d’intentionnalité ne devrait pas être
élargie. Dans des sociétés telles que les nôtres, la domination semble
aujourd’hui plus souvent structurelle qu’intentionnelle. Vouloir
réduire la domination ne suppose-t-il donc pas de s’attacher à penser
la part intentionnelle du structurel, ou plus exactement de proposer
une redescription d’une part du structurel en termes
d’intentionnalité ?
Quand je m’interroge sur l’éventualité d’une démocratisation de la
tentation oligarchique, je ne veux pas dire que les gens puissent
vouloir disposer directement du pouvoir de dominer – il existe bien
50 Patrick Savidan
sûr de telles personnes, mais nous n’avons pas de raison d’en tirer une
norme anthropologique et sociale. Je veux simplement dire que nous
participons à la formation et au maintien de rapports sociaux que
nous contribuons à définir, pour les raisons que j’ai indiquées
précédemment, sur un mode dont nous savons qu’il revient à
externaliser autant que faire se peut la domination. Ce sont les
rapports sociaux, les pratiques, les institutions résultant de ces
interactions qui se révèlent ensuite source de domination pour
autrui36.
Je prends rapidement un exemple pour préciser ce point. Philip
Pettit propose de ne pas décrire en termes de domination les effets
naturels de la chance. Il a évidemment raison. Si je reçois une tuile sur
la tête par un soir de tempête, j’aurais quelque difficulté à vous
convaincre – et c’est heureux – que c’est en raison d’une domination
qui s’exerce sur moi. Mais nous savons bien aussi que les choses ne
sont pas toujours aussi nettes, que la frontière du « naturel » et du
« social », du « social » et du « politique », n’est pas toujours aisée à
déterminer. Certaines catastrophes naturelles, telles que le passage de
l’Ouragan Katrina, en 2005, sur le territoire des États-Unis, et en
particulier dans le Mississipi, le montrent bien. Le nombre de morts et
l’amplitude des dégâts ont rapidement révélé l’impact déterminant de
facteurs qui étaient d’abord et avant tout sociaux et politiques. La
question raciale est devenue une clef de compréhension centrale de ce
qui s’était passé, selon des modalités dont la gravité est apparue
suffisamment forte pour que soit forgé un néologisme : le
katrinagate37. Il y a évidemment une part de malchance à se trouver là
au moment où l’ouragan passe, mais il est bien établi que, dans de
telles situations, la malchance n’explique pas tout. Ce type d’analyse a
pu être mené sur d’autres genres de phénomènes climatiques, par
exemple des canicules, avec les mêmes résultats38.
Reconsidérer les frontières de l’intentionnel et du non-intentionnel
me semble tout aussi nécessaire pour les questions d’incapacité ou de
rareté. Ne pas être capable d’accomplir une action peut évidemment
tenir à des limitations qui ne doivent rien à la domination. Je ne suis
pas capable de courir 100 mètres en moins de 10 secondes, et je serais
bien mal venu d’y voir l’expression d’une domination. Mais la capacité
peut aussi avoir, nous le savons, des déterminants sociaux et
politiques. Un examen critique des principes et du fonctionnement du
principe d’égalité des chances, de la manière dont se constitue le
rapport entre capacité et mérite, permet d’en rendre compte assez

aisément39. Quant à la rareté, sans même parler de ses usages
marketing, nous savons qu’elle peut être socialement produite40.
Dans tous ces cas, il semble que l’intentionnalité, pour n’être pas
directe, n’en semble pas moins présente. Et si nous allons au bout de
l’idée selon laquelle il ne saurait y avoir, pour nous, collectivement, de
prises sur les évolutions souhaitables de notre société sans
présupposer que nous puissions être parties prenantes des problèmes
à résoudre, alors il nous faut présupposer aussi que des interférences
en apparence non-intentionnelles puissent faire l’objet d’une
redescription qui en fasse apparaître la dimension intentionnelle. C’est
aussi ce qui explique que nous puissions exercer une forme de
domination dans la société, sans l’avoir pourtant directement voulu.
Allons un peu plus loin dans cette direction. Philip Pettit,
cherchant à préciser la notion de domination, souligne qu’il peut y
avoir domination même quand aucune interférence ne s’exerce. Ce
point me paraît essentiel pour caractériser le type de domination que
j’ai en vue lorsque je m’interroge sur l’éventualité d’une
démocratisation de la tentation oligarchique. Je ne crois pas que le
problème tienne en effet à la surreprésentation sociale de personnes
essentiellement mues par le désir de dominer autrui. Suivant en cela la
leçon de Machiavel, je conçois plus aisément que le plus grand
nombre puisse essentiellement vouloir ne pas être dominé. Cela
signifie que, se trouvant en position de domination, il n’est pas assuré
qu’il en fasse usage directement.
On pourra ici me reprocher un certain optimisme. Je répondrais
en soulignant deux choses : d’abord que je ne parle pas ici de
situations extrêmes, provoquées par des idéologies violentes et
déshumanisantes, mais cherche à proposer une description de
mécanismes qui me semblent à l’œuvre dans des sociétés
démocratiques injustes, mais relativement stables et inclusives en
droit. Ensuite, que la question n’est même pas de savoir – dans un tel
contexte – si l’individu use de sa position de domination pour
promouvoir un intérêt arbitraire. Le seul fait qu’il soit en mesure de le
faire si bon lui semble est déjà en lui-même une forme de domination
qui produit des effets de cet ordre. C’est ce que veut dire Philip Pettit
lorsqu’il montre qu’il peut parfaitement y avoir domination sans
interférence. De cette dernière résultent des effets dont le plus
52 Patrick Savidan
manifeste est bien entendu la rupture de fait de l’égalité. Même si la

personne en position dominante ne fait pas usage de son pouvoir, « la
victime ne pourra jouir du statut psychologique attaché au fait d’être
l’égal de l’autre : elle se trouve dans une situation où la crainte et la
déférence demeurent constamment à l’ordre du jour, et non pas la
franchise qui accompagne l’égalité intersubjective41 ».
Cette complication constitue un obstacle majeur à l’émancipation.
L’aspiration à l’égalité dans la liberté prend une forme qui n’est pas
celle de la servitude volontaire, mais du fait de sa fragmentarisation
donne un cours plus libre à la domination, que celle-ci soit assortie
d’interférences effectives ou non. La démocratisation de la tentation
oligarchique peut se comprendre ainsi. Elle s’intensifie d’autant plus
qu’il ne s’agit pas seulement de modifier un état de fait, mais de poser
des jalons pour s’assurer une maîtrise de l’avenir.
Claude Lefort avait, de manière très suggestive, fait remarquer que
tous les conflits dans la société n’ont pas même valeur. Certains
permettent à la démocratie d’avancer, d’autres la plongent dans des
logiques régressives. Il écrivait :
Quand l’insécurité des individus s’accroît, en conséquence d’une crise
économique, ou des ravages d’une guerre, quand le conflit entre les
classes et les groupes s’exaspère et ne trouve plus sa résolution
symbolique dans la sphère politique, quand le pouvoir paraît déchoir au
plan réel, en vient à apparaître comme quelque chose de particulier au
service des intérêts et des appétits de vulgaires ambitieux, bref se montre
dans la société, et que du même coup celle-ci se fait voir comme morcelée,
alors se développe le phantasme du peuple-un, la quête d’une identité
substantielle, d’un corps social soudé à sa tête, d’un pouvoir incarnateur,
d’un État délivré de la division42.
Pour Claude Lefort, ces circonstances peuvent provoquer un
« dérèglement de la logique démocratique » et entraîner le
surgissement de la société totalitaire. Dans les circonstances que je me
suis attaché à décrire, il me semble que nous avons affaire à une autre
forme de dérèglement : celui auquel préside une sorte de
démocratisation ou de généralisation du désir oligarchique.
L’insécurité sociale enflamme un désir de certitude qui nous arrache à
la logique démocratique.
Dans cette configuration, la diffusion sociale d’un conflit qui tend
à se fragmentariser, n’étant plus autant inscrite dans l’horizon du
droit, perd son sens proprement politique ; elle nous éloigne en tout
cas de cet horizon auquel, selon Machiavel, nous devons toutes les
« bonnes lois ». Le conflit se déconflictualise ainsi, à mesure que la
politique et le temps se dépolitisent.
Nous nous retrouvons ainsi acteurs et victimes de cette situation.
Plus nous en sommes victimes, plus nous en sommes acteurs. Plus
nous en sommes acteurs, plus nous en sommes victimes.
NOTES
[1] « Classement Forbes : record absolu du nombre de milliardaires dans le
monde », Le Monde, 9 mars 2011.
[2] Voir par exemple Philippe Steiner, Les rémunérations obscènes, Paris, La
Découverte, 2011.
[3] R. W. McChesney, « Introduction », dans N. Chomsky, Le profit avant
l’homme, trad. J. Maas, Paris Fayard, 2005 ; David Harvey, « Le « Nouvel
impérialisme » : accumulation par expropriation », Actuel Marx 1/2004
(n° 35), p. 71-90 ; et du même A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2005. Voir également N. Klein, La Stratégie du
choc. La montée du capitalisme du désastre (2007), trad. L. Saint-Martin et P.
Gagné, Paris, Léméac/Acte Sud, 2008, et Jeffrey A. Winters, Oligarchy,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011. En France, Hervé
Kempf, L'oligarchie ça suffit, vive la démocratie, Paris, Seuil, 2011.
[4] Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in
America, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2013.
[5] Voir la page consacrée aux travaux de cette task force sur le site de
l’Association de science politique américain, en ligne :
http://www.apsanet.org/content.asp?contentid=614.
[6] Thomas Piketty et Emmanuel Saez, « Income Inequality in the United
States, 1913-1998 », Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1), 2003, p. 1-39 ;
ibid., « Income inequality in the United States, 1913-2002 », dans
Anthony B. Atkinson et Thomas Piketty (dir.), Top Incomes over the
Twentieth Century : A Contrast Between Continental European and English-
speaking Countries, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.
[7] Robert Solow, « Piketty is right », New republic, 22 avril 2014, en ligne :
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-
century-thomas-piketty-reviewed.
[8] Rousseau, « Projet de constitution pour la Corse », in Œuvres complètes,
op.cit., p. 939.
[9] Nathan J. Kelly et Peter K. Enns, « Inequality and the Dynamics of
Public Opinion: The Self-Reinforcing Link Between Economic
54 Patrick Savidan
Inequality and Mass Preferences », American Journal of Political Science,

vol. 54, n° 4, octobre 2010, p. 855-870.
[10] Roland Benabou, « Inequal Societies: Income Distribution and the
Social Contract », American Economic Review, 90(1), mars 2000, p. 96-129.
Public Opinion : The Self-Reinforcing Link Between Economic
Inequality and Mass Preferences », op. cit., p. 867 : « On ne peut
certainement pas dire que ceux qui se situent au bas de l’échelle sociale
deviennent plus conservateurs suite à une augmentation des inégalités
parce qu’ils ne voient pas ce qui se passe vraiment. »
[12] Cette contribution à la discussion infirme donc la thèse inverse selon
laquelle l’augmentation de la perception des inégalités entraîne un
déplacement de l’opinion publique vers des positions de type progressiste
s’agissant du rôle de l’État. Voir Alan H. Meltzer et Scott F. Richard, « A
Rational Theory of the Size of Government », Journal of Political Economy,
89(4), p. 914-927.
Public Opinion: The Self-Reinforcing Link Between Economic
Inequality and Mass Preferences », op. cit., p. 868.
[14] Ibid., p. 856.
[15] Régis Bigot, « En 2014, le soutien de l’opinion à l’État-providence
vacille », Credoc, Note de synthèse, n° 11, 2014.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Baromètre opinion DREES 2013, février 2014, op. cit., p. 5.
[18] Nicolas Duvoux, Le Nouvel Âge de la solidarité : pauvreté, précarité et politiques
publiques, Paris, Seuil/République des idées, 2012.
[19] N. Guisse, S. Hoibian & J. Müller, « Regards sur la protection sociale et
les politiques de solidarité », Credoc, Premiers résultats, n° S4301,
septembre 2015, étude réalisée à partir de 2000 entretiens :
(http://www.credoc.fr/publications/abstract.php?ref=Sou2015-4301).
[20] En référence à ce que Robert Castel plaçait dans l’individualisme qu’il
disait « positif ». Voir, sur ce point, Les métamorphoses de la question sociale,
op. cit.
[21] Ph. Pettit, On the People's Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy,
op. cit.
[22] Nous suivons ici l’analyse de Dominique Leydet et Hervé Pourtois dans
« Pluralisme et conflit dans les théories contemporaines de la
démocratie », Archives de philosophie du droit, n° 49, 2005, p. 71-92.
[23] Sur la montée en puissance du néolibéralisme et les difficultés, pour les
intellectuels les plus en vue dans les années 1970 et 1980, à en concevoir
la nature, voir S. Audier, Penser le « néolibéralisme ». Foucault, le néolibéralisme
et la crise du socialisme, Bordeaux, Les Éditions du bord de l’eau, 2015.
[24] Dans une bibliographie abondante, je signale la démarche originale de
Stéphane Haber qui s’attache, dans Penser le néocapitalisme (Paris, Les
prairies ordinaires, 2013), à examiner les formes multiples de tensions et
torsions entre « système » et « monde de la vie » qu’entraîne le capitalisme
contemporain.
[25] Anthony F. Heath et Sin Yi Cheung (dir.) Unequal Chances. Ethnic

Minorities in Western Labour Markets, Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2007.
[26] Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, op.cit., p. 60.
[27] Chiffres d’affaires en hausse constante – tout particulièrement en Italie,
en Espagne et en Grande-Bretagne –, rentabilité toujours plus grande,
multiplication des points de vente – en France, on en compte près de
45 000, soit environ 1 détaillant pour 1 400 habitants, mieux que les
boulangeries ou les bureaux de poste. Voir Les Jeux de hasard et d’argent en
France, dir. F. Trucy, Rapport d’information du Sénat, Commission des
finances, n° 223 (2001-2002).
[28] Cl. Lefort, « Préface » dans Machiavel, Discours sur la première décade de
Tite-Live, Paris, Champs-Flammarion, 1985, p. 10.
[29] Machiavel, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live (1512-1517, publiés en
1531), op. cit., p. 44-45.
[30] Ibid., Livre I, chapitre V. p. 48.
[31] Voir son lumineux commentaire dans Étienne de la Boétie, Discours sur
la servitude volontaire (1548), Paris, Payot, 1978.
[32] Voir également de Cl. Lefort, Un homme en trop. Réflexion sur l’Archipel du
Goulag, Paris, Seuil, 1976.
[33] Michel Abensour, Pour une philosophie politique critique, Paris, Sens &
Tonka, 2009, p. 26.
[34] Je rejoins ici la thèse de Nicole-Claude Mathieu qui a su montrer, à
partir de la condition des femmes, que céder à une domination n’est pas
y consentir et que si l’on peut sans doute parler de consentement à la
domination c’est d’abord du point de vue de ceux qui l’exercent, et non
pas du point de vue de celles qui la subissent. « Quand céder n’est pas
consentir », L’arraisonnement des femmes : essais en anthropologie des sexes, Paris,
EHESS, 1991, p. 169-243. Dans le cas des ouvriers, voir Michael
Burawoy, « Le procès de production comme jeu » (1979), trad. J. A.
Calderón, Tracés, 14|2008, mise en ligne : 30 mai 2010. En ligne :
http://traces.revues.org/38. Voir également Lucie Goussard, « Le
consentement limité au travail. Résistances et consentement des salariés
de l’ingénierie automobile », Tracés, n° 14, mars 2008, p. 175-194. Dans
cet article, l’auteur s’intéresse aux formes de résistance légère au travail
qui peuvent contribuer au consentement subjectif du travailleur.
[35] Ph. Pettit, Républicanisme. Une théorie de la liberté et du gouvernement, op. cit.,
p. 78.
[36] En ce sens, l’analyse peut être mise en parallèle avec la notion de
« configuration de domination » forgée par Max Weber. Celle-ci me
semble articuler de manière forte les dimensions structurelle et
intentionnelle de la domination – cette dernière signifiant pour le
sociologue allemand « le fait qu’une volonté affirmée (un ‘ordre’) du ou
des ‘dominants’ cherche à influencer l’action d’autrui (du ou des
‘dominés’) et l’influence effectivement, dans la mesure où, à un degré
significatif d’un point de vue social, cette action se déroule comme si les
dominés avaient fait du contenu de cet ordre, en tant que tel, la maxime
de leur action (‘obéissance’). » (La Domination, Paris, La Découverte, coll.
56 Patrick Savidan
« Politique et sociétés », 2013, édition critique établie par Y. Sintomer,

trad. I. Kalinowski, p. 49). Ce que montre très bien Weber, c’est que
l’enjeu pour ceux qui occupent ou aspirent à occuper des positions
dominantes est d’assurer la permanence de cette configuration, pour
écarter l’instabilité des échanges sociaux susceptible de nuire à la
constitution et au maintien de l’ordre qui leur est favorable. Ce qui dans
une perspective machiavélienne impliquera de chercher à toujours
renforcer les positions acquises.
[37] Chester Hartman & Gregory Squires (dir.), There Is No Such Thing as a
Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina, Routledge, 2006.
[38] Voir notamment l’excellent ouvrage d’Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A
Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
2006.
[39] Je me permets de renvoyer sur ce point à mon ouvrage, Repenser l’égalité
des chances, op. cit.
[40] Bruno Ventelou, Au-delà de la rareté, la croissance économique comme
construction sociale, Paris, Albin Michel, 2001.
[41] Ph. Pettit, Républicanisme. Une théorie de la liberté et du gouvernement, op. cit.,
p. 91.
[42] Cl. Lefort, « La question de la démocratie » (1983) dans ibid., Essais sur le
politique. XIXe-XXe siècles, Paris, Seuil, 1986, p. 31.
RÉSUMÉ
Depuis la fin des années 1980, les inégalités ont de nouveau augmenté. Les
conséquences ne sont pas seulement d’ordre économique mais elles
interrogent sur l’avenir de la démocratie. Aujourd’hui tout porte à craindre
que la concentration actuelle des pouvoirs et des richesses ne conduisent au
retour des oligarchies, où les pouvoirs prennent en compte les préférences
des plus riches alors qu'une démocratie prend en compte les préférences du
plus grand nombre. Rousseau avait déjà dénoncé cette forme de pouvoir, les
études de Piketty et Solow viennent confirmer la tendance actuelle. Mais pire
encore le pouvoir de type oligarchique se démocratise : les préférences des
riches deviennent aussi celles des plus pauvres. Moins d’Etat-providence et
moins de dette publique contre des assurances privées, les puissants
parviennent à convaincre les plus pauvres que ces mesures sont bonnes pour
notre avenir. Ainsi la seconde partie de cet article pose la question de savoir
si la tentation oligarchique ne se traduit-elle pas par un consentement à la
domination.
THOMAS PIKETTY LOOKS BACK ON THE SUCCESS OF

CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY*
Arthur Goldhammer: I’d like to begin by asking you to summarize

the findings of your book Capital in the 21st Century, which has brought
the phenomenon of inequality to the attention of a large global
audience. In the past you’ve said that the book is not an individual
work but the work of an équipe, so perhaps you’d like to begin by
telling us something about your team of collaborators, how you put it
together, and how the research that went into the book was done.
Thomas Piketty: Yes, I’d be happy to, but first let me say how glad I
am to be here with Art. I think this book would not have been as
successful as it has been without your help in particular. When I read
my book in English, I can’t believe I wrote it. Thanks to my contract
with Harvard University Press and with you as translator, I knew
from the beginning that although I was fortunate enough to be able
to write in my own language, I would not be writing for the French
public alone. I would be writing for an international audience. And so
I conceived the book differently than I would have if I had been
writing first for a French audience in the hope that someday it might
be translated.
* The following remarks are a lightly edited version of remarks made by

Thomas Piketty at a colloquium at the American University of Paris in
February 2016. He is interviewed by his American translator and The
Tocqueville Review editorial board member Arthur Goldhammer.
58 Thomas Piketty
I met Art at Harvard well before I began writing the book, and we
had a very interesting discussion at dinner after the presentation. Art
told me that he was translating one of Pierre Rosanvallon’s books at
the time, which I already knew from Pierre and others. So I was
interested in whether you might possibly be interested in the project,
and happily you were.
The book’s publication has been an incredible experience for me. The
immense success of the English edition had a huge impact on the
book’s reception in the rest of the world. Also, at the end of the day,
I’m very proud that of the 2.4 million or so copies that have been
printed world-wide, about 600,000 are in English, or one-quarter of
the total.
One-quarter is a lot, but it also means that three-quarters of the world
is reading the book in other languages, which is important to
remember because sometimes people in the US tend to imagine that
English is the only language. In the end, sales in Chinese, Japanese,
French, German, and Portuguese are greater than in English.
Arthur Goldhammer: If I can interrupt for one moment. Your
Japanese translator came to see me, and he confessed that he used my
English translation.
Thomas Piketty: I was about to say that. I just made this same
remark to a journalist from Le Monde. In fact, in Korea I was told that
it would be difficult to find a good French/Korean translator and
asked whether they could use the English version as the basis of the
Korean translation. The English translation was so good that that I
said, “Yes, please do use it, no problem. It’s perfect, maybe better
than the French version!”
So, yes, the English version played a huge role, not only because it
was used as the basis of the translation into a number of other
languages but also because the success in the US attracted much more
attention than the book would otherwise have received. So the first
person to whom this book really owes a lot is definitely Art.
Now, there’s also another group of people who played an immense
role, a very international team that collected the historical data I tried
to present and integrate in the book. In 2001 I published a book on
the history of income and wealth inequality in France called, “Les
hauts revenus en France au XXe,” which was never translated. Now it
T. Piketty looks back on the success of Capital in the 21st century 59
will be, but at the time nobody wanted to translate it because it was
800 pages just on France, and this really was too much.
But this first book had the virtue of launching an international
research project. I wrote a summary version in English, and Tony
Atkinson from Britain, who reads French very well, started to do
similar work on Britain, and I also began working with Emmanuel
Saez on the US, as well as with Facundo Alveredo from Argentina
and Abhijit Banerjee from India.
So it became a very international research project covering more than
30 countries, and our work has continued since the book’s
publication. One of the most interesting impacts of the book is that it
led more governments and more tax administrations to open their
fiscal archives and historical data than was the case before. Take
Brazil, for example. Brazil is not properly covered in the book
because we didn’t have access to Brazilian tax records. But then
journalists began asking the government why Brazil was not in the
book, and eventually we got access to the tax data. Same for Mexico,
same for Korea, same for Chile. So we are extending our work in
many directions. We are also trying to get access in West Africa. So
clearly, the book’s success created pressure that induced more
governments to open their archives.
Of course, data is not everything, because data is imperfect. It’s
always a social construct of some sort, which depends on institutions.
Whether or not to adopt a certain kind of tax system or to allow
public scrutiny of fiscal records depends on the outcome of a power
struggle among institutional actors, who accept or reject a particular
tax regime. But the book could never have been written without the
data and without a large group of people to collect and analyze it.
Arthur Goldhammer: Would you like to say a word about what your
research showed?
Thomas Piketty: For me, the most striking finding of the book is
the level of inequality we found in pre-World War I Europe,
especially France. Subsequently, the shocks induced by World War I,
the Great Depression, World War II, and the new fiscal and social
policies finally accepted by the elite reduced inequality after World
War II. More recently, however, starting in the 1980s, the trend
toward lower inequality began to reverse for a number of reasons,
60 Thomas Piketty
including the conservative revolution in England and the United

States, financial deregulation, and the fall of the Soviet Union. These
and other political factors have, broadly speaking, changed the
atmosphere and the ambient ideology.
Prior to World War I, however, there was apparently no tendency for
wealth inequality to decrease. That was very striking to me. The
French experience is particularly interesting, in my view, because
France likes to present itself as a very egalitarian country, but the
truth is that elite discourse is highly hypocritical when it comes to
equality, in France and everywhere else. Elites can be very imaginative
when it comes to justifying inequality.
France was in fact the last Western country to create an income tax,
in the summer of 1914. The US adopted its income tax in 1913,
before the war—it had nothing to do with the war. And Britain made
its income tax progressive in 1908. Germany, Sweden, and Japan
opted to tax income in the late 19th century. France was really the very
last developed country to create an income tax. And it wasn’t to pay
for schools, it was to pay for war with Germany. Later, of course, the
revenue would be used to pay for schools and to create a welfare
state.
But what’s interesting and to my mind also very depressing is that, at
that time, the discourse of the French elite, the French republican
elite, was to say, “Look, we made the French Revolution, that’s
enough. We don’t need a progressive income tax. A progressive tax is
very useful in an aristocratic country like Britain because they have
strict class boundaries and extreme concentration of wealth, so they
need progressive income and inheritance taxes, but we don’t, because
French society is egalitarian and we are a nation of small property
owners.”
The problem, of course, is that my data show that the concentration
of wealth in Paris in 1914 was the same as in Britain. Aristocratic land
holding had ceased to matter by then. Concentration of property
meant concentration of business assets, real estate, and financial
assets. Being a republic rather than a monarchy did not affect the
process by which wealth became more concentrated.
This elite hypocrisy is important to bear in mind, and not only in the
French case. It’s easy to recognize that hypocrisy in retrospect, but of
course there’s a risk that we might be similarly hypocritical today

without recognizing it. Financial globalization today is different than
it was a century ago, and it is also justified differently.
Many things have changed over the past century. Let me mention the
rise of Asia, Africa to some extent, and Latin America, the historical
traumas of the 20th century, and the huge failure of communism.
Former communist countries such as Russia and China have
themselves become opponents of progressive taxation and wealth
redistribution of any kind. In Asia today wealthy people from Taiwan
or Japan or Korea want to die in Communist China because there is
no inheritance tax there, whereas in Korea or Japan the tax on large
estates is 50%.
The historical trauma of communism has thus had very strange
ideological consequences. Attitudes toward inequality are therefore
very different from 100 years ago, for this and many other reasons.
These comparisons are important. So I think the most important
finding of my book is that elites were hypocritical about inequality
before World War I and we must bear in mind the possibility that
they may be again today.
Arthur Goldhammer: Now for some questions from the audience.
Audience Member 1: Why do you choose a capital tax as your
solution?
Thomas Piketty: At the end of my book I say that the purpose of
capital taxation is not simply or even primarily to raise revenue. It’s
rather to generate information about the distribution of wealth so that
government and citizens know what is happening. The ultimate goal
is to limit on the concentration of power that comes from
concentration of wealth.
There are different ways to do that. Public ownership is one way. In
some cases I think it is still useful. Progressive taxation of private
property is another way. It’s a way to make private property
temporary rather than permanent. Very wealthy people, billionaires,
might be required to return to society two or three or five or ten
percent of what they own every year. In the end, such taxation is a
way to say, “Look, you own this property but not forever. If you
invest productively and earn a huge return on your capital, you will
remain wealthy, but if you don’t do anything but live off your
62 Thomas Piketty
accumulated wealth, you’re going to have to return part of it to

society.” This would of course pose a substantial challenge to
traditional notions of property.
In addition to public ownership and progressive taxation of private
property, there are many conceivable forms of property intermediate
between public and private ownership. This includes the non-profit
sector of course, foundations and so on. It also includes new forms
of participatory ownership such as crowdfunding, as well as new
forms of governance and organization.
I don’t deal with these issues sufficiently in my book, which is already
very long, and in any case there are limits to my knowledge and what
I am able to contribute. But I am very much aware that we need an
entire new set of institutions and rules. Progressive taxation is only
one of them. I make clear from the very introduction of my book that
the main force to reduce inequality in the long-run is the diffusion of
education and knowledge, not taxation. But taxation can be useful to
pay for education.
Education plays quite a big part in the book, but new forms of
organization and ownership and democratic governance and
participatory government are not sufficiently covered. Although there
is a chapter in the book where I compare German corporations with
Anglo-Saxon corporations. There, the gap between the social value of
capital and the market value of capital plays quite a big role. But more
needs to be said about these topics. That’s one of the limitations of
the book.
Arthur Goldhammer: To follow up on this, if I may, an estate tax
would be easier to implement than a tax on capital because it can be
done within one country. A global tax on capital creates problems of
competition among countries, a race to the bottom where capital,
which is free to flow from one country to another, can escape
national taxes. So unless all countries co-ordinate simultaneously,
which is an insoluble political problem, you have this problem of a
race to the bottom. That’s the political problem.
For the economic problem it seems to me that an estate tax would
answer your concern about the exponential growth of wealth over
long periods of time. If you confine the accumulation of wealth to a
single generation then the problem is reduced, if not eliminated. It’s
at least reduced because you don’t have these great fortunes that
continue one generation after another.
In the United States we see that there are fortunes that were
accumulated at the country’s inception that still exist today at the top
of the wealth distribution. If you had a real, progressive estate tax it
seems to me that would solve the problem. So why do you prefer this
global wealth tax to the estate tax?
Thomas Piketty: Well, first, I think we need both, and second, the
tax doesn’t need to be global, there’s a lot there’s a lot that can be
done at the national level. You say a big part of inequality will be
reduced with an inheritance tax alone. Yes and no, because life is
long—longer than ever before. When you make a fortune at the age
of 30 or 40, or 25, does this mean that at the age of 90 you should
still be sitting on $50 billion, so that people have to come to you to
ask how they should organize a health system in Africa? This is an
important issue, but despite your interest in it, your knowledge is
unfortunately limited, and your business experience is not germane.
Of course you feel entitled to give answers because it’s in the nature
of your position to feel entitled, but it’s not at all clear that the best
way to organize a public health care system in Africa is to rely on the
preferences of a billionaire who made his fortune in computers. So
you know, that’s a problem, life is long, and people who have great
ideas at the age of 30 or 40 may not still have the greatest ideas at the
age of 90, especially in areas that have nothing to do with the area in
which they made their fortunes. I think that’s a serious concern, a
very serious concern indeed.
Now from a practical, political viewpoint, let me make very clear that
capital taxes have always existed and have proven to be more
effective than inheritance taxes always and everywhere. And for good
reason. In the real world capital taxes already exit, but they are usually
called property taxes. The term came into common use at the time of
the Atlantic Revolutions of the late 18th century. A new fiscal system
was designed at that time, and it focused on land, because landed
wealth was the most important form of capital at that time. Wealth is
still important, but today it’s financial wealth that matters far more
than landed wealth.
64 Thomas Piketty
So the property taxes designed back then were based on real assets
like land, real estate, and business equipment—real assets. This was
the property tax system that was set up long ago in the US, France,
and Britain. The problem is that these systems have not changed very
much since then, but the nature of wealth has changed. Property taxes
still exist and still generate a lot of revenue, a lot more than the estate
tax, in both the US andFrance. And they also bring in a lot more than
the progressive tax on net worth that I propose in my book.
In France, for example, the property tax is called la taxe foncière. It
generates annual revenues of 25 billion euros, whereas the wealth tax,
or l’impôt sur la fortune, brings in only around four billion, or one-sixth
as much. So the big capital tax is the property tax. The problem is
how to adapt these property tax systems that were created 200 years
ago to the 21st century.
Existing property taxes also have certain peculiar features, which have
become apparent since the financial collapse of 2008. For example, if
you own a house in the US that’s worth $300,000, but you have a
$400,000 mortgage because the price of your house has gone down,
so your net wealth is actually negative, you still keep paying the same
property tax as someone who has no mortgage or even someone with
a net worth $2 million. This makes no sense. No logical reasoning, no
economic theory, no political theory can justify this. It’s like this
simply because this is the way it was 200 years ago when there was no
financial wealth. The system has not changed because financial
institutions haven’t wanted it to change.
But you can actually ask people what they think. For instance, there’s
a very interesting recent paper called, “Do Americans Want a Capital
Tax?” And you ask people, okay, here are groups of households with
different income and net wealth. How much should an individual
with a net wealth of $100,000 pay? Or $1,000,000 or $2,000,000. All
told, including income tax, property tax. And you find that for most
people it’s common sense that for a given level of income, say
$100,000 per year or $200,000 per year, the person with a net worth
of $10 million should pay more than the person with a net worth of
$2 million or $1 million.
At least, when you ask the question to thousands of people online,
nobody would say that someone who owns many houses around the
country should be exempt from the property tax just because he has
no income. Everybody will say, “Well look, if you have no income, do

something with your property. Sell one of your houses to someone
who will know what to do with it.” So it’s complete common sense
that there should be both an income tax and capital tax.
Now, why is it that in practice this capital tax or property tax raises a
lot more revenue than the inheritance tax? I think there are good
reasons for this. Most people would rather pay 1% property tax each
year, 1% of the value of the house each year for 30 years, rather than
30% at the time of inheritance. Maybe that’s partly because of tax
illusion because they don’t realize they are paying the property tax,
but I think it goes deeper than that.
There’s also a very theoretical idea that we should prefer lump-sum
taxation at the time of inheritance and let people do what they want
in their life with their property. This is really an economist’s idea, so
I’m surprised that you accept it. It’s very theoretical because in the
real world there are lots of capital market imperfections which make
this theoretical idea not such a great idea.
For instance, if you need to pay 30% of the value of the home that
you inherit from your parents, how are you going to pay for that? Will
you be able to borrow this sum and reimburse one percent per year
during the next 30 years? You might have to sell the house, which
would be unfortunate. So maybe paying 1% per year is better. Also
you don’t know how the market value and the rental value and the
rate of return to your capital are going to change.
For example, if I had inherited an apartment worth 100, 000 euros in
Paris in 1972, when I was one year old, nobody would have guessed
that it would be worth five million euros today. So it would be been
foolish to tax me on the basis of the inheritance at the time and then
not tax me for the rest of my life. I think it makes a lot more sense to
combine the two. You could have a small inheritance tax and then an
annual wealth tax, depending on how the market value of the
property and the rental income are changing.
So I think what I’m proposing is really common sense and to a large
extent already exists, although the existing system will have to be
adapted to the 21st century. As for the issue of global cooperation, of
course it’s better if you have more cooperation, but, you know, we
can have property tax without cooperation. So I think the claim that,
66 Thomas Piketty
“Oh, global wealth tax, we can’t do anything,” is a little bit lazy. It’s
not really looking at the issue, which is that property taxes already
exist, and we can revise them. So we should not use the lack of
perfect global cooperation and a perfect global environment, which
of course will never exist, as an excuse not to do what we can do.
Arthur Goldhammer: Well I’m older than you are and when you get
old you get lazy.
Thomas Piketty: Oh no, this was not for you. I interpreted your
question as you were repeating what some people…
Arthur Goldhammer: I’m playing a devil’s advocate.
Audience Member 2 – [Steven Sawyer]: You mentioned the
question of how much tax, where most of the tax revenue comes
from, and you also mentioned the Third Republic. But the way you
describe your distribution is essentially financial or monetary. One of
the arguments behind the Third Republic is that, first of all, you do
have a massive fiscal revolution because they overhauled their system
of indirect taxes. But they never dropped them.
So basically fiscal revenue from indirect taxes increased by between
40 and 45% between 1870 and 1873. What did they do with that
money? They paid off the debt in two years, and they put it into
schools, and then they financed the construction of the railroads.
These indirect taxes were obviously regressive, and this may have
affected the distribution of wealth. But the revenue was used to build
schools, and by 1895 France was the number one education provider
in Europe, in the world, in terms of providing education to numbers
of people. So is that something to consider, is that important, does it
introduce—and of course we also know that the welfare state has
always been largely financed by indirect taxes anyway. Is that
something to consider?
Thomas Piketty: Yes, it’s definitely part of what needs to be
considered and part of what I try to consider. But the point is that
even if you include indirect tax and all forms of tax until World War
I, we had a small government in France just like everywhere.
Concretely, you had total tax revenue of 10% of national income until
World War I in France, the US, Britain, Germany, Sweden,
everywhere.
It’s only after World War I, in the inter-war period, that you have an
increase of total tax revenue toward 20, 30 and then in some
countries 40 or 50%, at first because of the war and war-related
spending, such as war pensions. In the turbulent interwar period you
then saw increased social spending, and then after World War II you
got the full-blown welfare state.
Then, in the 1980s, you saw a stabilization pretty much everywhere,
which continues to this day, but at different levels, around 30% of
national income for tax revenue in the US, 50% in Sweden, 40% in
Germany and Britain, 45% in France. Everybody’s in this range. But
until World War I you are below 10% everywhere so, you know, there
could be variation by 1870 to 1873 but in the end, in the decades
prior to World War I, tax revenues are increasing at the same speed as
national income.
Government spending is still increasing, because of course you have
industrial growth, which gives you more resources to invest. If you
have more factories, you can also have more roads. The general
growth process includes growth of the public sphere, broadly
speaking, in absolute amounts. But in relative amounts you don’t see
that. And in the concentration of wealth and assets you don’t see that.
And, if anything, you have rising, slightly rising concentration until
World War I.
But of course, the country is developing and the broadening access to
education is part of the growth process and modernization process.
And not only in France. Sweden was more advanced in terms of
educational achievements than France at the time, Germany also to
some extent, some parts of Germany, but I’m not an expert on this.
Arthur Goldhammer: Your book has attracted an enormous amount
of praise but also a certain amount of criticism. And I wonder which
of the criticisms of your book you find most pertinent? I’ll just
mention three, and I don’t know whether they’ll be the three that you
consider important or not. One is that you have no theory of ‘r’. You
have this famous inequality, ‘r’ greater than ‘g’, but all your evidence
about ‘r’ is based on empirical, historical data and so there’s no reason
to believe that ‘r’ should be at any particular level in the future.
The second criticism is related to that. It has to do with the elasticity
of substitution between capital and labor. And you might want to
68 Thomas Piketty
explain, for the sake of the audience, what that means. But Larry
Summers, for one, who in general praised your book, said that your
arguments about the elasticity of substitution being greater than one,
on which the future of ‘r’ depends, is not really sustained by the
available empirical studies. And then the third area of criticism has to
do with the composition of capital. There are some, like Matt Rognlie
at MIT, who argues that the increase in wealth and equality since
1980 is based mainly on the increase in real estate values, and not on
productive assets. And he believes that that’s a fundamental critique
of your argument. Do you agree with that? Or is there some other
criticism that you find most pertinent? Handle the question any way
you want to.
Thomas Piketty: Well, okay, so I think there has been lots of
interesting discussion, critiques. To be honest, the three you’ve
chosen, to which I’ll respond, all come from economists, and as I
think you know, the problem with economists sometimes is not only
that they don’t write books, it’s also that they don’t read books. So
this creates problems because at some point, you know, my book was
so successful people wanted to write about it even without opening it.
First, the question of ‘r’. In fact, there is a series of r’s, so it’s
complicated. If it was simple, if everything could be summarized with
an elasticity of substitution, the book would not be 800 pages long, it
would be short. And maybe it could have been shorter, but I don’t
think it could have been 10 pages long. And the stories that Rognlie
and Summers want to write are stories that are one page long, or
three slides, which is nice, but this is not the story I’m telling because
I think the world is complicated.
I think the more interesting critiques come from social scientists
outside economics, who read books more carefully, generally
speaking. For example, there was a special issue of the review Annales
- Histoire et sciences sociales, where there are many critiques, many people
disagree, but I think the critiques are deeper and more interesting
than the ones from economists, generally speaking. The British Journal
of Sociology also had a special issue.
So there have been many discussions of the book outside economics
that I find more interesting. I will say a few words about those three
critiques you mentioned, but to me the most interesting and most
important general critique is that my book is definitely too much
centered on the Western experience. It’s partly due to data availability

but it’s more than that.
So it’s partly due to the fact that I was not able to access historical
data for China, for Africa, for South America, at least until recently,
so this makes me concentrate a lot on Western Europe, North
America, and Japan. But it’s more than a question of data availability.
It’s also that, as I was saying, the book is very much written as a
reflection about the 20th century dynamics of inequality in Europe
with the huge shocks caused by the two World Wars, the Bolshevik
Revolution and the pressure put by the Communist model on the
Western elite in the post-World War II decade, and the fall of the
Soviet Union at the end of the period, which to some extent brought
us back to a new regime of unlimited faith in self-regulating markets.
So this is really a book about the shocks of the 20th century viewed
from a European viewpoint. And from the viewpoint of India, from
the viewpoint of South Africa, from the viewpoint of Brazil, you
know, the history looks very different. Because these shocks are
important for them because they are embedded into the world
systems, the colonial systems, etc., but this is not a book about them
basically.
So the book is limited in this respect. The good news is that it will not
be my last book. I hope to work more on other parts of the world
and think more. I’ve been to India several times recently. With Abhijit
Banerjee I’ve been working on Indian data for some time now, and
I’m trying to think more about the inequality regimes in other parts of
the world. But that’s clearly the most important limitation of the
book; it has been criticized for that and I think for good reason.
Now the other critiques you mentioned: Yes, there’s no theory of the
rate of return to capital. Or rather, I think there is a theory but it’s a
complicated theory because at the same time you have the usual story
of declining return to capital. So if you accumulate more capital and
your capital income ratio goes up, the rate of return may decline or it
may stabilize.
If the capital/income ratio stabilizes at a high level, the rate of return
does not have to go to zero. Scarcity of capital is part of what
determines ‘r’, but clearly this is not enough. Bargaining power also
matters, as does the legal system, which determines the balance of
70 Thomas Piketty
power between the workers and owners of capital. This is very

important.
Thus, there are many institutional factors that determine the return
on capital. I tried to show how the capital share of income changed
over the course of the 19th and 20th century, and I found political
factors in the broad sense of the term are extremely important. In the
case of France, for example, the labor share increases hugely after
1968, but after 1993 it goes in the opposite direction.
So when you want to explain the dynamics of the capital share and
the rate of return, political and institutional factors are at least as
important as the supply and demand laws that economists prefer to
look at. And my answer about the elasticity of substitution is more or
less the same. I don’t think that you can predict the future rate of
return to capital simply by looking at the elasticity of substitution of a
well-behaved, one sector production function.
I use this language at one point in the book in order to show that
even if you accept that framework, there’s no reason to conclude that
the capital/income ratio cannot continue to rise. If in the future you
have new uses for capital, robots that can replace human labor, say,
then the elasticity of substitution could be a bit bigger than one. It
doesn’t need to be infinity but just a bit larger than one to make a big
difference.
But I’m not saying that this is what has been happening so far. Maybe
this will be important 30 years from now, but at this stage the rise in
the capital share is mostly due not to not robots but to traditional
capital-intensive sectors like energy and housing. So the Rognlie
point, in my view, was the stupidest of all. He is just using our
database on housing and saying, look, housing is important.
Well of course, this is our database, we completely agree about the
fact that housing is important. And he wrote an entire paper saying
just that housing is important. Really, what can I say? I agree. In my
2014 paper with Gabriel Zucman we give the full decomposition of
wealth accumulation in all countries into what we call volume effect
and price effect.
And the price effect is mostly this housing price effect and we show
that in a number of countries it’s actually more than 100% of the rise
in wealth accumulation rate, but that’s not particularly good news.
That’s not particularly good news because it means that for the new
generation who don’t have family wealth and who only have their
labor income if they want to access property in Paris or London, they
will need to earn quite a lot from their labor.
So, yes, housing prices are a big part of the story. So what? Does this
mean that everything is fine? To me this is an additional reason to be
concerned about inequality dynamics and the need to adapt the tax
system and legal system to the situation. So, frankly, I don’t see the
point of this critique.
Audience Member 3 – [Olivier Zunz]: Can I ask a question though?
When the problems of the economy are discussed, we talk about
many things other than the tax system. Why do you think that
reforming the tax system will get at the roots of the problems with
today’s economy? I think there’s no easy answer to the question, but I
just wanted to hear you think more broadly about the nature of our
economic difficulties.
Thomas Piketty: Yes, you’re perfectly right, there are many
problems other than taxes. I don’t think I’m saying that tax is the key
to everything. When I talk about the rise of the social state and the
fiscal state, I try to make it clear that the two evolve together.
So tax is a big part of the state formation process, and it’s important
not for its own sake but for what it means for the state formation
process more generally. And for the development of the modern
social state. And I also try to make clear that the legal system is
incredibly important when it comes to reducing inequality, increasing
equality, and regulating the economy.
Think of financial deregulation, privatization, patent law, and rent
control. These are aspects of the legal system that I talk about in the
book at some length. I think maybe even more than I talk about
taxation. These things are a very big part of the overall story of
inequality. The thing about taxation is that it’s very difficult to have a
quiet discussion about it. People get excited very fast. So when they
see one page about taxation or a high tax rate, whatever, they focus
on that and nothing else. But I think there is a lot more in the book
and certainly there’s a lot more in the story of inequality.
72 Thomas Piketty
Audience Member 4: I’ve only read a little bit of your book, the first
third or a quarter, but I have a question about the importance of
monetary policy in the big rise in inequality we’ve seen since 1980.
Thomas Piketty: I don’t think that monetary policy is the main
driving force in the increase in capital and asset values, at least in the
long run. I think there are other forces that have to do with changes
in the legal system that favor private owners of wealth: the end of
rent controls, financial deregulation, stock market reform. I would
also include demographic factors with the explosion of population
growth and more accumulation of assets.
Now, that being said, monetary policy can have enormous impact
over a period of five to ten years, and right now, certainly, monetary
policy is playing an enormous role. But I guess it depends on the
timescale you are looking at. If you want to explain the fact that in
every developed country between 1970 and 2015 you have a huge rise
of the wealth-income ratio, I think this is true irrespective of the short
run or even medium run evolution between the 70s, 80s, 90s, today.
But, again, we’ve probably been asking too much of monetary policy
in recent years. And of course it’s much easier to print billions of
dollars or euros than to fix the tax system, because for that you need
a parliament and you need people to agree in the parliament, which is
difficult. You need people to agree outside the parliament also, which
is even more difficult. Whereas monetary policy is simple: you can
create billions of dollars and euros in one day.
But the problem is you don’t really know what you do with that
money. You put it somewhere and, indeed, you can contribute to the
bubbles and rising asset prices for certain assets in particular areas of
the economy or particular countries. The people who benefit from
this are not necessarily the people you would like to benefit from
public policy. So I fully agree with you: that’s a big concern, especially
now.
Arthur Goldhammer: Alan Kahan.
Audience Member 5 – [Alan Kahan]: You suggested just now, and
many other people have suggested, that spreading education has been
an enormous force in reducing inequality. What if we have topped
out in our ability to spread education, at least to the developed world?
That is to say, there’s a sharply declining marginal return on increased
investment in education, that it was cheap and easy to teach 98% of

the population to read and write, and apparently impossible to teach
25% to engage in critical thinking.
Thomas Piketty: That would be sad, but I’m not sure we are there
yet. Let me say that the spread of education, it’s not so much that it
has reduced inequality but at least it has prevented inequality from
rising enormously. So it’s not that the inequality of labor earnings
today is not less than a hundred years ago. In some countries, such as
the US, it has probably become higher than it has ever been. But in
most countries it is maybe comparable today with what it was a
hundred years ago. But without the education expansion it would be a
lot higher today.
So if the bottom half or bottom 90% of the population had remained
at the same skill level as 100 years ago and only the top 10% had
increased their education levels, then inequality would be enormous.
And to some extent this growing gap in educational investment
between the bottom half in the US and the top 10 or 1% in the US, is
I think a primary explanation for rising inequality in the US, and
stronger rising inequality in the US than in Europe or Japan.
But I think it could be different. It’s clear there are very different
educational models. I’m always impressed in the French debate, we
talk about university, we look at the tuition regime in the US or in
Britain and we say, we don’t have tuition, maybe we should have
more, and you know, maybe we could have a little more, but at the
same time we don’t look so much at other countries like Germany or
Sweden where they have zero tuition, less than in France.
In Bavaria there was a referendum two years ago where they voted,
there was an introduction of a 200 euro tuition for universities, and
they voted it down. And it’s not a particularly left wing territory but
there was a majority to say, no, 200 euros per year, that’s too much,
that’s a break in equal access to education, let’s put it back to zero.
And it’s the same in Sweden, and I think in the end that’s part of the
reason why there’s less of an increase of inequality in Sweden or
Germany than in the US. So there are very different—you know,
there are different ideologies and different policies in the globalized
world, so you can have similar technological evolution but still very
different outcomes in different countries.
74 Thomas Piketty
Arthur Goldhammer: This answer brings us to politics in the

everyday sense and my journalist friends have mandated me to ask
you several questions about politics. First of all your mention of
resistance to tuition payments brings up the Bernie Sanders campaign
in the United States. He’s proposing free tuition for all students. And
several journalists have asked me to put to you the question, in the
Democratic primary race in the United States, are you supporting
Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton? And you don’t have to answer if
you don’t want to.
Thomas Piketty: No, look, of course I support Bernie Sanders with
no hesitation. Also, I don’t have the right to vote there so I cannot.
But I think it’s really very impressive that he’s doing so well. And I
think, you know, look, maybe he’s not going to win, but what he
shows, at the very least, is that maybe a younger Bernie Sanders and a
less white Bernie Sanders could have won, and maybe will win
another time. And not only win the primary but also the general
election, because given where the Republican party is going, you
know, I think he will win the election and then there will be a major
shift in the political regime and public policy of the US.
So this makes me full of hope and this confirms the fact that it’s very
difficult to predict the future. And people who believe that nothing
will ever change and that the Reagan policy regime is with us forever.
You know, it’s easier with Clinton and Obama, Democrats, but it’s
not with us forever. It will change.
Arthur Goldhammer: And here in France you’ve been multiplying
your interventions every day since I’ve been here. I’ve seen your
name in the newspapers on one petition or another. I know you’ve
been asked the question before. Do you intend to become involved
directly in politics yourself, and you’ve answered firmly, no?
Thomas Piketty: No, I am involved in politics in the public debate
but, no, not as a candidate. But look, there are many different ways to
be involved in politics. And I’m not sure, you know, the people who
are candidates and people who are in office are the ones who are
doing the most politics. Because when you see the political discourse
of many political leaders, most of the time it’s very vague and when
they say something precise it’s only when it has become the dominant
consensus and the dominant opinion.
So in the end, who is the slave of whom, I don’t know. But I believe
in the power of ideas and books, and I want to keep writing books,
that’s for sure. But in the case of the French election, I think we need
party primaries now that we have a new political regime in which the
extreme right is capturing a third of the vote, the same as or even
more than the mainstream parties of the right and left. Nobody could
have imagined that the extreme right would do more than 40% in
certain regions until last December, so I think already in 2002 the lack
of a primary election between left wing candidates was a major
mistake.
And I can say that as someone who voted for Christiane Taubira at
the time, I felt a bit ashamed, the night of the first round in 2002,
because I contributed to the fact that the left was not in the second
round and that La Pen beat Jospin in the first round. So already at the
time it was a mistake not to have a primary election between left wing
candidates.
But now that the National Front has 30% rather than 15% of the
voters, it’s not a mistake, it’s criminal. And especially now, with
Hollande’s low approval rating. The very least he can do is to agree to
go through the process. He doesn’t have to have 100 debates in little
villages, he just has to do two or three TV debates, October,
November, at the same time as the right wing candidates, and if he’s
the best candidate for the left he will win. And I think this is his only
chance for re-election.
So it would be a big mistake to have no primary on the left this year,
which is where things stand right now. It won’t be good for anyone if
Hollande delays the announcement of his candidacy until just before
the election. It’s certainly not good strategically for Hollande, and it
will surely lead to a political catastrophe next May.
Arthur Goldhammer: I think we have time for one more question
from the audience.
Audience Member 6: I’ve been looking at the International
Monetary Fund and one of the things that is so striking about it is
that many applied economists there talk about the economy as a
technical sphere, like medicine.
One thing that I thought was so useful in your book is that you say
that’s simply not true, it’s not a technical question, it’s a political
76 Thomas Piketty
question. We need to bring all of the social sciences and humanities

to bear, and even the novels of Balzac. Economic questions pertain
to all of us. On the other hand you don’t actually engage much with
the existing social science literature on inequality, and one of the big
gaps within the economics literature is of course gender. If you were
to address gender issues, how would that change the kind of
argument that you make?
Thomas Piketty: You’re right, and that’s again one of the many
limitations of the book. I recognize it. Gender is not entirely absent.
If you look, for example, at the importance of demographics and
immigration in countries like Germany and Japan, I make clear that
the real issue behind the scenes is gender inequality.
You know, if you assign women to a role that they don’t want after
they have children, they will react by not having children, and the
population will fall. As I argue in my book, this has huge
consequences for the dynamics of wealth accumulation and
inheritance. But of course there are many other dimensions to gender
than this, family and fertility dimensions, which I do not address in
my book.
In any case, I’m in the process of escaping from economists. You
have to leave me more time. I hope the next book will be more
satisfactory from this standpoint. For now, I’ve said where I want to
go, but I’m not there yet.
Arthur Goldhammer: Well, I think that’s a good note to end on. I
hope we’ve aided you with your escape from economics. And we
want to thank you very much for agreeing to talk with us today.
ABSTRACT
This article is the edited version of remarks made by Thomas Piketty at a

colloquium at the American University of Paris in February 2016. He is
interviewed by his American translator and The Tocqueville Review editorial
board member Arthur Goldhammer.
L’ÉTAT-PROVIDENCE FACE AUX INÉGALITÉS ET LA

« DÉMOCRATIE DE PROPRIÉTAIRES » :
UNE COMPARAISON ENTRE MEADE, RAWLS,
ACKERMAN ET PIKETTY
Catherine AUDARD
INTRODUCTION
Les travaux récents d’économistes comme Thomas Piketty ou
Anthony Atkinson1 ont mis fin à une conviction, bien établie, que les
politiques de redistribution de l’après-guerre menées par l’État-
providence auraient définitivement réussi à réduire les inégalités. Or,
bien loin d’avoir diminué, les inégalités non seulement de revenus,
mais aussi de richesse et de patrimoine, n’ont cessé de croître depuis
les années 1980 pour retrouver des niveaux comparables à ceux du
XIXe siècle. En parallèle est apparue au sein des sociétés
démocratiques une tentation pour l’inégalité qui a accompagné la montée
des inégalités et a semblé les légitimer dans l’opinion publique. Patrick
Savidan a bien souligné à quel point « nous avons validé
démocratiquement l’oligarchisation de nos régimes sociaux et
politiques » et combien il est devenu difficile de légitimer la lutte
contre les inégalités2. Ce changement de mentalité n’est pas sans
évoquer Rousseau et sa description de l’amour propre comme
justification des inégalités extrêmes, même parmi ceux qui en sont
victimes3.
Si les démocraties sont tentées de cette façon par les inégalités,
cela ne contredit-il pas la vision de John Rawls qui a dominé la
théorie politique démocratique et libérale depuis plus de quarante
ans ? Pour lui, « la société juste est un système équitable (fair) de
coopération entre citoyens libres et égaux », « où chacun trouve des
avantages que mesure un critère adéquat d’égalité », un idéal selon lui
78 Catherine Audard
« implicite dans la culture publique d’une démocratie4 ». Or non

seulement les inégalités ont augmenté mais elles apparaissent comme
la condition même de la prospérité et de l’efficacité économique,
selon le double argument de la hausse de la productivité marginale
que récompenseraient les hauts salaires, et du trickle down effect selon
lequel toute la société bénéficierait à terme de l’enrichissement des
plus riches. Ce genre de perspective où la démocratie avance à tâtons
sur un arrière-plan d’inégalités n’est guère attirante, mais elle fait déjà
partie de notre présent et définira peut-être notre avenir en l’absence
de politiques sociales égalitaires sur la base d’arguments nouveaux.
Or, il me semble qu’il existe chez Rawls, comme de nombreux
auteurs l’ont montré récemment5, des ressources pour faire barrage à
cette légitimation. Je voudrais donc, après avoir (1) examiné les
explications que Piketty donne du retour des inégalités, présenter (2)
les raisons que Rawls et Piketty avancent pour l’échec de l’Etat-
providence à les réduire. Si (3), comme le soutient Piketty, la cause
structurelle des inégalités se trouve dans la propriété du capital, est-ce
qu’une dotation initiale sur le modèle de la « société des ayant-droits »
(stakeholder society) de Bruce Ackerman6 ne serait pas la solution ? Je
montrerai (4) que la solution institutionnelle que Rawls propose, à la
suite de James Meade, la « démocratie de propriétaires » (Property
Owning Democracy, POD par la suite) est en accord avec les solutions
avancées par Thomas Piketty. Mais je conclurai (5) qu’elle est plus
satisfaisante parce qu’elle justifie les hauts niveaux de taxation requis
pour la POD par une conception de la personne et de ses intérêts qui
accomplit un véritable changement de paradigme par rapport à
l’utilitarisme de l’État-providence. L’égalité qu’il s’agit de favoriser est
l’égalité des aspirations et des chances de développer et de réaliser son
potentiel grâce à la propriété d’un capital productif, pas seulement
l’égalité des besoins de base. En ouvrant le champ des aspirations,
une telle vision prend des risques, mais elle peut aussi être
suffisamment en phase avec l’individualisme contemporain pour le
réorienter vers un idéal rénové de justice.
I - LA MONTÉE DES INÉGALITÉS ET LES ÉCHECS DE L’ÉTAT-PROVIDENCE
(PIKETTY ET RAWLS)
Dans son livre Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Thomas Piketty présente le
résultat de quinze ans de recherches, un vaste tableau historique de
l’évolution des inégalités de revenu et de fortune depuis la fin du
L’Etat-providence face aux inégalités et la « Démocratie de propriétaires » 79
XVIIIe siècle en Europe occidentale et aux Etats-Unis, un travail qui

n’avait jamais été accompli sur cette échelle jusque-là.
Piketty et le retour des inégalités injustes

Quel est son diagnostic ? Ses conclusions qui ont rendu l’ouvrage
rapidement très célèbre sont que les inégalités au XXIe siècle, bien
loin de diminuer, ont retrouvé le niveau du XIXe siècle, contrairement
à toutes les prévisions.
Il propose l’explication suivante de cette évolution. Le taux de
rendement annuel du capital (R) a été depuis le XVIIIe siècle en
moyenne plus élevé (4-5%) que celui de la croissance de la population
et des salaires, du revenu du travail (G) (1%-1,5%), ce qui constitue la
contradiction centrale du capitalisme : R>G, et qui explique que les
inégalités de fortune et de revenu soient restées stables si longtemps
bien que très importantes. Avant la révolution industrielle, le taux de
rendement du capital R, la rente foncière dans la société agraire du
XVIIIe siècle, est resté constamment supérieur au taux de croissance
G, très lent jusqu’à la Révolution française : 0,1% par an alors que le
rendement du capital R a progressé de 4-5% par an. Mais la révolution
industrielle n’a pas changé cette relation fondamentale et R>G continue de
caractériser la répartition de la richesse dans la société capitaliste. G
est passé à 1% par an et R à 5-7% par an sans que le rapport change
et que les inégalités diminuent. La concentration des richesses est
restée stable entre 1789 et 1914 avec 1% de la population possédant
70% des actifs malgré la révolution industrielle. Qu’il s’agisse des
rentiers du XIXe siècle ou des entrepreneurs du XXe, le facteur décisif
des inégalités a donc été, non les inégalités de salaire, mais la propriété
du capital productif et l’héritage qui créent des inégalités de départ
insurmontables pour les non-possédants.
La seule période où la relation R>G s’est transformée a été entre
1914 et 1970. G est alors devenu très élevé et, pendant les Trente
Glorieuses, la croissance G a même été de 5% par an en moyenne.
Par contre, pendant cette période, R a beaucoup diminué à cause des
chocs extrêmement violents qu’ont entraînés les deux Guerres
mondiales, la Révolution russe de 1917 (pensons aux Chemins de fer
russes et à la ruine des petits porteurs) et la Grande dépression de
1929. En conséquence, le capital a été en grande partie détruit, son
rendement a diminué considérablement et, grâce aux mesures sociales
et à la croissance économique, les inégalités de revenu et de fortune
80 Catherine Audard
ont fortement diminué. Mais une fois la reconstruction de l’après-

guerre terminée, après les Trente Glorieuses à la fin des années 1970,
G est retombé à 1% et R a augmenté, retrouvant les niveaux du XIXe
siècle. Les taux atteints parlent d’eux-mêmes. En 1914, 1% de la
population possédait 70% des actifs. En 2010, aux États-Unis et dans
une moindre mesure, en Europe, « le décile supérieur détient souvent
jusqu’à la moitié du revenu national » (Piketty, op. cit., p. 40, n.1)7. « La
concentration des revenus a retrouvé dans les années 2000-2010 –
voire légèrement dépassé – le niveau record des années 1910-1920 »
(Piketty, op.cit., p. 37).
On pourrait objecter que les inégalités observées dans les sociétés
démocratiques contemporaines n’ont rien à voir avec celles du XIXe
siècle. Elles seraient le résultat justifié de l’égalité des chances et de la
récompense des talents utiles à tous selon l’argument méritocratique.
Là encore, Piketty montre qu’il s’agit d’une illusion. Les hauts salaires
des managers ont certes remplacé les rentiers de la Belle Epoque,
mais le niveau extrême de ces salaires ainsi que le système des stock-
options qui les accompagne ont permis la reconstitution rapide du
capital productif et sa transmission aux générations suivantes selon un
modèle qui n’a rien à envier au XIXe siècle. « Une très forte inégalité
du revenu total peut être le produit d’une société hyper-
méritocratique … une société de super-cadres … mais rien n’interdit
d’être en même temps super-cadre et rentier … et aux enfants de
super-cadres de devenir rentiers » (Piketty, op. cit., ch.7, p. 416-417).
La justification de ces hauts salaires n’obéit, en réalité, à aucune
logique de productivité (Piketty, op. cit., chapitre 9, p. 524). La source
en est le pouvoir politique des 1% les plus riches. Il existe, montre
Piketty, une corrélation presque parfaite entre la baisse des taux
d’imposition des plus hauts revenus et la hausse de ces revenus
(Piketty, op. cit., p. 823). Depuis 1980, on constate la baisse des taux
supérieurs d’imposition à 30-40% au lieu de 80-90% entre 1930-1980.
Ce sont les négociations politiques qui les ont rendu possibles
(Piketty, op. cit., p. 825 et 829). C’est donc que, dans l’État-providence,
le processus politique a été capté par les 1% et empêche tout
relèvement du taux confiscatoire. Seuls des taux d’imposition
dissuasifs, du type de ceux appliqués aux Etats-Unis et au Royaume-
Uni au XXe siècle, permettraient de revenir en arrière et de mettre fin
à l’envol des hauts revenus (Piketty, op. cit., p. 830).
Rawls, critique de l’Etat-providence

Face à ce diagnostic pessimiste, la théorie de la justice de John
Rawls semble pécher par optimisme et avoir perdu toute pertinence.
Elle prétend exprimer des valeurs et des principes qui seraient
largement répandus dans les sociétés démocratiques contemporaines.
Ces principes sont (1) l’égalité « réelle » des libertés fondamentales,
politiques en particulier, (2) l’égalité « réelle » des chances et (3) le
principe de différence ou de réciprocité qui ne tolère des inégalités
que si elles sont utiles pour tous ou pour les plus défavorisés8. Or si
les sociétés ont changé aussi radicalement que le constate Piketty,
l’égalitarisme rawlsien apparaît dépassé et impuissant face non
seulement à « la dérive vers l’oligarchie », mais aussi à la « tentation
pour l’inégalité » qu’évoque Patrick Savidan9.
Il est certain que, à première lecture, Théorie de la justice (TJ) a pu
sembler être un manifeste de la social-démocratie et de l’État-
providence. Mais c’est une erreur qui a été bien mise en lumière par
les commentateurs récents de Rawls10. En réalité, Rawls se livre dans
ses derniers livres à une critique sévère des insuffisances de l’État-
providence et de la justice sociale comme assistance. Bien loin d’avoir
progressé vers l’idéal démocratique, l’Etat-providence de l’après-
guerre que Rawls décrit comme le Welfare State Capitalism, (WSC par la
suite)11 a été en partie un échec qu’il avait anticipé même si en 1971 il
restait encore relativement optimiste. Bien loin de réduire les
inégalités, le WSC les a laissées se développer et là Rawls anticipe sur
le diagnostic de Piketty de l’échec de l’Etat-providence. Les inégalités
extrêmes de revenus et de fortune qui sont devenues la norme sont
bien une menace pour la démocratie car elles concentrent le pouvoir
politique entre les mains d’une minorité et Rawls serait d’accord avec
Piketty pour parler d’une « dérive vers l’oligarchie » (Piketty, op. cit.,
p. 741).
C’est sur ce diagnostic que Rawls et Piketty convergent et que
l’actualité de la pensée de Rawls apparaît. En effet, comme Piketty,
Rawls pense que, plus que l’inégalité de revenus, c’est la concentration
de la propriété du capital dans les mains d’une minorité (Piketty, ch.
10) qui est la cause structurelle de l’injustice sociale que l’État-
providence a été incapable de combattre pour des raisons politiques.
D’où ses espoirs dans un programme politique et social qui lutterait
pour généraliser la propriété du capital et pour développer une
82 Catherine Audard
« démocratie de propriétaires » (POD). Voici ce qu’il écrit en 1987

dans sa « Préface » à la traduction française de TJ pour expliquer son
évolution :
Ce que je ferais différemment aujourd’hui serait de distinguer plus
nettement entre l’idée de la démocratie de propriétaires (Property Owning
Democracy, POD par la suite) introduite au chapitre 5 et celle de l’Etat-
Providence (Welfare State Capitalism, WSC par la suite). En effet, ces idées
sont complètement différentes mais, comme dans les deux cas on peut
avoir une propriété privée des capacités productives, nous pouvons faire
l’erreur de les confondre. Une différence majeure est que les institutions
de POD et de son système de marchés concurrentiels tentent de
disperser la propriété de la richesse et du capital pour éviter qu’une
petite partie de la société ne contrôle l’économie et indirectement, la vie
politique elle-même. Une démocratie de ce type y parvient non pas en
redistribuant une part du revenu à ceux qui en ont moins, et cela à la fin
de chaque période, mais plutôt en garantissant une large dispersion de la
propriété des atouts productifs et du capital humain dès le début de
chaque période, tout cela étant accompagné par l’égalité des libertés de
base et la juste égalité des chances. L’idée n’est pas simplement d’assister
ceux qui sont perdants en raison d’accidents ou de malchance (bien qu’il
faille le faire), mais plutôt de mettre tous les citoyens en position de
gérer leurs propres affaires et de participer à la coopération sociale sur
un pied de respect mutuel dans des conditions d’égalité (TJ, p. 13).
Tout d’abord, et là Rawls serait d’accord avec Piketty, la
concentration de la propriété du capital et de la richesse est
incompatible avec les principes de justice et la défense de la liberté
parce qu’elle représente un risque de dérive oligarchique. Ainsi la valeur
réelle des libertés politiques est menacée par « des inégalités très
importantes en matière de propriété réelle (celle des moyens de
production et des ressources naturelles) si bien que le contrôle de
l’économie et de l’essentiel de la vie politique réside entre les mains de
quelques-uns12 ». Seule la dispersion du capital permettrait de lutter
contre la domination économique et politique d’une minorité. Le
WSC ne respecte donc pas le premier principe de justice, en
particulier l’égale (fair) valeur des libertés politiques qui seule permet
l’exercice des droits de la citoyenneté par tous. Mais il ne garantit pas
non plus les deux autres. La juste égalité des chances et le principe de
différence sont irréalisables sur la base des seules politiques de
transfert de revenus du WSC. Ces transferts garantissent, selon le
schéma keynésien, un niveau de vie minimum et un marché de
consommateurs, mais sans s’attaquer aux causes structurelles des
inégalités que Piketty met bien en valeur, au premier chef, l’inégale

répartition de la propriété du capital (Piketty, op. cit., ch. 10 et 12).
Deux formes de redistribution

À partir de ce diagnostic et des échecs du WSC, il peut être utile
de distinguer entre deux formes de redistribution sans nécessairement
les opposer. Le WSC a échoué parce qu’il redistribue ex post vers les
plus pauvres ce qui est nécessaire à un niveau de vie minimum, mais
sans lutter contre les causes de la pauvreté, sans permettre le
développement du potentiel de chacun qui permettrait d’y échapper.
Ce niveau minimum est certes indispensable à la lutte contre la
pauvreté et à la protection contre les aléas de la vie et Rawls veut
même en faire un droit constitutionnel13. Mais il est inefficace dans la
lutte contre les inégalités et tend à les aggraver parce qu’il ne permet
pas de sortir de la pauvreté et de l’assistance. « Lorsque à la fin de
chaque période ceux qui ont besoin d’aide peuvent être identifiés …
peut se développer une classe déshéritée et découragée dont les
membres sont dépendants de manière chronique des prestations
distribuées. Cette classe se sent exclue et ne participe pas à la culture
politique publique » (La justice comme équité. Une reformulation. JCER par
la suite §42, p. 193). Ce minimum social est de plus en plus vu comme
insuffisant et les propositions abondent pour le remplacer par un
Basic Income ou une allocation universelle, bien supérieure à un
minimum social14.
Seule une redistribution ex ante par une dotation initiale en capital
qui corrigerait le taux de rendement du capital R et sa répartition, et là
Rawls est à nouveau en accord avec le diagnostic de Piketty,
permettra de lutter efficacement contre les inégalités, pas seulement
contre la pauvreté. À la distribution de prestations ex post qui rendent
dépendants et sont insuffisantes pour accéder à l’autonomie, Rawls
veut donc ajouter la distribution ex ante d’un capital et l’accès à la
propriété qui garantissent, au contraire, l’indépendance. D’où son
intérêt, comme nous allons le voir, pour une « démocratie de
propriétaires ». La prédistribution ex ante est préférable à la
redistribution ex post : cette dernière encourage la dépendance et
l’assistance, la première garantit la valeur réelle des libertés de base et
la juste égalité des chances grâce à la dispersion généralisée de la
propriété du capital et du pouvoir politique qu’elle confère. Elle
84 Catherine Audard
donne les moyens politiques de résister à l’oligarchisation de la société

contre laquelle le WSC est resté impuissant.
Mais jusqu’où va la distribution ex ante dans la transformation de
l’État social ? Sous-jacent à ce débat, il nous semble qu’il existe un
nouvel argument sur lequel nous reviendrons et que Rawls avance
pour s’opposer au WSC. Il n’est pas sûr qu’il soit sur ce point en
accord avec Piketty qui lui vise plutôt à moderniser l’État social qu’à
changer de paradigme15. En effet, pour Rawls, le but de la justice dans
une société démocratique n’est pas seulement la survie ou la lutte
contre la pauvreté, mais le développement des capacités et
l’épanouissement de chacun que seule permet la propriété du capital.
Rawls rejette un minimum social qui est toujours trop faible pour
permettre l’exercice égal de la citoyenneté et les « conditions sociales
du respect de soi ». En d’autres termes, le WSC ne vise pas la justice
comme reconnaissance de l’égale dignité de chacun, mais seulement à
garantir un revenu social minimum et à compenser la malchance, ce
qui ne suffit pas à promouvoir le développement de soi et la
citoyenneté.
II - LA DOTATION INITIALE EN CAPITAL (ACKERMAN)
Le diagnostic sur lequel Piketty et Rawls sont d’accord est donc
que c’est l’inégale distribution de la propriété du capital bien plus que
celle des revenus du travail qui est la cause structurelle des inégalités
injustes et arbitraires. Face à ce diagnostic, plusieurs voies s’ouvrent.
Généraliser, non pas supprimer la propriété privée du capital

Si la propriété privée du capital est la source structurelle des
inégalités, ne faut-il pas la supprimer et l’étatiser ou la collectiviser à la
suite du marxisme et du socialisme ? Piketty n’a-t-il pas choisi comme
titre pour son livre de faire écho à Marx ? Or, aussi bien Rawls que
Piketty rejettent la suppression de la propriété privée du capital
productif et sa collectivisation dont le coût serait le sacrifice des
libertés fondamentales16. Tous deux cherchent à concilier liberté
individuelle et justice sociale. Rawls discute Marx longuement dans de
nombreux textes17, et s’il s’oppose aux effets destructeurs du
capitalisme18, il se situe résolument dans un cadre social-libéral où la
priorité des libertés fondamentales reste le principe normatif. Quant à
Piketty, s’il n’approfondit pas ses rapports au marxisme, il est clair
que son objectif est de transformer le capitalisme et d’arriver à « un
compromis idéal entre justice sociale et liberté individuelle » (Piketty,

op. cit., p. 816). Tous deux proposent donc de généraliser la propriété
privée, non de la supprimer. Ils souhaitent réduire les inégalités
sociales tout en respectant les libertés de base dont le droit à la
propriété personnelle.
On retrouve là les idées du « nouveau » libéralisme social19 pour
qui la propriété privée est compatible avec la justice si on distingue
entre la « propriété en vue du pouvoir d’exploiter » et la « propriété en
vue de l’utilité ». Comme on le voit avec le principe de différence de
Rawls, un certain degré d’inégalités de revenus et de propriété du
capital est compatible avec la justice sociale si elles sont bénéfiques
pour tous. Comme l’écrit Thomas Piketty, citant Rawls, « l’égalité est
la norme, mais l’inégalité est acceptable si elle est fondée sur l’utilité
commune20 ». Dans ce contexte, la défense d’une « démocratie de
propriétaires » apparaît comme une idée plausible.
Propriété du capital et citoyenneté

Mais c’est un programme qui est également proche du
républicanisme21 puisqu’il fait de l’accès à la propriété la condition de la
citoyenneté égale pour tous et de la liberté comme non domination telle
que Rousseau, par exemple, la conçoit22. Pour le républicanisme du
XVIIIe siècle23, pour Rousseau, Harrington, Jefferson, Thomas Paine
ou Adam Smith, l’égalité des droits de la citoyenneté doit
s’accompagner de l’égalisation de la propriété du capital productif car
seule la propriété privée donne les moyens de la citoyenneté égale.
Ainsi Thomas Paine qui avait été influencé par Adam Smith propose,
dans Rights of Man : Part Two (1792) et dans Agrarian Justice (1797), que
l’avènement du gouvernement représentatif soit accompagné d’un
nouvel engagement de la société à garantir des ressources matérielles
suffisantes pour l’exercice de la citoyenneté, « non comme charité
mais comme un droit ». Si la propriété privée est largement et
équitablement distribuée, elle est tout à fait défendable car elle permet
de concilier la liberté comme indépendance vis-à-vis d’autrui et
l’égalité comme non servilité du citoyen, le but étant de lutter contre
la domination politique des plus riches sur le reste de la société. Ainsi
pour Paine, chaque citoyen à la naissance et à son mariage, ou à sa
majorité à 21 ans, devrait recevoir une dotation en capital de la part
de l’État. De plus, chaque citoyen aurait droit à des allocations en cas
86 Catherine Audard
de chômage et de maladie, à une retraite à partir de 50 ans, toutes

mesures qui anticipent à la fois le Welfare State et la POD.
Cependant, il ne faut pas oublier d’ajouter à cette liste l’utilisation
de la POD qu’en ont faite les conservateurs dans les années 1980 avec la
politique d’accession à la propriété du logement généralisée par le
gouvernement Thatcher. En enrichissant les citoyens et en
développant une classe de petits possédants, une telle politique
permettrait de développer la responsabilité individuelle et de
désengager l’Etat-providence, ce qui était le but déclaré de Thatcher.
Pour Thatcher et les conservateurs britanniques, la « démocratie de
propriétaires » était une panacée se limitant à l’accès au logement, une
mesure isolée, un outil politique et idéologique pour lutter contre le
socialisme en développant une catégorie sociale de petits propriétaires
qui deviendraient solidaires du gouvernement conservateur. La POD
serait un substitut de la politique de logements sociaux et de
prestations sociales, pas un complément. Le danger malheureusement
très prévisible et qui s’est avéré réel a été le surendettement de ces
nouveaux petits propriétaires et la spirale sociale du déclassement. On
voit donc que l’idée est complexe.
La « Stakeholder Society » et la dotation initiale

C’est dans cette ligne républicaine que se situe le projet de la
« société des ayant-droits » ou Stakeholder society du philosophe
américain Bruce Ackerman24. Il s’agit d’une tentative similaire à celle
de Rawls pour allier justice sociale, réduction des inégalités et liberté
individuelle grâce à la généralisation de la propriété du capital par une
dotation initiale en capital sans conditions de ressources, comme un
droit de la citoyenneté. Inspirée par l’exemple illustre de Thomas
Paine, cette solution serait le meilleur moyen de réaliser à la fois la
juste égalité des libertés politiques et l’égalité des chances au sens
rawlsien, tout en respectant le premier principe et en améliorant la
situation des plus défavorisés (principe de différence).
Bruce Ackerman est inspiré à la fois par Thomas Paine et par le
souci rawlsien de donner aux libertés politiques et à l’égalité des
chances leur juste valeur. L’idée essentielle est que « la tâche centrale
du gouvernement est de garantir une égalité authentique des chances ».
Au lieu de se limiter aux droits socio-économiques du travailleur
comme le WSC, il faut se tourner vers l’idée d’une citoyenneté
économique. Le projet est l’attribution d’une somme de 80 000 dollars
(1999) à chaque jeune de 18 ans sans conditions de ressources quand

il accède à la majorité civique et devient citoyen afin qu’il puisse
entrer dans la vie avec de vraies chances de réussite. Ce capital est
financé initialement par l’impôt. À sa mort, chaque bénéficiaire doit
repayer ces 80 000 dollars à un fond commun qui financera les
dotations des générations futures, conformément à sa responsabilité
de citoyen. Dans une interview de 2012, Ackerman déclare :
« L’héritage citoyen propose d’offrir 80 000 dollars à tous les
Américains qui décrocheraient l’équivalent du bac, c’est-à-dire un
examen national évaluant un niveau minimum de compétence, pas la
capacité à intégrer une grande école ; chacun pourrait d’ailleurs choisir
à quel moment passer cet examen. En 2008, Anne a réévalué notre
chiffrage de 1998, date de la publication du livre. La Réserve fédérale
américaine est une mine d’informations sur la répartition des
richesses ; s’il y a beaucoup d’inégalités dans la répartition des salaires
aux États-Unis, la situation est encore pire en ce qui concerne la
répartition des richesses. Or si l’on imposait un impôt sur la fortune à
hauteur de 2% des revenus des 3% des foyers américains les plus
riches (c’est-à-dire deux adultes possédant plus d’1,6 millions de
dollars en fortune réelle), même avec un taux de fraude fiscale de 25 à
30%, on aurait assez d’argent pour financer un héritage citoyen de
80 000 dollars par Américain, s’élevant à un total de 3,7 millions par
an25 ».
Ce faisant, on encouragera l’accès à la propriété des classes
défavorisées et on luttera à la fois contre la pauvreté et les inégalités,
la société à deux vitesses. Ainsi sera revivifié l’idéal américain de vivre
dans un pays où tous ont une chance équitable (fair) de réussir, « a
land of equal opportunity ». Ainsi la liberté individuelle et la justice sociale
seraient rendues compatibles. « Notre vision de la citoyenneté
économique, écrit Ackerman, est enracinée dans la tradition libérale
classique ... C’est à chacun de décider comment utiliser ce capital
initial. Chacun est responsable de l’utilisation de cette chance initiale.
Triomphes et échecs sont nôtres ». (The Stakeholder Society, p. 5)
Comme chez Rawls, cette ambition s’oppose au Welfare State et à la
croissance des bénéfices sociaux sans contreparties, ce qui diminue la
richesse à partager sans créer de solidarité ou de civisme. Elle
s’oppose aussi aux libertariens qui refusent la redistribution et les
impôts au nom de la liberté individuelle. La dotation initiale dessine
une « troisième » voie entre socialisme et libéralisme et permet
88 Catherine Audard
d’accroître à la fois la liberté et l’égalité. Ainsi la « société des ayant-

droits » fut l’une des principales idées du Premier ministre Tony Blair
durant sa campagne de 1997. Les citoyens ne devraient pas être traités
comme les destinataires passifs d’allocations et d’aides calculées selon
leurs besoins. Ils devraient plutôt disposer d’un véritable droit aux
avantages de la vie sociale, quels que soient leurs succès ou leurs
échecs, leurs contributions effectives ou leurs besoins, parce qu’ils
sont des participants à ses arrangements coopératifs, ayant des
devoirs et des responsabilités politiques correspondants : voter,
exercer leurs capacités cognitives et participer aux débats portant sur
le bien commun ainsi qu’aux délibérations publiques. Pour exercer
pleinement ces droits et responsabilités et pour bénéficier d’une réelle
égalité des chances, ils devraient recevoir une dotation initiale.
En rendant la promesse de liberté universelle et concrète, écrit
Ackerman, tous les Américains sont concernés … Les jeunes de la
nouvelle génération affirment ainsi à la fois leur droit individuel à forger
leur destin, mais aussi leur identité de citoyens. C’est ce qui créera leur
allégeance à la démocratie26.
Critique rawlsienne d’Ackerman

Si séduisante qu’elle soit, la dotation initiale est loin de représenter
en totalité l’idéal rawlsien.
Certes distribuer dès le départ, ex ante, des moyens productifs
suffisants pour garantir à tous les jeunes indépendance, respect de soi
et citoyenneté égale est une mesure légitime qui semble aider à lutter
contre les inégalités. Le grand mérite de la dotation initiale est que le
principe de l’égalité des chances ne doit pas conduire à se contenter
de compenser la malchance (luck egalitarianism) au cours de la vie ou
de remédier à la pauvreté, mais il demande de créer une communauté
d’égaux. Pour cela, le fait que la société se substitue à la famille pour
aider les jeunes à démarrer dans la vie est une excellente mesure, bien
supérieure à la fois sur le plan politique, symbolique et moral comme
sur le plan économique aux transferts de l’État-providence. Mais ne
faut-il pas compléter la dotation initiale par des mesures tout au long
de la vie et, surtout, par une taxation vraiment progressive des hauts
revenus et du capital? La position d’Ackerman comme celle de la
Troisième voie de Tony Blair conduiraient plutôt à justifier une
diminution de l’intervention de l’État pendant le reste de la vie, une
fois la dotation initiale effectuée. La dotation initiale est présentée comme
une alternative à la redistribution alors qu’elle en est un complément. La

position rawlsienne est donc différente de la Stakeholder Society. Rawls
ne pense pas que la dotation initiale se substitue à la transformation
structurelle de la propriété du capital. C’est la structure de base de la
société qui doit être modifiée si la propriété privée du capital continue
à en faire partie sans générer d’injustices. Un ensemble de mesures
sociales complémentaires : plein emploi, politique de revenus, services
sociaux universels, etc. sont des conditions nécessaires pour que
l’accès à la propriété ne devienne pas un fardeau insupportable pour
les plus pauvres.
III - LA POD COMME ALTERNATIVE AU WSC (MEADE ET RAWLS)
Rawls avance alors l’idée distincte de celle de la dotation initiale,
l’idée d’une « démocratie de propriétaires » (POD). L’idée est délicate
à bien comprendre et surtout à traduire en français, c’est pourquoi
nous avons gardé le terme anglais. Ses ambitions consistent à lutter
contre les inégalités les plus injustes grâce à des taux d’imposition
confiscatoires du capital et des revenus les plus élevés (70-80% pour
la tranche la plus élevée) et à une politique de redistribution qui vise
non pas à détruire, mais à généraliser la propriété privée. Son objectif
est non seulement de lutter contre la pauvreté, mais surtout de
développer la classe moyenne, condition de survie de la démocratie.
James Meade (1964)

Mais c’est l’économiste d’Oxford, James Meade (1907-1995)27, prix
Nobel d’économie en 1948, dont Rawls a repris en partie les idées,
qui a le mieux formulé le programme. Piketty se réclame également de
Meade qui anticipe sur ses conclusions avec près de cinquante ans
d’avance. En 1964 Meade avait prévu la possibilité que le rendement
du capital dépasse celui du travail grâce aux innovations
technologiques, entraînant la croissance des inégalités et un nouveau
monde dystopique qu’il appelait The Brave New Capitalists’ Paradise
(Meade, 1964, p. 33).
Le problème de Meade était celui de Piketty face au retour de la
Belle Époque et de ses inégalités, l’oblitération des acquis des Trente
Glorieuses. Ce qui est remarquable, c’est que la solution qu’il propose
se démarque des idées dominantes de l’époque, de l’utilitarisme
comme du socialisme et combine différentes stratégies, différentes
institutions aussi bien capitalistes que socialistes, transferts de
90 Catherine Audard
revenus, plein emploi, services sociaux universels et redistribution de

la propriété, pour préserver le dynamisme économique tout en
réduisant les inégalités. Il veut créer une communauté de citoyens
libres et égaux qui ne n’est pas soumise à la domination politique et
économique d’une minorité de possédants. Il fournit ainsi le modèle
d’une société juste qui est une réponse aussi bien au socialisme et à la
propriété collective des moyens de production qu’au néolibéralisme et
au règne des lois du marché.
Tout d’abord, et ici il suit Keynes et se situe bien dans la ligne du
« nouveau » libéralisme, il recommande d’agir sur la demande de
manière indirecte, en élevant le niveau de vie par des transferts de revenus
plutôt que, comme les socialistes, par une intervention directe de
l’Etat sur les marchés et l’imposition d’un salaire minimum, de
nationalisations, d’un contrôle des changes, etc. Il est en faveur d’un
Welfare State qui, à la différence du socialisme, agit indirectement sur
l’économie et les niveaux de revenus pour plus d’efficacité. Il défend
ainsi l’idée d’une allocation universelle (Basic Income) ou « dividende
social » qui serait versé à chaque citoyen sans conditions de revenus
tout au long de sa vie. Dans Outline of an Economic Policy for a Labor
Government (1935) et dans d’autres écrits, il y voit un ingrédient central
d’une économie à la fois efficace et juste. Il s’agit d’un revenu
minimum garanti plus généreux et moins créateur de dépendance que
les programmes du WSC. En complément, il est nécessaire de
contrebalancer le pouvoir des entreprises par une organisation des
travailleurs qui a pour but d’améliorer les salaires et les conditions de
travail et d’assurer le plein emploi et des services sociaux universels. C’est le
Trade Union State. Il recommande ensuite de mettre en concurrence le
secteur public et le secteur privé et de développer la démocratie et la
cogestion dans l’entreprise dans le contexte d’une économie mixte.
C’est l’idéal d’une Workplace Democracy. C’est seulement une fois ces
conditions réalisées qu’il sera possible de procéder à une large
redistribution de la propriété privée du capital grâce à une taxation très
progressive du capital ainsi que des successions et des donations. Par
contre, l’impôt sur le revenu devrait être limité aux revenus les plus
élevés.
L’argument qu’utilise Meade comme tous les libéraux sociaux est
que la richesse est un produit social et le bien-être de chacun une
responsabilité collective, pas seulement individuelle. Il n’y a pas de mérite
individuel à obtenir un niveau élevé de revenu ou à posséder un
capital important car la contribution de la collectivité à ces résultats

est beaucoup plus importante que celle de l’individu concerné,
comme Rawls s’emploie à le montrer dans sa critique célèbre de la
méritocratie28. C’est cette illusion qu’il faut démasquer, l’impôt étant
une juste reconnaissance du rôle de la collectivité dans la création de
la richesse individuelle.
L’après-guerre a vu triompher au Royaume-Uni un autre
programme social, celui du socialisme de Beveridge, fondé sur le
salaire minimum, les allocations familiales et la sécurité sociale, qui
s’est répandu en Europe et a relégué la POD à l’arrière-plan.
Rawls et la POD : les mesures préconisées par Rawls (JCER, §41-42 et 49)
Voyons maintenant ce que Rawls garde du programme de Meade.
Six mesures caractérisent le programme présenté dans Théorie de la
justice (§42-43), mais surtout dans son dernier livre, La justice comme
équité (§41 et §49). Toutes, elles insistent sur la prédistribution ex ante
et sur la taxation progressive, plutôt que la redistribution ex post alors
que Meade combine les deux stratégies sans les opposer.
Tout d’abord, Rawls propose de revenir à une taxation très
progressive des hauts revenus « pour prévenir des accumulations de
richesse qui sont jugées hostiles au contexte social juste, par exemple
à la valeur équitable des libertés politiques et à l’égalité équitable des
chances » (JCER §49, p. 220). Celle-ci s’accompagne d’une taxation
également très progressive de la transmission du capital « pour
encourager une dispersion plus large et plus égale de la propriété
réelle et des moyens de production » (Ibid. p. 220). Le résultat est une
dispersion très large de la propriété personnelle d’une génération à
l’autre « qui n’exige pas une croissance économique continuelle de
génération en génération » sur le modèle de l’état stationnaire de
l’économie mentionné par John Stuart Mill (Ibid., p. 218). Ce faisant,
Rawls se situe dans la tradition égalitariste américaine que Piketty
analyse très clairement (Piketty, op. cit., p. 816). Ces hauts niveaux de
taxation supérieurs à 70% que Rawls demande ont, en effet, existé
aux Etats-Unis dès 1919-1922, puis de nouveau dans les années 1937-
1939 pour mettre fin à des niveaux de revenu et de patrimoines jugés
socialement excessifs et économiquement stériles. Mais ils sont
retombés à 30-40% depuis les années 1970. À cela il ajoute une taxe
proportionnelle sur la consommation plutôt que d’augmenter l’impôt
sur le revenu qui est injuste pour les revenus les plus modestes. « Il
92 Catherine Audard
est possible que le principe de différence puisse être satisfait en

abaissant ou en augmentant le niveau de revenu exempt de l’impôt
proportionnel sur le revenu » (JCER, §49, p. 221)29. S’inspirant de
John Stuart Mill et du mouvement coopératif comme de Meade,
Rawls propose d’ouvrir la propriété du capital aux travailleurs, de
développer les coopératives, la démocratie dans le lieu de travail afin
de mieux réguler le capital en faisant des travailleurs des actionnaires
de leur entreprise (JCER, §52, p. 242). Comme Meade, il voit dans la
démocratisation de l’entreprise, la Workplace Democracy, la cogestion et
l’autogestion comme le développement du mouvement coopératif,
une autre voie d’accès à une dispersion de la propriété du capital
productif. Enfin, s’il espère, comme Meade, qu’un minimum social
puisse être garanti par la Constitution, ce minimum n’est pas celui du
WSC, mais il est spécifié par « l’idée de la société conçue comme
système de coopération équitable entre citoyens tenus pour libres et
égaux… par le principe de différence et l’idée de réciprocité » (JCER,
§38, p. 180). La POD doit se traduire par un droit constitutionnel à un
capital inaliénable qui garantirait la valeur égale de la liberté politique
et de la citoyenneté, pas seulement un droit à l’Etat-providence et à
l’assistance.
Les mesures préconisées par Rawls consistent donc à généraliser
l’accès ex ante à la propriété privée personnelle par la taxation et à
empêcher la concentration excessive du capital productif entre les
mains d’une minorité. « Une démocratie de propriétaires évite cela,
non pas en redistribuant le revenu à ceux qui possèdent le moins à la
fin de chaque période, mais plutôt en s’assurant d’une propriété
largement dispersée des moyens de production et du capital humain »
(JCER, §42, p. 192). C’est donc par la généralisation de la propriété
privée et la taxation progressive du capital et de la consommation que
la victoire sur les inégalités injustes sera réalisée, pas par les transferts
de revenus (JCER, §49). La méfiance de Rawls à l’égard des risques de
dépendance que crée le revenu minimum le conduit à opposer la
POD et l’allocation universelle alors que les disciples de Meade s’y
refusent et n’opposent pas WSC et POD. Rawls reste donc proche de
Meade, mais sa critique du WSC peut laisser à penser qu’il penche
plus du côté d’un libéralisme social que d’un socialisme libéral même
s’il se refuse à trancher. La différence frappante est que Rawls insiste
surtout sur les inconvénients de la stratégie ex post et sur la dispersion
la plus large possible de la propriété du capital ex ante (par l’impôt sur
le capital, les revenus et les successions). Mais la POD a sans doute

besoin d’être complétée par des interventions ex post tout au long de
la vie (allocation universelle, revenu citoyen et WSC) pour assurer le
développement du capital humain et des opportunités, à la manière de
Thomas Paine qui combine les deux : revenu citoyen après 50 ans et
dotation en capital à 21 ans pour garantir la citoyenneté égale pour
tous. Peut-être s’agit-il d’une différence de génération, Rawls étant
plus individualiste et moins fasciné par le Welfare State que Meade ?
Piketty et le « contrôle démocratique du capitalisme »

Comment la POD ainsi définie par Meade et Rawls se compare-t-
elle avec les idées de Thomas Piketty qui, comme Rawls qu’il cite
rapidement30, est en faveur d’une taxation très progressive des
revenus et des patrimoines les plus élevés pour permettre une large
dispersion de la propriété ? Quelles sont alors les solutions que
propose Piketty pour lutter contre des inégalités, semble-t-il,
inévitables ?
Comme Meade, il préconise un Etat social qui aurait une mission
plus large que l’État-providence ou le Welfare State (Piketty, op. cit., p.
761). C’est cet Etat social qu’il faut moderniser et dont il faut
contrôler les dépenses, mais certainement pas démanteler (Piketty, op.
cit., p. 769). Comme Rawls, il pense qu’il faut contrôler le capitalisme
financier sans le détruire car « la propriété privée et l’économie de
marché … jouent un rôle utile pour coordonner les actions de
millions d’individus ». L’histoire a montré que l’économie planifiée
n’est pas une solution viable (Piketty, op. cit., p. 866-867). L’avenir est
dans le développement de nouvelles formes de propriété et de
contrôle démocratique du capital (Piketty, op. cit., p. 937). Comme
Rawls, il pense qu’il existe des inégalités justifiées si elles sont fondées
sur l’utilité commune : il y aurait consensus sur le principe de
différence de Rawls (Piketty, op. cit., p. 44, p. 62 et p. 768). Il fait un
rapprochement éclairant entre le principe de différence et La
Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (26 août 1789) dont l’Article
Premier dit : « Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en
droits. Les distinctions sociales ne peuvent être fondées que sur
l’utilité commune. » La question des inégalités n’est pas celle de leur
éradication, mais celle de leur mise au service des conditions de vie
des plus désavantagés. Comme Rawls enfin, la solution qu’il préconise
à la suite de James Meade est « l’impôt progressif sur le patrimoine
94 Catherine Audard
individuel, une institution qui permet à l’intérêt général de reprendre

le contrôle du capitalisme tout en s’appuyant sur les forces de la
propriété privée et de la concurrence » (Piketty, op. cit., p. 867). Il
favorise un impôt sur le capital plus efficace et plus juste que l’impôt
progressif sur le revenu inventé au XXe siècle (Piketty, op. cit., p. 755)31.
Comme Rawls, il cite James Meade et Anthony Atkinson (p. 821) sur
le choc fiscal et la taxation de l’héritage et il note l’influence de J. S.
Mill.
L’impôt progressif constitue toujours une méthode relativement libérale
pour réduire les inégalités dans le sens où cette institution respecte la
libre concurrence et la propriété privée tout en modifiant les incitations
privées de manière démocratique dans le cadre de l’Etat de droit.
L’impôt progressif exprime en quelque sorte un compromis idéal entre
justice sociale et liberté individuelle » (Le capital au XXIe siècle, op. cit.,
p. 816).
D’autres voies que la taxation progressive existent certes : la
propriété publique des entreprises et la réglementation des salaires des
dirigeants (France et Allemagne). De même l’Union soviétique n’a
jamais eu besoin d’impôt confiscatoire, même chose pour la Chine
(Ibid. p. 816, note 1). Mais ces autres moyens ne respectent pas la
propriété privée et la liberté individuelle. C’est pourquoi l’impôt
progressif est une meilleure solution. « L’impôt progressif exprime en
quelque sorte un compromis idéal entre justice sociale et liberté
individuelle » (Thomas Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle, op. cit., p. 816).
« L’impôt sur le capital permettrait de faire prévaloir l’intérêt général
sur les intérêts privés tout en préservant l’ouverture économique et
les forces de la concurrence » (Ibid., p. 752, p. 867 et p. 943).
Mais, à la différence de Rawls, Piketty pense en termes de
mondialisation. Il faut adapter l’impôt progressif au capitalisme
patrimonial mondialisé du XXIe siècle : il doit être mondial. Et,
surtout, Piketty n’avance aucune conception de la personne qui
permettrait de répondre à tous ceux qui sont fascinés par les
promesses de réussite pour tous dans une société où les libertés ne
seraient plus limitées par les demandes de justice, c’est-à-dire d’une
juste égalité des chances.
Objections à la POD
Les difficultés que présente la POD sont nombreuses. Pourquoi la
propriété privée, pas seulement l’accès au logement mais aussi à
l’actionnariat, serait-elle supérieure à la propriété collective ou

étatique des moyens de production ? Dans quelle mesure sommes-
nous devenus plus individualistes ? Ensuite, la taxation extrêmement
progressive que demande la dispersion de la propriété va accroître le
rôle de l’appareil d’État et de la bureaucratie ainsi que le sentiment
d’injustice face à des droits de succession très élevés, par exemple.
N’est-ce pas dangereux pour les libertés ? Surtout, l’allocation
universelle paraît créer des risques inutiles si elle est mal utilisée par
ses bénéficiaires et décourage le goût du travail.
De plus, ses objectifs sont contradictoires et oscillent entre
individualisme et socialisme. Le but est-il de lutter contre la pauvreté
et de maintenir un marché de consommateurs, comme pour Keynes,
ou de lutter contre des inégalités dangereuses pour la cohésion sociale
en évitant de trop grands écarts de richesse, ce qui est l’argument du
républicanisme classique en faveur d’une « société d’égaux » qui
permet l’accès de tous ou du plus grand nombre à la citoyenneté et à
l’exercice des libertés politiques ? Ou bien est-il, comme Rawls
semble le suggérer, de permettre le développement de soi et
l’autonomie du plus grand nombre et d’accepter les inégalités qui
peuvent résulter de talents inégaux, comme pour le libéralisme de
l’individualité inspiré par John Stuart Mill ?
Il ne faut donc pas ignorer les nombreuses difficultés d’un
programme qui place la redistribution du capital au centre de la lutte
contre les inégalités. Sur le plan économique, les risques pour
l’appareil productif sont considérables si le capital ainsi redistribué est
redirigé exclusivement vers la consommation et pas vers
l’investissement. Sur le plan politique, les risques existent d’un
autoritarisme grandissant de l’État pour imposer des niveaux
insupportables de taxation. Le niveau maximum de l’État social est
déjà atteint : entre un quart et un tiers du revenu national, et il est
impossible d’aller plus loin (Piketty, op. cit., ch. 13, p. 761). Comment
créer un consensus politique quand on avance des chiffres d'au moins
300 milliards d'euros annuels en France (sur la base de 450 euros par
mois et par adulte) pour financer un revenu universel ? Or, pour le
moment, les minima sociaux en France représentent moins de 25
milliards et même en y ajoutant les allocations familiales (12 milliards),
le compte n'y est pas. Quant à la taxe globale suggérée par Piketty,
est-ce qu’elle ne demanderait pas un État mondial dont le caractère
utopique ne fait pas de doute ? De même, la nécessité d’une
96 Catherine Audard
bureaucratie très importante pour réaliser le programme de la

« démocratie de propriétaires » risque d’accroître les dépenses
improductives et de menacer la démocratie qu’elle est censée mettre
en œuvre. Comme le recommande Bruce Ackerman, la redistribution
du capital suppose, au moins dans une phase préliminaire, un
encadrement des citoyens, un système de « tutorat » pour apprendre
aux citoyens à gérer ce capital, à le faire fructifier pour les générations
futures, ce qui suggère une forme de paternalisme éclairé et de
« despotisme doux » à la Tocqueville plutôt qu’une démocratie de
citoyens responsables d’eux-mêmes. Enfin, sans une éthique publique
qui valorise les investissements à long terme plutôt que la satisfaction
immédiate, sur le modèle des analyses par Max Weber de l’éthique
protestante, le système n’est-il pas condamné à l’échec ?
IV - LA JUSTIFICATION DE LA TAXATION DU CAPITAL ET DE LA
PRÉDISTRIBUTION : UN CHANGEMENT DE PARADIGME
Mais une réponse existe. Elle se trouve dans l’attrait d’une

conception de la justice qui justifie la redistribution du capital au nom
de ce qui est nécessaire au développement de soi de chacun, de son
potentiel et de toutes ses facultés, et qui fait de l’égalité une condition
du développement de soi, pas une fin en soi. Le succès de la
« démocratie de propriétaires » dépend de son mode de justification et
de sa capacité à résister à la tentation pour l’inégalité qui a accompagné la
montée des inégalités et semblé la légitimer dans l’opinion publique.
Ce qui fait la force de la position de Rawls, c’est qu’à la différence
des auteurs que j’ai mentionnés, il justifie la POD grâce à une
conception philosophique anti-utilitariste de la personne bien différente
de celle du WSC qui restait sous l’influence de l’utilitarisme. C’est
ainsi que s’explique son insistance sur l’empowerment des citoyens, que
l’assistance ou l’État-providence réduisent à néant. Rapprochons cela
du rôle important que joue le respect de soi dans la liste des biens
sociaux premiers qu’une société juste garantit à ses membres. Et
nous retrouvons alors l’idée classique de développement de soi,
centrale aussi bien pour le jeune Marx de 1844 que pour John Stuart
Mill en 1859, dans De la liberté. C’est cette valeur du développement
de soi qui a été détruite par le modèle mécanique et naturaliste de
l’État-providence. C’est cette valeur que Rawls aide à remettre au
cœur d’un nouveau paradigme de l’État social au XXIe siècle. Le
nouveau paradigme que Rawls oppose à WSC remet en son cœur les
valeurs du libéralisme : l’autonomie et la capacité à décider de son

destin qui s’opposent au welfarisme et à la « prétendue conception
économique de la démocratie » (TJ, §75, p.532) qui est une idéologie
de technocrates et d’experts qui prend comme référence l’individu-
consommateur, pas l’individu-citoyen.
En suivant Mill, Rawls propose une conception empirique de la
personne comme un être en développement qu’il oppose à
l’utilitarisme et à sa description des préférences comme données.
L’individualité est faite non seulement de données observables
instantanées, mais elle possède un potentiel de développement auquel
contribuent ou non les décisions, les choix et les ajustements de
chacun tout au long de sa vie qui permettront d’échapper à la
pauvreté et d’exercer son statut de citoyen. On voit tout ce qui sépare
Rawls du WSC et du socialisme qui, à la suite de Marx, défend
l’égalité au nom de l’égalité des besoins de base qu’une société juste
doit satisfaire, pas au nom d’une juste égalité des chances de
développer son potentiel.
CONCLUSION
Ce qui ressort des analyses que nous avons menées, c’est que le
choix réside entre trois types d’arguments qu’il est, bien sûr,
souhaitable de combiner. Soit on reste dans le cadre du Welfare State et
de son amélioration, comme pour Meade et Piketty, et l’accès à la
propriété du capital est présenté comme un complément des
transferts de revenu ex post, la taxation du capital étant nécessaire à
l’amélioration du niveau de vie et à la lutte contre la pauvreté. Mais
cet argument ne peut justifier des niveaux de taxation qui peuvent
atteindre 80-90% des hauts revenus et des droits de succession. Soit
on avance, comme Ackerman et Rawls, l’argument de la citoyenneté
et de l’égale valeur des droits et des libertés pour tous. C’est
l’argument du républicanisme qui fait de la lutte contre l’oligarchie
financière un objectif essentiel du combat pour la liberté et contre la
domination des élites. Seule l’autonomie financière permet l’exercice
réel de la citoyenneté comme le souligne Rawls. Mais, pour cela, il
faut un accord sur la conception de la liberté comme non domination
et sur un rôle étendu de l’État et de la bureaucratie pour mettre en
œuvre un tel programme, ce qui paraît contradictoire. La réaction du
libéralisme social est alors, à la suite de John Stuart Mill et nous avons
montré que Rawls est proche de cette position, de reformuler
98 Catherine Audard
l’argument en termes de satisfaction des aspirations et de

développement de soi, pas seulement de citoyenneté et de
participation politique. D’une part, il faut convaincre les citoyens que
le développement légitime des aspirations individuelles a besoin pour
se réaliser de conditions sociales relativement justes, d’un equal playing
field caractérisé par les deux principes de justice : priorité des libertés
égales pour tous et égalité équitable des chances ainsi que principe de
différence. C’est seulement en reconnaissant que la richesse est un produit
social et le bien-être de chacun une responsabilité collective pas seulement
individuelle que l’on peut justifier la redistribution du capital au-delà
des prestations du Welfare State. D’autre part, il faut comprendre que
ces conditions n’assignent pas un destin à chacun, mais sont des
moyens, des chances, des opportunités de développement tout au
long d’une vie afin de sortir de la spirale de la consommation
immédiate et de l’endettement. L’autonomie n’est pas sacrifiée à
l’égalité si, grâce à l’accès au capital, les conditions sociales deviennent
des tremplins plutôt que des obstacles pour la réussite et
l’épanouissement de soi.
NOTES
[1] T. Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle, Le Seuil, 2014 ; Anthony B. Atkinson,

Inequality: What can be done? Harvard University Press, 2015.
[2] P. Savidan, Voulons-nous vraiment l’égalité ? Albin Michel, 2015, p. 251.
[3] « L’amour propre n’est qu’un sentiment relatif, factice et né dans la société
qui porte chaque individu à faire plus de cas de soi que de tout autre » (J.-
J. Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité, 1755, 1ere Partie, note 1, p.
196, Paris, GF, 1971). Comme l’écrit F. Neuhouser, l’amour-propre
explique « comment les êtres humains peuvent être conduits à rechercher
les inégalités pour elles-mêmes, comme manifestations publiques du
statut supérieur qu’ils cherchent à atteindre. La gamme des phénomènes
humains qui dépendent d’une telle pulsion pour l’inégalité est bien
connue et très étendue : la poursuite sans fin de la richesse, la
consommation ostentatoire, le désir incessant de compétition et de
dépasser les autres… toutes manifestations de la ferveur qu’inspire
l’amour-propre d’accroître notre fortune, non sur la base de besoins
réels, mais afin de se placer au-dessus des autres », (OC III, 175).
Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 79.
[4] J. Rawls, Libéralisme politique, 1993, tr. fr. Paris, PUF, 1995, (LP par la
suite) I §3, p. 40-41.
[5] M. O’Neill et T. Williamson (dir.), Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and
Beyond, Oxford, Blackwell, 2014 ; Thomas Piketty, Le capital au XXIe
siècle, op. cit.
[6] B. Ackerman et A. Alstott, The Stakeholder Society, New Haven and
London, Yale University Press, 1999.
[7] Voir Piketty, op. cit., p. 52, le graphique 1.1. En 2016, la moitié des
ménages français concentrent encore 92 % des avoirs patrimoniaux,
selon une étude de l’Insee publiée le 8 novembre 2016.
[8] J. Rawls, Théorie de la justice (1971, 1999), tr. fr. Paris, Le Seuil, 1987 (TJ
par la suite), §11 p. 91 et §46 p. 341, pour l’énoncé final.
[9] Rawls n’utilise pas le terme qui se trouve chez Piketty op.cit., p. 833 ainsi
que chez Savidan, Voulons-nous vraiment l’égalité ? op. cit., chapitre 17. Un
exemple frappant de cette dérive oligarchique est la décision de la Cour
Suprême du 2 avril 2014 (McCutcheon v. FEC, 572 U.S.) qui a consacré
le pouvoir politique des 1% les plus riches en supprimant les limites au
financement des campagnes électorales par les individus après avoir, en
2010, supprimé les limites au financement des campagnes par des
entreprises et des syndicats.
[10] Martin O’Neill par exemple pense que Rawls offre une véritable
alternative au capitalisme (M. O’Neill, op. cit. p. 3.)
[11] Il s’en explique longuement dans La justice comme équité. Une reformulation
(2001), tr. fr., Paris, La Découverte, 2003, (JCER par la suite), où il
distingue entre 5 types idéaux de systèmes sociaux : « le capitalisme du
laissez faire, le capitalisme de l’Etat-providence (Welfare State Capitalism,
WSC par la suite), le socialisme d’Etat avec économie dirigée, la
démocratie de propriétaires (Property-Owning Democracy, POD par la suite)
et finalement le socialisme libéral (démocratique) » (JCER, §41, p. 188). Il
ne développe pas le cas du socialisme libéral et se concentre surtout sur
« la démocratie de propriétaires » que nous allons analyser.
[12] J. Rawls, La justice comme équité. Une reformulation (2001), tr. fr, Paris, La
Découverte, 2003, §41, p. 190.
[13] « Ce qui doit être une disposition constitutionnelle essentielle est
l’assurance d’un minimum social qui couvre au moins les besoins
humains de base » (JCER, §49, p. 221).
[14] Ce débat en France a été initié par l’œuvre d’André Gorz, Misères du
présent, richesse du possible (éd. Galilée, 1997) qui oppose le Basic Income ou
revenu de base à la dotation initiale et au revenu minimum. Voir aussi P.
Van Parijs, L'Allocation universelle (avec Yannick Vanderborght), La
Découverte, coll. « Repères », Paris, 2005. Le débat entre allocation
universelle et dotation initiale mériterait un autre article, bien sûr.
[15] T. Piketty, op. cit. p. 769 : « Il faut moderniser l’Etat social, pas le
démanteler ».
[16] T. Piketty, op. cit., p. 866-867 : « La propriété privée et l’économie de
marché … jouent un rôle utile pour coordonner les actions de millions
d’individus ».
100 Catherine Audard
[17] Les rapports entre Rawls et Marx demanderaient une analyse beaucoup
plus complète. Contentons-nous de renvoyer à JCER, §52 et à la critique
marxiste de Rawls par G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, Harvard
University Press, 2008, p. 2.
[18] JCER, §41, p. 188. Voir aussi M. O’Neill, op.cit., p. 75 : « Rawls
considérait que sa théorie de la justice menait à une critique
fondamentale des formes bien connues du capitalisme ».
[19] Sur le New Liberalism, voir J. T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory, Oxford,
1986, M. Freeden, The New Liberalism. An Ideology of Social Reform, Oxford,
1986, et C. Audard, Qu’est-ce que le libéralisme? Paris, Gallimard, 2009,
chapitre 4.
[20] T. Piketty, op. cit., p. 767. Voir J. Rawls, Théorie de la justice, op. cit., §11, p.
92 : « Si la répartition de la richesse et des revenus n’a pas besoin d’être
égale, elle doit être à l’avantage de chacun ».
[21] Sur les liens entre POD et le républicanisme, voir A. Thomas, Republic of
Equals : Predistribution and Property-Owning Democracy, Oxford University
Press, 2016.
[22] Sur la conception républicaine de la liberté comme non domination et le
contraste avec la définition libérale de la liberté comme non interférence,
voir P. Pettit, Républicanisme. Une Théorie de la liberté et du gouvernement, trad.
fr. par P. Savidan et J.-F. Spitz, Paris, Gallimard, 2004. Parmi les
différentes conceptions de la liberté que l’on trouve chez Rousseau, la
liberté comme non domination occupe une place prééminente. « On est
libre quoique soumis aux lois et non quand on obéit à un homme parce
qu’en ce dernier cas, j’obéis à la volonté d’autrui ; mais en obéissant à la
loi, j’obéis à la volonté publique qui est autant la mienne que celle de qui
que ce soit » (Fragments politiques, Œuvres complètes III, p. 248).Voir aussi
Du Contrat social II, chapitre 12 : « il n’y a que la force de l’État qui fasse la
liberté de ses membres ».
[23] Sur l’histoire de l’idée, voir Ben Jackson « POD, A Short History » in M.
O’Neill et T. Williamson, op. cit., p. 33-52.
[24] Bruce Ackerman et Anne Alstott, The Stakeholder Society, New Haven and
London, Yale University Press, 1999.
[25] Thomas Grillot & Jean-Claude Monod, « Une citoyenneté pour le XXIe
siècle. Entretien avec Bruce Ackerman », La Vie des idées, 5 mars 2012.
ISSN : 2105-3030. URL : http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Une-citoyennete-
pour-le-XXIe-siecle.html
[26] B. Ackerman et A. Alstott, The Stakeholder Society, op. cit. p.44.
[27] J. E. Meade, Efficiency, Equality and Property-Owning Democracy, G. Allen &
Unwin, Londres, 1964. L’intérêt pour les travaux de Meade n’a cessé de
croître. Voir R. Krouse et M. McPherson, « Capitalism, Property-owning
Democracy and the Welfare State » in A. Gutmann (dir.), Democracy and
the Welfare State, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988, et A.
Atkinson, « James Meade’s Vision », National Institute Economic Review,
1996, n°157, pp. 90-96.
[28] Voir J. Rawls, Théorie de la justice, op. cit., § 17, p. 134 : « Mériter c’est avoir
un droit. L’existence de tels droits présuppose un système de coopération
effectif… Nous ne méritons pas notre place dans la répartition des dons
à la naissance pas plus que nous ne méritons notre point de départ initial
dans la société. Avons-nous un mérite du fait qu’un caractère supérieur
nous a rendus capables de l’effort pour cultiver nos dons ? Ceci aussi est
problématique… La notion de mérite ne s’applique pas
[indépendamment] d’un système équitable de coopération sociale. » Voir
aussi §48, p. 348-353.
[29] Rappelons que l’impôt proportionnel prélève une proportion fixe du
revenu (flat tax) et le taux est le même pour tous alors que l’impôt
progressif change de taux selon le niveau de revenu et de fortune (son taux
est plus élevé pour les plus riches). Voir T. Piketty, Le capital au XXIe
siècle, op. cit., p. 796.
[30] T. Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle, op. cit., p. 768.
[31] Sur l’impôt progressif et son rôle dans la modification structurelle de la
répartition du patrimoine, voir aussi Piketty, op. cit., chapitre 10, p. 594.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, I would like to present some remarks on the idea of a
“property-owning democracy”, first presented by James Meade in 1964 as an
institutional remedy to the rise of inequality and then developed by John
Rawls in his Theory of Justice (1971) and in Justice as Fairness. A Restatement
(2001). Far from being obsolete in the present state of increased and extreme
inequalities as described by Thomas Piketty in his influential Capital in the
XXIst Century, (2013), I will show that Rawls’s focus on inequalities of capital,
not only of income, is still relevant today. Only a wide dispersion of capital
and property through a return to high levels of taxation can remedy the
failure of Welfare State benefits to reduce inequalities. Rawls’s argument is
based on the need not only to fight poverty, but also to create economic
conditions for civic and social inclusion. He advocates a quasi-republican
conception of the person as citizen, not only as consumer, that echoes Bruce
Ackerman’s stakeholder society (1999). But he also, and more convincingly in
my view, draws on Mill’s conception of the individual as a self-developing
being and argues that a property-owning democracy is the condition for her
autonomous development.
REPUBLICANISM AND PROPERTY-OWNING

DEMOCRACY: HOW ARE THEY CONNECTED?
Stuart WHITE
INTRODUCTION
Recent years have seen a growth of interest in republicanism in
academic political theory (Sandel, 1996; Pettit, 1997, 2012; Skinner,
1998; Honohan, 2002). There has also been a more modest growth of
interest in “Property-Owning Democracy” (POD) as a form of
economic organization, as advocated by John Rawls (Rawls, 1999). A
POD is a market economy, with a significant role for private
ownership of the means of production, but in which public authority
is used to sustain an egalitarian distribution of productive assets so
that market outcomes are more equal than is typical of a capitalist
society. The categorisation of Rawls’s theory as “liberal”, combined
with the tendency to see “liberalism” and “republicanism” as rival,
even opposing schools of thought, might lead one to think that
republicanism and POD stand in some kind of rival or antagonistic
relationship. There are, however, strong reasons for seeing them as
mutually supportive. In this paper I shall explore how POD arguably
supports republicanism as a political ideal, and how republicanism
also arguably supports POD as an economic ideal. By extension, I
shall suggest that liberalism— or, at least, a Rawlsian liberalism—and
republicanism are more appropriately seen as mutually supportive
than in opposition (see also Audard, 2007; Thomas, 2016).
We begin in section 1 with some opening definitions of
republicanism and POD. Republicanism, I argue, is helpfully broken
down into (a) a conception of political legitimacy; (b) a conception of
104 Stuart White
liberty; and (c) a conception of citizenship and politics. In sections 2

and 3 I then set out two ways in which POD supports republicanism.
Section 2 discusses how POD supports republican legitimacy, in
particular through its support for the value of political equality. I
connect this argument to Rawls’s concerns about oligarchy and to his
own case for POD. Section 3 discusses how POD supports a concern
to secure republican liberty (as “non-domination”). Sections 4 and 5
then consider how republicanism might support POD. Section 4
sketches an argument I have developed elsewhere at greater length
that a specifically republican form of citizenship is important to the
stability of POD (White, 2012). Left to itself, POD might well have a
tendency to generate “individualism” in Alexis de Tocqueville’s sense
of the term, implying a withdrawal from civic engagement and a
consequent erosion of citizens’ support for the institutions that
maintain a POD. A Tocquevillian response to this problem is to
foster a republican practice of citizenship that counters
“individualism” and encourages civic engagement and a concern for
the wider public good. While section 4 discusses a potential problem
of stability for POD once established, section 5 considers the possible
contribution of republican politics to establishing a POD in the first
place. The most contemporary section of the paper, it discusses how
a specifically republican approach to politics, focused on the
constitution-defining role of “We the people”, might be necessary or
helpful in pushing back against the ‘oligarchic shift’ that many
capitalist democracies, such as in the Euro-Atlantic region, have
experienced in recent years. In this way, a republican politics can
create conditions more favourable to the establishment of POD.
Section 6 concludes with a brief discussion of the wider theoretical
implications of the discussion, focusing in particular on the
relationship between liberalism and republicanism.
I - DEFINING PROPERTY-OWNING DEMOCRACY AND REPUBLICANISM
Let us begin, therefore, by defining what we mean by POD and
republicanism. As a term POD originates in UK politics, being
initially adopted by Conservatives in the early/mid-twentieth century
as a way of describing their proposed alternative to socialism
(Jackson, 2012, 36-40). In the 1950s and 1960s, “Revisionists” in the
Labour Party in the UK began to develop ideas about how economic
equality could be advanced by changes to the distribution of
Republicanism and Property-owning-Democracy 105
productive assets and they picked up on the term, in effect contesting

its Conservative use (Jackson, 2012, 40-44). This is the context in
which the economist James Meade used the term in his influential
book, Efficiency, Equality, and the Ownership of Property (Meade, 1964).
Here Meade distinguishes four ways in which government can
promote economic equality. First, it can use taxation and public
expenditure (The Welfare State). Second, it can support trade unions
to maintain wages (The Trade Union State). Meade argued that, in the
UK of the 1960s, these two approaches needed complementing by
two further approaches. One was to take public ownership of capital
so that the return on capital was available for distribution to the
citizenry as a whole (The Socialist State). The idea was not that the
state should itself manage or control businesses. Rather, it should, in
Meade’s view, acquire a stake in businesses across the economy and
thereby share in the rise in capital value as the businesses grew and in
the returns on this capital. Additionally, the state could act to
promote a wider dispersion of privately-held wealth, e.g., through
reforms to the structure of inheritance tax. This focus on shaping the
private distribution of assets, with an underlying egalitarian ambition,
is referred to by Meade under the heading of “Property-Owning
Democracy”.
Meade’s discussion was an important reference point for John
Rawls. In his A Theory of Justice, first published in 1971, Rawls argues
that the principles of social justice are not satisfied by a free-market
capitalist system or even by “welfare-state capitalism”. Justice requires
either a system in which the means of production are publicly owned,
while production is coordinated through the market (“liberal
socialism”); or else a system in which the distribution of productive
assets, including “human capital”, is purposively shaped to limit
inequality in the ownership of these assets. This is “property-owning
democracy” (Rawls, 1999, xiv-xvi, 239-251). The basic idea is that
social justice requires more than corrective tax-transfers to limit the
effects of class inequality in a capitalist economy. Rather, it requires
the abolition of the capitalist economy itself, in the sense of a market
economy with private ownership of the means of production and a
strong profile of unequal asset ownership. In place of a capitalist
society with a stark division between workers and capitalists, justice
requires a market economy in which productive assets are distributed
so that the distinction between workers and capitalists is blurred.
106 Stuart White
Ideally, the vast majority of citizens would be both in the sense of

getting income from the sale of labour-power and from capital.
Roughly in line with Rawls’s discussion, let us define a POD for
purposes of this paper as follows:
Property-owning democracy (POD): An economic system which features (a)
large-scale use of the market as an allocative mechanism; (b) large-scale
private ownership of the means of production; (c) institutions to limit
significantly inequality in private ownership of the means of production
and human capital; and (d) a non-trivial public sector, particularly to
help with limiting inequality in human capital.
At the institutional and policy level, POD is likely to involve some
form of taxation on wealth inheritances (Rawls, 1999, 245-246). It is
also compatible with, and arguably requires, the idea of a universal
capital grant: a scheme under which each citizen would receive a
substantial basic endowment of wealth in early adulthood as of right
(Ackerman and Alstott, 1999; White, 2015). Although Rawls does
note the possibility of “hybrids” of liberal socialism and POD, he
presents them as discrete alternatives (Rawls 1999, 240-242). This
contrasts somewhat with Meade’s presentation in Efficiency, Equality,
and the Ownership of Property. Certainly, in his later work, Meade offers a
model of a (more) egalitarian market economy that integrates what
Rawls terms “liberal socialism” and POD. In this hybrid, which
Meade refers to as “Agathotopia” (the good place), the community
owns a sizeable share of productive assets and distributes a “social
dividend” to citizens as a share-out of the return on these assets
(Meade, 1989). Thus, citizens would derive income from their own
work, where earning power is shaped by universal access to quality
education; from their own capital, where the distribution of private
capital is shaped by policies such as inheritance tax (and, we might
add, universal capital grant schemes); and from the social dividend
payment which represents their share in the return on the
community’s public investment fund. In the discussion below, it will
help to keep in mind not only POD as defined above but also this
“Agathotopian” model or what we may here term extended POD.
If this is how we define POD, what about republicanism? I
propose here to define republicanism in terms of specific conceptions
of political legitimacy; of liberty; and of citizenship and (the doing of)
politics. A political view is more or less republican according to how
far it accepts the republican conceptions of legitimacy, liberty and
citizenship and politics (as elaborated below). In an ecumenical spirit,

I leave open here the question of how the three conceptions might be
understood in relation to one another. I propose that we define
republican conceptions of these three sets of ideas as follows.
Republican conception of legitimacy: a political system is legitimate, such that
authority-holders have the right to issue commands, to the extent that
(a) laws and policies are made through a genuinely democratic process
and (b) laws and policies reflect collective judgments of the common
good.
Republican conception of liberty: an individual is free when he or she has the
status of non-domination, i.e., is not subject to another’s power of
arbitrary interference.
Republican conception of citizenship and politics: citizenship is not only a status
of holding rights but a practice that involves active participation in
political life, animated by a commitment to the common good; politics
should give democratic expression to this conception of citizenship.
The republican conception of legitimacy has roots in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s The Social Contract (Rousseau, 1994; Cohen, 2009c). It is an
attempt to capture what is of value in Rousseau’s claim that legitimacy
is tied to the sovereignty of the ‘general will’. I take from this the idea
that legitimate law-making must be sufficiently sensitive to the views
and demands of equal citizens—that it comes equally from all and, in
this respect, is genuinely democratic. At the same time, I take the idea
that a legitimate law-making process is one that systematically
encourages citizen-legislators to frame proposals that serve the shared
interests of citizens, conceived as equals. In this respect, law-making
must be oriented to the good of all, to their common good. Thus, equal
opportunity for political influence is necessary for legitimacy but not
sufficient. It must be complemented by practices through which
citizens search for their common good. In contemporary political
theory, this latter idea is often elaborated using the notion of
“deliberative democracy”, where “deliberation” refers to a form of
civic discussion and argument in which citizens offer reasons for
legislative proposals that are suitably linked to considerations of the
common good (Cohen, 2009a; Freeman, 2000; Young, 2001).
Let us now turn to the second republican conception, the
conception of liberty. Philip Pettit has recently argued that
republicanism is distinguished by a particular conception of liberty,
liberty as “non-domination” (Pettit, 1997, 2012; see also Skinner,
108 Stuart White
1998). In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Rousseau says that the
worst thing that can happen in human affairs is to find oneself living
at the mercy of another (Rousseau, 1984, 125). Roughly speaking,
freedom as non-domination is the status of not living at another’s
mercy. As Pettit describes it, it is the status of not being subject to
another’s power to interfere arbitrarily in one’s choices. Skinner
elaborates the closely related “neo-Roman” conception of liberty as
the status of not being dependent on another’s good will. Both
contrast this way of approaching liberty to the idea that liberty
consists simply in the absence of actual interference: even if nobody
is actually interfering with my choices, their power to do so, at their
discretion, if they have such a power, casts a shadow over my choices
that undermines my freedom. Note that one can accept that liberty in
this sense is very important, as I do here, without also claiming that
this is the only significant kind of liberty or claiming that the notion
of freedom as non-domination is absent from liberal thought.
Finally, turning very briefly to our third republican conception,
republicanism is often associated with a particular view of citizenship
and with a related, normative view of politics (Nabulsi, 2008). The
citizen is appropriately “active” and her activity is centred on political
participation, and guided by a commitment to the common good.
This model of citizenship, as a virtue-centred practice, has application
in the well-ordered republic, but also has application more generally,
including in the struggle to create and develop the republic (Nabulsi,
2008; Gourevitch, 2015, 138-173).
II - FIRST CONNECTION: POD SUPPORTS REPUBLICAN LEGITIMACY
The first connection between POD and republicanism we shall
discuss concerns the way POD arguably supports the republican
conception of legitimacy. The basic argument can be set out as
follows.
The political equality argument:
(1) Republican legitimacy requires that law and policy is made
through a genuinely democratic process.
(2) A genuinely democratic process requires political equality:
equality of opportunity for political influence.
(3) Equality of opportunity for political influence is undermined by
substantial inequality in the ownership of productive assets.
(4) POD prevents substantial inequality in the ownership of

productive assets.
Therefore:
(5) POD helps to maintain equality of opportunity for political
influence.
Therefore:
(6) POD helps to maintain a genuine democratic process.
Therefore:
(7) POD helps to maintain republican legitimacy.
The central concept in the argument is that of political equality,
understood as equality of opportunity for political influence (Cohen,
2009b). As explained by Joshua Cohen, equality of opportunity for
political influence does not mean that all citizens do in fact have equal
influence in law- and policy-making. But it does mean that any
inequalities in influence must reflect choices about how far to get
involved in political decision-making, and in personal abilities, rather
than inequality in the resources that citizens have the opportunity to
bring to bear in the political process. One important resource that
people can bring to bear in the political process of course is money.
In many contemporary Euro-Atlantic polities, candidates for political
office have a strong need for funds to finance their campaigns. Those
with more wealth are in a better position to offer these funds and, in
this way, to exert influence over the platforms and preferences of
politicians (Lessig, 2015). The wealthy are also more able to offer
other kinds of material incentive to politicians. They can also exert
influence through the media and various interventions to shape the
flow of ideas (e.g., through the funding of think-tanks).
POD acts directly on the background distribution of wealth,
however, preventing the large-scale, unequal inheritance of wealth
across the generations, and ensuring (or at least promoting) a basic
endowment of wealth for all citizens. In this way, it directly limits the
inequality of wealth that is one important source of inequality of
opportunity for political influence. By helping to protect equality in
opportunity for political influence it thereby helps maintain a
genuinely democratic political process, which is one key condition for
republican political legitimacy.
110 Stuart White
Rawls’s argument for POD appeals in part to its alleged

connection with political equality. Rawls is very clear on the threat
which wealth inequality poses to genuine democracy:
Historically one of the main defects of constitutional government has
been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary
corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have
been seriously entertained. Disparities in the distribution of property
and wealth that far exceed what is compatible with political equality
have generally been tolerated by the legal system. Public resources have
not been devoted to maintaining the institutions required for the fair
value of political liberty. Essentially the fault lies in the fact that the
democratic political process is at best a regulated rivalry; it does not
even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to
truly competitive markets. Moreover, the effects of injustices in the
political system are much more grave and long lasting than market
imperfections. Political power rapidly accumulates and becomes
unequal; and making use of the coercive apparatus of the state and its
law, those who gain the advantage can often assure themselves of a
favored position. Thus inequities in the economic and social system may
soon undermine whatever political equality might have existed under
fortunate historical conditions. Universal suffrage is an insufficient
counterpoise; for when parties and elections are financed not by public
funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained
by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measures needed
to establish just constitutional rule are seldom presented. (Rawls, 1999,
198-199)
One key reason why welfare-state capitalism is not sufficient for
social justice, in Rawls’s view, is that it allows for such inequalities of
wealth which in turn enable the wealthy to control the economy and
“political life itself”. POD (like liberal socialism) acts on the
background distribution of wealth to prevent this (Rawls, 1999, xiv-
xv, 245-246; Rawls, 2001, 139).
It seems clear that in this respect POD is helpful to political
equality and, thus, to republican legitimacy. Critics have wondered,
however, both about its necessity and sufficiency to political equality
and, thus, to republican legitimacy. On the one hand, critics have
argued that the problem of “money in politics” can be addressed
through laws that directly target campaign finance and the like,
removing the need for reduction of underlying wealth inequality. This
concern, they argue, consequently does not offer a strong justification
for POD as against, say, welfare-state capitalism (O’Neill, 2012, 81-
84). What this argument perhaps underestimates, however, is the
extent to which substantial wealth inequality puts political equality

under permanent siege. Specific, targeted laws might help to bolster
the defences and manage the threat. But the stability of the
democratic polity is surely enhanced if we can lift the state of siege
itself, so to speak; this points in the direction of POD—or at least of
some system that goes beyond welfare-state capitalism in addressing
background wealth inequality.
A somewhat different criticism is that even if POD reduces wealth
inequality there arguably remains a threat to democracy in that
wealth-holders might still have undue political influence by refusing
to invest if particular policies are enacted. The democratic state
remains, in Marxist terms, “structurally dependent” on capital
(Cohen, 1989, 28; White, 2012). This suggests that the democratic
state must itself have control over investment, and this moves us
away from POD and in the direction of a socialist economy.
Admittedly, in the hypothetical case of POD we are imagining, the
underlying issue is not really about political equality as, by definition in
a POD, wealth is distributed in an egalitarian fashion. But there might
still be a threat to republican legitimacy. Even if wealth is distributed
quite equally, some policies that citizens would support as voters
might be rendered unfeasible by the private investment decisions they
can be expected to make in response as wealth-holders. This might be
thought to limit the effective sovereignty of the democratic citizen
body (White, 2012). This challenge raises issues that I lack space to
consider here. But insofar as it is valid, it does point to a limit to
POD as a way of supporting republican legitimacy, albeit one that
could perhaps be mitigated in a form of Meade-style extended POD
that includes a liberal socialist element. A full analysis would also need
to consider whether a socialist alternative to POD might not also
carry risks to democracy. How would public control over investment
work in practice? How would it itself respect political equality? To
sum up, POD almost certainly represents an advance in terms of
political equality (and, thus, republican legitimacy) relative to
contemporary capitalism; whether it is optimal in this respect is a more
disputable matter.
112 Stuart White
III - SECOND CONNECTION: POD SUPPORTS REPUBLICAN LIBERTY

A second important connection between POD and republicanism
concerns the potential contribution of POD to securing republican
liberty. The basic argument here may be set out as follows.
The liberty argument:
(1) Liberty as non-domination is supported by economic
independence: by having an income that is not dependent on the
discretion of another such as an employer, spouse, or state
bureaucrat.
(2) Economic independence is supported by owning wealth.
(3) POD ensures that wealth is distributed across all citizens.
Therefore:
(4) POD supports economic independence across all citizens.
Therefore:
(5) POD supports enjoyment of liberty as non-domination by all
citizens.
The first step in this argument has been developed in recent work
by Daniel Raventós and David Casassas (Raventós, 2007; Casassas,
2007). If one lacks access to the goods and services necessary to meet
basic needs, then others, who can give one access to these resources,
can have an important source of power over you. They can make
your access to the goods and services dependent on conforming to
their will. If you desperately need the resources, and have no rival
source for them, then you are in a position where you have little
option but to conform to their will. Consequently, you are in a
position where you experience domination: you are subject to
another’s power to interfere in your choices at their will. To be
dominated, is, on the republican conception of liberty, to be unfree.
To lack economic independence, therefore, is to be unfree; or, at
least, to be vulnerable to unfreedom.
This insight has played a significant role in working-class
opposition to capitalism. Consider, as an example, the following
passage written by striking cotton-spinners in Manchester in the early
nineteenth-century:
The master spinners are a class of men unlike all other master tradesmen
in the kingdom. They are ignorant, proud, and tyrannical. What then
must be the men or rather beings who are the instruments of such
masters? Why, they have been for a series of years, with their wives and
their families, patience itself – bondmen and bondwomen to their cruel
taskmasters. It is in vain to insult our common understandings with the
observation that such men are free; that the law protects the rich and
poor alike, and that a spinner can leave his master if he does not like his
wages. True; so he can; but where must he go? Why to another, to be
sure. Well: he goes; he is asked where did you work last: ‘did he
discharge you?’ No; we could not agree about wages. Well I shall not
employ you nor anyone who leaves his master in that manner....What
then is the man to do? If he goes to the parish, that grave of all
independence, he is there told – We shall not relieve you; if you dispute
with your master, and don’t support your family, we will send you to
prison; so that the man is bound, by a combination of circumstances, to
submit to his master. (Thompson, 1963, 179)
The basic claim is clear: as workers we have no choice in effect
but to agree to the terms of employment presented to us by our
respective employers and this makes us subject to their will, placed in
a position of submission to a “master”.
The second step in the liberty argument for POD is that
ownership of wealth—of assets that provide an income—establishes
a degree of economic independence and therefore diminishes one’s
vulnerability to domination. If workers have some wealth, then, as
Meade put it, they can “snap their fingers” at an employer and walk
out because they know they can live for a time on their own wealth
(Meade, 1964, 38-39, quoted in Ackerman and Alstott, 1999, 25-26).
Obviously this effect is stronger the more wealth one has. But even a
modest amount can arguably give the individual a crucial degree of
“independence”, enabling them to search more widely for job offers
(or other economic opportunities) and reducing the pressure to
scramble into a specific job and conform to the employer’s will. Thus,
insofar as POD manages to spread wealth ownership across all adult
citizens it helps to promote liberty as non-domination for them. This
is why there is a deep connection between the commitment to
securing liberty as non-domination and universalising property in
some form.
Again, however, while POD seems clearly helpful to republican
liberty in the manner suggested, critics might question whether it is
necessary or optimal in this regard. Raventós and Casassas, for
example, both argue that economic independence, and thus
republican liberty, is best served by a universal basic income payment
114 Stuart White
from the state: each citizen receives an income from the state without
any test of willingness to work or of means. A basic income in this
sense can surely provide economic independence just as much as
ownership of wealth. Indeed, in one respect at least, the basic income
approach seems better. Wealth, after all, is always something the
individual can lose, e.g., through a misguided investment. If they do,
then their economic independence is also lost, at least temporarily,
and their liberty is at risk. By comparison, a basic income, paid
regularly, and provided it cannot be converted into a capital sum,
offers a more secure basis for economic independence. Thus, what
really serves republican liberty, it might be said, is not POD but a
scheme of (non-mortgageable) universal basic income (Raventós,
2007; Casassas, 2007).
In response, we should note that what I have termed extended
POD actually involves both a wide dispersion of wealth and a
universal basic income: the basic income is the social dividend that
each citizen receives as their share of the return on the state’s
investment fund. This can of course also be topped up through the
tax-transfer system. Still, the critic might argue that even extended
POD does not go far enough in this respect. Under extended POD,
economic independence is supported by a mix of basic income and
dispersed wealth. The latter is still alienable, so would it not be better
in principle to have a system in which economic independence
depends only on a basic income? To this challenge, I have two
responses (for helpful discussion, see also Bidadanure, 2014a, 2014b,
142-170; White, 2015). First, in institutional terms, there is arguably a
benefit from having economic independence supported from
different directions rather than resting too much on one specific
policy. This might make economic independence more protected
from the risks of policy change by spreading this risk across different
policy instruments. Second, there are intrinsic benefits to citizens
holding alienable wealth, e.g., in terms of supporting personally
valued investments, which also need to be taken into consideration. If
republican liberty is our only concern, perhaps there is a case for
basic income alone over the more mixed approach, at least if the
former is relatively secure in political terms. But republican liberty
isn’t, or shouldn’t be, our only concern. The opportunity to marshal
resources to support a valued personal project, commercial or
otherwise, is also important, and we might reasonably view a mixture
of basic income and personal wealth holding as striking the most

reasonable balance between the interest in republican liberty and this
other important interest. If so, then even if an extended POD does
not promote republican liberty as much as a system with a higher
basic income would, it arguably promotes republican liberty to the
right extent in an all-things-considered sense.
IV - THIRD CONNECTION: REPUBLICAN CITIZENSHIP SUPPORTS POD
So far we have focused on how POD supports republican
commitments. Let us now consider how republican commitments
might support POD. A first connection here relates to the stability of
POD once established. The basic argument may be set out as follows
(drawing on White, 2012).
The stability argument:
(1) POD creates pressures towards “individualism” (in Tocqueville’s
sense of the term).
(2) “Individualism” threatens to undermine the sense of justice that is
necessary to sustain POD over time.
However:
(3) Pressures towards “individualism” can be countered effectively by
institutions that embody a republican conception of citizenship.
Therefore:
(4) Republican citizenship helps to increase the stability of POD over
time.
POD is a market-centred economic system. Although assets are
distributed on a relatively equal basis, economic life is still
characterised by a degree of competition and differences in reward
and success. As I have argued at greater length elsewhere, the image
POD conjures up is in some ways similar to what Tocqueville claimed
to see in the democracy of the USA in the early nineteenth century.
Amongst white men at least, this was a society characterised, in
Tocqueville’s view, by a relative equality of education and capital
(Tocqueville, 2003, 617). It was a society in which no individual could
be assured of staying very rich, but in which there was also a realistic
possibility of material advance. Tocqueville argues, of course, that a
society that is egalitarian or democratic in this way—based on a wide
dispersion of productive assets—carries a significant tendency
116 Stuart White
towards individualism: “a calm and considered feeling which

persuaded each citizen to cut himself off from his fellows and to
withdraw into the circle of his family and friends in such a way that
he thus creates a small group of his own and willingly abandons
society at large to its own devices” (Tocqueville, 2003, 587).
Individualism has both an affective and cognitive aspect. Affectively,
it involves the withdrawal from the public sphere, and concern for
one’s fellow citizens, described above. Cognitively, it involves having
a diminished, inaccurate sense of one’s interdependency with others,
a failure to see how one is part of a cooperative social scheme. The
cognitive error helps maintain the affective withdrawal.
If Tocqueville is correct in this sociological thesis, then this may
have implications for a society which bases its economic life on POD.
As noted, POD involves ongoing collective action to sustain an
egalitarian distribution of productive assets. This is achieved through
public policies such as publicly-funded education, stable rules about
the taxation of wealth and inheritances and, perhaps, a scheme of
universal capital grants. The stability of POD depends, therefore, on
the continuation of these policies. This in turn depends on citizens
being willing to continue to vote for and otherwise support these
policies. This depends on citizens having what Rawls calls an effective
“sense of justice” (Rawls, 1999, 41, 274-275). They must have an
appreciation of the principles of social justice and of how policies
such as the ones just described work to fulfil them. They must be
willing to carry any sacrifices this might imply, e.g., in terms of
taxation of wealth transfers within the family. Individualism, however,
in the sense outlined above, seems to jeopardise this sense of justice.
Consequently, if POD does indeed foster individualism in this sense,
it looks as if there is instability at the core of POD. Even if the POD
is established, its operation will promote cognitive error and attitudes
that are at odds with the sense of justice that is needed over the long-
run to sustain POD. POD will be self-undermining in practice.
In Democracy in America, however, Tocqueville argues that the
Americans have found a way to counter the risk of individualism.
Participation in democratic self-government at the local level pulls
citizens out of their private spheres. In the course of engaging with
others to address local problems, they are reminded of how their
society is in fact a cooperative scheme and they are encouraged to
develop concern for how well this scheme is functioning—a concern,
in other words, for the welfare of their fellow citizens. As Tocqueville

puts it:
As soon as communal affairs are treated as belonging to all, every man
realizes that he is not as separate from his fellows as first imagined and
that it is often vital to help them in order to gain their support…When
the public is in charge, every single man feels the value of public
goodwill and seeks to court it by attracting the regard and affection of
those amongst whom we live.
Many of the emotions which freeze and shatter men’s hearts are then
forced to withdraw and hide away in the depths of their souls. Pride
conceals itself; scorn dares not show its face. Egoism is afraid of itself.
(Tocqueville, 2003, 592.)
Thus, Tocqueville claims that the “one effective remedy” to the
“evils produced by equality” is “political freedom”, by which he
means primarily here participation in local self-government
(Tocqueville, 2003, 595). In his Considerations on Representative
Government, influenced by Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill makes a
similar argument, referring to the “moral part of the instruction
afforded by the participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in
public functions. He is called upon…to weight interests not his own;
to be guided…by another rule than his private partialities; to
apply…principles and maxims which have for their reason of
existence the common good…” (Mill, 1993, 233). If Tocqueville and
Mill are correct in this claim about the morally educative effects of
political participation, then we can perhaps see a way in which the
potential instability at the core of POD can be addressed. By
structuring the state so as to foster a specifically republican form of
citizenship, characterised by active participation in political decision-
making, the state can counter individualism and in this way possibly
help sustain the sense of justice that is necessary to maintain POD
(White, 2012). In this respect, republican citizenship putatively
supports POD.
Clearly, this argument rests on two empirical claims that need
further support than I offer here: that POD is subject to a problem of
individualism and that institutions that promote republican
citizenship are effective in addressing this problem. Moreover, even if
these claims are correct, the argument does not show that a
republican form of citizenship is strictly necessary to POD, rather
than helpful to it. Perhaps there are other institutional responses that
can also help to stabilise POD against the risks of individualism,
118 Stuart White
making republican citizenship unnecessary (see Hussain, 2012).

Nevertheless, we can say that there are reasonably strong
considerations for thinking that the promotion of republican
citizenship is supportive of POD’s stability.
V - FOURTH CONNECTION: REPUBLICAN POLITICS SUPPORTS POD
The argument just set out concerns the stability of POD once
established. But POD is not yet established in any nation.
Establishing a POD is, moreover, a major political challenge. Because
it involves a significant change in property and power relations
relative to contemporary capitalism, creating a POD is always likely to
be a major challenge. But has the challenge increased? Colin Crouch
argues that many Euro-Atlantic polities have shifted over the past few
decades towards a “post-democratic” state. Over the first half of the
twentieth century the labour movement rose in these polities and,
through a combination of party political presence and union
organization, gradually balanced the power of the rich and business.
The post-war “Keynesian welfare state”, in its various permutations,
was a reflection of this (Crouch, 2004, 4-11). During the past thirty or
so years, however, power over policy-making has tipped back towards
business interests and the very rich:
Behind this spectacle of the electoral game, politics is really shaped in
private by interaction between elected governments and elites that
overwhelmingly represent business interests....while the forms of
democracy remain fully in place...politics and government are
increasingly slipping back into the control of privileged elites in the
manner of pre-democratic times... (Crouch, 2004, 4, 6).
In the USA, important recent studies by Jacob Hacker and Paul
Pierson and by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page also point to
what one might call an “oligarchic shift” in the way policy-making
works (Hacker and Pierson, 2010; Gilens and Page, 2014).
Against the background of this alleged oligarchic shift, the
prospects for moves towards POD look even more challenging (at
least in the Euro-Atlantic polities). In particular, to advance POD-
related policies in the context of ordinary politics, given the
background of the oligarchic shift, looks like a recipe for limited
progress, if not outright defeat. To open up even the possibility of
significant moves in a POD-like direction it seems necessary to first
counter the oligarchic shift itself. This implies less of an immediate
focus on ordinary politics and public policy and more of a focus on

what one might call constitutional politics, a politics that addresses
the political system itself and which purposefully seeks reforms to the
political system in order to counter the rise of oligarchic power (Hind,
2014; White, forthcoming; see also Ronzoni, 2015).
In connection with this it is interesting to see the emergence in
recent years of various kinds of citizen politics that incorporate a
critique of the existing political system and a demand for fundamental
constitutional reform. Examples include—but are by no means
exhausted by—the various “movements of the squares” such as the
15-M movement in Spain and the related Occupy movement in the
USA and elsewhere (Gitlin, 2012; Ishkanian, Glasius, and Ali, 2013;
Kaldor and Selchow, 2014; White, forthcoming); the movement for
constitutional reform in Iceland (Landemore, 2015); and perhaps also
the independence movements in Scotland and Catalonia. To varying
extents, these initiatives have a strong republican quality in two
senses. First, they often seem to embody a strong “tribunate”
element. They frequently involve attempts to visibly gather the
“people” in an open, public setting and in a way that is presented as
in opposition to an elite, e.g., as in the Occupy movement’s rhetoric
of the 99% against the 1%. Second, also in their practices of open,
public assembly, and in some of the demands for political reform that
they articulate, these initiatives express the principle of popular
sovereignty. They can be understood as efforts to reawaken a working
sense of “We the people” as a prerequisite of a democratic politics of
fundamental constitutional reform (Hind, 2014; White, forthcoming).
With this in mind, we can thus perhaps see a fourth connection
between republicanism and POD, which we can set out as follows.
The anti-oligarchy argument:
(1) Some “capitalist democracies” have experienced an oligarchic shift
in recent decades.
(2) Policies to move towards POD are made less feasible by an
oligarchic shift in power.
However:
(3) A revival of republican political practices, aimed at democratising
reforms of the political system, offers a way of countering an
oligarchic shift in power.
120 Stuart White
Therefore:
(4) Where an oligarchic shift has occurred, revival of republican
political practices, aimed at democratising reforms of the political
system, offers a way of increasing the feasibility of policies to
move towards POD.
It is of course important to acknowledge the limitations of this
argument. For one thing, it is not being claimed that democratising
reforms of the political system, reducing the influence of the very rich
and of business corporations, will necessarily lead to the adoption of
POD-like policies. The claim is only that such reforms remove an
obstacle to their adoption. But such policies would still have to win
popular support, not least amongst the citizens who have become
active in the cause of democratising reform itself. Second, the
argument as stated conveniently glosses over the question of just how
the revival of republican political practices, as exemplified in the
movements of the squares, does lead to actual and significant reforms
that diminish oligarchic power. This may be one of their aims. But
how is it to be achieved? Sceptics will point out that the highly visible
public assemblies and protests of the 15-M movement and Occupy
have long since disappeared. The sceptic will argue that they have
achieved little and that little is likely to issue from them or similar
events in the future.
In response, it is important to take a longer term perspective than
that offered by the critic. It may be that the movements of the
squares represented the early stages of a political development that
will take many more years to work itself out. It would be rash to
assume the eventual success of such a movement, but also is unduly
pessimistic to conclude that its initial failure implies ultimate failure.
Here one might note the case of Iceland where the initial movement
for constitutional reform was halted in 2012 but which, at time of
writing, may shortly resume following new legislative elections in
2016. Nevertheless, the objection points to a key issue that
movements of this kind need to address —how to expand the
opportunities for such movements to make effective interventions at
the level of constitutional politics. There is a “bootstrapping”
problem here: How does such a movement intervene effectively to
change the underlying constitutional structure, so as to make it easier
to make such interventions, before an enabling constitutional reform
has been made?
CONCLUSION: POD, REPUBLICANISM AND THE LIBERAL-REPUBLICAN

DEBATE
This paper has set out four ways in which republicanism and
POD might be connected. Establishing a POD is at least helpful to
republican legitimacy (first connection) and to republican liberty
(second connection). It is reasonable, on Tocquevillian grounds, to
think that republican citizenship is supportive of the stability of POD
(third connection). In addition, a republican politics, affirming
popular sovereignty over the constitution and seeking democratic
reform, is arguably a precondition for serious policy moves in the
direction of POD, at least in Euro-Atlantic polities that have in recent
years experienced an oligarchic shift in power (fourth connection).
In closing, I want to draw out some wider implications of the
discussion for how we think about the relationship between liberalism
and republicanism in political theory. Republican political theorists
often define their position in opposition to liberalism, and some
liberals are happy to reciprocate. Common to both is the tendency to
view liberalism and republicanism as complete, self-contained
political theories. An alternative perspective is to see liberal and
republican ideas more as modules that form parts of a complete
political theory. For example, on the question of what social justice is,
one might have a liberal module, based on, say, Rawls’s proposed two
principles. One might also adopt a liberal module on the question of
what kind of economic system secures social justice. POD, as
proposed by Rawls, or extended POD as developed in the work of
Meade, can also be seen as liberal modules in this sense. At the same
time, however, one might adopt republican modules with respect to
other ideas, as we have in this paper with respect to what political
legitimacy is, what liberty is, and how best to conceive of citizenship
and politics. Of course, not every liberal module will be compatible
with every republican module. But some might be consistent and
even mutually supportive. In the case we have been discussing, for
example, the four connections we have explored suggest that liberal
modules on justice and economic organization cohere well with
republican modules on legitimacy, liberty and citizenship and politics.
(Specific combinations might also have an effect on a given module’s
content as when the republican liberty module leads us to give greater
emphasis than we otherwise might to basic income in the
POD/expanded POD economic organization module.) Our overall
122 Stuart White
political theory might thus have both liberal and republican elements,
and be all the stronger for it. Republicanism and liberalism ought not
to be seen as complete, self-contained alternatives but as modular
toolkits of ideas that we can usefully draw on and combine in
building the best political theory we can.
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ABSTRACT
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that social justice demands an
economic regime like that of Property-Owning Democracy (POD). Rawls’s
work is frequently categorised as ‘liberal’ and contrasted with
‘republicanism’. Challenging this opposition, this paper explores four ways in
which republicanism and POD are supportively connected. Establishing a
POD is at least helpful to republican legitimacy (first connection) and to
republican liberty (second connection). It is reasonable, on Tocquevillian
grounds, to think that republican citizenship is supportive of the stability of
POD (third connection). In addition, a republican politics, affirming popular
sovereignty over the constitution and seeking democratic reform, is arguably
a precondition for serious policy moves in the direction of POD, at least in
polities that have in recent decades experienced an oligarchic shift in power
(fourth connection). Liberalism and republicanism are modular toolkits of
ideas that, as this paper shows, may be usefully combined.
Tocquevilliana
Les archives personnelles d’Alexis de Tocqueville sont dorénavant

disponibles en ligne à l’adresse : http://archives.manche.fr/trucs-et-
astuces-details.asp?card=13915807#.VL5bAGc5Cmw
The personal archives of Alexis de Tocqueville are now available

online at : http://archives.manche.fr/trucs-et-astuces-
details.asp?card=13915807#.VL5bAGc5Cmw
GUERRE ET PAIX :
L’HÉRITAGE MÉCONNU DE TOCQUEVILLE*
Elie BARANETS
L’œuvre d’Alexis de Tocqueville n’est que rarement mobilisée par

les auteurs qui s’intéressent aux affaires internationales. Lorsque cela
survient toutefois, comme nous le verrons, c’est avec une tendance à
mentionner son travail de manière superficielle, voire tronquée.
Réciproquement, les lecteurs attentifs ne relèvent que très peu la
dimension internationale de sa réflexion. Notre objectif sera de
contribuer à combler ce double manque. Plus précisément, nous
soulignons ici l’intérêt à étudier la pensée de Tocqueville à propos des
études sur la guerre et la paix dans le cadre de la discipline des
relations internationales (RI).
Plutôt que de resituer les travaux de Tocqueville dans les
conditions exactes dans lesquelles ils ont été produits, nous tâchons
plutôt d’en extraire la substance utile pour expliquer la politique
internationale aujourd’hui1. À cet égard, son œuvre comporte
l’avantage de traiter des sujets qui nous intéressent de manière
explicite et précise, de telle sorte qu’un effort d’éclaircissement est
bien souvent inutile s’il s’agit uniquement de rendre ses propos
univoques. Et ceux de Tocqueville le sont généralement. Exploiter
son héritage ne relève par conséquent pas d’une opération
intellectuelle hasardeuse.
* Je tiens à remercier Frédéric Coste pour sa lecture critique de l’article dont

une première version a été présentée au Congrès des associations
francophones de science politique, tenu en février 2015 à Lausanne.
128 Elie Baranets
En l’occurrence, c’est dans sa manière de traiter de la guerre et de

la paix dans De la démocratie en Amérique que nous jugeons Tocqueville
précieux. Deux débats majeurs au sein de la discipline des RI
pourraient ainsi bénéficier de son éclairage. Le premier concerne l’état
de paix qui existe entre pays démocratiques : on parle de « paix
démocratique ». Le second concerne la propension des démocraties à
triompher militairement : on parle de « victoire démocratique ».
Outre le fait que l’héritage du penseur français soit potentiellement
exploitable sans recours à de grossiers artifices, il existe un autre
avantage à s’en référer. Tocqueville affiche des qualités propres aux
grands auteurs : sa pensée est profonde, ses explications
parcimonieuses, le tout étant au service d’une conception originale du
monde. Il propose une vision cohérente de la démocratie réduite à
peu d’éléments. Il en déduit ensuite de manière logique les attributs
qui seront les siens à l’égard de la guerre, parvenant à lier la question
de la paix à celle de l’efficacité au combat.
Est-on pour autant certain que Tocqueville ait quelque chose à
nous dire et que nous parlions des mêmes processus ? Nous nous
penchons sur le comportement de pays dont les régimes politiques
sont déjà démocratiques. Tocqueville, quant à lui, adopte une
perspective plus dynamique. Il juge, dans la première moitié du XIXe
siècle, que la propagation irrésistible de la démocratie doit entraîner
des bouleversements majeurs sur les nations aristocratiques
européennes. Il étudie les effets empiriques attachés à ce basculement
qu’il pressent. Il s’intéresse donc aux changements historiquement
survenus, ainsi qu’à venir, en rapport au processus de
démocratisation, plus qu’à la démocratie en soi, de manière statique.
Pour autant, l’utilité de Tocqueville ne se résume pas à la question
des mutations ou du changement de régime, ni ne se cantonne à la
période durant laquelle il vécut. Puisqu’il parvient à identifier des
régularités attachées à la démocratie, nombre de ses conclusions sont
valables à l’égard des unités politiques dont le régime démocratique
est institué de manière stable. Que les intentions de Tocqueville ne
soient pas identiques à celles des internationalistes contemporains ne
doit pas empêcher ces derniers de se référer au premier si sa réflexion
est pertinente lorsqu’appliquée à un objet d’étude similaire. C’est du
reste ce que nous essayons de montrer en nous interrogeant, tout
d’abord, sur le rapport des démocraties à la paix (I). Qu’en est-il
Guerre et paix : l’héritage méconnu de Tocqueville 129
ensuite lorsque la guerre survient ? Les démocraties sont-elles

disposées à se confronter à l’épreuve des armes (II) ? Comment se
comportent-elles, enfin, lorsque la portée de l’affrontement armé
grandit et que la guerre atteint une telle dimension qu’elle façonne la
vie des hommes en démocraties dans leurs activités quotidiennes et
leurs aspirations profondes (III) ?
I - DES DÉMOCRATIES TENDANCIELLEMENT PACIFIQUES
Les États démocratiques sont-ils pacifiques ? Les débats qu’a fait
naître cette interrogation ont été parmi les plus prolifiques qu’ait
jamais connus la discipline des RI. Sans fournir de réponse définitive
à cette question féconde, nous soulignons que l’œuvre d’Alexis de
Tocqueville pourrait être utilisée à profit par tous ceux qui se la
posent.
Tocqueville n’abordant pas ce sujet de manière détournée, l’unique
précaution terminologique que nous prendrons sera de rappeler que
l’égalisation des conditions constitue pour lui le processus qui
caractérise la démocratisation. Par conséquent, il n’est pas
déraisonnable de considérer, et notamment dans les passages
auxquels nous faisons référence, que lorsque Tocqueville invoque le
principe d’égalité, c’est en fait la démocratie qu’il nomme et examine.
Lorsque le principe de l’égalité ne se développe pas seulement chez une
nation, mais en même temps chez plusieurs peuples voisins, ainsi que
cela se voit de nos jours en Europe, les hommes qui habitent ces pays
divers, malgré la disparité des langues, des usages et des lois, se
ressemblent toutefois en ce point qu’ils redoutent également la guerre et
conçoivent pour la paix un même amour. En vain l’ambition ou la colère
arme les princes, une sorte d’apathie et de bienveillance universelle les
apaise en dépit d’eux-mêmes et leur fait tomber l’épée des mains : les
guerres deviennent plus rares.
À mesure que l’égalité, se développant à la fois dans plusieurs pays, y
pousse simultanément vers l’industrie et le commerce les hommes qui
les habitent, non seulement leurs goûts se ressemblent, mais leurs
intérêts se mêlent et s’enchevêtrent, de telle sorte qu’aucune nation ne
peut infliger aux autres des maux qui ne retombent pas sur elle-même, et
que toutes finissent par considérer la guerre comme une calamité
presque aussi grande pour le vainqueur que pour le vaincu.
Ainsi, d’un côté, il est très difficile, dans les siècles démocratiques,
d’entraîner les peuples à se combattre ; mais, d’une autre part, il est
presque impossible que deux d’entre eux se fassent isolément la guerre2.
130 Elie Baranets
La position tocquevillienne apparaît distinctement à la lecture de

ce passage. Il n’est toutefois pas inutile d’en examiner certains
éléments, ne serait-ce que pour nous repérer par rapport aux débats
contemporains en RI.
Le premier paragraphe renvoie au rapport qu’entretiennent les
démocraties à la guerre en général. Pour Tocqueville, il est clair que
ces dernières sont tendanciellement pacifiques3.
Précisons d’emblée que ce n’est pas par cet aspect de son œuvre
que Tocqueville se distingue dans l’histoire des idées. Comme on peut
l’apercevoir chez des auteurs comme Emmanuel Kant ou Thomas
Paine, il a longtemps été consensuel de prêter aux nations
démocratiques la capacité ou la volonté de résoudre les conflits sans
user de la force armée. Dans la discipline contemporaine des RI, cette
proposition est connue sous le nom de « paix démocratique
monadique » : les démocraties sont plus pacifiques que ne le sont les
régimes non démocratiques. Des auteurs tels que James Lee Ray,
Kenneth Benoit, et surtout Rudolph Rummel soutiennent cette
thèse4.
Cette question a généré davantage d’enquêtes statistiques et de
débats méthodologiques que de réflexions théoriques. Par ailleurs, la
discipline s’est orientée vers le chemin inverse de celui emprunté par
de nombreux philosophes : les auteurs soulignant le pacifisme des
démocraties y sont tout à fait minoritaires. L’existence d’un tel
consensus n’a que peu favorisé l’éclosion d’un grand débat
scientifique sur cette question. En tout état de cause, celui-là n’eut
jamais lieu, de telle sorte que l’on peut dire que la paix démocratique
monadique n’est pas une proposition qui a marqué les RI. Quant à
Tocqueville, il n’apporte pas ici d’éclairage novateur. Pour autant, il
est utile de mentionner sa position sur la question, moins pour ce
qu’elle représente en soi que parce qu’elle est une partie essentielle
d’un tout cohérent qui, lui, est riche d’enseignements. En
l’occurrence, Tocqueville considère que les démocraties sont peu
enclines à user de la force. On aura noté que cette réticence ne
provient pas uniquement d’un calcul coût/bénéfices. L’homme
démocratique semble être sous l’emprise d’une force qui le dépasse, et
qui le conduit à se détourner de la violence armée.
Par ailleurs, Tocqueville évoque les rapports qu’entretiennent les
pays démocratiques entre eux, de manière plus instructive et directe
cette fois. Le premier paragraphe ne traitait pas explicitement de cette

interaction. Tout juste la laisse-t-il suggérer en évoquant la
propagation des normes démocratiques. Ce n’est que par la suite que
cette dimension est clairement explorée. En l’occurrence, Tocqueville
pressent que les démocraties entretiendront des relations pacifiques
les unes avec les autres. Or, la paix qui caractérise les relations entre
démocraties est le constat qui est précisément à la base du débat que
l’on nomme paix démocratique dyadique, (ou, à défaut, simplement
« paix démocratique ») assurément l’un des sujets les plus étudiés en
RI.
L’objet de la discussion ne réside pas dans cette absence de guerre
en soi. Il s’agit là d’un fait empirique qui n’est généralement pas remis
en cause. Pour des raisons chronologiques évidentes, Tocqueville
n’aurait de toute façon pas été en mesure d’apporter un quelconque
éclairage sur cette question si elle était posée en ces termes. En
revanche, son apport est potentiellement décisif sur ce qui fait
l’intérêt du débat : l’identification des origines de cette paix séparée.
En l’occurrence, les facteurs mis en avant par Tocqueville sont
similaires à ceux que la littérature spécialisée mobilise. Au regard de la
paix démocratique, ce n’est donc pas dans la perspective de trouver
des hypothèses nouvelles que Tocqueville est utile. C’est bien plutôt
parce qu’il peut nous aider à explorer les pistes existantes avec
davantage de rigueur et de discernement. L’extrait reproduit
précédemment ne peut que résumer la pensée de Tocqueville sur le
sujet. Il suffit toutefois à montrer sa pertinence. Après donc avoir
examiné le comportement général des démocraties, Tocqueville traite
des relations inter-démocratiques. Les explications fournies pour
rendre compte de ces deux processus renvoient, dans le premier
paragraphe, aux théories « culturelles ». Appliquées à la dimension
dyadique, les théories culturelles suggèrent que les normes
démocratiques, au sens large, propagent à l’intérieur des sociétés
démocratiques des attentes pacifiques, et font percevoir ces mêmes
attentes chez les autres nations démocratiques. Dans le second
paragraphe, Tocqueville aborde également l’hypothèse de
l’interdépendance économique. Pour des raisons exposées par ailleurs,
il souligne que l’accroissement des activités commerciales inhérentes
au développement des mœurs démocratiques renforce les liens entre
les individus, leur conférant des intérêts communs. C’est donc le
calcul rationnel des acteurs qui les incite ici à renoncer à user de la
132 Elie Baranets
force, puisque, dans de telles conditions, s’attaquer à l’autre

reviendrait à se nuire soi-même, indépendamment du résultat de la
guerre.
En RI, ce sont justement les explications éclectiques, conciliant
hypothèses culturelles et économiques de la paix démocratique qui se
sont imposées comme dominantes5. Celles-ci ont pour avantage d’être
précises, dans le sens où elles permettent d’analyser plusieurs aspects
de la démocratie libérale. Elles ont en revanche ce qui, à nos yeux,
s’apparente à un défaut : celui de manquer de parcimonie. Leur
généralisation est rendue difficile du fait de leur degré élevé de
sophistication. La prise en compte d’une multitude d’éléments
distincts pour expliquer un processus amoindrit leur pouvoir
explicatif.
Mais il en est différemment de Tocqueville, pour qui les
hypothèses culturelles et économiques ne sont pas deux explications
indépendantes, mais deux manifestations d’une seule et même
approche, puisque c’est l’essor de conditions égalitaires qui en est à
l’origine. Au regard de l’opposition entre théories parcimonieuses et
théories éclectiques, on peut donc dire de la vision tocquevillienne de
la paix démocratique qu’elle affiche les qualités des premières, sans
souffrir des lacunes des secondes.
Les politologues intéressés par les affaires internationales
pourraient donc avoir intérêt à prêter attention à l’œuvre de
Tocqueville. Au lieu de cela, la paix démocratique est associée à
Emmanuel Kant, et plus précisément à son essai Vers la paix
perpétuelle. Michael Doyle est l’initiateur de cette association,
aujourd’hui devenue banale6. Ce rapprochement est pourtant
contestable, tant l’approche normative que l’on y trouve diffère du
positionnement positif inhérent aux théories de la paix démocratique.
Surtout, il n’est pas certain que cette proposition soit représentative
du contenu de l’opuscule, et encore moins de l’héritage de Kant dans
son ensemble7.
Cela ne doit rien enlever à la qualité intrinsèque des théories de la
paix démocratique concernées, ni à leur intérêt pour expliquer
certains aspects de la politique internationale. Soulignons simplement
que, dans de telles circonstances, le recours à Kant est peu éclairant.
Pour le coup, il aurait été plus adéquat, et sans doute plus précieux, de
puiser dans l’œuvre d’Alexis de Tocqueville8. Le même constat vaut

pour un autre débat en RI : celui de la « victoire démocratique ».
II. DES DÉMOCRATIES TEMPORAIREMENT VULNÉRABLES
Il serait faux de prétendre que les politologues impliqués dans le
débat sur la victoire démocratique ignorent complètement
Tocqueville. Une citation apparaît dans The Logic of Political Survival de
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al 9. Quelques idées de Tocqueville sont
rapidement mentionnées par Dan Reiter et Allan Stam dans
Democracies at War10. Mais ce n’est que de manière très artificielle que
son œuvre est explorée. Dans une certaine mesure, ce constat est
généralisable à ceux qui s’intéressent à la politique internationale, ou à
des sujets connexes comme la politique étrangère. Deux éléments de
sa pensée sont alors régulièrement abordés. Le premier est relatif à
son annonce prophétique de la Guerre froide. Le second concerne
son analyse de la relation entre démocratie et politique étrangère. Ce
n’est pourtant pas là que son œuvre est la plus précieuse.
D’une part, en ce qui concerne le premier élément, Tocqueville
décrit en effet un système international bipolaire marqué par
l’opposition des États-Unis à la Russie plus d’un siècle avant que ce
dernier ne se mette en place. D’aucuns y décèleront la manifestation
du génie d’un esprit capable de présager de l’avenir lointain avec une
clairvoyance unique. Mais cette stupéfiante annonce ne constitue pas
un cadre théorique à l’intérieur duquel pourraient s’inscrire les
recherches d’internationalistes contemporains. Bien que Tocqueville
expose les raisons qui l’amènent à émettre cette prédiction, celles-ci
sont formulées dans des termes vagues11. Tocqueville parvient à saisir
l’emprise de forces historiques sur le processus qu’il étudie, sans
toutefois clairement exposer les rouages intellectuels du mécanisme
sous-jacent à son analyse. La prédiction n’est donc pas complètement
incantatoire. Elle est néanmoins le fruit d’une réflexion allusive, et
donc impropre à constituer une base de travail opératoire.
Le second élément, d’autre part, est encore plus régulièrement
mentionné que ne l’est le premier : Tocqueville distingue une
incompatibilité entre démocratie et enjeux internationaux. Par
extension, il met en avant l’inaptitude des régimes démocratiques à
formuler une politique étrangère efficace. Il ne s’agit pas là d’un de
ses apports majeurs tant ce trait est régulièrement souligné dans
l’histoire de la pensée. Sous des formes variables, on retrouve des
134 Elie Baranets
traces de cette idée aussi bien dans l’Antiquité chez Thucydide que
chez les réalistes du XXe siècle en RI en passant par les libéraux
européens tels que John Locke, et chez ceux qui compteront ensuite
parmi les pères fondateurs de la république américaine, comme
Alexander Hamilton. Certes, l’exposé que fournit Tocqueville est plus
précis et détaillé que celui que l’on retrouve chez beaucoup d’autres
auteurs. En cela, il mérite que nous en disions un mot. Néanmoins,
les conclusions qu’il dresse sont conformes à la vision que beaucoup
se font intuitivement du rapport entre démocratie et politique
extérieure. Pour cette raison, nous serons concis.
En considérant jusque dans ses Souvenirs que les démocraties
« n’ont, le plus souvent, que des idées très confuses ou très erronées
sur leurs affaires extérieures, et ne résolvant guère les questions du
dehors que par des raisons du dedans12 », Tocqueville confirme
l’analyse qu’il avait produite dans De la Démocratie en Amérique. « La
politique extérieure n'exige l'usage de presque aucune des qualités qui
sont propres à la démocratie, et commande au contraire le
développement de presque toutes celles qui lui manquent13 », disait-il
déjà. Ces propos, d’ordre général14, introduisent une argumentation
plus précise quant aux origines de cette déficience. Selon lui, le peuple
et ses représentants sont des entités dont les intérêts, le rôle, et les
caractères nuisent à l’élaboration d’une politique étrangère efficace15.
D’une part, que le chef de l’exécutif puisse être élu implique une
certaine fréquence de changement quant à l’identité de la personne
qui se voit confier la charge de la fonction16. Cela contribue à rendre
instables les politiques qui sont menées par le gouvernement. Il s’agit
d’un « des vices principaux du système17 » qui touche d’autant plus à la
politique étrangère qu’une négociation en la matière « ne peut guère
être entamée et suivie avec fruit que par un seul homme18 ». Cette
inconstance est d’autant plus nuisible que le pays entretient des
relations houleuses avec ses voisins : « Plus un peuple se trouve dans
une position précaire et périlleuse, et plus le besoin de suite et de
fixité se fait sentir dans la direction des affaires extérieures, plus aussi
l’application du système de l’élection au chef de l’État devient
dangereuse19 ».
D’autre part, le comportement du peuple, et son implication dans
les affaires publiques en démocratie, contrarient les exigences qui
entourent la conduite efficace de la politique extérieure d’un pays.
Cette dernière nécessite constance et patience, lorsque le peuple se

montre au contraire versatile et pressé. D’ailleurs, la relative absence
de transparence que l’on observe parfois en politique étrangère n’est
pas adaptée aux attentes populaires : « La démocratie ne saurait que
difficilement coordonner les détails d'une grande entreprise, s'arrêter
à un dessein et le suivre ensuite obstinément à travers les obstacles.
Elle est peu capable de combiner des mesures en secret et d'attendre
patiemment leur résultat20 ».
Quant à l’inconstance de l’opinion, elle peut facilement rejaillir sur
le chef de l’État en démocratie. Un phénomène que Tocqueville
n’observe pas à l’intérieur d’une aristocratie, où la présence d’un corps
restreint de membres éclairés empêche cet égarement21, surtout qu’il
observe une similarité d’intérêt entre cette élite et le peuple22.
Pour ce qui est des États-Unis, Tocqueville veut tempérer la
portée de ces facteurs sur la conduite des affaires extérieures. Il
invoque, d’une part, les spécificités institutionnelles qu’il y observe23
et, d’autre part, la nature des relations que ce pays entretient avec le
monde24. Néanmoins, ces nuances concernent une époque et surtout
un pays du fait de ses particularismes25. Les traits majeurs que
Tocqueville relève, et qu’il relativise pour le cas précis des États-Unis,
décrivent bel et bien les démocraties en général ; des entités qui, en
tant que telles, seraient inaptes à mener une politique étrangère
efficace. On retrouvera cette attitude démocratique dans les prémices
d’une partie consacrée, non pas à la politique étrangère, mais à
l’origine et à la portée des erreurs que les Américains commettent26.
Tocqueville explique pourquoi le processus démocratique empêche
que les représentants interviennent subitement pour réglementer les
habitudes néfastes : une telle mesure serait impopulaire et nuirait aux
hommes politiques désireux de rester au pouvoir. De telles pratiques
ne cesseront que lorsque le peuple sera convaincu qu’il est opportun
de modifier son comportement. Les hommes en démocratie sont
donc en mesure de mettre un frein à leurs pratiques nocives. Mais
leur manque de promptitude à le faire les mettra en grand danger s’ils
font face à une menace potentiellement fatale comme celle provenant
de forces armées extérieures27.
Au-delà de la question de la politique extérieure, Tocqueville
aborde plus explicitement celle de la guerre. C’est dans ce registre que
136 Elie Baranets
son œuvre est ignorée, alors même qu’il s’agit de ses réflexions les
plus utiles.
Tocqueville renouvelle son analyse prêtant à la démocratie une
plus grande capacité à prospérer, tout en demeurant plus vulnérable
que ne le sont d’autres régimes face aux attaques provenant de
l’extérieur. Il traite de cette question avec d’autres, au cours de
plusieurs chapitres distincts. Pour reproduire sa pensée à propos de ce
sujet, et en faire un cadre d’analyse simplifié exploitable en RI, il nous
faut la présenter de manière plus ramassée qu’elle n’apparaît dans
l’œuvre originale, mais sans toutefois substantiellement en altérer le
contenu. Nous proposons pour cela de distinguer trois facteurs à
l’origine de la faiblesse des démocraties : un intérêt dans la paix plutôt
que dans la guerre, une culture martiale limitée, et, enfin, un manque
de reconnaissance envers la carrière militaire28.
Dans l’hypothèse de la destruction de leur appareil militaire
étatique, et d’une conquête subie par une autre puissance, les
membres individuels d’une société démocratique sont moins enclins à
créer des foyers de résistance pour combattre l’envahisseur que ne le
sont leurs équivalents au sein des aristocraties29. Les premiers
craignent en effet de perdre leurs propriétés en se révoltant. Les
seconds ont intérêt à se battre pour protéger leur pouvoir politique
quand ils en ont, ou bien, lorsqu’ils en sont démunis, n’ont que peu
de choses à perdre à prendre les armes si on le leur demande, et ont
d’ailleurs appris à obéir. S’observe ici un effet du premier facteur,
celui du manque d’intérêt dans la guerre. Ce dernier se manifeste
également lorsque, par ailleurs, beaucoup d’individus jugent que
l’usage de la force n’est pas une alternative avantageuse en
démocratie. Les hommes démocratiques sont en effet parvenus à
prospérer par le commerce et l’industrie en temps de paix, de telle
sorte que la guerre puisse difficilement paraître comme aussi
profitable que ne le sont ces activités à leurs yeux.
Tocqueville explique alors ce pacifisme tendanciel par l’effet
conjugué d’un intérêt pour la paix et d’un second facteur, plus
culturel : « Le nombre toujours croissant des propriétaires amis de la
paix, le développement de la richesse mobilière, que la guerre dévore
si rapidement, cette mansuétude des mœurs, cette mollesse de cœur,
cette disposition à la pitié que l’égalité inspire, cette froideur de raison
qui rend peu sensible aux poétiques et violentes émotions qui naissent
parmi les armes, toutes ces causes s’unissent pour éteindre l’esprit
militaire30 ».
À l’image de cette dernière idée, on aperçoit que le manque de
culture martiale au sein des sociétés démocratiques est la deuxième
variable expliquant leur désavantage au combat. Bien évidemment, la
cause plus générale de ce facteur est toujours la même pour
Tocqueville : « Les mœurs s'adoucissent à mesure que les conditions
s'égalisent31 ». Il ne s’agit donc pas d’une deuxième hypothèse
indépendante, mais d’une deuxième manifestation du même
processus général.
Cette disposition à faire état de compassion s’observe de la part
des individus à l’intérieur des démocraties. Elle s’observe également
de la part du peuple en entier que ceux-là forment lorsqu’ils sont
associés. Mais elle s’applique surtout à leurs semblables. Dès lors, des
agissements cruels peuvent tout aussi bien se produire à l’égard de
ceux qui sont d’une condition différente, comme le sont l’esclave en
interne ou l’ennemi extérieur. Malgré cette nuance, la société
démocratique demeure façonnée par cette douceur des mœurs, et
apparaît comme mal préparée à l’épreuve de la guerre. Les peuples
démocratiques en viennent même à éprouver de l’« amour » pour la
paix32, un sentiment préjudiciable en temps de guerre.
On observera ici à quel point Tocqueville propose une vision
parcimonieuse des processus qu’il étudie : ses travaux permettent
d’appréhender ensemble théories de la paix et de la victoire
démocratique. En effet, un pays s'expose grandement à connaître la
défaite, émet Tocqueville, lorsqu’il a cessé durablement d’aller en
guerre, et que cette épreuve survient à nouveau. Or, les démocraties
sont moins enclines à prendre les armes, a-t-il déjà expliqué, ce qui
favorise alors l’établissement de longues périodes de paix. Une fois de
plus, les démocraties apparaissent comme substantiellement
défavorisées33.
La culture martiale a disparu en démocratie en même temps que
l’habitude de recourir à la force. Parallèlement, l’intérêt dans la guerre
décroît. Dans de telles circonstances, une situation dans laquelle le
métier des armes n’est plus prisé s’observe : il s’agit du troisième
facteur.
138 Elie Baranets
En aristocratie, l’inégalité qui règne entre les hommes pénètre

dans les rangs de l’armée. En résulte une certaine fixité des grades34.
Mais pour être satisfaits, les hommes n’ont pas besoin d’y connaître
une grande ascension. Les membres d’une société aristocratique ont
appris à mesurer leur ambition. En outre, ils ne perçoivent pas la
guerre de manière négative, comme ils ne considèrent pas qu’intégrer
l'armée doive être une source d'enrichissement matériel. Un tel choix
de carrière apparaît comme honorable en soi.
En démocratie, au contraire, l’horizon n’est pas obstrué par ces
barrières aristocratiques fixement établies entre les hommes et qui
restreignent la grandeur des buts personnels qu’ils se fixent.
L’égalisation des conditions permet, autant qu’elle nourrit, l’appétit
chez les soldats de gravir les échelons. Mais cette ambition est freinée
par l’absence de conflits armés. La paix empêche d’accroître le
nombre de fonctions qui sont exercées au sein de l’armée. De plus,
ces dernières sont occupées de manière plus durable, puisque les
possibilités d’avancement de carrière sont amoindries en raison de
l’absence de décès sur le champ de bataille35.
Alors que le peuple l’abhorre, la guerre est donc souhaitée par les
militaires, et de premier chef par les sous-officiers, du fait de leur
progression inaboutie36. S’en suit une mutuelle incompréhension,
nuisible aux honneurs attribués à la vocation militaire. Les carrières se
paralysent, et dès lors, n’attirent pas les citoyens les plus illustres. Ce
dernier élément contribue à affaiblir l’armée de la démocratie, autant
qu’à ternir encore plus son image auprès de la société entière.
Opérant tel un cercle vicieux, ce mécanisme pérennise une situation
qui dote le pays d'un appareil militaire peu performant et accroît sa
vulnérabilité aux attaques extérieures37.
Les hommes les plus capables se détournent de la carrière
militaire, faute de perspective d’ascension hiérarchique. Plus encore,
quand cet élément agit de concert avec les autres décrits
précédemment, il contribue à amoindrir la qualité des effectifs lorsque
vient le temps de saisir les armes. En effet, l’officier ne peut convertir
sa lente et précieuse progression au sein de l’armée en avantages qui
lui seront profitables dans la société, du fait du manque de
considération pour la vocation de militaire qui règne à l’intérieur du
pays. Dès lors, « il ne se retire ou n’est exclu de l’armée qu’aux limites
extrêmes de sa vie38 ». En temps de guerre, il apparaît alors usé et trop
vieux pour conduire efficacement des soldats qui, eux, au contraire,

sont trop inexpérimentés. Quant aux douceurs de la vie en
démocratie, elles ont attendri tous ces hommes, les rendant inaptes à
la rude activité guerrière.
Toutes pacifiques qu’elles soient, les démocraties ne sont pas à
l’abri d’une guerre39. Les trois facteurs que nous avons soulignés,
lesquels ont l’égalisation des conditions comme origine commune,
s’influencent mutuellement, et exposent les démocraties au risque de
défaite lorsque vient le moment de prendre les armes. Les faiblesses
démocratiques que des auteurs comme Thucydide ou Hamilton
décrivent sont des maux auxquels on peut remédier en allégeant les
contraintes qui pèsent sur l’exécutif40. Celles décrites par Tocqueville
s’inscrivent dans un processus social plus profond : des arrangements
juridiques et institutionnels ne les corrigent pas. Pour autant, on ne
saurait en conclure l’infériorité irréversible des démocraties en guerre.
III. DES DÉMOCRATIES FINALEMENT VICTORIEUSES
Tocqueville confère aux démocraties des caractéristiques qui les
rendent impropres à combattre efficacement. Qualifier de cette
manière la vision de l’auteur français n’est pas totalement infondé, et
nous avons nous-mêmes présenté les facteurs qu’il identifie comme
étant à la base des difficultés des pays démocratiques : l’intérêt à faire
la guerre, la culture guerrière et, enfin, la considération pour la
carrière de militaire. Mais si de tels attributs vulnérabilisent les
démocraties à court terme, leur influence décroît tandis que la guerre
gagne en ampleur, jusqu’à finalement totalement disparaître.
Déjà, l’intérêt que le peuple porte en la préservation d’un état de
paix, par définition, disparaît lorsque l’état de guerre finit par s’établir.
Qu’en est-il plus précisément du fait que les individus, en
démocratie, estiment que les gains sont pour eux plus grands à ne pas
s’investir dans l’entreprise guerrière, et qu’ils aiment mieux continuer
à concentrer leurs efforts pour s’enrichir par le biais d’activités
professionnelles ordinaires ?
En se développant au sein du pays démocratique, l’entreprise
belliqueuse n’est plus ce frein à la recherche de prospérité des
hommes. Elle se mue au contraire en une formidable, et même en
l’unique source d’enrichissement matériel41. Cette fin ne cesse donc
jamais d’être visée par les hommes. Mais la guerre les prive des
140 Elie Baranets
ressources qu’ils utilisent ordinairement pour y parvenir, apparaissant

elle-même comme l’unique moyen dans cette quête.
En s’installant durablement, la guerre fait en outre resurgir chez
les hommes démocratiques leur culture martiale, qui ne s’était en
réalité jamais éteinte, mais demeurait plutôt enfouie, pour ainsi dire,
sous les décombres de la paix42.
Les carrières militaires, enfin, s’organisent plus efficacement
lorsqu’un conflit armé se prolonge dans le temps que lorsque
l’affrontement n’est qu’hypothétique ou naissant. En temps normal, le
faible intérêt pour la paix, et le manque de développement de culture
guerrière contribuent à rendre l’armée impropre à utiliser
efficacement la force. Or, si ces deux facteurs n’opèrent plus dans ce
sens, il paraît logique que le troisième facteur s’affaisse à son tour.
D’une part, lorsque la guerre devient lucrative, les hommes qui sont
intéressés par l’idée de rejoindre l’armée cessent d’être les moins
capables d’entre eux, mais apparaissent au contraire comme les
meilleurs43. D’autre part, lorsque des mœurs plus belliqueuses gagnent
la démocratie, la considération faite à la vocation militaire grandit.
Que d’illustres membres de la société l’embrassent désormais
contribue ensuite à valoriser le métier des armes, et renforce encore
davantage son attractivité44. La mort sur le champ de bataille joue à
cet égard un rôle fort louable. Elle accroît les perspectives d’ascension
hiérarchique et renforce le prestige de la vocation militaire. L’armée
est alors susceptible d’attirer des officiers jeunes et talentueux.
Par ailleurs, si l’on a vu que les préférences des sous-officiers
différaient de celles du peuple dans son ensemble, Tocqueville ne
manque pas de souligner la ressemblance qu’a le soldat avec le citoyen
au sein de la société civile. La liberté dont l’homme démocratique
bénéficie fait de lui un soldat intelligent, qui applique peut-être les
ordres de manière moins mécanique et disciplinée qu’un autre, mais
qui ne manquera pas d’obéir à chaque fois que cela sera nécessaire, sa
raison même lui dictant de le faire45.
On voit donc que les facteurs qui vulnérabilisent les démocraties
au commencement de la guerre s’estompent à mesure que cette
dernière marque durablement la vie démocratique. Pour autant, cela
suffit-il à favoriser les démocraties, ou bien cet élément permet-il
seulement de rétablir l’équilibre entre ces dernières et les autres
régimes ?
Tocqueville explique que l’égalité qui règne en démocratie fait

naître des ambitions et des talents qui, dans leur nature, leur étendue
et leurs effets, lui sont propres. Lorsqu’ils s’appliquent à la même
entreprise, la démocratie s’en trouve favorisée. En démocratie plus
qu’ailleurs, les hommes seront dévoués à l’effort de guerre.
Tocqueville estime en effet que la perspective de victoire y suscite un
intérêt si élevé que perdre la vie pour faire triompher la nation
constitue un risque volontiers encouru. Il conclut logiquement que
« si la paix est particulièrement nuisible aux armées démocratiques, la
guerre leur assure donc des avantages que les autres armées n’ont
jamais ; et ces avantages, bien que peu sensibles d’abord, ne peuvent
manquer à la longue, de leur donner la victoire46. »
Cohérente, parcimonieuse et dynamique, la vision qu’offre
Tocqueville des relations entre paix et démocratie est-elle pour autant
pertinente d’un point de vue empirique ? À première vue, rien n’est
moins sûr. Il semble en effet que le poids de l’opinion, des médias, et
des normes libérales au sein des démocraties occidentales
contemporaines exposent ces dernières au risque de défaite d’autant
plus que la guerre dure dans le temps. Le public se lasse rapidement
d’une guerre et manque rarement de montrer sa sensibilité élevée aux
méthodes coercitives et à ses conséquences létales. Il s’agit là d’une
thèse devenue aujourd’hui tout à fait banale, et que l’on retrouve plus
précisément incarnée par les figures dominantes du débat sur la
victoire démocratique, à savoir Dan Reiter et Allan Stam47. La thèse
de l’« affaiblissement démocratique » semble donc constituer une
critique de la vision développée par Tocqueville. Mais il est deux
raisons pour lesquelles ce dernier n’y prête en réalité pas le flanc.
La première est que la thèse de l’affaiblissement démocratique
concerne essentiellement des guerres à propos desquelles l’enjeu pour
la nation démocratique n’est pas considéré comme assez important
pour qu’elle y consacre une partie substantielle de ses forces
matérielles, ni pour qu’elle combatte avec détermination. Or, les
conflits armés auxquels Tocqueville fait référence sont d’une autre
nature. Ils sont manifestement d’une importance vitale pour le
belligérant démocratique. Tels qu’il les décrit peu de temps après les
guerres napoléoniennes, ils sont en outre d’une ampleur clairement
plus vaste que les guerres limitées qui forment l’échantillon des
conflits armés auxquels les tenants de l’affaiblissement démocratique
se réfèrent.
142 Elie Baranets
D’autre part, et surtout, ce serait s’égarer sur le plan logique que de

penser que les démocraties perdent des guerres par le simple fait
qu’elles durent dans le temps. En guerre, comme ailleurs, le temps en
soi ne joue pour personne. Il n’est pas ce facteur décisif que l’on
décrit à tort, puisque rien ne se passe dans le temps tant que les
acteurs n’agissent pas. Le temps n’est que la dimension à l’intérieur de
laquelle d’autres forces sont à l’œuvre. Il faut donc observer ces
forces, plutôt que de compter vainement les jours qui passent. Les
indicateurs temporels, en soi, ne correspondent à rien de concret.
Leur utilisation a des vertus heuristiques indéniables. Mais ils ne
peuvent être employés au-delà, et considérés comme facteurs, sans
devenir des artefacts qui, dès lors, sont tout à fait impropres à être
exploités pour juger de la pertinence d’une telle théorie. Lorsque
Tocqueville en appelle à la temporalité, il s’agit uniquement pour lui
d’une commodité établie dans le but de résumer son propos. Seuls
ont de l’importance les trois facteurs que nous avons soulignés,
lesquels influencent le cours de la guerre différemment à mesure que
cette dernière gagne en ampleur. Logique, argumentée et cohérente,
l’analyse de Tocqueville mérite d’être considérée en tant que telle, ou
bien il ne fait pas de sens de la convoquer. La mobilisation, et a fortiori
l’évaluation de l’œuvre d’un tel auteur requiert que l’examen qui en est
fait se conforme un tant soit peu à ce à quoi elle correspond en
substance. Pour ces raisons, l’utilisation de telles considérations n’est
pas appropriée en tant qu’unique élément de comparaison entre les
travaux de ces auteurs, et nous aimons mieux ne pas jeter le bébé
tocquevillien avec l’eau du bain temporel48.
CONCLUSION
Que faire de l’œuvre de Tocqueville ? Est-elle pertinente pour
expliquer la politique internationale aujourd’hui ? Il ne nous
appartient pas de procéder ici à un test empirique des hypothèses qu’il
émet. Nous les percevons néanmoins comme prometteuses, dans le
sens où elles semblent être en mesure de rendre compte de
phénomènes à la fois centraux et intrigants. C’est le cas, par exemple,
du comportement des acteurs internes face aux enjeux économiques
propres à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Aux États-Unis, la portée de
l’affrontement atteignant un stade très élevé, la production de matériel
de guerre devenait l’unique industrie susceptible d’enrichir aussi bien
les entrepreneurs que les ouvriers. La guerre excitait alors les
ambitions personnelles, exactement comme Tocqueville le prédit.
Tous s’en saisirent, ce qui ne manqua pas de profiter aux

performances militaires américaines. L’intérêt dans, et la culture de, la
guerre grandissaient conjointement, permettant à l’armée de disposer
d’un arsenal considérable, ainsi que d’en faire profiter ses alliés. Ce fut
là un facteur essentiel dans la victoire contre les puissances de l’Axe.
La transformation d’une industrie civile en industrie militaire,
processus complexe d’ordinaire long, a commencé tardivement. Mais
une fois enclenchée, elle s’est réalisée à la fois efficacement et
rapidement49.
On aura par ailleurs noté que les démocraties européennes et
américaine, à cette époque et dans les quelques années qui suivirent,
étaient gouvernées par des élites qui entretenaient des rapports étroits
avec la sphère militaire. Dans les temps marqués par la guerre, la
carrière militaire n’était donc pas dénigrée, et pouvait servir de
tremplin pour atteindre des positions élevées au sein de la société
civile. De nos jours, alors que ces mêmes démocraties sont en état de
paix prolongée sur leur territoire, et conformément à ce qu’annonce
Tocqueville, il est beaucoup plus rare de voir des anciens militaires
aux responsabilités les plus importantes, et ce sont des civils qui ont
dorénavant remplacé les Churchill, De Gaulle et Eisenhower. Seule
exception notable au sein des démocraties occidentales : Israël. Les
plus hautes fonctions sont régulièrement confiées à des anciens
militaires, qui parviennent à faire fructifier à l’intérieur de la société
civile leur expérience au sein de l’armée. Les guerres répétées qu’a
connues l’État hébreu l’expliquent sans doute, autant que cela
crédibilise la vision tocquevillienne de la question.
Cela étant dit, l’évolution des techniques ne rend-elle pas l’analyse
de Tocqueville obsolète ? Ce dernier souligne les aptitudes toutes
particulières des hommes en démocratie à développer leurs activités
industrielles en temps de paix, pendant qu’ils délaissent la vocation
militaire. Or, depuis que Tocqueville a écrit son œuvre, le rapport
entre ces deux sphères a été bouleversé. Loin de s’opposer, ni même
d’être étrangères l’une à l’égard de l’autre, elles sont devenues
complémentaires, du fait du développement de la mécanisation des
activités humaines. Une nation se sert de son industrie pour se doter
de capacités militaires conventionnelles redoutables50. Les auteurs
réalistes en RI, qui prêtent à la force militaire des États une
importance primordiale, font d’ailleurs des capacités industrielles un
attribut essentiel de la puissance51. Quant au penchant, selon
144 Elie Baranets
Tocqueville, des hommes démocratiques pour le commerce, il peut

contribuer à enrichir la nation, et ainsi profiter aux activités
industrielles – et donc potentiellement militaires – du pays.
Que cela change-t-il à l’égard de la pertinence des arguments
développés par Tocqueville ? La séparation des activités industrielles
et militaires qu’il opère est peut-être partiellement datée, mais cela
n’invalide en rien la logique de son argumentation par ailleurs. Ce
n’est pas parce que l’industrie peut servir l’armée que l’intérêt à faire la
guerre grandit52, que les mœurs guerrières se cultivent à l’échelle de la
société, ni que la vocation pour une carrière militaire est valorisée.
Rien ne nous permet d’émettre que le raisonnement de Tocqueville
soit intrinsèquement moins judicieux aujourd’hui qu’il ne l’était au
moment de sa production. Peut-être faut-il tout au plus relativiser
l’influence de certains facteurs qu’il décrit sur le résultat de la guerre,
du fait de l’évolution des méthodes et outils employés pour la faire. Il
s’agit donc moins d’invalider la réflexion de Tocqueville que de
nuancer la portée de quelques-uns de ses développements, lesquels
s’inscrivent dans un cadre général dont on ne peut que souligner
l’utilité pour les questions qui nous intéressent.
En plus d’analyser paix et performance militaire conjointement, le
penseur français considère que la seconde découle de la première sur
le plan causal, parvenant à appréhender l’une et l’autre à travers une
seule matrice. Tocqueville propose donc une réflexion très détaillée,
mais cohérente, sur ce qui fait les forces et les faiblesses des
démocraties en guerre. Il souligne, d’abord de manière générale, le
manque de continuité très préjudiciable existant en démocratie, et qui
favorise l’ennemi. Ensuite, et à propos de la guerre plus précisément,
les démocraties apparaissent comme fragilisées en raison d’un
manque d’intéressement dans le fait guerrier, d’une faible culture
martiale, et, enfin, d’une absence de reconnaissance pour la carrière
militaire. Ces caractères démocratiques ont comme origine commune
profonde l’égalité des conditions, et s’ils s’observent dans ce sens
précis, c’est en raison de la situation de paix prolongée dans laquelle
les démocraties se retrouvent. Logiquement, Tocqueville explique
comment ils œuvrent dans un sens inverse lorsque la guerre gagne en
ampleur, cessant alors de jouer en la défaveur de la démocratie, mais
au contraire se transformant en atouts. En termes d’affaires
internationales, l’œuvre de Tocqueville est ignorée, ou abordée de
manière hâtive. Elle est pourtant formulée dans des termes qui lui
permettent d’être aujourd’hui exploitée dans le cadre de débats

majeurs en RI.
NOTES
[1] Il nous faudra parfois émettre des remarques contextuelles pour

interpréter correctement le sens implicite donné à certaines de ses
réflexions. Nous essayons néanmoins de faire un usage le plus
parcimonieux possible de ces précisions.
[2] Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, Œuvres complètes,
vol. II, partie 3, chap. 26, p. 800, Paris, Gallimard, 1962. Toutes nos
références à De la démocratie en Amérique renvoient à cette édition.
[3] Voir également, vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 782.
[4] En RI, la première pierre de ce débat fut posée par Rudolph Rummel qui,
dès 1983, soulignait l’effet pacificateur des régimes les plus ouverts du
point de vue des droits politiques et des libertés civiles, ainsi que ceux
garantissant le libre-échange, voir « Libertarianism and International
Violence », Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27 (1), 1983, p. 27-71 ; Kenneth
Benoit analyse le comportement des démocraties dans les années 1960 et
1970, « Democracies Really Are More Pacific (in General). Reexamining
Regime Type and War Involvement », Journal of Conflict resolution, 40 (4),
1996, p. 636-657. Son étude statistique est sans doute l’une des plus
abouties parmi les tenants de la paix démocratique monadique. On
notera toutefois qu’il ne s’interroge pas sur les raisons pour lesquelles,
selon lui, les démocraties étaient en général plus pacifiques sur la période
concernée. Pour une étude des causes de ce phénomène présumé, on
consultera plutôt James Lee Ray, « Democracy on the Level(s): Does
Democracy Correlate with Peace? » in John Vasquez (dir.) What Do We
Know About War? Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, p. 299-316 ; sans
oublier John MacMillan, « Beyond the Separate Democratic Peace »,
Journal of Peace Research, 40 (2), 2003, p. 233-243.
[5] John R. Oneal et Bruce M. Russett, Triangulating Peace: Democracy,
Interdependence, and International Organization, New York, Norton, 2001 ;
Michael Mousseau, « The Nexus of Market Society, Liberal Preferences,
and Democratic Peace: Interdisciplinary Theory and Evidence »,
International Studies Quarterly, 47 (4), p. 483-510 ; Michael W. Doyle, Liberal
Peace: Selected Essays, New York, Routledge, 2012.
[6] Les références à Kant lorsqu’il est question de la paix démocratique sont
tellement répandues qu’il serait aussi fastidieux qu’inutile de renvoyer à
des sources bibliographiques pour illustrer cette pratique devenue
courante.
146 Elie Baranets
[7] Georg Cavalar, « Kantian Perspectives on Democratic Peace: Alternatives

to Doyle », Review of International Studies, 27 (2), 2001, p. 229-248 ; Beate
Jahn, « Kant, Mill, and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs »,
International Organization, 59 (1), 2005, p. 107-207 ; Scott Gates, Torbjorn
L. Knutsen et Jonathon W. Moses, « Democracy and Peace: A More
Skeptical View », Journal of Peace Research, 33 (1) 1996, p. 6. Par ailleurs,
Gates, Knutsen et Moses s’opposent fermement au rapprochement entre
Kant et la paix démocratique pour une autre raison : Kant parlait de
« républiques » et non de « démocraties ». Les trois auteurs font preuve
d’un mépris singulier envers ceux qui n’ont pas considéré cette nuance
comme péremptoire, ibid., p. 6. S’il est vrai que Kant parle de
républiques, il est aussi vrai que ces deux termes ont connu une évolution
sémantique depuis la fin du XVIIIe siècle. On peut d’ailleurs trouver des
justifications chez les théoriciens de la paix démocratique quant au choix
de considérer que la « république » à laquelle Kant fait allusion peut
renvoyer à la démocratie telle qu’on la conçoit aujourd’hui, voir par
exemple, Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-
Cold War World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 4. Nul
n’est forcé de considérer que la démarche consistant à assimiler la
république kantienne à la démocratie contemporaine soit rigoureuse, et
que l’opération soit convaincante. On ne peut néanmoins pas faire
comme si aucune précaution n’avait été prise, ainsi que Gates, Knutsen
et Moses le laissent entendre. Pour notre part, il est clair que si
l’utilisation de Kant comme base d’une théorie de la paix démocratique
doit apparaître comme un bricolage intellectuel contestable, la raison en
est ailleurs.
[8] Bruce Russett semble faire figure d’exception. Principal théoricien de la
paix démocratique, derrière Doyle, il évoque en effet les travaux de
Tocqueville. Mais il le fait uniquement pour mentionner, de manière
tronquée, la thèse prêtant aux démocraties une infirmité majeure en
termes d’affaires extérieures. Rien n’est dit sur son apport potentiel aux
théories de la paix démocratique. Russett relativise ensuite la portée de
l’argument tocquevillien, soulignant qu’il fait sens dans l’environnement
anarchique principalement constitué d’États autocratiques, et qui
caractérisait la période durant laquelle Tocqueville écrivait. La démocratie
s’est depuis propagée, venant instituer de nouvelles normes à l’échelle du
système international, ibid., p. 137-138. L’auteur pourrait bien avoir
raison sur ce dernier point. Que Russett oppose à Tocqueville la
tendance historique de la démocratie à se propager ne manque, par
ailleurs, pas d’ironie, tant ce dernier n’a précisément de cesse de souligner
son irrésistible ascension.
[9] Bruce Bueno De Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival, Cambridge,
MIT Press, 2003, p. 129.
[10] Dan Reiter et Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War, Princeton, Princeton
[11] Vol. I, partie 2, chap. 10, p. 479-480.
[12] Alexis de Tocqueville, Souvenirs, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, p. 317.
[13] Vol. I, partie 2, chap. 5, p. 262.
[14] Dans le même registre, il écrit : « Quant à moi, je ne ferai pas difficulté
de le dire : c’est dans la direction des intérêts extérieurs de la société que
les gouvernements démocratiques me paraissent décidément inférieurs
aux autres », Vol. I, partie 2, chap. 5, p. 261.
[15] Internationaliste majeur, Kenneth N. Waltz valide la vision
tocquevillienne des lacunes démocratiques en termes de politique
étrangère dans Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British
Experience, Boston, Little, Brown and Co, 1967, p. 8-15.
[16] Pour un constat similaire à celui dressé par Tocqueville (bien que pour
des raisons différentes) appliqué cette fois aux stratèges, lesquels restent
aux responsabilités trop peu de temps en démocratie, voir Ron Schleifer,
« Democracies, Limited War and Psychological Operations », In Efraim
INBAR (dir.), Democracies and Small Wars, London, Frank Cass, 2003, p.
46.
[19] Ibid. Tocqueville est plus nuancé pour ce qui est du fonctionnement
institutionnel des États-Unis. Il note que, « en Amérique, le Président
exerce une assez grande influence sur les affaires de l'État, mais il ne les
conduit point ; le pouvoir prépondérant réside dans la représentation
nationale tout entière », vol. I, partie 1, chap. 8, p. 144. Cette parenthèse
vient atténuer le manque de continuité qui résulte des changements
successifs d’hôtes à la Maison Blanche. Il semble néanmoins que cette
tentative de modération affiche aujourd’hui une pertinence érodée.
Depuis que Tocqueville a produit son œuvre, les pouvoirs réels du
président se sont largement renforcés, notamment en ce qui concerne la
politique étrangère, que ce dernier la conduit désormais bel et bien. Voir
Arthur M. Schlesinger, La présidence impériale, Paris, Presses Universitaires
de France, 1976. Tocqueville précise lui-même que le président des
États-Unis, ainsi que le Sénat, se voient confier une tâche d’une ampleur
plus importante concernant ce domaine, voir infra.
[23] « Nous avons vu que la Constitution fédérale mettait la direction
permanente des intérêts extérieurs de la nation dans les mains du
président et du Sénat, ce qui place jusqu’à un certain point la politique
générale de l’Union hors de l'influence directe et journalière du peuple.
On ne peut donc pas dire d'une manière absolue que ce soit la
démocratie qui, en Amérique, conduise les affaires extérieures de l'État. »,
Vol. I, partie 2, chap. 5, p. 259.
[24] Elles se caractérisent par une double absence : celle d’une quelconque
interdépendance avec les autres acteurs sur la scène internationale et celle
de dangers pouvant y provenir et menaçant le pays, vol. I, partie 1, chap.
8, p. 145. Mais sur ce point, l’Amérique, a changé depuis 1835, et avec
elle son statut. Elle est devenue la première puissance du monde, garantit
à elle seule la sécurité physique de plusieurs États, et assure en grande
partie la survie matérielle d’institutions internationales. Nous pouvons
148 Elie Baranets
observer que l’isolationnisme prôné par George Washington s’est

progressivement mû en interventionnisme au cours du XXe siècle. Il
atteindra finalement son paroxysme au début du XXIe siècle, à la suite
des attaques du 11 septembre sur le sol américain, venues alors
« désanctuariser » un territoire continental jusque-là vierge de toute
agression significative. Cela nous permet de revenir sur la deuxième
absence : celle des dangers provenant de l’extérieur, ayant été
questionnée pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale ainsi que pendant la
Guerre froide.
[25] Justin Vaïsse s’étonne de ce que Tocqueville ne voie pas dans le
patriotisme américain un facteur de puissance, alors même qu’il est décrit
par ailleurs comme une source d’atténuation du manque d’adhésion
nuisible aux affaires extérieures, Justin Vaïsse, « De l'infériorité des
régimes démocratiques dans la conduite des affaires extérieures : une
relecture contemporaine de Tocqueville », The Tocqueville Review/La Revue
Tocqueville, 30 (1), p. 137-158. Quand bien même nous exécuterions cette
démarche à sa place, il n’en resterait pas moins que cette nuance
concernerait avant tout les États-Unis, du fait de leur histoire et de leur
culture, et pas nécessairement les pays démocratiques. Il ne s’agirait donc
pas d’une disposition générale, ou bien, si elle devait l’être, nécessiterait
d’être formulée en tant que telle.
[26] Vol. I, partie 2, chap. 5, p. 256-259.
[28] Ces facteurs ne sont pas tout à fait indépendants les uns des autres. Ils
ont l’égalisation des conditions comme origine commune. De même, et
ainsi que nous le verrons, ils sont susceptibles d’interagir, et de renforcer
mutuellement à la fois l’ancrage et l’impact qu’ils connaissent sur la
gestion d’une crise armée en démocratie. Mais dans la mesure où leurs
effets recouvrent des champs distincts au sein de la société démocratique,
et surtout au sein des études de Relations internationales, nous pensons
qu’ils requièrent un examen différencié, cela facilitant par là-même leur
identification aux problématiques contemporaines.
[29] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 26, p. 802-805. Tout au long de son ouvrage,
mais de manière plus manifeste encore à l’égard de la guerre, Tocqueville
confronte explicitement la démocratie à l’aristocratie. L’égalité des
conditions propre à la première, et dont il perçoit la propagation, menace
irrésistiblement, à terme, l’existence de la seconde. Cela explique la
tendance qui est la sienne à se focaliser sur la comparaison entre ces deux
régimes, occultant dès lors les modes d’administration plus autoritaires.
Les conclusions qu’il tire de cette démarche précise voient ainsi leur
pertinence limitée à cette stricte comparaison. En revanche les propos
qu’il tient de manière plus générale sur les traits des démocraties ont
vocation à être généralisables au-delà.
[30] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 782.
[31] Vol. II, partie 3, chap.1, p. 676-681. Pour observer la consistance
théorique de la pensée de Tocqueville à propos de notre sujet, voir vol.
II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 785.
[33] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 26, p 793-794 et p. 796.

[34] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 783-784.
[35] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 783 et s.
[36] Au même titre que les militaires en général, les sous-officiers sont
incapables de traduire comme avantage dans la société civile
démocratique leur avancement de carrière. En outre, la spécificité de leur
condition implique qu’ils disposent d’un grade hiérarchique trop bas
pour qu’il leur fournisse un quelconque confort, qu’ils entrevoient donc,
sans qu’ils puissent l’atteindre. Leur frustration est en partie liée à la
situation de statu quo qui accompagne les temps de paix, vol. II, partie 3,
chap. 23, p. 792-793.
[37] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 782-789. Dans le but de remédier à cette
situation génératrice d’inquiétudes et de tensions auprès de ceux qui
détiennent tout de même des armes susceptibles de se retourner contre le
pouvoir, les gouvernants en démocratie peuvent avoir tendance à
multiplier les charges militaires. Cette mesure, en plus d’être coûteuse,
n’offre pas de solution satisfaisante pour Tocqueville. Lorsque les
possibilités d’ascension se multiplient, alors le nombre de candidats
intéressés également. Par conséquent, les chances d’accession à la
fonction supérieure n’augmentent pas. Seule la prise de conscience
éclairée des enjeux attachés à cette question auprès des citoyens apparaît
pour Tocqueville comme le remède à un mal, autrement inéluctable.
[39] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 782-783.
[40] Tocqueville lui-même estime que le fait guerrier restreint les libertés
civiles, d’abord par les institutions, puis par les mœurs.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Bien que Tocqueville ne formule pas expressément cette idée, on
pourrait, à ce stade, conclure que le cercle vicieux « dévalorisation-
recrutement médiocre-dévalorisation » se voit remplacé ici par un cercle
vertueux de nature inverse « valorisation-recrutement prestigieux-
valorisation ».
[45] Vol. II, partie 3, chap. 22, p. 789, et surtout, vol. II, partie 3, chap. 24, p.
798-799. L’idée est réutilisée par Dan REITER et Allan C. STAM qui,
pour le coup, mentionnent Tocqueville. Ils soulignent que
l’individualisme inhérent aux sociétés démocratiques confère à ses
membres un esprit d’initiative supérieur. Cela améliore les aptitudes
militaires des soldats comparés à ceux des nations non-démocratiques,
Democracies at War, op. cit, p. 64-65. Plus généralement, la thèse de la
supériorité occidentale dans la guerre est aujourd’hui incarnée par
l’historien militaire Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage et Culture. Les grandes
batailles qui ont fait l’occident, Paris, Flammarion, 2002. Selon lui, les
dispositions non militaires caractéristiques de l’occident – et plus
particulièrement de la démocratie – en termes politiques, économiques et
culturels, se traduisent en avantage militaire décisif.
150 Elie Baranets
[47] Dan Reiter et Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War, op. cit.

[48] Elie Baranets, « À qui profite le temps ? Une analyse critique de la
référence au temps dans les études sur la guerre », Temporalités [En ligne],
21, 2015.
[49] Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, London, Pimlico, p. 232-242.
[50] Dans une certaine mesure, cela est peut-être également vrai dans le sens
inverse, puisque les temps de guerre ont favorisé de multiples inventions,
qui furent ensuite utilisées en temps de paix à des fins civiles. Mais cela
n’est pas en lien direct avec notre questionnement.
[51] Voir John M. Earsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New-York,
Norton, 2001 ; Raymond Aron, Paix et Guerre entre les Nations, Paris,
Calmann-Levy, 1985 ; et surtout Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among
Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, Boston, McGraw-Hill Higher
Education, 2006.
[52] En tout cas, pour la majorité. Certes, l’intensification des liens entre
sphères militaire et industrielle a créé une catégorie d’hommes d’affaires
intéressés par la guerre. Mais l’influence de ce « complexe militaro-
industriel », selon la formule proposée par Dwight Eisenhower, s’observe
en marge des mécanismes démocratiques.
RÉSUMÉ
Lorsqu’elle n’est pas complètement ignorée, l’œuvre d’Alexis de Tocqueville
est généralement traitée de manière superficielle par les auteurs qui
s’intéressent à la politique internationale. Réciproquement, les lecteurs
attentifs de ce dernier ne s’intéressent que peu à la dimension internationale
de sa réflexion. Cet article a pour objet de contribuer à combler ce double
manque, en soulignant l’intérêt qu’il existe à mobiliser la pensée de
Tocqueville à propos des études sur la guerre et la paix. Tocqueville élabore
un cadre d’analyse novateur pour questionner le caractère pacifique des États
démocratiques, que ce soit en général, ou dans leurs relations mutuelles. Il
propose également une réflexion cohérente et empiriquement pertinente sur
les forces et les faiblesses des démocraties en guerre.
Tocqueville, America, and Us
TOCQUEVILLE, AMERICA, AND US

PREFACE WRITTEN IN 2016
By Marcel GAUCHET
Translated by Jacob Hamburger
The following article originally appeared in 1980. It is typical of a

certain intellectual moment in France, one that fits into a much larger
ideological moment—a global one, really—that one might call the
“liberal turn” in our recent history.
Two dates come to mind: May 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s victory
in the British elections, and November 1980, the election of Ronald
Reagan as President of the United States. In France at that time, the
liberal turn had none of the same political effects. Quite the opposite:
in May 1981, it was François Mitterrand’s left-wing government that
came to power, after spending 23 years in opposition. In the
intellectual sphere, however, the subsequent move towards liberalism
was profoundly felt, perhaps more so in France than elsewhere,
because it marked a real rupture with the country’s tradition. After all,
for the British and the Americans, a turn towards liberalism merely
involved a return to what had been the dominant inspiration of their
history. But for the French, this called into question the double
heritage that their political culture was based on, both a revolutionary
and statist past.
The most striking illustration of this impact is the series of lectures
that Michel Foucault devoted to the subject between January and
April 1979, now famous since its publication in 2004 under the
misleading title, The Birth of Biopolitics. “The problem of liberalism
presents itself to us, in effect, in its immediate and concrete reality,”
Foucault says in order to justify this break from his initial program.1
154 Marcel Gauchet
But I would cite two other important titles that perhaps offer a better
idea of the tremors taking place at the time. François Furet’s
Interpreting the French Revolution, published in 1978, was a thunderclap in
what had seemed to be the clear skies of the Marxist orthodoxy that
read the bourgeois revolution of 1789 in light of the social revolution
to come.2 Furet’s insistence that “the French Revolution is over” had
the effect of revealing that the emperor— “Revolution,” that is—had
no clothes. In 1979, Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition
expanded on this analysis by extending it to all “grand narratives” of
progress or emancipation.3 If the “immediate and concrete reality” of
the liberal question, both in France and elsewhere (even in China!),
was most apparent in the discussion of the role of the state in the
economy, there was an additional discussion to be had concerning the
decisive event in our national history that was the Revolution and, in
a broader sense, the clashing visions of history caught up in the
interpretation of this event. This was the array of questions that
served as the background for the reflections I developed in
“Tocqueville, America, and Us.” Even independently of my own case,
however, this moment nourished an entire intellectual generation,
lending its particular color to the reevaluation and reappropriation of
the liberal tradition that became this generation’s task.
Among the major thinkers contributing to the renewal of the
problem of liberalism, one also cannot fail to mention the impact of
Louis Dumont’s Homo æqualis, which appeared in 1977. Dumont
tackled the subject formidably, bringing to light the link between the
development of the notion of economy and the affirmation of
individualism from Mandeville to Marx. Pierre Rosanvallon took on a
similar exploration in his 1979 Le capitalisme utopique.4 As for my own
approach, I attacked the problem from a more political angle. The
guiding thread throughout my work was the manner in which liberal
thought emerged in France out of both the heritage of the
Revolution, and the tradition that directly challenged this heritage.
In this sense, my study of Tocqueville was inseparable from my
work editing the political writings of Benjamin Constant, which I
took on at the same time and which also appeared in 1980 with a long
preface entitled “The Lucid Illusion of Liberalism.”5 My thesis was, in
short, that liberalism is blind to what makes it possible, which is at the
same time the social dynamic in which it appears. It sees quite clearly
the sphere that constitutes the central articulation of this society, a
Tocqueville, America, and Us. Preface 155
sphere that centers around the rights of individuals, in which the

liberty of Moderns is distinguished from that of the Ancients. But this
visible sphere of society in turn conceals a hidden part, the
foundation on which the exercise of personal liberties rests. This
includes, similarly, the correlates of the equality of conditions that
elude Tocqueville’s grasp. His exposition of the prodigious
transformative power of equality, which his American laboratory
reveals to him, easily leads him to forget the implications of this
power for the organization of the collectivity. From this point of
view, America is as deceptive as it is instructive. If what we seek is to
comprehend the destiny of an egalitarian society, then, we will find it
useful to come back to the old Europe that we first had to leave.
But I had yet another reason to become interested in Tocqueville,
one that takes us away from the scene of politics. I was determined to
exhaust the meaning of “the equality of conditions” by taking into
account a dimension that had hardly concerned Tocqueville, namely,
the interiority of this individual who is considered as an equal.
Modern individualism has gone hand in hand with an attribution to
the individual of a self-relating existence that we have recently taken
to calling “psychological” or “psychic.” One cannot conceive of the
modern condition without grasping the importance of this life ruled
by the interior. Conversely, it is impossible to conceive of the homo
psychologicus outside of our society of equal individuals. I became
convinced very early on that it was indispensable to connect and
explore in parallel the exterior and interior facets of this new human
condition.
Now, the essential source of our knowledge of this internal
experience turns out to come from the pathological expressions it
takes on. The Freudian discovery of the unconscious is the most
telling example here. This line of thinking led me to plunge into the
psychopathological continent and its history, in intimate collaboration
with Gladys Swain, who provided a psychiatrist’s scientific point of
view. We could scarcely avoid an encounter with the uncontested
monument of the field at the time, Michel Foucault’s L’histoire de la
folie, and what resulted was a radical challenge to the perspective
Foucault proposed in his presentation of the birth of psychology
around 1800. This was the object of La pratique de l’esprit humain,
which we published together, also in 1980.6 Far from being a story of
exclusion, as Foucault insists, the history of madness is on the
156 Marcel Gauchet
contrary the history of an inclusion that reveals the hidden

architecture of the interior world. The birth of psychiatry marks a
decisive step in this process, as psychiatry finds in what is apparently
unreasonable the reasonable traces that allow it to be accessed and
deciphered.
It was in this context that I found Tocqueville’s judgment so
illuminating; here, the notion of the equality of conditions seemed to
me to take on its fullest meaning. For what is that “third equality,” if I
dare to name it, that is irreducible to abstract juridical equality, but
also distinct from equality in a concrete sense? There is an “imaginary
equality,” Tocqueville responds, that pushes us to find everywhere
around us the figure of the “fellow man” who resembles us [le
semblable]. What Tocqueville evidently has in mind is the contrast with
the hierarchical separations of the aristocratic age, which imposed an
insurmountable distance between superiors and inferiors. But here we
must expand the range of applications. The sentiment of dissimilarity
in aristocratic society did not stop at differences in social status; it
clung to the ensemble of various differences at work in the
interpersonal sphere. The otherness of the madman only represents
the extreme case of such differences.
The egalitarian inversion consisted in the identification of one’s
fellow man that transcends the differences of fact that create barriers
between beings. This identification touches even the madman; despite
all that separates him from “common sense,” one learns in the
democratic age to recognize his place within the circle of similarity,
even if that place is behind or against the rest. It touches as well,
beyond relations between masters and servants, relations between the
sexes or between people of different ages. It touches our relations
even with other sentient beings, namely animals. It is in this sense
that the “imaginary” equality that Tocqueville identified has
consequences that reach far beyond the narrow field of politics. This
third equality is one of the most revolutionary motors of our culture,
constantly obliging us to revise our idea of the human in light of the
imperative to find our fellows in what once appeared as “other” or
outside the boundaries of humanity.
I continue to believe that the unveiling of this crucial and poorly
understood dynamic remains the mark of Tocqueville’s profound
genius.
Tocqueville, America, and Us. Preface 157
NOTES
[1] Michel Foucault, Naissance de la Biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978-

1979 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2004), 25. The English translation was
published in 2008 as Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the
Collège de France, 1978-1979, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. G. Burchell
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). On the context surrounding this
course, Serge Audier’s recent book is immensely clarifying: Serge Audier,
Penser le « néolibéralisme ». Le moment néoliberal, Foucault et la crise du socialisme
(Paris: Le Bord de l’eau, 2015).
[2] François Furet, Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978).
[3] Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne (Paris: Minuit, 1979).
[4] Louis Dumont, Homo aequalis. Genèse et épanouissement de l’idéologie économique
(Paris: Gallimard, 1977); Pierre Rosanvallon, Le capitalisme utopique, (Paris:
Seuil, 1979). As a result of these similarities, I saw it fit to treat both
works in the same review: “De l’avènement de l’individu à la découverte
de la socitété,” which appeared in the Annales ESC in 1980.
[5] Benjamin Constant, De la liberté chez les modernes (Paris: Pluriel, 1980). This
edition has since been reprinted in Pluriel’s Folio Collection under the
title Ecrits Politiques.
[6] Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain, La pratique de l’esprit humain.
L’institution asilaire et la révolution démocratique (Paris: Gallimard, 1980).
Published in English as Madness and Democracy: The Modern Psychiatric
Universe, trans. Catherine Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999). This work should be read as a prolongation of an earlier work by
Gladys Swain, Le sujet de la folie. Naissance de la psychiatrie (Toulouse: Privat,
1977). I have written on this trajectory in her work in the preface to the
posthumous writings of Gladys Swain, Dialogue avec l’insensé (Paris:
Gallimard, 1996).
TOCQUEVILLE, AMERICA, AND US

AVANT-PROPOS
Jacob HAMBURGER
A partial English translation of this article appears under the title

“Tocqueville” in a 1995 volume of essays on political philosophy
edited by Mark Lilla for the series New French Thought.1 The stated aim
of this volume was to introduce English-speaking readers to a new
generation of French thinkers who had rediscovered political
philosophy in a country that had for decades cast it aside. The
prestige of such intellectual trends as existentialism, Marxism,
structuralism, and post-structuralism, each in their own way,
distracted generations of French thinkers from properly political
questions. It was the generation of thinkers whose intellectual
development was shaped by the failed revolution of 1968 and the
revelations of the true extent of the atrocities of Communist regimes
that brought politics, and liberal politics in particular, back to the
center of their writings.2 The New French Thought volume, with this
narrative in mind, sought primarily to showcase essays by members of
this intellectual generation—which includes Marcel Gauchet along
with Pierre Manent, Luc Ferry, and Gilles Lipovetsky—that focus on
great thinkers of the liberal canon, new understandings of the history
and key concepts of modern politics, or critiques of the illiberal
aspects of contemporary French intellectual life.
Translating and reprinting the entirety of Gauchet’s essay today in
2016 is—in a sense—a far less ambitious undertaking. The first
English publication of “Tocqueville, l’Amérique et nous” sought to
present the revival of liberal political thought (or, rather,
thought about liberal politics) as a contemporary intellectual
phenomenon. In other words, its aim was to diagnose a shift in the
160 Jacob Hamburger
overwhelming philosophical trends of its own day, a break between

the vanguard of today’s thinkers and those of previous decades. In
the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was good
reason to regard the present moment as the result of a long process
of ideologisation and de-ideologisation. But almost thirty years since
the essay’s original publication in Libre, however, there are equally
good reasons to reconsider this narrative. This is not to say that such
a redemptive tale of French intellectuals’ return to liberalism and the
critique of totalitarianism is entirely false or historically outdated. Far
from it. Reading “Tocqueville, America, and Us,” one finds a
characterization of totalitarian extremism, for example, that remains
contemporary. My only suggestion is that we are better served today
by a more ambivalent analysis of the status and success liberalism in
French thought of the last several decades. It is therefore my hope
that a complete English translation of this essay will not only help
introduce Anglophone readers to Gauchet's work (which has been
too little translated), but also aid in understanding the historical
specificity of the so-called liberal moment in France.
Gauchet's essay is a particularly good example of what can be
gained by today's English-speaking reader. One finds in “Tocqueville,
America, and Us” not only an early version of the analysis Gauchet
expands some years later in Le désenchantement du monde, but also an
engagement—though mostly implicit—with many of the most
prominent voices of twentieth century French intellectual life. In this
early essay, Gauchet remains close to the teaching of his erstwhile
mentor Claude Lefort, who characterized democracy as essentially a
site of confrontation and conflict. His discussion of the notion of
alterity in society draws on both the phenomenology of Emmanuel
Levinas and the work of French anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-
Strauss and Pierre Clastres.3 And it is hard to read Gauchet’s
polemical engagement with what he takes as the prevailing academic
orthodoxy without noticing a thinly veiled jab at the work of Michel
Foucault, anticipating his later criticism of Foucault’s history of
madness. All of these engagements, furthermore, take place through a
reading of Tocqueville, whose “revival” in the 1970s—largely thanks
to Raymond Aron—is itself a major turning point in French
intellectual history. To read this early work in Gauchet’s career is
therefore to place oneself at a major crossroads of twentieth century
French thought.
Tocqueville, America, and Us. Avant-propos 161
More importantly, though, Gauchet’s take on Tocqueville remains

a powerful discussion of issues that define the present moment. And
there is no better way to make this clear than by presenting a
complete version of the original 1980 essay. The previous translation
reproduces only two of its original sections. As the second of these
sections is the longest and perhaps the richest of them all, this is not
in itself a misrepresentation of Gauchet's intentions. The first thirty
pages of the articles give a relatively concise presentation of the
conflictual nature of democracy, as well as the danger of
totalitarianism that democratic societies produce within themselves.
But the main drawback of the decision to end the essay in this
manner—undoubtedly taken out of concerns for the essay’s length—
is that this discussion of totalitarianism gets the final word, leaving
the reader with an implicit call to vigilance against this internal threat
of democracy. Important as the notion of totalitarianism is for
Gauchet, this is not the ending that French readers of this well-
known essay would have seen. And it is in the subsequent sections
that we find some of the issues and discussions that remain as
relevant today in 2016 as they did in 1980: for example, Gauchet’s
treatment in section IV of gender difference, identity, and animal
rights in light of Tocqueville’s characterization of equality in
democratic societies. In light of recent struggles for transgender
issues, inclusiveness on college campuses, and environmental
justice—to name only a few pressing issues in recent events—
Gauchet’s emphasis of the notion of totalitarianism can in fact start
to look like one of the least durable aspects of his analysis.
Finally, Gauchet’s French prose is difficult, but unmistakably
contemporary. To facilitate the readability of the text, I have often
introduced my own paragraph breaks into the text where they do not
exist in Gauchet’s original. I include certain recurrent French terms in
brackets to avoid confusion in cases where I have found it necessary
to translate them using varying English equivalents. My overall aim in
translating this piece has been to facilitate clarity and preserve the
intended meaning rather than to mirror the style of the original.
162 Jacob Hamburger
NOTES
[1] Mark Lilla, ed., New French Thought: Political Philosophy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995). The New French Thought series also
published Gauchet’s most well known work, Le désenchantement du monde,
as The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, trans. Oscar
Burge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
[2] See Lilla’s provocative introductory essay in this volume, “The
Legitimacy of the Liberal Age,” in New French Thought, 3-34.
[3] Clastres as well as Lefort were along with Gauchet contributors to the
journal Libre that originally published this essay. A short-lived
interdisciplinary publication, the journal itself is a fascinating document
in French intellectual history.
TOCQUEVILLE, AMERICA, AND US:

ON THE GENESIS OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES*
By Marcel GAUCHET
Translated by Jacob Hamburger
I
The aim in the following pages is to consider Tocqueville’s
thought less for its own sake than for its contemporary significance.
What does democracy mean today, what has it become, and what can
Tocqueville’s way of thinking about it tell us about its future? His
great study of America remains an incomparably vibrant source for
understanding our political universe, one that appears astonishingly
present each time one revisits it.1 In naming what he called “the
equality of conditions,” he put his finger squarely on one of the key
notions that give meaning to the recurring dynamics of contemporary
society, a concept that still demands elucidation despite its apparent
simplicity. Tocqueville is one of those rare authors fortunate enough
to have been right despite themselves. History has been
uncharacteristically kind to him, going far enough down the path he
imagined to have both reached and surpassed the limits of his
imagination, thereby vindicating the essentials of his thought at the
expense of its occasional naiveté or timidity.
* Originally published as Marcel Gauchet, “Tocqueville, l’Amérique et nous :

sur la genèse des sociétés démocratiques,” Libre, Politique-Anthropologie-
Philosophie, n°7 (1980), 43-120. This article is an expanded version of a
presentation given in May 1977 to the political working group of the journal
Esprit.
164 Marcel Gauchet
In this regard, it is all the more instructive to examine the limits,

the dead ends, and the blind spots of Tocqueville’s thought as well as
his unique capacity for penetration and premonition. For our
hindsight today makes evidently clear a certain systematic blindness in
Tocqueville’s work, a tendency to overlook the true historical role of
certain aspects of the democratic phenomenon that have revealed
themselves to be essential. This shortcoming both explains and is
exemplified by his detour in America itself. Tocqueville sought out a
country where in the absence of any other history, democracy had
been established as if by nature. In the American experiment,
presumably, the absence of historical obstacles to democracy had
allowed it to realize its complete essence, starting from a base of free
and equal individuals. Having gone in search of democracy in the
New World, however, Tocqueville lost sight of the alternate paths
towards democracy that were being forged contemporaneously in the
Old Continent. He failed to consider the ways in which the American
example of the new political order was in fact contrary to the normal
advance of modernity. For in the European historical experience, the
democratic order was ultimately forged and imposed in the very same
arenas that Tocqueville judged to be the crucial obstacles towards its
establishment.
In fact, given the persistent antagonism between the forces of
reaction and revolution at work in the Europe of his day, Tocqueville
could not avoid misunderstanding the ultimate historical significance
of the democratic fact in its American context as well. Though he
skillfully identified a central and universal trait of modern societies,
the multifaceted and indefinite process of equalization, what he
observed was only one face of democracy, only one of its possible
developments. In the final analysis, the American case was the least
likely and the most idiosyncratic form that it could have taken, the
special circumstance in which the principles of a political regime
precede society, so to speak, and literally serve as its model. What
Tocqueville excluded, in his overly transparent framework, was a
sense of the turbulent transformations that shook the old universe of
organic, hierarchical unity. Through an arduous adjustment of its
functional principles, one that often manifested itself through
desperate rebellions, this society produced another kind of democracy
on the other side of the Atlantic. This was democracy as a way of
being much more than as a political system; or rather, it was a
Tocqueville, America, and Us: On the genesis of democratic societies 165
political system that expressed deeper elements of the social world

that the special American case could not fully articulate. A
democracy, in this sense, that bore within itself the specter of
totalitarianism. While this potentiality was precisely absent from the
American destiny, at least according to the country’s origins, Europe’s
history of the last century is unintelligible without it as a horizon and
possible endpoint.
Tocqueville’s work, however, did not completely fail to foresee the
most momentous implications of this crucial divergence. In the final
sections of Democracy in America, the geographical return to Europe
coincided with a shift in perspective towards the kinds of despotism
that threaten democratic nations, a shift he referred to as a “return to
himself.” Our task here, in short, is to continue these acts of return as
far as possible, to measure, as far as our present history allows, the
distance between Tocqueville’s America and the errant pathway of
our own European world.
II
There is an underlying problem that not only profoundly justifies
Tocqueville’s American detour, but also holds the key to explaining
what appears today as his paradoxical blindness towards the destiny
of Europe. This is the problem, in abstract terms, of democratic
society’s agreement [adéquation] with itself.2 His starting point, at
bottom, is the scandalous failure of the Old World nations to
recognize and affirm their inevitable democratic future. Tocqueville
does not have words strong enough to express this idea, and the
resulting formulations are well known. The democratic revolution
advances through an unstoppable movement, “the oldest, most
continuous, most permanent fact known to history” (I, Intro., 1).
Only the language of religion and the categories of the absolute are
sufficient to capture a notion of this subterranean power at work over
the long history of European societies. How can one fail to recognize
the “certain signs” of the will of God himself? “The gradual
development of the equality of conditions is therefore a providential
fact. It has the essential characteristics of one: it is universal, durable,
and daily proves itself to be beyond the reach of man’s powers. Not a
single event, not a single individual, fails to contribute to its
development” (I, Intro., 6).
166 Marcel Gauchet
In the face of a phenomenon so far removed from the intentions

of its actors that it is sustained equally by “those who strove to ensure
[its] success” as “those who never dreamed of serving it”—by “those
that fought for it” as well as “those who declared themselves its
enemies” (Ibid.)—what can one do but leave one’s partisan
preferences aside and assume the position of the humble witness? As
Tocqueville attests, “this entire book was written in the grip of a kind
of religious terror occasioned in the soul of the author by the sight of
this irresistible revolution, which for centuries now has surmounted
every obstacle and continues to advance amid the ruins it has
created” (I., Intro., 6-7). Logic would have it, he suggests, that in the
presence of such a momentous alteration in the direction of human
history, individuals would unanimously follow its directions. And
nations, for their part, understanding that “to wish to arrest
democracy” would be “tantamount to a struggle against God
himself,” would firmly and completely resolve to “accommodate to
the social state imposed on them by Providence” (I, Intro., 7).
On the contrary, nothing of the sort has played out in actual
historical experience. What did take place is perhaps best described as
a blasphemous blindness of the “Christian peoples” before the fate
that their “sovereign master” had assigned them. Tocqueville’s
judgment was clearly correct that “the gradual and progressive
development of equality,” the salient feature of the democratic age,
constitutes both “the past and future of mankind.” The peoples and
leaders of Europe in his day, however, proved utterly ignorant of this
movement, and thus incapable of allowing any sort of historical
consciousness to guide their actions. No one among the heads of
state had either the discernment or the intelligence to make sense of
the social revolution at work: “It has come in spite of them, or
without their knowledge” (I, Intro., 8). At times they were stupid
enough to believe that it was in their power to oppose it; otherwise,
all they could manage was to endure it, to prostrate themselves before
what they could not understand. Hence the inevitable confusion in
which those who ought to have been the natural allies of democracy
became its enemies, and, conversely, those who fought in its name
found themselves engaged in undermining its foundations and its
prospects for the future. Through an inexplicable perversion,
European societies remained obstinately unaware of their true
democratic nature. They underwent fierce struggles over whether or
not to accept a social state that was largely already in place, and
against which they are utterly powerless. They remained strangely
powerless both to take on in earnest their place within the democratic
order, and to begin to organize themselves accordingly, as if their
intention had been to exacerbate the pressures and tensions of the
democratic order. “Thus we have democracy,” Tocqueville writes,
“minus that which ought to attenuate its vices and bring its natural
advantages to the fore. We already see the evils it entails but know
nothing as yet of the good it may bring” (I, Intro., 8).
This was the situation that demanded of Tocqueville to undertake
his detour in America. In order to understand democracy according
to its fundamental principle, it was necessary to travel beyond the
intellectual and moral disorder of the Old World. Beneath this state
of disorder that prevailed in Europe, in fact, the true nature of
democracy lay hidden. Tocqueville nonetheless sought to discover it
in a society that, in contrast, lived in a fundamental harmony with its
democratic social state. For Tocqueville, in other words, American
society is the concrete response of Providence to an abstract need. It
gives form to what one could not help but dare to imagine: a society
in agreement [coïncidence] with the democratic principle.3 This is a
society that not only accepts, but also positively embraces a social and
political order built on the equality of conditions, allowing it to reach
its full development. For “there is one country in the world in which
the great social revolution of which I speak seems almost to have
attained its natural limits. It has been effected there with simplicity
and ease” (I, Intro., 14). There is therefore for Tocqueville no need to
risk the errors of speculation. A book already lies open in which to
study the essential correspondence [adéquation] of institutions and
mores with their historical destiny, that is, the generative fact of
equality.
Upon inspection, it is less obvious than it might seem exactly how
to determine what, in Tocqueville’s words, a “complete and
undisturbed” correspondence or continuity between a society and its
cardinal ruling principles looks like. On a most basic level, the task is
not a difficult one; it is simply a matter of observing the full,
unrestricted development of the principle of popular sovereignty that
follows directly from the recognition of equality between individuals.
In the United States, this principle has been “put into practice in the
most direct, the most unlimited, the most absolute manner.”4 “It
168 Marcel Gauchet
expands with freedom’s expansion and meets no obstacle on the way

to its ultimate ends” (I, 1.4, 62). The formulas Tocqueville employs to
describe it have since become famous: “The people reign over the
American political world as God reigns over the universe. They are
the cause and end of all things; everything proceeds from them, and
to them everything returns” (I, 1.4, 65). Such statements lead us to a
second level of analysis that permits an account of the positive
adhesion of the collectivity, both symbolic and concrete, to its general
mode of operation. The principle of popular sovereignty, according
to Tocqueville, is “reflected by mores” as much as it is “proclaimed
by laws.” American society recognizes itself for what it is in each and
every one of its parts; it grasps and embraces itself with neither
obscurity, nor drama, nor violence. It is here that we arrive at a third
level of analysis, whose most immediately tangible and “obvious”
aspect does not obscure for long its problematic character. The
correspondence [adéquation] between society and the essential fact of
democracy effectively amounts to both a civil peace and a unity of the
collectivity. To observe these consequences, despite their undeniably
empirical character, implies a basic background representation of
society and history. It is precisely this representation that the entire
meaning of the democratic experience as we understand it today
renders impossible to grasp, or at least calls radically into question. At
this point, on the most solidly factual ground of Tocqueville’s inquiry,
we come into contact with the lure of America.
The observation is indisputable: while throughout recent history,
“all the nations of Europe were ravaged by war or torn by civil
discord, the American nation has remained, alone in the civilized
world, at peace. Nearly all of Europe has been turned upside down by
revolutions; America has not even had riots.” (Pref. 1848, 910). The
year was 1848 when Tocqueville added these words to his book. For
the past sixty years, he writes in the same avertissement de la douzième
édition, the American people had been “not only the most prosperous
but the most stable of all the peoples of the earth” (Ibid.). The
partisans of revolution that Europe knew so well were scarcely to be
found in the United States, if at all; the American worldview appeared
to be deprived of all populist inclinations. There was nothing
accidental in Tocqueville’s having devoted a chapter of the second
volume of Democracy in America (1840) to demonstrating that, contrary
to what superficial speculation might suggest, the social state of
democratic nations does not lead them towards violent

transformations of laws, doctrines, and mores, “but rather leads them
away [from such transformations].”5 Tocqueville’s descriptions of
concrete mechanisms of stabilization, homogenization (“The
principal opinions that men hold become similar insofar as their
conditions are alike” [II, 3.21, 755]), and perpetuation of the
established order and its system of belief do not exhaust his reasons
for thinking that an authentically democratic society naturally avoids
the kind of social discord that can only be resolved through
revolution.
There is a deeper, unstated reason, found in disparate traces
throughout his work, that falls under the domain of Tocqueville’s
latent “metaphysical” representation of the establishment of
democracy. Countless times, the remarks on this subject that issue
from his pen bear the mark of a certain relativism. As he tells us at
one moment, “equality constitutes the distinctive characteristic of the
era”: it is simply because it is, with no further explanation (II, 2.1,
582). Another day, then, some other notion of the relation between
individuals should similarly be able to impose itself in a similar way,
replacing the values of democracy. It merely suffices to push the
expression of this relativism to its conclusion, however, to see how it
constitutes only a marginal impulse that hardly fits with the
predominant orientation of the work. In fact, Tocqueville clearly
leans in the other direction. His overall guiding tendency is to
consider democracy in its modern—that is, egalitarian—form as
anything but an accident of history, a merely contingent and
revocable decree. In truth, it is easily discernable that the background
of his argument is an insistence on the idea that democratic equality is
fundamentally the realization of history’s design, as if by divine will.
It is Tocqueville’s manner of understanding religion that disposes
him towards such a thought. The profoundest meaning of Christ’s
message is none other than equality: “Christianity, which made all
men equal in the sight of God, will not shrink from seeing all citizens
as equal in the eyes of the law” (I, Intro., 12). There is therefore
nothing shocking in the realization this message in the world against
the will of men, or without their being conscious. The democratic age
is the flowering of the religious ideal, as the American example
confirms quite powerfully. Christian revelation, however, only
hastened the coming to light of a principle that had been in a sense
170 Marcel Gauchet
immanent in all societies, though long relegated to obscurity. The

advent of democracy therefore represents for Tocqueville the open
manifestation of a truth of human society that it was always hidden
within it. “The principle of the sovereignty of the people,” he writes
in one instance, “which to some extent always underlies nearly all human
institutions, is ordinarily wrapped in obscurity.” Tocqueville cites as
evidence the “intriguers in all times and despots in all ages” who
understood how to invoke this principle in order to exploit it for their
own gain (I, 1.4, 62, italics added).
The role of the modern age is less to have invented the principle
of popular sovereignty than to have let it fully manifest itself. And yet
there is another indication in Tocqueville’s work of what the
democratic social state has accomplished. The notion of equality that
he develops implies in effect that there can be nothing beyond
equality, for it both serves as the logical foundation for the relation
between men (that is, insofar as it creates a resemblance between
individuals), and at the same time allows each individual to seeks his
own fulfillment independently. In other words, the true danger of this
world does not lie where passing appearances might suggest. The
threat is not to be found in the efforts of subversives, but rather the
immobilizing aspect at work in all social unrest. What Tocqueville
fears, he writes, is that “the human race will stop progressing and
narrow its horizons. I fear that the mind will forever subdivide itself
into smaller and smaller compartments without producing new ideas,
that man will exhaust his energies in petty, solitary, and sterile
changes, and that humanity, though constantly on the move, will
cease to advance” (II, 3.21, 760).
Under these conditions, how could one be surprised that
democratic society, where it attains a direct and authentic self-
expression, is a society at peace with itself? It is destined to achieve
internal tranquility, a life in conformity with the profoundest demand
that has ever been placed on human societies. Democracy reconciles
society with itself, and revolutions, from this perspective, no longer
appear as anything other than an inevitable vestigial effect,
condemned to collide with democracy’s merciless resistance. On this
point, Tocqueville’s thought is nothing if not clear. The democratic
social state, he writes, ultimately imposes itself through deadly violent
efforts. He continues:
Even after… a great revolution ends, the revolutionary habits it creates

live on for quite some time, and deep turmoil follows in its wake. Since
all this takes place as conditions are tending toward equality, people
conclude that there is a hidden relation and secret bond between
equality itself and revolution, such that the former cannot exist without
giving rise to the latter” (Ibid., 747).
A temporal coincidence does not amount to an intimate bond,
and in reality, what appears as revolutionary in the early days of
democracy, far from belonging to democracy itself, is only a residual
inheritance of the process through which it was born. Egalitarian
democracy as such marks the entry of humanity into an age where
great revolutions have ceased to be necessary. Even if “little ones”
remain possible, on the whole the internal logic of democracy’s social
mechanism tends to proscribe them.
Hence the privilege of the United States in exhibiting the true face
of democracy: the privilege of new beginnings. In Europe, the
sovereignty of the people had to reverse the old order in order to
establish itself, and the aftermath of this unforgiving struggle
continues to cause confusion and resignation. In the United States, in
contrast, democracy did not have to completely destroy an
established aristocratic regime in order to gain its foothold. “The
great advantage of the Americans is to have come to democracy
without having to endure democratic revolution and to have been
born equal rather than become so” (II, 2.3, 589).
Tocqueville, in sum, found in the United States a satisfying
resolution to the problem posed by the historical path of European
societies, long caught up in a struggle between “two contrary
principles.” In the first place, America provides confirmation that
societies are wholly capable of embracing the democratic social state.
The conflicts of the Old Continent might have led one to think that
the extension of equality propels us into an era of indefinite civil
discord, in which every step towards popular sovereignty is paid for
by an aggravation of social warfare. It would thus appear, in other
words, that democracy could never protect itself against the
contestation of its principle. On the contrary, the European situation
seemed to have been proven anomalous and probably transitory in
light of the American example: the spectacle of a society fully adapted
to its democratic nature; organized according to “natural
appearances” and “free movements”; in accordance with all the
172 Marcel Gauchet
formal requirements that give rise to the equality of conditions. In the

second place, correlatively, only once an unreserved acceptance of
democracy is realized is there proof that democracy alone holds the
potential for a profound collective peace or harmony, in other words,
for an authentic social unity. It might seem that the society that sees
itself as democratic and acts accordingly, granting the equal right of
participation in its affairs to all its members, would thereby ferment a
spirit of disunion. Such a society, in fact, achieves precisely the
opposite, tending towards a fundamental spiritual and moral
agreement within itself. In the final analysis, this agreement actually
presents itself as a burden, namely the concerning threat of
conformism.
Thus we arrive at the crossroads of our critical examination, the
point of divergence between the American and European political
universes. This is also a blind spot in Tocqueville’s vision, the point
where the American reality begins to serve as a shroud over further
reflection. We discover a limit of Tocqueville’s representation of
society in his obstinate confinement within the perspective of the idea
of a necessary cohesion of the social. Tocqueville’s opinions on the
matter are unequivocal:
What keeps large numbers of citizens subject to the same government is
much less the rational determination to remain united than the
instinctive and in some sense involuntary accord that results from
similarity of feeling and likeness of opinion. I cannot accept the
proposition that men constitute a society simply because they recognize
the same leader and obey the same laws. Society exists only when men
see many things in the same way and have the same opinions about
many subjects and, finally, when the same facts give rise to the same
impressions and the same thoughts (I, 2.10, 430-1).
He sets for himself, moreover, to show that the inhabitants of the
United States fulfill precisely these conditions. The same idea appears
in the second volume:
It is easy to see that no society can prosper without such beliefs, or,
rather, that none can survive that way, for without common ideas, there
is no common action, and without common action, men may still exist,
but they will not constitute a social body. If society is to exist and, a
fortiori, to prosper, the minds of all citizens must be drawn and held
together by certain leading ideas (II, 1.2, 489).
There can be no society, in other words, without a vibrant

intellectual unity. The misfortune of Europe—and particularly of
France—the legacy of revolutions, is to have lost this unity amidst a
general anarchy, in which “it almost seems as if the opinions of
mankind are nothing more than intellectual dust, blown about by
every wind and unable to coalesce into any fixed shape” (II, 1.1, 487).
Intellectual unity is in no way merely reducible to either unanimity
or identity: “Although the Anglo-Americans have several religions,
they all look at religion the same way”; they are divided when it
comes to forms of government, but “they do agree about the general
principles that ought to rule human societies” (I, 2.10, 431). On a
number of issues, their “public opinion is endlessly divided,” but a
penetrating observer could not help but discern, behind the many
“political factions” that they form, “the two great parties that have
always existed in free societies.” Of these parties, one “wants to limit
the use of public power,” while the other seeks “to extend it” (I, 2.2,
202). All this takes place, however, within a common umbrella of
presuppositions, such that no in either party dares attack “the present
form of the government or the general course of society” (Ibid., 201).
Tocqueville makes a comparison that helps to clarify what he insists is
a kind of general congruence of minds:
The republican principle reigns in America today as the monarchical
principle dominated France under Louis XIV. In those days the French
were not just friends of monarchy; they could not imagine the possibility
of putting anything else in its place. They accepted it as one accepts the
course of the sun and the succession of the seasons. They were neither
advocates nor adversaries of royal power. This is how the republic exists
in America: without combat, without opposition, without proof, by a
tacit accord, a sort of consensus universalis (I, 2.10, 459-60).
Here again, the spontaneous convergence of human souls is not
enough. Tocqueville must add to the picture that other indispensable
factor, the intervention of a spiritual power that limits human
pretentions: in other words, religion. In addition to intellectual
unity—and in order to provide some way of reinforcing or
guaranteeing it by giving it shape—some kind of stopping point to
thought is essential, one that only faith in the divinity can provide
with any value. In truth, the role that Tocqueville assigns to religion is
difficult to determine. He attempts in vain to link the uniformization
of opinions to the equalization of conditions, as would reassure him
of the chances of seeing established the consensus he finds
174 Marcel Gauchet
indispensable. One senses that he is at the very least tempted to think

that only a body of dogmatic beliefs—sheltered from the contestation
inherent in experience, as if the beliefs themselves came from the
beyond—can in the final analysis assure a firm conjunction of minds.
For Tocqueville, “equality places men side by side without a common
bond to hold them together” (II, 2.4, 590); or rather, “in a nation
where ranks are almost equal, no obvious bond brings men together”
(II, 3.20, 747, italics added). Does the similarity of ideas suffice, then,
in order to counterbalance this tendency toward the dispersion of
individuals and their closedness unto themselves? Or is something
else needed, a unanimous conviction in which something can be
explicitly shared, as if by common sight?
The latter is in fact what Tocqueville suggests: “How can society
fail to perish if, as political bonds are loosened, moral bonds are not
tightened?” But the words that follow lead us even higher in the
hierarchy of necessities: “And what is to be done with a people that is
its own master, if it is not obedient to God?” (I, 2.9, 340). There are
other paths towards making sensible an individual’s belonging to a
community besides beliefs regarding the final ends. For example,
there is daily participation in local affairs, insertion within an intense
associative life: “The free institutions that Americans possess, and the
political rights of which they make such extensive use, are, in a
thousand ways, constant reminders to each and every citizen that he
lives in society” (II, 2.4, 593). But there is on the other hand a
decisive function in which religion is thoroughly irreplaceable: the
circumscription of human affairs within their bounds of viability. For
what is inconceivable is the utter abandonment of peoples to their
own devices. There is an element of dissolution in the faculty of the
human spirit that seeks to rest on nothing but its own talents, though
this element is radically impossible to accept. Normally, reason will
on its own choose some stopping point to bow before a superior
power. Once again, Tocqueville sees in the excesses of revolution the
primary transgressions, on this matter, for which the Old Continent
found itself the theater. It is an “accidental and particular cause,” he
writes, “at work among us that prevents the human spirit from
following its bent and drives it beyond its natural limits.” That cause
is “close alliance between politics and religion” (I, 2.9, 347). Rigidly
associated with the old princes of Europe, Christianity became the
enemy of the popular forces in the process of taking power there, to
the extent that the triumph of equality seems to have only been made
possible by the eradication of faith.
In the United States, on the other hand, a strict distinction
between domains of social life—one that sheltered revealed truths
from the vicissitudes of public debate—allowed not only “man’s
natural state with respect to religion” to flourish (Ibid., 345), but also
religion to exercise its indispensable task of providing souls with
satisfaction in the moral sphere. Without this task, the maintained
existence of republics is inconceivable. Tocqueville doubts, he says,
“that man can ever tolerate both complete religious independence
and total political liberty, and I am inclined to think that if he has no
faith, he must serve, and if he is free, he must believe” (II, 1.5, 503).
This is not at all to say that the organization of society should depend
on a religious jurisdiction. On the contrary, it is far more fitting to
leave “to human discussion and effort” everything the principle of
equality imposes in an absolute manner. But though it would be vain
to seek to constrain liberty of judgment and the independent
movement of the individual to the sphere of collective administration,
it would be equally so to wish to establish a sphere of “certain and
final” moral rules, beyond the reach of human power to the extent
that they are recognized as emanating from the divine will.
Thus, bound by “truths it accepts without argument,” confronted
in the moral world by intangible imperatives according to which
“everything is arranged, coordinated, anticipated, and decided in
advance” (I, 1.2, 49), “the human spirit never sees a boundless field
of possibilities before itself6: for all its audacity, it sometimes runs up
against seemingly insurmountable barriers. Before it can innovate, it is
forced to accept certain basic assumptions and to mold its boldest
conceptions to certain forms, and in the process it is slowed down or
even brought to a halt” (I, 2.9, 337). As these words suggest, the
distinction between the moral-religious world and the political world
does not imply that there is no interaction between the two. There is
a political effect to be expected as payment for faith in the world
beyond. This effect is based, among the conditions created by the
principle of popular sovereignty, on the prohibition against church
ministers’ explicit intervention in public affairs, as well as their
willingness to recognize a sphere of action that is entirely malleable
according to human initiative. It is the autonomy of religion with
respect to the political that renders it politically effective. Tocqueville
176 Marcel Gauchet
sums up his views on the matter with a particularly suggestive

formula: “Thus even as the law allows the American people to do
anything and everything, there are some things that religion prevents
them from imagining or forbids them to attempt” (I, 2.9, 338).
The necessity of intellectual unity, and the necessity of limits to
human thought before the decrees of divine intelligence: Tocqueville
judges these two conditions that he finds realized in the United States
to be not only in accordance with [correspondre à] the “natural”
inclination of the democratic social state, but also fundamentally
linked with one another. This is the case not only because a common
belief in a certain number of truths sheltered from debate has a
solidly unifying effect on individuals. Much more profoundly, it is
because to fundamentally question the rules that govern the relations
between human beings, the values that command their social life, is to
instill an irreconcilable division within the community. Or, to put it
inversely, antagonism between social groups can only arise when the
notion of a universal understanding of the human world and its final
ends is called into question.
What is the intuition that motivates Tocqueville’s distinction
between the free administration of the citizens’ concrete existence
and interests, and the consensual servitude to a transcendent master
of one’s destiny? This latter notion, in its original conception,
precisely excludes the possibility of a human world—including its
ultimate legitimations—completely administered by human beings. It
is an exorcist’s intuition, born from the fear of the abyss opened up
by revolution. In fact, the intuition is pertinent, for there is indeed an
intimate relation between the establishment of a society within an
unlimited self-interrogation—the decision to cross “the wide and
limitless space” that extends before those that recognize no masters
but themselves—and civil conflict, or even revolutionary struggle.
It is with quite good reason that Tocqueville sees “irreligion” as
the passion par excellence that gave the French Revolution its
particularly extreme character. In earlier times, he observes,
There was always, even during the greatest shocks, a point that remained
solid. But during the French Revolution, as religious laws were
abolished at the same time as civil laws were turned upside down, the
human spirit entirely lost its grounding. It no longer knew what to hold
on to, nor where to stop itself. One saw as a result the appearance of a
hitherto unknown species of revolutionary, one that had an audacity, to
the point of folly, such that no novelty could surprise him, nor could
any scruple slow him down. These were revolutionaries that never
hesitated before the execution of a plan. And it would not do to believe
that these new beings were the isolated and ephemeral creation of a
single moment: they have since formed a race that has perpetuated itself
and begun to populate all civilized parts of the world.7
It is indisputably by virtue of this total power of questioning, this
infinite right to endeavor that it set free within European society, that
the French Revolution marks the beginning of a new era. What is
shocking is that the same man who so clearly discerns the essential
link between social conflict and the extension of what is most
problematic for man—and who, furthermore, does not fail to
emphasize the permanence of and increasing number of these êtres
nouveaux who have begun to push the limits of the questionable—this
man nonetheless sees in this new situation nothing but “fortuitous
and passing” deviations from the course of history. No less shocking
is that this same man who appears so convinced of the irrepressible
nature of the movement towards the equalization of conditions,
confronted in 1848 by the workers’ uprisings, can only regard these
proletarians as strangers to the new world he describes. There is no
question for him other than how to contain or eliminate these
movements. Not for a second does he address the question of the
integration of these excluded classes, despite his own characterization
of the advance of history that must inevitably lead to such an
integration, and in fact has done so.8
All of these many blind spots, in truth, point to a single one
regarding the later developments of democratic European societies. If
the century that has passed between him and us has established
anything, it is that we must reverse Tocqueville’s terms, taking as
essential traits of democracies what he saw merely as accidents of
revolution. This goes as much for the internal disputes about
superficial forms of government as for debates over the most
fundamental values that sustain and guide the human adventure. At
the end of our historical experience, we discover as the essential
originality of the democratic experience neither intellectual unity nor
the limits of human intelligence before the ultimate justifications of
existence. To bind individuals together by virtue of the opposition
between them, engaging them in a limitless enterprise of questioning
the meanings that forge their social unity: these are the activities we
have discovered to be crucial properties of the societies established
178 Marcel Gauchet
on the Old Continent. These societies have been put into place with
no small hardship, under the contradictory pressures of the
revolutionary will and the retrograde rejection of both republicanism
and equality. Democracy, contrary to what the American experience
might suggest, does not consist primarily in a deep agreement of
minds. It tears apart sources of meaning and creates a merciless
antagonism of thought. The democratic age, to return to
Tocqueville’s formula, is the age in which society forces each man to
conceive of everything for himself, and which puts all men in a
position to dare to do anything. These possibilities arise insofar as
democratic society is one of conflict, whose structured stands
definitively outside of the dimension of unity that Tocqueville insisted
must follow the divisions of the revolutionary age. This conflict is as
much the result of the natural relations that arise between equals as of
the necessities inherent in the very existence of the social.
The peculiar fate of European democracies is to have developed
largely in ignorance of their own foundations. Their development has
been marked less by a clear self-comprehension, than by a tendency
in practice to produce a harmony [adéquation] of society with itself by
means of its political forms. The obsessive richness of the unity-
identity structure that hangs over all of Tocqueville’s thought directly
explains this dynamic. Tocqueville’s originality lies in that he places
the intimate adjustment of the individual, a general and absolutely
necessary one, within the collective process, that is, within the free
development of equality. It is in this regard that he sees the United
States and its institutions as a model. But this preoccupation in itself
is in no way particular to Tocqueville. It was the preoccupation of all
thinking people of his century, and particularly that of democracy’s
adversaries. For them, the illusions and prejudices that Tocqueville
describes are particularly alarming, as they fundamentally threaten
what they find to be the indispensable unity of the social body.
Tocqueville ultimately presents an entirely different vision of this
social unity, which he finds newly reconstructed once equality is fully
in place. The basic worry behind any authentically reactionary thought
is that only a return to what was, the reestablishment of old
hierarchies, can restore that organic solidarity between men without
which there is no society worthy of the name. Though Tocqueville
shares this worry with the reactionaries as he embarks on his research
in the United States, he finds there a society capable of accepting in
full, and without social discord, the absence of explicit links between
persons that once produced collective cohesion.
What is remarkable is that under such circumstances, this resolute
rejection of the republican regime in the name of social unity
nonetheless played a determining role in establishing political conflict
as a constitutive factor of society. What we know as democracy today
was fashioned in an essential aspect by the opposition to democracy.
The presence within society of a party hostile to the sovereignty of
the people led easily to the creation of a space for radical social
debate: a space that engages the very essence of the collective order,
and within which the society’s internal conflict of interests—which go
beyond the contestation of ideas concerning political systems—is able
to express itself freely. Far from dwindling out, as Tocqueville
predicted, the “struggle of contrary principles” has proved itself a
mirror in which our society projects and deciphers a rupture even
more crucial than the transition between the hierarchical past and the
egalitarian present. This is the division between the possessors and
the dispossessed, between the proprietors and the proletariat (which
Tocqueville insists “does not exist in the United States”). In the same
manner, the totalizing discussion imposed by the existence of a
reactionary project has made it possible to question without
constraints the limits and ends of the human community. This
questioning begins from the simple fact that there is a complete
contradiction between the interests of some and those of others.
Make no mistake: this antagonism between retrograde
conservatism and a necessarily revolutionary republicanism—whose
perverse deviations from and rejections of what should be the course
of history Tocqueville deplores—has served as the arena for the
central aspect of the democratic process that is the figuration of
conflict. From within the battle, ultimately contingent, between the
partisans of the old order and those of the new—as well as the
symbolic order that results from it—a new political perspective arises.
This perspective gives a political expression to the social conflict par
excellence, namely, the class conflict. The real mode of operation of the
modern democratic system is to be established around this
representation, which is at the same time a neutralization, of this
division that is in no way accidental, but rather must be admitted
(however insensibly) as inherent to the structure of democratic
society.
180 Marcel Gauchet
As Alain Bergougnioux and Bernard Manin so profoundly

observe, the creation of the workers’ party marks the crucial moment
of the crystallization of this process.9 The entry onto the scene of a
class-based party effectively requires a complete reorganization of the
political arena, beginning with a redefinition of the nature of all other
parties. Their various attachments or correspondences to definite
social forces become indispensable criteria to consider. As a result,
the competition for power is transformed into a legitimate expression
of the antagonisms that pervade the social body, by means of the
mechanism of delegation. The implication of this process is that the
violence contained in these oppositions—virtual, symbolic violence
materialized in real social relations—is effectively reduced. But once
again, one cannot stress enough the extent to which the struggles that
the principle of equality imposed on the peoples of Europe have
profoundly influenced the continent’s destiny. It is these struggles
that gave an initial form to what democracy ultimately demands that
we acknowledge: the existence of an irreconcilable tension at the
heart of society.
Once again, we must avoid the conclusion that this slow
emergence of a scene of conflict came about as a result of human
conscious thought. Nor should we believe that the peaceful
functioning of the system that came as its result has had anything to
do with a deliberate calculation. Quite the contrary, in it was in its
fervent opposition social disaggregation—a consequence of popular
sovereignty—that the reactionary or counter-revolutionary party
actually helped give form, despite itself, to the democratic division. In
the same manner, it was in placing at the forefront of its program the
resolution of all of the old antagonisms of society that the
revolutionary workers’ party achieved the result of structuring the
political system as a means of expression of social conflict. This
important consequence, incidentally, also allowed a separation of the
State to manifest itself freely. On the one hand, there is the sphere of
private interests and the various collective groupings that the
convergences and divergences of these interests produce. On the
other hand, there is the sphere of the legitimate representation of the
divisions of the social body, where the play of diverse social forces is
translated into power that applies to the whole of society.
From the earliest beginnings of the modern republic, to the
axiomatic conception of the autonomy of individuals who deliberate
on the form of the contract that is to unite them: in both cases, the
place of the political tends to appear precisely as the site of
identification between power and society. Power, in other words, is
nothing but the idealization of society in action. From this we can
trace the unanimous character of democratic politics in its earliest
state, for example, the will to unity that obsessed the French
Revolution and that led to its proscription against factions and
parties. The Revolutionists’ identification between the people and the
various representations of the people returned unceasingly to this
ideal. We can trace as well the idea of democratic voluntarism, which
flows to us, with no significant break, from the ancient
representations of power as the sheer will to maintain collective
cohesion, the conformity of the world of men with the order of its
destiny. In both cases, power plays a role in the concrete coincidence
between all parts of the social body with the overall project that
founds and guides it.
Historically speaking, the figuration of conflict has been the
mechanism that has definitively liberated the social from all traces of
the archaic form of political will. From the moment where it becomes
the cornerstone of the political field, however unconsciously, civil
society becomes correlatively autonomous. From then on there exists
an independent, self-organizing domain of human activity, coherent
unto itself, that delegates power to its principal actors according only
to divisions within the sphere of public power. The mechanism of
representation, far from conspiring to establish a coincidence of the
collectivity with itself, amounts rather to an affirmation of the
distance between the place where conflicts are formed (society) and
the place where they are exhibited and resolved (the State). In the
same way that social conflict is pacified through its symbolic
representation, the difference of the State is neutralized through its
symbolic manifestation. The representative mechanism is not only the
recognition of the autonomy of politics with respect to civil society,
but also the demonstration of the ways in which power arises from
society, and only from society, even if only to become separate from
it.
We thus find ourselves faced with a system whose very life is to
foster those divisions that are necessarily invisible on the surface to
social actors, who refuse or even seek to suppress them. For though
the State is symbolically separated from its occupants, it presents
182 Marcel Gauchet
itself in its own official discourse as both the immediate and organic
expression of the general will, and a specialized executive power. It
claims, furthermore, to perfectly integrate both of these tasks
concerning the collective interest. The social forces and groups in
conflict, at the same time as they reinforce the State in their actions,
seek tirelessly to put an end to its pernicious effects and its artificial
character—in other words, to deny its reality, or to proclaim its
inevitable overcoming. To put it briefly, democracy in no way implies
self-recognition as such. Democracy is the result of interaction
between parties equally ignorant of the truth of democracy, and at
times ideologically anti-democratic.
To be clear, the aim here is not to deny, for the mere sake of
paradox, the existence of explicitly democratic parties, whether
republican or liberal in name. These parties are democratic to the
extent that they accept competition between a plurality of organized
opinions. Without this acceptance, it seems, there could be no
conceivable evolution towards a representation of the irreconcilable
in public life. The point is only that the final reality of the democratic
fact essentially belongs to the underlying logic of the collective social
process. This process is ultimately prior to the open contests for
power, that is, the defined rules of political regimes and the ideologies
of institutions. All of these are spaces where this democratic reality
resides.
Consider, for example, the confrontation of parties as Tocqueville
conceives it, following the American example. What does this
confrontation suppose if not a general consent to the “generating
principles of the laws,” and to the concrete foundations of society,
and an all-encompassing intellectual communality? All of these
effectively refuse to deal with the divergences of view that exist,
however considerable they might be. In other words, Tocqueville
ultimately supposes a continuous unity and agreement [adéquation] of
society with itself, without any “natural and permanent dissonance
between the interests” of diverse classes of citizens, and correlatively,
without any questioning of the foundations of the society’s
organization. It is indispensable to dispense with all of these
presuppositions if one is to grasp the real mode of functioning, at its
core, not of democratic regimes, but of the democratic societies that
have come to exist on the Old Continent, where the very legitimacy
of democratic institutions has never ceased to be a matter of debate.
What has been at stake in these debates is the content of

communal bonds. In its opposition to the conciliatory illusions of
liberal republicanism, the class critique of the workers’ movement has
played a major role in shaping the symbolic arena of the irreconcilable
that constitutes the heart of modern democracies. The political
organization of the proletariat has introduced a new dimension of
distance into the “normal” spread of parties. It is nonetheless true,
however, that at the same time as it denounced the myth of collective
concord, this party brought about the further illusion of the eventual
abolition of social divisions. This illusion helped to renew the very
same proposition that had guided the other parties regarding the
proper form of society, namely, the necessity of cohesion and a
unified destiny.
One can therefore make the claim that democracy has been made
independently of the efforts of democratic parties to promote it. That
is, if we understand by “democratic” those parties capable of
discerning and affirming its novel truth. Democracy has been
advanced despite a generalized denial of its true articulations on the
part of its own social agents. It was established without the
knowledge of its creators, and in fact as the result of their combined
blindness. Or rather, as the intersection of various undertakings each
opposed in its own way to the authentic spirit of democracy, for all of
them were inspired in some way by the idea of a society’s ultimate
agreement [adéquation] with itself. It is this idea that had dominated
human history in its entirety, and the rupture therewith that
represents the democratic age’s most essential novelty. True
democracy, in our societies, can only be understood as lying beneath
the surface of the beliefs and aims of social actors. Without a doubt,
it is concretized in rules, forms, and institutions that grant it its
explicit practical character. Nevertheless, as a social process, it is
engendered and continues to develop largely unconscious of itself.
But is this process destined to remain unconscious? The answer to
this question is quite another affair, one in which the shocking return
of totalitarianism threatens to intervene as a decisive factor.
As the conditions for their emergence became little by little the
subject of a combative misunderstanding, it became clear that
democracies carry within them, by their very nature, the prospect of
their own totalitarian negation. The possibility of totalitarianism was
inscribed from the beginning into the democracies that developed on
184 Marcel Gauchet
the Old Continent. It follows them as their inverse, their inseparable

double. It owes its structural features to the contradiction between
what is explicit and what is implicit in democracy’s mode of
functioning. That is to say, the contradiction between the manifest
content of opposing ideologies, and the underlying reality of the
symbolic system in which they operate. Democratic society, at its
most profound, is one of conflict, but one in which there is no one
who does not dream of social unity (however they may conceive it). It
is therefore permanently threatened by the spilling over of discourse
into the real, the attempt to concretize ideologies of unity in political
action. This is the essence of totalitarianism, whether in its counter-
revolutionary form of a strong organic solidarity guaranteed by the
reestablishment of a hierarchical structure (the fascist variant); or in
its “progressive” form of a superior and definitive type of unity—as
opposed to that of prior ages—achieved by resorbing class
antagonisms and the separation of the State within a historically
completed totality (the communist variant). The same dynamic can
occur even in the form of an aggravated republicanism, in which
popular sovereignty is invoked as an aspiration of unanimity in
contrast to the artificial divisions created by the parties. Although the
latter case is better described as a plebiscitary authoritarianism than a
totalitarianism strictly speaking, and may be ultimately more peaceful,
the reconciliatory aspect of such a regime is no less embedded in the
totalitarian perspective.
The essential point to take away from all of this—now more than
ever, since totalitarianism has become the object of a recent
“discovery”—is the historically regressive character of the totalitarian
project. Totalitarianism proceeds most fundamentally from a refusal;
from a reaction against the novelty of democracy and all that it
reveals; from a blind will to return to the explicit cohesion of the
human community. This cohesion, to repeat, is the ideal that has
dominated human history, from its origins in the emergence of the
State and social classes to our own time. It has done so primarily by
means of religion; that is, by means of the conformity of society to a
pre-established plan, as well as the intimate solidarity that occurs
despite immense differences in real social status. It is as if humanity,
arriving at the moment where religion begun its retreat and the very
reasons for collective organization were put to a general debate,
fainted before the unbearable spectacle of its own truth. As if it found
itself incapable of withstanding the free expression of its internal

oppositions that it discovered as the structure of the social world at
the very moment when religion ceased its millenarian function of
obscuring them. Totalitarianism is the return of the religious principle
within a world on the verge of having dispensed with religion. It is
the undeniable spirit of guilt that religions have mobilized from the
very beginning. It is the senseless perseverance of that which
democratic modernity has rightly rendered impossible: the full and
total coincidence between society and a predetermined eternal truth (a
truth that imposes the ultimate choice between returning to it, and
the end of history itself).
It is without a doubt the most unfathomable mystery of human
societies—this savage, unanimous, obstinate refusal to consider
themselves directly—to which the existence of religions has always
born witness. What an enigma it is, this denial of their power over
themselves, of the true nature of their articulations, which we might
have thought to be definitively established. But even if the roots of
this apparent difficulty of the human species to accept itself for what
it is remain totally opaque, what is quite clear is that the totalitarian
phenomenon represents the virulent resurgence of an immemorial
passion for self-misunderstanding that we know to be profoundly
embedded in the unconscious order of human groups. It is at the
same time true that totalitarianism is inseparable from modernity; it
would be inconceivable during an age of religion, for the simple
reason that religion, when it was in full force, fulfilled the role that
totalitarianism seeks in vain to reestablish.10 This is not to say that
totalitarianism is itself religion, but rather that it tends towards the
resurrection—within a universe where religion has ceased to exercise
a power over the social, if not to exist at all—of collective cohesion
that religions once assured. Quite strangely, in totalitarianism an
alliance is realized between the ancient and the new. For it is also true
that it mobilizes, with the State as its instrument, a social factor
whose rise to power is strictly correlated with the decline of
transcendence. Totalitarianism must completely reintegrate into the
human sphere justifications that hitherto had depended on the world
beyond. Only then do the project of an exhaustive appropriation and
a complete remodeling of society by a detached power become
imaginable. It is in this sense that one can characterize totalitarianism
186 Marcel Gauchet
as the fulfillment of modernity, carrying the potential to fully exploit

of its limits, embodying its most developed expression.
Here again, we must not neglect the other side of the
phenomenon. Here again, the question is useful as to the aims
towards which such an all-powerful statism is mobilized. For if the
means of totalitarianism properly belong to modern politics, which
has been liberated from religion, the design it pursues can only be
retrograde. It represents at bottom nothing but a nostalgic repetition
of the ideal social form that has always emanated from the religious
vision of the human destiny: the good old days where everyone
thought the same; where each person occupied a clear place at the
same time as his or her belonging to the collective was tangible; and
where the interests of all, without competition or confrontation,
converged towards a manifestly unique end. Behind every
totalitarianism, whether consciously or not, there is the radical
impossibility to break free of this original model of social life, rooted
for millennia in the human spirit and protected by the religious
understanding of things. This model was profoundly shaken by the
democratic revolution. It was, then, in order to recover a world on
the verge of being lost that the new power of the State was mobilized
in vain, from the very moment that it no longer found itself oriented
towards the beyond, towards a God that holds the final word in all
knowledge and power. If there has been any actualization of the
phantasmagorical project of domination inscribed in the radical
pretention of our societies to become their own possessors, it is the
dream—both achieved and in process—of the full collective identity
that produced the ancient transcendental dispossession of meaning.
Such an actualization exists only by virtue of the spectral
reincarnation of a fading past.
This hypothesis has the merit, if nothing else, of cohering with the
real conditions out of which totalitarianism has sprung. Nowhere in
the countries where it has it been imposed has it appeared without
fracturing the long secular process of the construction of the modern
national State. Nowhere has it emerged as the natural and inevitable
product of the growth of the modern political apparatus. On the
contrary, every context in which it has appeared has been one marked
by the archaism, or relative inefficiency, of the development of State
structures. In each case, the national State in its canonical form had
but the weakest roots, as a result of its recent constitution (e.g.,
Germany and Italy), or because of the historical power of the old

imperial model against which modern nations have been constructed
(e.g., Russia and China, although the imperial problem was present in
a less direct way in both Germany and Italy as well). Totalitarianism
has served over and over again as a means of reinforcing the modern
State during its bouts of impotence, rather than, as it claims, as the
result of the State’s logical development. And finally, each time that it
has been established has been on the heels of a period of political
liberalization. Whether in open reaction to the disaggregation that
results from this liberalization, or rather in favor of the resulting
agitation, totalitarianism always arises in order to extinguish the
authentic democratic possibilities that these periods reveal.
Totalitarianism was born as if under the double necessity to
establish through superhuman effort a State that mirrors the nation,
the materialization of its absolute sovereign power; and, at the same
time, to return in haste to an intangible coherence, to an unfailing
unity, to the mystical solidarity of the old society that had collapsed in
a mere instant. Always and everywhere, it has been a violent entry
into the era of the monopoly of the State over the definition and
organization of society. But totalitarianism has nonetheless
understood itself as the means of reestablishing an exact coincidence
[adéquation] between society and itself, in which there is no
contradiction between men and society is presumed to be coextensive
with the State, absorbed within it. Since the very origin of human
societies, this coincidence [adéquation] has been the embodiment of an
obsessive, inexhaustible ideal, whose reproduction par excellence has
been found in religion. The appearance within democracy of an open
arena of the conflicts that constitute the social—the scission between
the State and society, the antagonism between classes—represents an
extraordinary rupture with this idea of coincidence.
Such a rupture has been experienced as intolerable in those places
where a slow and imperceptible process did not prepare the way for
it. Let us not, then, proclaim the return to a “political spiritualism,” or
any other miserable over-the-counter “monotheism,” that is to be the
safeguard against the totalitarian danger built into our social atheism.
It is assuredly not by returning to religion, but rather by finally ridding
ourselves of it that we will effectively guard against totalitarianism. It
is not out of the lack of religion that totalitarianism is born, but rather
out of our insufficiently having eradicated it, our inability to step out
188 Marcel Gauchet
of its spaces. Totalitarianism is the terrible symptom of the tensions

inherent in our societies, the monstrous compromise between
opposing logics of the collective establishment. It belongs historically
to the pathologies of the transition between two epochs. It is at its
deepest the reaction to the difficulty for the human race to break
from the primordial reflex that has always prevented it from seeing
itself for what it is. The immensity of the stakes of the democratic age
is that in it, we have undertaken to defeat and dispossess this age-old
reflex.
The absolutely new dimension introduced by democracy—of
which totalitarianism is a desperate conjuration—is the complete
absorption of society into a process of self-questioning, by means of
its own division. All previous societies had answers at their disposal,
ready in advance and unanimously accepted (or nearly so), serving as
self-explanations and self-justifications regarding their ultimate
character. Such answers were infinitely varied in terms of their
content, but constructed on an identical model: things are the way
they are because the Others or the Gods, the Absolute Other or the
all-powerful One True God wanted them that way. The radical
originality of democratic society is that it questions its very
organization, and as a result produces antagonistic responses. On the
one hand, with the separation of the State comes the paradoxical
possibility of society’s complete seizure of itself. This possibility
creates in democratic society a perspective in which power is fully
capable of modeling and organizing itself (a power symbolized most
purely by the idea of “revolution”), at the same time as it produces a
sign of that same society’s dispossession of such a power. For it is
from outside of itself, and in a sense from against itself, that this
power becomes operative. On the other hand, with the division of
classes and the idea of their structurally opposed interests, appears a
different but no less profound challenge to the idea of a simply just or
acceptable order of collective existence. No longer does the sentiment
exist in a comprehensible manner that society rests on a stable and
definitive base. Rather, it becomes certain that the solutions to its
problems are to be found wholly within itself. The point is not merely
that democratic society necessitates the asking of questions; the
democratic social process itself takes the form of a question. It is
therefore in vain that actors within this society oppose themselves
only to fully formed answers. No matter how deep down they dig, all
they will find is the manifest impossibility to resolve any debate

whatsoever, the mental abyss of infinite possibility.
This underlying dynamic of incertitude, this relentless
destabilization of what had once been unquestionable, these infinite
resources of contestation stemming from the very structure of
democratic societies: all of these represent without a doubt the
dimensions before which Tocqueville found it necessary to bring his
analysis to a halt. Not that he failed to discern them. He speaks quite
clearly of “yawning void of almost limitless proportions” into which
more or less “every revolution” has had the effect of throwing the
human spirit (II, 1.1, 487). It is with full awareness of what he was
doing, and therefore more significantly, that he cast these elements as
contrary to the normal progression of society, destined as a result to a
merely transitory phase of history. His repugnance for them should
not be surprising if one considers the paroxysmal reactions in our
own century against the progressive entry of the entire human race
into the anxiety of a debate free of “natural” foundations. Far from
having become more respectable since Tocqueville’s time, the
perspective in which nothing is contestable, nothing capable of being
established in opposition to what is, has only grown more and more
hopeless. Its degeneration has reached the point where it has
ultimately sparked the totalitarian project of restoring a secure
collective base, a society that knows itself unquestionably for what it
is, an organization of the world once again definitive and determined
in all of its parts.
Let us examine, in our own time, the edifying spectacle that
today’s intellectuals offer us in palinode. Freshly delivered from their
adhesion to totalitarian ideologies, our intelligentsia has nothing to
offer us but an exchange of one faith for another: anything to
continue refusing to acknowledge the abyss of social possibility. Man
“left to himself,” as Tocqueville puts it, remains an intolerable idea
for man. Never the less, if there is in our universe a “universal,
durable” phenomenon—one that “daily proves to be beyond the
reach of men’s powers”; one that “all events,” as well as “all men,”
conspire to develop even in opposing it11 —it is the inscription of
societies in a self-interrogation that is unable to be closed. This self-
questioning proceeds from an internal cleavage, which ravages the
entire society without mercy. Its instances of direct violence
undoubtedly tend to fizzle out, and its explicit concrete stakes often
190 Marcel Gauchet
become obscured. But the necessity of this interrogation always

reveals itself at its barest and most profound when the prospect of
eliminating the enemy within social conflict disappears; when the grip
of the State is loosened, and the aim of State politics becomes
dispossession rather than coercion.
We have arrived in all likelihood at a turning point, in this sense,
where something of the ancient economy of misunderstanding has
been defeated. Our understanding may stand to benefit from its
inevitable encounter with its totalitarian other, which is unlikely to
disappear anytime soon. This is without a doubt a positive result of
the return from the cataclysmic collision of totalitarian illusions with
reality. But it is also the exhaustion of the historical functions of
political parties, each one blind to their conflictual presence alongside
one another within a larger whole. Each party denying to the others
their right to existence, claiming to seek their elimination and in so
doing impose its own vision of a reunified society, such blindness had
the effect of bestowing upon party conflict a radical character. It
appeared as a clash of two worlds, one that spread throughout all
aspects of human activity without exception.
If we are witnesses today to a significant loss of potency of these
confrontations, it is because they have lost their former mandate.
Nothing remains in our world beyond the limits of discussion. The
problematic dynamics of democracy, furthermore, need no longer
pass through a combatively exclusive representation of the good
society. It has been established that social life on the whole is rightly
the subject of debate, and this debate inevitably manifests itself
through oppositions. Such oppositions therefore do not in the least
tend to disappear; they are tacitly recognized, and show themselves
following the obligation either to impose themselves by force, or to
achieve recognition by persuasion.
We must have no illusions here: with society’s total power over
itself that it finds in the State, with its internal antagonism between
visions of the social and the human destiny, we are far from reaching
a stopping point. Perhaps the reverse is true, that we are merely at the
beginning of establishing a collective atheism (though, it must be said,
perfectly compatible with private faith), over a century in the making,
the social logic of democracies. For contrary to what Tocqueville
believed, democratic society not only has no need of limits
established by divine command, but it is precisely that society that

organizes itself by liberating a practical force of questioning. This
power internal to democracy is destined without fail to turn
individuals away from the divine. Prevailing opinion matters little
here; it is within the very mechanism of the social where the
disappearance of God is to be found. As long as the powers of refusal
at work within them—both totalitarian passion and the religious
denial—do not carry democratic societies away, in a general twist of
fate that no one can dismiss outright, their development according to
their “natural bent” will make them the tomb of religion.
III
“If, after attentively studying the history of America, one carefully
examines its political and social state, one becomes firmly convinced
of the following truth: that there is not a single opinion, habit, or law,
I might almost say not a single event, which the point of departure
cannot readily explain” (I, 1.2, 33). It helps to complement this claim
of Tocqueville’s with another: “America is the only country in which
it has been possible to witness the natural and tranquil course of a
society’s development and to pinpoint the influence of a state’s point
of departure on its future” (Ibid., 32). Tocqueville’s reasoning here is
flawless. The seminal fact of the democratic universe is the equality of
conditions. There exists a nation that has not only been constituted
entirely ex nihilo on the basis of the equality of conditions, but has also
developed with constant fidelity to its founding content.
Consequently, it is as if the origin itself has made transparently
evident the ultimate product. The democratic regime supposes,
furthermore, the logical anteriority of its independent citizens with
respect to the mode of government that results from their sovereign
association. America then offers the unique historical example of a
society where sovereign power is effectively—and not merely in
principle—crystallized from below; where the exercise of the
deliberative function is intensified to the extent that one remains
close to the first elements of the social body; and finally, where the
generalized practice association permanently reenacts the founding of
the political contract.
How better to judge the future of the democratic nations—having
entered the age of popular sovereignty more or less in a state of
confusion—than on the model of a society whose historical evolution
192 Marcel Gauchet
forms a single process with a logically necessary development of

principles? We must add only that there is a downside to
Tocqueville’s privilege of the beginning, namely, his break with
democracy’s conditions of emergence. Tocqueville pays for the clarity
with which he observes the American “point of departure” by
obliterating what had previously allowed it to take place. It is here
where Tocqueville is led most astray in his perspective on the future
of democratic societies in general. In the longue durée of the process of
equality’s engenderment, the exemplary American case proves in
reality to be highly particular. The marks of democracy’s origins cast a
veil over its historically creative mechanisms and its inescapable
prolongations. For the dynamic of equality has been the bearer of a
radical rupture in the course of human affairs, and its rich effect has
been a new beginning, a re-foundation of societies on entirely
different bases. If this dynamic is truly proper to equality, and if it is
more than a mere re-composition of the same elements of the social
fabric, it is also a dynamic that belongs to the social articulations that
produced the equality of conditions. That is to say, the internal
scissions, the separation of the State, and the class oppositions that
gave the public life of modern democracies, contrary to what
Tocqueville believed, an irreducibly conflictual character.
The specific difficulty that democratic societies faced as they
stumbled through their gestation on the Old Continent, furthermore,
was to have realized two apparently incompatible series of factors: the
principle of popular sovereignty and the reality of the separation of
the State. That is to say, the necessity of an active representation of
the general will alongside the obligation to take into account an
effective set of antagonisms. What Tocqueville saw in the United
States was the perfectly peculiar—and therefore deceptively “pure”—
example of a society spared since its origin from these constraints. As
a result, America never had to confront the historical challenge of
synthesizing the imperatives of the democratic age with the heritage
attached to the genealogy of equality. Tocqueville’s is therefore a
blinding clarity, illuminating the general movement of history (which
provides “the flame that our fathers lacked,” in his words) while at
the same time tacitly rejecting the reasons for its generation.
There is nothing more curious in Tocqueville’s work than the
absence of a systematic account of what he takes to be the causal
factor of a number of the historical necessities that weigh on the
evolution of the democratic phenomenon. This is not to say,

however, that he fails to reflect on the origins of equality, for this is
precisely what The Ancien Régime and the Revolution sets out to
accomplish. He observes, on the one hand, that “it was the absolute
kings who did most to level ranks among their subjects” (II, 2.1, 584).
On the other hand, he considers the expansion of social power—each
day “more centralized, more enterprising, more absolute, and more
extensive” (II, 4.5, 813)—as a consequence resulting from the spread of
equality. And in Europe in particular, this expansion of centralized
power is the result of “secondary and accidental causes that
Americans do not have to contend with” (II, 4.5, 803). Centralization
tends to produce equality; equality tends to produce centralization.
The point here is not to chastise Tocqueville for having failed to
establish definitively the correlation between the two movements of
equalization and the expansion of the State. Nevertheless, between
the notions of equality as effect and equality as cause, there is a
fundamental void. Any historical analysis of democracy as the result
of a reciprocal interaction of elements that are at the same time
inseparable from its future is essentially contradictory. This supposed
democratic State, in enlarging its own prerogatives, comes to detach
itself as a result from society and appear above it in its entirety,
therefore exerting an equalizing influence over it. It is clear that such
a State would never simply disappear, as if by magic, the day when its
activity of reducing its subjects to the equivalence of individual
identity will have resulted in subverting social hierarchy in favor of
the sovereignty of equals. Such is the task of The Ancien Régime and the
Revolution, to show the essential continuity of this statist factor within
and beyond the revolutionary rupture, both instigated by the
concentration of power, and conspiring to expand it further. Now,
despite having been the most effective agent in establishing popular
sovereignty, the separated State is no less in contradiction with the
essential principle of the latter. It is difficult to reconcile the
autonomy of its political instantiation with the concept of
representative transparency. The turning of administrative power
against the very society it means to govern from the outside,
furthermore, does not sit well with the abstract notion of a
government by the people and for the people.
All of this speaks directly to what is most fundamental. For if the
detachment of power is not absolutely irreconcilable with equality
194 Marcel Gauchet
(which is able, according to Tocqueville, to become embodied in a

single entity that guarantees in exchange the equivalence of all), it
tends nonetheless to impinge upon the territory of liberty. This latter
is the independence of individuals who are only equals by virtue of
their autonomy with respect to one another. Under these conditions,
how could democracy have been historically constructed if not as the
fruit of the interaction of elements belonging to heterogeneous
temporalities, those whose contents are logically opposed? And let us
say nothing of the problem of reconciling the imperative to represent
the will of all of the citizens with the existence of a conflict between
their interests that is recognized, at least tacitly, as irreconcilable. This
is the aspect of modern societies towards which Tocqueville remained
the most resolutely closed off until the very end.
Rather than turn towards an analysis of this nature regarding the
State, whose elements are nonetheless at his disposition, Tocqueville
prefers to envisage the example of a society founded purely on the
basis of equality. It is as if this society contained within itself the
principle of a fundamental change of the social structure so radical
that sooner or later, the last vestiges of the conditions that brought it
about were inevitably bound to disappear. As if the new world was to
completely escape from a progressive reconstruction of the one that
came before, on the basis of the relation of equivalence and similarity
between individuals. Without a doubt, we have touched on the
fundamental position, suggested by the very logic of his democratic
object, which both guides and blinds Tocqueville: the postulate of a
complete foundation [instauration].12 For him, democracy is at its core
a total redefinition of the social order on the basis of the entirely new
social material of independent human beings. It is the radical
beginning of a new history, starting from premises entirely different
from those of the past. There is no use seeking in it a secular process
whose signs can be found throughout prior human experience.
Democracy is a decisive discontinuity, a reinstitution of the human
community on bases hitherto unseen. It implies a complete
redefinition of the terms of social life, down to the finest details.
It is one thing to speak of a progressive movement of equality that
begins within an aristocratic universe, where each man is attached to
his fellows through a chain of dependencies uniting superiors and
inferiors. It is quite another to speak of the genuine establishment of
a society of individuals, independent beings that recognize themselves
as equals with no hierarchical difference between them, and that

participate identically in sovereign power. The privilege of America is
to have laid bare this truth concerning foundations. By virtue of a
fortuitous encounter between the principle and the event of
foundation, America reveals within the state of freedom its founding
and generating dynamic of equality. Nothing is more significant in
this regard than the leap Tocqueville makes from the centralization of
the European State as a cause, to centralization as an effect. What is
most interesting from the point of view of the liberation of
democracy’s central characteristics (as opposed to the point of view
of historical understanding) is not so much the notion of continuity,
but rather what follows properly from the fact of equality, what it
produces in its own right. From this perspective, equality is
considered as a source destined to supplant and absorb all other
historical sources, the only such source free of the contaminations of
the past.
Hence the revolutionary illusion inherent in the democratic
process that one finds at the root of Tocqueville’s uncertainties
regarding the nature and foreseeable future of democratic societies.
An effective illusion, true in a sense, of a pure foundation, in which
society can be entirely reconstructed from a first principle. This
principle, for Tocqueville, is the equality of conditions. Without much
infidelity to his intentions, we could choose alternatively to call it
individualism, a term Tocqueville employs himself. But where
Tocqueville uses this term to describe a relatively circumscribed
domain of democratic life, we understand it in a much more
expansive sense. Individualism is a reversal of the explicit ontological
priority of a society considered explicitly as a whole over and above
each of its members taken in isolation. In democratic society, the
logical priority of the individual is no less explicit: the individual is
understood as detached from society, the latter being the result of a
contract of association agreed upon by originally independent beings.
These contracting agents are radically equal by virtue of this
independence, their rigorously identical status conferred upon them
by their origin.
If there has been such a thing as a democratic “revolution”—
independent of actual revolutionary events—it has consisted in this
inversion of the foundations of society. Its direct consequence has
been a complete change in the status of the political. In the old world
196 Marcel Gauchet
of social hierarchies, where the primacy of the collective was

expressed as a dependence of each social agent on a superior, the
political order was understood as preceding by its nature the will of
men. Once individuals are recognized as primordially autonomous,
on the other hand, the political acquires a subordinate rank. It
appears as derivative, the product of the free and deliberate activity of
human equals. Tocqueville’s intervention appears within this
historico-ideological process. His aim is to restore the democratic
process to its founding efficiency by revealing it as both an
elementary (viz., beneath which no analytic decomposition can
proceed) and internally rich fact of an entirely new world. His
theoretical vision simultaneously results from, reflects, and
perpetuates both the return and the rupture that have taken place
within the order of society’s founding representations. As a result,
Tocqueville reproduces the illusion specific to democracy by
overlooking the fact that it was society itself—at a certain moment in
its history, as a result of deep transformations in its articulations—
that gave rise to the individual. This forgetfulness follows from the
notion of the original sovereignty of equals, a conviction that goes
more or less unseen within the social mechanisms that assure the
unity and identity of democracy.
In other words, Tocqueville helps pass on the illusion according to
which there were only individuals at the beginning of society. Given
the indisputable fact that there are individuals, this ontological
postulate of their anteriority effectively translates into the idea of a
concrete social autonomy. There are, then, hidden from view in this
illusion, structures that impose unconscious symbolic constraints on
social life. Tocqueville reproduces a form of this illusion in his
deduction that democratic society emerged entirely from the intrinsic
dynamic of equality. In fact, democracy was created through the
interaction between the manifest content of our societies (the rights
of individuals), and the latent content (the constraints of political
articulation, the separation of the State, and the full-frontal
oppositions between men). Or, alternatively, the interaction between
social atoms (independent and equal individuals) and the all-
encompassing society that produced them. The social whole created
human individuals as such by presenting itself to them in an
indiscernible manner, while never ceasing to contain them entirely
along with their incessant imperative to pursue their ends. One sees
therefore how America was able to pose itself as the perfect decoy. It
has been separated from this matrix of equality whose engulfing
presence was unmistakable in Europe, spared from the constraints in
the social unconscious—ever-present but nearly always overlooked—
of the production of collective unity. It perfectly embodies, then, the
illusory democratic ideal of a society left to its most basic social
components: individuals, or equals.
IV
Even if the hidden element of the democratic phenomenon
ultimately escaped him, if he only indirectly perceived it, Tocqueville
nonetheless proved himself—and remains to this day—an unequaled
analyst of its overt developments. That is to say, the dynamics that
follow from the new status conferred on the political agent, and from
the general recategorization of relations between men entailed by the
tacit postulate of their self-sufficiency. One cannot read him on this
point without being struck by the strangely contemporary intelligence
of his examination of a total social fact. But what is striking above all
is the pertinence of his identification of the central tendency at work
over the longue durée of Western history: the tendency towards the
reduction of alterity in human life. The subsequent development of this
reduction, and its spectacularly profound effects over the century
following the publication of Democracy in America, have nonetheless
been obstinately ignored by our most notable contemporary
“thinkers” today. There is an incisive Tocqueville to be liberated from
his lukewarm “liberal” flatterers—or rather, a polemical Tocqueville
to be opposed to our mediocre professors of official subversion, or
any other patented slanderers of a history they do not understand.
For what Tocqueville calls equality is one of the core sources of
meaning—effective meaning, meaning in action, meaning destined
towards concrete incarnation, rather than meaning through mastery
of concepts—that have shaped what is most original in our society.
Tocqueville’s equality is what Castoriadis would call a “central
imaginary signification,” a power that penetrates all established social
relations, an inextinguishable source of fluctuation in the positions of
social beings with respect to one another. All of this is well known,
from certain points of view, but Tocqueville continues to be one of
the few—and perhaps the only one—capable of making sense of the
surprisingly coherent unity at the heart of our history.
198 Marcel Gauchet
It is not an easy task to reconstruct what Tocqueville understands

by the “equality of conditions.” He clearly does not mean equality in
the juridical sense—the identity of men before the law, itself
characterized by its own unity—though from the point of view of an
equality “introduced by absolute power and under the watch of
kings,” this legal sense of the word is far from secondary. Nor does
Tocqueville have in mind the economic sense of equality, the “real”
equality that our good old tradition has taught us to demand, in
opposition to the abstract “opium” of equality before the law. There
is nonetheless something strange, from the point of view of our
ordinary conceptual schema, in that Tocqueville writes ceaselessly of
equality and its irrepressible movement without hardly blinking an eye
at the inequality of fortune that he clearly takes to be all but
inevitable. It is surprising that he does not undertake to imagine the
disappearance of this inequality among the foreseeable evolutions of
democracy. What is important here is less the gap between the goods
that individuals enjoy, than the existence of a graduated spectrum
within the social world, though one without any gaps considered to
be impassable. It is this dimension that gives a concrete reality to the
mobility of democratic societies, where anyone can legitimately claim
any social position, in contrast to the perpetuity of aristocratic
regimes where the position of each member is irrevocably fixed.
“[W]ealth and poverty, command and obedience, may accidentally
put a great distance between another,” Tocqueville writes concerning
the effects of the mobility of social status, “but no matter: public
opinion, which is based on the ordinary order of things, pulls them
back towards the common level and creates a sort of imaginary
equality between them despite the actual inequality of their
conditions” (II, 3.5, 674). From the point of view of the structural
truth of democratic equality, an “imaginary equality” can therefore be
more important than a “real inequality.”
The point is that the “real inequality” in question in no way
creates the perception of different natures between individuals in the
public mind. In times of aristocracy, in contrast, no equality of
fortunes could have abolished the essential difference between
beings. What constitutes men as equals in the democratic age goes far
deeper superficial characteristics related to wealth, or even to position
in social hierarchies. What is at stake, to remain in private terms, is
the impossibility to posit a difference of any profound substance, or
of an intimate nature between individuals, no matter what accidental

superficialities distinguish them in role or place. This is what
Tocqueville means positively by “the general notion of ‘one’s fellow
man [le semblable]’”13 (II, 2.2, 586). The idea recurs on numerous
occasions in his writing, with a consistency of expression that allows a
glimpse into the gravity of his reflection on the subject. Does he
mean to identify the originality of modern times by opposing them to
antiquity? “The most profound geniuses of Greece and Rome, the
most comprehensive of ancient minds, never hit upon the very
general yet at the same time very simple idea that all men are alike”
(II, 1.3, 496). But this is the same criterion Tocqueville uses to
establish the break with aristocratic peoples, where
each caste has its opinions, its feelings, its rights, its mores, and its own
separate existence. Thus, the men who belong to a particular caste do
not resemble everyone else. They do not share the same way of thinking
or feeling, and they scarcely even think of themselves as belonging to
the same humanity (II, 3.1, 655).
Inhabitants of aristocracies only see, then, “members of their own
caste as their fellows.” This is in contrast—in a passage on the
softening of mores as a result of the equalization of conditions,
central to Tocqueville’s understanding of equality—to when
the ranks in a nation are roughly equal and everyone thinks and feels in
almost the same way, then each person can judge everyone else’s
sensations in an instant: all he has to do is cast a quick glance at himself.
Hence there is no misery that he cannot readily conceive, or whose
extent is not revealed to him by a secret instinct. No matter if strangers
or enemies are involved: his imagination instantly puts him in their
place. His pity is thereby tinged with something personal, causing him to
suffer when the body of his fellow man is torn to pieces (Ibid., 658).
The idea is reprised again, with some shift in perspective, in a note
that is of interest among his positions taken on the “imaginary
equality” that obliterates “real inequality,” illustrating the ambivalence
of Tocqueville’s thought. The “fellow man” appears this time in a
discussion of what we call today the phenomenon of the mass:
“When citizens are divided into castes and classes, not only are they
different from one another, but they have neither the taste nor the
desire to look alike,” to the extent that “even those who are naturally
alike aspire to create imaginary differences between themselves.” In
contrast, “when a nation has a democratic social state…. [m]en
resemble one another, and what is more, they suffer in a sense from
200 Marcel Gauchet
not resembling one another” (II, 2.3, 780). This time, rather than an
(“imaginary”) underlying unity—fully compatible with marked
differences on the surface—we are confronted with an explicit desire
for sameness that drives the entirety of individual expression.
These two positions are less contradictory than they might seem.
They simply do not operate on the same level of description. In the
case of the relation between master and servant, the situation is
exemplary as a historical junction point and a logical limit. This
dynamic helps to establish how equality arises between and within
individuals, as well as to discern what exactly the relation of “fellows”
consists in, if there is to be one at all. How is it that beings as
essentially different as a master and a servant, from the point of view
of the old aristocratic mentality, can be taken as fundamentally the
same, despite the effective gap between their positions? It is equality’s
abstract component that emerges through such an operation, in
which the democratic understanding instinctively bypasses its
accidental features in order to get right to the substance. Whereas the
spirit of hierarchical societies would have directed them to construct
separations of status and roles based on group affiliation, “race,”
nature, or any other value distinction between men, democratic
societies are driven to neglect all visible, concrete, and natural
disjunctions. This in favor of an identity that one can only call
abstract, as it appeals to a general form independent of given
characteristics, and, at its core, intangible as such. Such an identity is
achieved by separating individuals from the facts that define and
situate them, in order to bring out an equality between them that is in
principle never fully realized.
For this reason I have advanced on many occasions the idea of
structure. For the equality at issue here is only conceivable in the set of
relations in which it is indefinitely embedded. What creates equality
between beings is not discernable in itself, that is, within any
particular individual. It is caught up in the socially defined manner in
which these beings encounter and place themselves with respect to
one another. In other words, the source of equality is to be found in
the structure of a relation that directs them—in a manner difficult for
the historian to notice—to disregard their real or natural differences,
whatever they may be, as soon as they become patent. Instead, the
democratic man is to recognize himself in the other, as Tocqueville so
finely observes, in such a way that he is to be incapable of witnessing
the other’s suffering without involuntarily putting himself in his

fellow’s place, blindly feeling his pain in his own body. The structure
of this recognition is like a mirror that society holds up to itself,
tending to dissolve practical separations in favor of a community of
belonging. This community, however, remains indefinite in that it is
ultimately detached from all effective determinations. But the mirror
effect is nonetheless mutual, by virtue of its strange property of
revealing something inexpressible to everyone in the person of the
other. We are all each other’s fellows, despite our apparent
differences. And once this faceless resemblance is established, the
mirror effect can easily play a role in sounding the call to superficial
similarity. When personal differences are experienced as mere cover
for a profound social identity, they become intolerable. The ultimate
impossibility of attaining full self-recognition in the other, then,
stokes an anxious attachment to its superficial manifestations.
But here, we have entered into a discussion of elements that are
logically secondary, whose particular sphere of application is limited,
concerning equality’s drive to capitalize on the currency of general
and effective identity. Such an identity is only conceivable through a
mode of relation based on a primordial link with the other,
symbolically ensuring that the movement of recognition does not
come to a halt before differences of fact. It is only because the other
is experienced as fundamentally the same that one seeks to resemble
him completely and exactly. The phenomenon that secures the
interminable character of the quest for equality is double. First, there
is the fact that there is no exact conformity possible in the human
species. But even more importantly, the identity pursued in the search
for similarity is of another order than that of fact. It disqualifies in
advance all attempts to translate and grasp it in a concrete figure. “In
democratic nations men easily achieve a certain equality but not the
equality they desire. That equality recedes a bit further every day, yet
it never disappears from view, and as it recedes it entices them to
chase after it, invariably it eludes their grasp” (II, 2.13, 628). Let us
not fail to see what keeps equality out our reach and prevents its
realization: in equality, there is an invisible object that men pursue
within the realm of the visible.
In the background of Tocqueville’s reflections on equality is the
feeling of the major originality of modern societies, which makes
them all but incomparable with “any previous time anywhere in the
202 Marcel Gauchet
world” (I, intro, 6). Liberty has long existed in other ages, under
different skies. Equality, on the other hand, is wholly new. The
aristocratic societies of the past, Tocqueville’s unfailing and
convenient reference point, from this point of view merely reflect the
law that had prevailed throughout all time. It is precisely this law that
egalitarian democracy has shattered: that man is other to man. It is a
fact that the entirety of previous societies have been uniformly—even
if under diverse banners and following different modalities—societies of
otherness [de l’autre],14 societies that express themselves most
fundamentally according to a dimension of alterity. This dimension is
first expressed as religious dependence, the establishment of society’s
foundation as radically other with respect to human beings, such that
it is entirely outside their creative power: things are as they are
because others have willed them as such, and our task is to preserve
them as they are by forbidding ourselves to meddle with them. The
persistent force of this original form of men’s division amongst
themselves continues to mystify the rupture that has allowed them to
escape from it. If this division guarantees the community its equality
and unity in the absence of a detached power, it forbids the
recognition of the humanity of other societies: we are the only men;
the others are simply something other than mankind. The decisive
rupture with this primordial division is the birth of the State. With
this event, alterity is thus rendered contestable, and the primitive
heteronomy becomes problematic. The State represents the
transposition of alterity to the interior of society. The founder- and
legislator-gods cease to be purely beyond the human realm; they now
have their representatives, or even incarnations, among men, and it is
this delegation that defines the fortification of social power.
It is at this moment in fact that man becomes an other for man,
for there now exists between members of the same society a
difference of nature and of value. The final limit of this difference is
the polar opposite of the figure of the God-man: the status of the
non-human pure and simple, the slave. The advent of political
domination, the introduction of divine alterity into the human world,
brings with it the establishment of a heterogeneity within the human
species between the dominant and the dominated. It is this
heterogeneity that was epitomized by the idea of superior “races” in
our European aristocracies. The State does not bring alterity into
existence, but rather redirects its movement, changes its point of
application, and transfers it from the exterior to the interior. In so

doing, the State places alterity directly within human experience,
establishing it as a tangible agent of oppression. Alterity thus enters
the scope of political struggle and collective debate, and as a result
becomes practically capable of being overcome insofar as it is an
object of intellectual questioning.
There is no doubt, then, that the birth of State domination must
be seen as a great step towards human emancipation. If the other is
embodied in man himself, then man is potentially capable of
surmounting the otherness that has plagued him since his beginnings:
that which he has denied himself in desperation, the other that he has
forced himself to construct for the large part of his history. But the
alterity that has been placed within the social sphere cannot be
reduced to a mere transcription of the hierarchy between the
dominant and the dominated. This point demands some precision
concerning the so-called hierarchical principle, that is, the intricate
relation that it entails between alterity and solidarity. As Louis
Dumont has taught us to discern, the intrinsic difference in nature of
the superiors lends symbolic significance to the preeminence of the
whole over its parts; of the ensemble over its particular elements; of
society established once and for all over the wills of human agents.
That which separates men, and radically so, is therefore also what
assures them their common setting, their co-belonging within an
coherent general framework.
Hence the appearance of such seemingly paradoxical forms of
collective cohesion as the essential division postulated between social
beings and their mutual frame of reference in exteriority. These
nonetheless go hand in hand with intense social bonds between
“strangers,” of whose strangeness our mode of recognizing reciprocal
identity gives only vague hints. What is true of the political bond
remains such in a general fashion: alterity—understood as both what
separates social beings and what brings them together under the sign
of otherness [le dehors]—in no way contradicts their feeling of being
integrated by necessity within an all-encompassing unity. It is
therefore possible to be rigorously “excluded,” conceived as an
“other” or treated as non-human, while at the same time perfectly
“integrated.” This is what one sees in the case of disgraced beings of
all kinds in Europe before the age of equality: the invalid, the blind,
the insane, and the like. The joyfully lauded “insertion” of these
204 Marcel Gauchet
groups into the community—that is, before their gruesome re-

exclusion at the hands of the moderns—has recently inspired no
small number rambling portraits, both picaresque and academic in
style. For if the socialization of these luckless creatures (whether in
terms of their physical characteristics, or of their social belonging,
that is, their very humanity) is not a matter of doubt—if it is true that
they have been explicitly admitted as partaking in the human
condition—it is all the more noteworthy that this incorporation was
possible only by means of an internal exclusion. These “others” were
henceforth to be locked up within their own difference, taken as the
sign of an incurable divergence from the common lot of man. For
such crimes, laughter appeared as the most merciful punishment.
In such a case, it is clear that familiarity is quite opposed to the
feeling of intimate closeness or sameness. It is born, rather, as the
inverse reaction to the radicality of difference. And as a result, it is
precisely at the moment where the peaceful certitude of the possibility
of interacting with a wholly other—or rather with an intrinsically
other—begins to subside that familiarity is undone. The spectacle of
difference becomes wholly intolerable and demands to be eradicated.
This is the origin of exclusion in the modern sense, the favorite topic
of so many of today’s frenzied bien-pensants. What these commentators
fail to notice even for an instant is that exclusion is called into being
by the emergence in the social world of a vision of the same. It is a
worried reaction to an alterity with no certain consistency or
foundation. From its beginnings, exclusion is preoccupied by the
contradiction that it is ultimately destined to reproduce through its
own self-erasure: the simultaneous inclusion of the other in the self
and the recognition of the self in the other.
On the one hand, it has become impossible to assure oneself of
the self-evidence of any form of difference. No concept of such
difference could allow us to coexist unprobablematically with the
deformed man so enticing to stare at, the blind man so disturbing in
his stumbling about, and the madman so amusing to engage in teasing
conversation. Hence the somewhat confused need to build up our
defenses against forms difference that we, for better or worse,
nonetheless recognize as in no way interfering with the identity of
belonging. Our confusion is an inseparable mix of the repressive urge
and charitable intention: we must sweep these people from view, all
the while taking them into our care. All this appears in the context of
what is, on the other hand, a society ever more openly threatened by
the will to sameness, a deep urge to abolish the internalization of
alterity-exteriority. This will extends all the way down to the most
closed of spaces, without making an exception for those on the
margins or in confinement. It was in the universe of exclusion, then,
that the conditions developed for the centuries-long operation that
has led us to locate the terms of the human condition in the very
places where its boundaries had been breached.
I have stressed on many occasions the natural basis of the
disjunctions that prevent the recognition of one’s self in the other,
but this does not in the least equate to a prohibition against
recognizing the other in a more basic sense. On the contrary, despite
its implication of a separation between individuals, the imperative
towards reciprocity includes the possibility of compelling social
agents to recognize the existence of others while nonetheless
considering them to be of a completely different nature. The equality
that arises from this exchange, it is worth noting, in no way resembles
the equality exalted by the modern age. This equality stems from the
identical positions of beings who, each one caught up in himself, fail
to grasp their common characteristics. Modern equality, in contrast,
sees its role as opening each individual to the other, removing all
modes of separations that otherwise render their contact purely
exterior.15 The crucial role of “natural” criteria in the formation of
these intrinsic differences between men is at least partially connected
to the necessities of the divide between nature and culture. At
bottom, society is revealed to rest on—and in opposition to—a
nature that must be symbolically distinguished from it.
It is thus in nature that the exteriority between social agents must
have its logical foundation. The exteriority that exists between the
sexes, such as the division between the masculine and the feminine,
constitutes one of the most remarkable mutations—in its generality,
its persistence, and its rootedness in our mentality—of the principle
of a divide grounded in nature. Such a principle has organized the
world’s inequalities since the dawn of society. The cornerstone of the
alterity that separates women for men lies in all likelihood in the force
of the female body, the vital necessity that pervades it, the
autonomous cycle of fertility that it reveals. While this natural power
is necessarily internal to society, it points to a dangerous beyond, that
with which society would never mistake for itself. It is against this
206 Marcel Gauchet
beyond that society is compelled to reaffirm the preeminence of what

is properly cultural or authentically social, that is, the masculine.
Inequality, then, in the historical sense of the term as a
characteristic of the societies that have preceded our own, is to be
found here in its structural nature, a structure independent of actual
spectrums of political and economic status. From the latter point of
view—that of high and low, powerful and powerless, rich and poor—
man and woman are thoroughly equal. But they are in fact quite
distinct from one another, and what separates them is a very real
inequality historically anterior to the advent, with the State, of
inequality in political or economic terms. Inequality is not merely the
fact that one is valued higher than another; it is rather the condition
for such unequal valuation, the drawing of a strict line of dissimilarity
between two beings. This line is taken to demarcate strictly different
forms of internal life, signaling a natural division so complete that the
very idea of recognizing one’s self in such a heterogeneous other
loses its meaning. It should be added that all such scissions, in the
ways in which they define the terms of social belonging, mobilize
either participation in or exteriority with respect to the collective idea
of truth, which provides them their validity. There could never have
been such a thing as an egalitarian revolution without a fundamental
challenge to this organizing principle, this ancient and original way of
relating to one another. The birth of equality was thus the end of a
general economy of alterity, of a system of beings closed upon
themselves in their differences. It was the emergence of an entirely
new mode of apprehension of the reality of others that allowed
individuals for the first time to make their identities open and
available to one another.
Tocqueville’s original genius was to have perceived the precise
nature and conceptual implications of the changes taking place in the
general relations between individuals. He was able to grasp like no
other the ripple effects that stemmed from the introduction of
similarity into human relations, from its initial penetration into the
heart of social life, to all of its effects on daily life. There can be no
equality that does not at the same time instill individual political
rights, in other words, the sovereignty of the people. No more can be
there equality without economic rights; the presupposition of
equivalence of participative roles in the domain of citizenship
necessarily has effects on the domain of the collective production of
wealth. On this point, however, as I have already discussed,

Tocqueville is not at his most articulate. But going beyond these
explicit institutional and legal transformations concerning the
conceptual identity of the individual, the discussion becomes more
complex than it might seem if we consider the following question:
where must we fix the limits of the individual’s participation in the
decisions that concern him? The dynamic of equality—in the
broadest and profoundest sense—a largely unconscious one, consists
in the erosion of social alterity. It is this insight that remains
Tocqueville’s unparalleled contribution. His analysis sheds light on
the unique source that unites the innumerable aspects of a complex
operation of the reduction of difference or dissimilarity in the human
sphere. And this operation is far from complete, continuing radically
to shape our encounters with the other.
The form of dissimilarity that is most grounded in human
experience is that of social distance, the invocation par excellence of
aristocrats, and the idea that separates the races of masters and
servants. But it is also the form that derives from the precedents set
through the exercise of authority in general. This is the tendency to
impose, often through the imperative of “respect,” a difference of
nature between those who command and those who obey. It is
almost trivial to note that it is out of this dynamic that the anti-
authoritarian spirit at work today has its primary origin and sphere of
application. The point is even more obvious when it comes not only
to the existence of authority, but to its “style” as well: in other words,
its presuppositions of the identity of those who wield it. Tocqueville’s
reflections on the altered relations between master and servant in the
democratic social state conserve today all their lucidity. Some men
command, so be it, but it must be made clear that their subordinates
could just as easily reverse the roles. In democratic society, it must be
understood that whatever authority exists is in no way based on
claims of intrinsic superiority.
Tocqueville’s account of what he calls “the softening of mores”
remains even more convincing. What he describes is the democratic
man’s impulsive recoil against any and all recourses to violence
against his fellow. Such a transformation of human instincts comes
about both as a result of a new image of the other and the conditions
surrounding the relations one’s relation thereto, and a suppression of
one’s inner aggressions, however “spontaneous” or “natural” such
208 Marcel Gauchet
violent instincts might seem. Though this suppression takes place at

society’s—or rather, bourgeois society’s—behest, it is thoroughly
private and individual. And when the individual is confronted with an
other that no longer appears to have nothing in common with
himself, when he regards this other, rather, as being of the same flesh,
restraining his “normal” inclinations to murder and destroy is no
longer difficult for him. Violence—the sign of otherness—dismantles
itself through peaceful means, without discipline, control, or any
other such intimate tortures. Only by virtue of the social
internalization of alterity, the cultural separation of beings rather than
bestial instincts, have we taught ourselves to reject what for our
ancestors was a habitual feature of life.
Relations between the sexes and ties of kinship are but two
domains where the individualist revolution—as well as its corollary
process that brings together liberated individuals into a relation where
mutual identification becomes possible—has irreversibly transformed
intersubjective conditions. This transformation has had enormous
consequences for the formation of what one experiences internally as
identity, consequences of a profundity that we are only today
beginning to understand. These transformations in the understanding
of personal identity continue to define our conceptions of individual
rights: contemporary movements that understand newly earned rights
of women as a wholly unprecedented civil right are a case in point.
One searches in vain if one locates the raison d’être of such movements
anywhere other than in the establishment of the age of equality. To
be sure, such movements can only progress through long and difficult
struggle, and their results must be ceaselessly defended. But in the
final analysis, they have their basis in the fundamental source of
legitimacy in our society, and derive from it an invincible power that
can be effectively opposed by nothing except the brute force of
inertia.
On this point, then, Tocqueville was right in ways he never could
have imagined, and what prevented him from fully anticipating what
has come about is by no means the least interesting aspect of his
work. In Tocqueville, the categories of the past appear as infinitely
persistent, like an immovable dead weight, while he nonetheless
remains completely certain of their inevitable decline. He seems to be
perfectly convinced that the social movement through which
“democracy destroys or modifies the various inequalities to which
society gives rise,” could not leave untouched “the great inequality
between man and woman, which has seemed until now to be based
on eternal foundations in nature” (II, 3.12, 705). The American
example is a confirmation for him that the general democratic
tendency to bring all individuals to the same level must necessarily
make woman the equal of man.
Tocqueville nonetheless maintains certain reservations—this too
from his observations in America—namely that such equality could
not be achieved without in some way dealing with real forms of
difference. Americans, he writes,
believed that because nature had made man and woman so different in
physical and moral constitution, its clear purpose was to assign different
uses to the diverse faculties of each. They judged, moreover, that
progress lay not in making dissimilar beings do virtually identical things
but in seeing to it that each acquitted itself of its task in the best possible
way (Ibid., emphasis mine).
He continues:
Americans do not believe that man and woman have the duty or right to
do the same things, but they hold both in the same esteem and regard
them as beings of equal value but different destinies.... [They] have thus
allowed woman’s social inferiority to persist but have done all they could
to raise her intellectual and moral level to parity with man (II, 3.12, 708).
The example is striking of an author’s reversal of his own intuitive
premises once presented with a decisive difficulty. This difficulty, it
seems, reaches the very foundations of the categories Tocqueville had
carefully chosen in order to characterize a universe no longer
composed of “dissimilar beings.” What is even more striking is his
appropriation of the very same mode of judgment that he
pronounces to have disappeared.16 For if there is a fundamental
feature of the mentality of the traditional world of alterity, it is
certainly the equation of all natural dissimilarity with differences of
nature.
In contrast, Tocqueville correctly perceives (even if he misreads
the crucial case) that the mystery of equality is that its feeling of
resemblance and its will to similarity skip over all natural obstacles.
Equality gets beyond the merely visible, endowing all individuals with
a rather militant notion of identity with their fellows, indifferent to, or
even in blatant contradiction with, what is manifest on the surface.
One could even say that the development of equality only reveals its
210 Marcel Gauchet
true meaning once it frees itself resolutely from the need for sensible
certainty, revealing the possibility of recognition where it had never
before been apparent. Equality indeed makes possible such a
recognition between man and woman—not, as Tocqueville thought,
with respect to a permanent difference, but indifferent to and
independently of the very real distinction between the sexes. But this
possibility is thrust aside, finding its expression only in the
acknowledgment of the interchangeability of social roles.
What is at issue here is best illustrated by examining the
spectacular feat of acrobatics necessary in order to overcome the
problems posed by differences in appearance. This leads to such
extremes as the declaration of the child’s status as an autonomous
individual, blatantly ignoring the obstacle of biological immaturity.
The status distinction between masculine and feminine divides beings
that are equally capable of providing for themselves, and thus
comparable, at the very least, on the basis of this autonomy. The
inferiority separating child from adult, however, is quite final by
comparison, based as it is on the material dependence of the smaller
creature on the larger. It is precisely regarding seemingly
insurmountable barriers of this sort that equality reveals its true
genius. It does not deny reality, but rather merely adapts itself to its
constraints. Equality’s move consists in a simple interpretative
substitution of the ontological regime of difference that had once
prevailed.17 The new regime is the inverse of the old, in which
difference is de-substantialized at the same time as it is fully
embraced. As a result, nothing prevents the adult from recognizing
the child he dominates, despite the latter’s complete dependence, as
his fellow [semblable], that is, an essentially autonomous individual that
is entitled to be treated as such.
In vain do the partisans of common sense attempt to remind us of
the insurmountable character of the child’s minority. No one denies
this fact, but the overwhelming mode of recognition in democratic
society constantly demands that we seek to discover ourselves in what
is apparently dissimilar from us. It is this imperative that leads us to
erect the child as an “equal.” It seems clear going forward that even
the boundary between species will not suffice to bring the movement
of equality to a halt. We can expect no less than a revolution in the
way we understand our relationship with animals, consisting in the
strange, quasi-social sense of individual identity that we have already
come to bestow upon them. This upending of our anthropological

concepts—still a relatively quiet one at present, but unquestionably
radical—has begun despite the barriers that our common sense
normally posits between animals and ourselves. The “humanity” of
the animal will thus in all likelihood be at the center of future
epistemological revolutions, brought forth out of the long march of
equality. These further revolutions, then, will resemble the one that
led us to integrate the potential for madness into our definition of
man. Here too, the basis for such integration is the recognition of
one’s fellow despite all “natural” alterity, as well as the will to bestow
the rights of the individual even to those who lack full the full
capacities for autonomy.
But to what other source than the dynamic of equality, as I have
presented it here, can we trace the intellectual revolution that has
transformed the status of peoples who were once viewed as “others”
par excellence? That is to say, peoples without writing, without the
State, without history. This revolution, begun over the course of the
last century and by no means finished, has undone the certainty of
our superiority as “civilized” men over the “savages,” and brought
the so-called “primitive” world onto the same plane as our own.
While this world operates according to a system of thought radically
at odds with our own, follows a different institutional logic, and
adheres to a set of values without equivalent in our society, we now
face an absolute imperative to recognize this world as equivalent to
the one we live in. We find ourselves compelled to discover actively a
way of understanding this world that makes it coherent with the
complexity and fullness we find in our own society. If a conscious
break with ethnocentrism—that is, the project of identifying all
human a priori systems as representing equally valid, absolutely
original choices—has ever been conceivable, it is as a result of the
disintegration of all traditional appeals to otherness as a result of the
unending advance of equality.
But it was our society that was the first to have been driven from
within its own development to consider the relativity of its own
fundamental principles and ideals with respect to those of other
societies. Ours is thus the first society of equality. Let us add to this
observation, in a Tocquevillian vein, the steady albeit roundabout
manner in which our society makes use of even its most committed
adversaries in the development of equality. In other words, those who
212 Marcel Gauchet
misunderstand or oppose society’s equalization are no less agents in

bringing it about. For if we were to constrain ourselves to take both
official dissent and popular outcry at their word, we would be unable
to see the overall process at work in the West over the last several
centuries as inspired by anything other than exclusion, rejection, and
isolation of the other. Representatives of this denunciatory discourse
consider everything but the social origins of their own supposed insight
into this refusal to accept difference. But this sort of denial turns out
to be quite an effective instrument of what it denies, for the
fundamental tendency of the democratic social movement is the
reduction of all possible forms of alterity in human life. It is therefore
simply not true that the system of modern attitudes towards human
madness is constructed on a new form of exclusion (even if the
inclusion of madness into the human sphere has historically been
accompanied by de facto exclusion).
But it is nonetheless certain that the recent myth of the so-called
“Great Confinement” has proved quite effective both in completing a
transformation that had long been underway, and in bringing to light
the identitarian requirement [exigence identitaire] that had hitherto been
obscured. One can rely on the same sort of reasoning in all instances
of protest against the supposed exclusion of our social universe,
which is inclusionary by its very essence. That is to say, everywhere
the “right of difference,” or the right to an equivalent status within
difference, is invoked. Such varied cases are all attempts to further
advance a process of equalization that turns out upon examination to
have been long at work, but whose natural progress is indefinite. But
in order to complete the picture, it is indispensible to add that the
patent lack of understanding on the part of these so-called radical
critics plays directly into the hands of a conservative skepticism, one
that finds in their protests the proof of its perennial diagnosis of the
“natural” limits of equality. Such limits may well exist, but are of no
concern for equality properly understood. Despite their naïve claims
to “lucidity,” then, the conservatives are no better informed than the
radicals as to the equality’s real movement. The paths that equality
has already taken—including those taken by the radicals—in no way
exclude others to come. The proper role of equality, furthermore, is
to reverse and exceed whatever limitations nature might assign it, to
reduce their scope if not to completely dissolve them. It is thus on
the plane of the confused mob, which Tocqueville described so well,
that democracy continues to advance; it is here where all work

together in common, “some in spite of themselves, others
unwittingly—blind instruments in the hands of God” (I, intro, 6).
It is necessary to say a word about God in order to close this
chapter on equality. Between the establishment of equality and the
exit from the religious universe, there is a direct and intimate linkage.
As I have stressed, religion was both the primordial symptom and the
functional keystone of the human world organized according to
alterity. It was the first and most fundamental manifestation of the
other for man: an encounter with the established law and the norms
of the community as the products of an infinitely superior power, and
thus radically beyond human control. How could it be possible to
bring the immense task of the destruction of inequality based on
heterogeneity or natural division—the task that we have inherited,
witnessed, and continue to carry forward—to a halt before the
obstacle of the division between the natural and the supernatural?
How could God, the epitome of exteriority and otherness, not fall
into its sights? How could we believe for a single instant, as
Tocqueville does, in a separation between a political sphere dedicated
entirely to human affairs, and a moral sphere dominated not by
individual wills, but by an intangible exteriority?
The erasure of alterity can do nothing but strive to reach its final
conclusions. There is therefore no reason to doubt that it will achieve
the complete disintegration of all possible signs of dissimilarity
between man and himself, which inevitably includes the idea of a
moral regime in which man must submit to an authority that does not
derive from himself.18 Religion and equality are therefore two
antithetical orders, two radically opposed means of understanding the
human condition. They also therefore represent two distinct ages of
the human world, the two great periods of universal history. The
former has been completed and exhausted, while the latter has hardly
begun.
V
But it is here that the modern dynamic of equality’s claim to have
radically re-founded human society is revealed as somewhat
deceptive. We must probe beneath the surface of this establishment
of a social universe whose principles, entirely its own, render it wholly
self-sufficient. As it contains within itself the principle of a complete
214 Marcel Gauchet
society, equality tends to hide from view anything that does not itself
derive from equality, above all its own social conditions of
emergence. To go even further, equality itself frequently plays an
active role in casting a shroud over its fundamental determining
factors, obscuring a clear understanding of their true functions. The
primary example here is the State, which, in the classical
understanding of the superiority of the social whole over each of its
members, embodies the will to maintain the unity of the community.
It therefore appears as the arena where society’s organic cohesion
finds its primary expression. And, crucially, beginning with the advent
of equal individuality, in many ways its own creation, the State comes
to separate itself from society, simultaneously realizing its full
structural power, and rendering it effectively invisible.
There is little doubt, then, that in an essential sense Tocqueville’s
intuition remains just that it was by means of the State—specifically
the singular development that it saw in the West—that the individual
was created. The original roots of this phenomenon in Christianity
and the struggle between Church and Empire, remain largely to be
elucidated.19 It was only with the rise of the sovereign State and the
political system we know today as absolutism beginning in the late
sixteenth century that a profoundly new form of political power
appeared in Europe, whose direct consequence was the creation of an
entity no less novel: the detached, self-sufficient individual. It is true
that the so-called absolutist State remained within the scope of the
traditional role of political institutions, intimately linked to the idea of
collective unity ontologically prior to individuals. But at the same
time, while this State continued to see itself as fixed to the social
body, its innovation was to have broken decisively with the principle
of hierarchical continuity. It ceased to occupy the highest place in a
long hierarchical chain, in which the relation of each to his direct
superior provided a reference to a higher power outside of the
concrete hierarchy. The immediate theoretical effect of the collapse
of this hierarchical structure was the appearance of the category of
the political, standing for a distinct form of power. Its practical effect
was the administrative affirmation of the properly political notion of
power, to the detriment of all “intermediate” or “natural” forms of
power that have their basis in the concrete existence of the individual
(e.g., the family, seigneurial relations, corporations). Resting on the
implicit principle that the State exercises the same right to rule over
all of its subjects, no matter what differences hold between them, this
affirmation proved an extraordinary advance for equality. As
Tocqueville puts it, once it has achieved this radical superiority, at
least in its potentiality, “the arm of the government searches each
man out individually in the crowd in order to make him bow, isolated
from the rest, to the common laws” (II, 3.8, 686).
The individual as such was born out of this materialization of a
new social power in the form of the modern State. This new State
was completely incommensurable with the old hierarchies; in vain
would one attempt to describe it merely as the highest rung of a long
social ladder. Rather, its relation was direct with each person, and it
thus permitted all social agents to conceive of themselves
independently of their family, class, and trade distinctions—in other
words, in terms of their abstract individuality. There now emerged a
sphere of society in which the fact that I was born into this family,
that I live in this place, or that I occupy this position, is of no
importance. Let us make no mistake that the State became the mirror
in which the individual was able to recognize himself in his
independence and self-sufficiency, free from the constraints of his
belonging to real social groups. The modern State—that is, the State
that presents itself as the ultimate center of social life—enabled
humanity for the first time to take full responsibility over its own
affairs. And despite the common notion of the individual’s enmity
towards the State, the latter is at once the originator, protector, and
greatest partner of the former. The idea of opposing the individual
and the State is therefore nothing short of derogatory; their apparent
rivalry is in truth the sign of their mutual cooperation. Wherever the
individual appears, there is the State, and it is impossible for one to
vanish without the other.20
Beyond this initial phase of gestation, both the individual and the
State have each achieved their own form of separation in
complementary ways. The separation of the individual reaches its
culmination in triumph of the democratic principle that sovereign
power emanates from the free will of all the citizens, gathered
together on the basis of their autonomy, and thus their prior equality.
No longer does the State appear as a link to an order beyond and
prior to all human intentions; on the contrary, it is now clearly
understood as fundamentally derivative and secondary. The State, it
appears, succeeds the individual, emerging from their association on
216 Marcel Gauchet
separate ontological grounds. After having itself created the

individual, the State becomes a creation of individuals. But here we
arrive at the inherent illusion of the egalitarian age: the separation of
the State becomes manifest, in the form of its juridical posteriority,
only at the same time as its function, its specific logic, becomes
invisible. In former times, the State, seen as preceding society, found
itself essentially linked to it. As a result, its role was explicitly defined:
to hold together a collection of men, to give permanent, visible, and
tangible sense to the cohesion of the community. The democratic
revolution by no means eliminates this function, but rather, it requires
that it be executed in the realm of the unconscious. It becomes
impossible to affirm the social whole openly as such. Since it is taken
to result from their free contractual consent, the whole can no longer
legitimately impose constraints on individual agents. But the
dimension of the social whole nonetheless remains indispensable as a
latent horizon for individual action. To a certain extent, the
institution of the social itself begins to follow the State’s pathways
toward practical action. For relieved of its duty to guarantee an order
founded in the exterior (viz., in God) in order to unify the human
community, the State becomes free to acknowledge a practical form
of exteriority that its symbolic function of domination under
absolutism had required it to contain or deny. As the State’s domain
of prerogatives and responsibilities shifts and spreads, it finds itself in
a position to produce a wholly new dimension of social totality. The
new totality conceived and taken on by the modern state has the
symbolic character, even if unconsciously, of coming from beyond
society.
A second aspect of the separation of the State inherent in the
democratic revolution—a separation on the level of social dynamics
rather than that of principles—brings us to the problem of
Tocqueville’s The Ancien Régime and the Revolution: to what extent did
the State that resulted from the French Revolution carry forward the
centralizing State project of the ancien régime? Put in other terms, to
what extent was the old form of social control reinforced by the
Revolution? The answer, it seems, is to be found in a fundamental
change that has taken place in the mode of production of social
cohesion. Held apart from the new society it helped to establish, but
as cut off from the hierarchical intermediaries as it could afford to
appear, the State during the ancien régime was limited in its
administrative power by the impossibility of pushing its exteriority to

its full implications. It was still constrained by both the symbolic task
of representing an alien, transcendent will, and the administrative task
of maintaining a centuries-old internal order. But there is nothing that
prevents a State governed solely by human will, in contrast, from
setting itself up completely beyond the social body. The modern State
finds in this new exteriority the intellectual means to put into action a
new regulatory regime that leaves virtually nothing untouched. The
State of visible domination thus gives way to the State of total
administration.
The State therefore once again takes up its role as the symbolic
embodiment of the social, but in an occult manner. It fulfills this
symbolic task by producing the feeling—both essential and intangible
for the individual—of belonging to a universe where it is possible to
exert control over the whole, which becomes at least from a certain
point of view comprehensible and malleable. The State’s empirical
function as a manager and its symbolic function as the producer of a
holistic dimension are therefore inseparable from one another. The
symbolic operation finds itself completely embedded in the State’s
practical organization, but without for a moment making this
relationship visible. It is this dynamic that we have in mind when we
speak of the spontaneous erasure of State functions. The necessity
that the State responds to most profoundly in its action tends by its
very nature and internal development to hide itself from view, as does
the original separation that produced this necessity. The superiority of
the premodern State was clearly apparent. The new administrative
State, in contrast, appears to assimilate itself into society, avoiding
obvious symbols of grandeur. It insists on the perfectly ordinary
character of the tasks it performs for those it administers, and works
hard to cultivate its image in this regard. Such appearances inevitably
could not last long before skilled analysts, and Tocqueville remains
the most skilled of all in observing this radical point of view of
exteriority. His guidance reveals the true direction of State activity
that disguises itself with an innocent claim to immanence. Hence
Tocqueville’s penetrating force in identifying the tendencies that we
have seen reach their full explosive conclusions in the totalitarian
State.
With every advance of the democratic revolution towards
separation of the State, then, both its basis for action in exteriority
218 Marcel Gauchet
and the underlying necessity that drives it retreat further into the
invisible. This effect is aided by the founding illusion of modern
society, namely, that of an original gathering of equal individuals. It
thus appears that the political in its entirety was contained in this
assembly of citizens, and that all power is merely their delegation for
the sole purpose of imposing and executing the general will. Under
these conditions, the actual genesis of democracies takes place, at its
core, through a tumultuous and teetering conflict between the
manifest principles of democracy, and the invisible necessity that is
nonetheless deeply felt by social actors as an authoritative constraint.
In theory, power arises from society and has no other substance than
that which the mechanism of representation confers on it. Practically,
however, it is impossible to satisfy ourselves with such a definition.
We cannot help but feel the exigencies of our social mechanism that
it fails to capture, that is, the real meaning of political power and its
uses. It is clear for us today, retrospectively, that this definition does
not adequately establish the difference between power and society, its
exteriority, not to mention that it fails to account for the role of
power as a symbolic founder of the public realm.
To take a concrete example from the French experience, this
contradiction between democratic principles and the deep necessities
of the political order gave rise, in the wake of a Revolution wracked
by the impossibility to conceive of discontinuity (between the people
and their representatives, between the government and the nation,
etc.), to the Bonapartist solution.21 Only if we understand Napoleon’s
rule as an attempt to reconcile or synthesize the exteriority
reintroduced into the essence of the State with the continuity
maintained between the State and the nation, we recognize its success
in achieving stability. Power imposed from on high, but that secures
the general consent of the people; power that appears to fall from the
sky that nonetheless justifies itself by the collective will alone. It was
by presenting itself in such a manner that the Bonapartist regime was
able to link together the opposite ends of the chain, so to speak, to
forcibly make compatible (however crudely or contradictorily) the
theoretical sovereignty of the people and the practical division
between the State and society. Even the liberal adversaries of the
Napoleonic system—Constant, for example—would find themselves
forced to rely on the principle of this solution, no matter how critical
they were of the tyrannical aspects of Bonaparte’s rule.
In the long run, the liberal way of understanding the political form
that best guarantees the prospects of a “republican constitution in a
large country” rests on two basic cruxes: the impossibility of
completely removing power from society, and the obligation—
difficult to justify, but nonetheless taken as inevitable—of mitigating
the representative mechanism with a “preserving power”: in other
words, an impenetrable form of difference behind State power, such
as that of heredity. And things have in fact played out along these
lines. What we have seen has overwhelmingly been the progressive
conquest by society of forms of power that had once been seen as
exterior or heteronomous [non-choisi] (monarchies, coups d’état, etc.),
forms of power whose visible difference allows a robust formulation
of the need for representation. As a result, power’s exteriority does
not lead to its being dissolved within society. Our experience is thus
better characterized as the socialization of the difference of the State,
than by the release of State power into the interior of society in strict
conformity with the democratic ideal.
In other contexts, for example in England, other paths forward
have been possible. But the general problem that all emerging
democracies have faced, at least in Europe, is one and the same: how
to reconcile the explicit notion of democracy—government of the
people and for the people, or a power internal to society—with the
invisible and insurmountable constraints imposed by the function of
the State, which suppose its fundamental division with society? As I
have already indicated, the factor that has allowed the system to
stabilize itself is the political integration of conflict, the appearance of
the internal division of society in the arena where power is contested.
The representative mechanism thus ceases to have as its sole task the
expression of a governmental will according to the ideal criterion of
unanimity. The symbolic recognition of the division between social
agents takes on a value of its own.
VI
The other fundamental correlate of equality, its major agent in
society, is the presence of conflict. One of the factors that have most
decisively contributed to the equalization of conditions is the
antagonism between classes. Such open opposition between men and
groups is a social dimension that is inseparable from the replacement
of hierarchy with individuality. Despite all appearances, collective
220 Marcel Gauchet
conflict is an integrative force. While hierarchical society took great

care to distinguish between ranks, creating what would seem to us to
be an infinite source of friction, it left no space in principle for the
expression of a conflict reaching down to the very definition of a
social order. Each man occupied a pre-defined position within a
social whole taken to be eternal; as a result, there was no possibility of
a social dispute that could call into question the necessity of the
collective unity as a whole. All such disputes were inherently
particular: never between master and serf, but only between this
master and this serf. One might say that the affirmation of the
preeminence of the collective—which implied at each rung of the
ladder the preeminence of the superior over his subordinate—
juxtaposed different social beings without turning them against one
another. The old society, then, linked these beings together precisely
by means of what separated them, rendering meaningless the
prospect of a confrontation on the basis of this difference. As a
difference of being or of nature, this difference as such remained
unquestionable.
From this point of view, the appearance of a social movement that
calls into question the nature of the social organization, however
diffusely, and that tends to prefer an opposition between social agents
to their mere juxtaposition, is the surest sign of the defeat of the
hierarchical principle and the advent of equality. It is a sign that the
supposed harmony between the present society and the true
foundation of societies in general is debatable to say the least (and to
signify this is not the same as merely to seek via reason the legitimacy
of the current order). It is a sign, furthermore, in one sense or
another, that supposes on an ideal plane its own contradictory figure.
The suppression of any and all discussion of the correspondence
between the just order and the actual order is one of the fundamental
conditions of the maintenance of inequality. For the latter consists in
a relation between beings on the basis of complementarity, that is, an
attachment created by difference itself. As a result, each being is
confined to a separate and special nature that is nonetheless necessary
to all the others.
There is thus an internal (and not merely consequential) link
between equality—understood as a mode of social relations that
permits each member to see himself in the other, or as social debate
that calls the bond between fellows into question—and social
conflict, a structurally obligatory result of an encounter under the

pretenses of similarity. The moment of radical opposition is necessary
for equality. No one proves to be more similar to you than the one
whose thinking is most antagonistic to your own, whom you are
therefore obliged to recognize as thinking in his unique determinate
manner (e.g., according to his particular interests). It is not, as the
cliché would suggest, merely an effect of “social physics” (viz., the
impossibility of containing a force that exceeds all obstacles one
would put in its path) that with the workers’ movement the class
struggle has intensified and taken a central place in European
societies over the last century. After all, our century has proved that a
determined political regime and a dominant ruling class are perfectly
capable of reducing otherwise considerable social forces to silence. It
is surely not out of impotence that the bourgeoisie, once in power,
failed to establish an “industrial despotism,” which was always within
their means. The explanation lies beyond mere questions of the
balance of social power at a given time in society. It is the
intervention of “providence,” the proper genius of equality, that one
must take into account: namely, the manifestation of an antagonism
between social agents, one that entails a contradiction between the
ideas of what society is and what it should be, and crucially, one that
stems from real divergences of interest. The development of this
antagonism is the extreme but exemplary case of the relation of
resemblance established between individuals.
It is equality and nothing else that provides the class struggle the
legitimacy that has made it what it is today, disarming the age old
reflex of our historical mentality to sacralize the notion of unity
without discord. There can be no equality without a confrontation
with the other. This confrontation is in fact contained in the very
logic that presents the other to me as essentially identical, and
consequently obliges me to recognize him as my indisputable equal. I
arrive at this conclusion, no matter what differences of position may
separate us, not by accident, but in keeping with the very order of the
world in which we must coexist. The open development and tacit
institutionalization of social warfare only became possible insofar as it
reached the furthest depths of the inter-individual relation. It was the
particular form of this relation engendered by equality that gave such
conflict its necessary and partially legitimate expression.
222 Marcel Gauchet
It becomes of little use to dwell on the decisive contribution of

the class struggle to the establishment of equality once we have
examined in detail the essential elements of its original manifestation.
Historically speaking, one might say that the antagonism between
classes has centered on the State as the principal agent of equality.
Both sides understood the State as the dynamic factor that places all
individuals on the same level, leading to recognize one and other as
interlocutors with equal right to judge concerning the highest ends of
collective organization (regardless even of competence, the only
legitimate criterion for determining social position). All this took
place in European societies that nonetheless remained attached to the
aristocratic value of eminence and hierarchical notions of severe
restrictions on social participation.
Is it not in this crucial role of integrating the excluded that the
workers’ movement has in fact acted as an agent of equality? And is it
not here—that is, in a dynamic quite independent from the
movement’s explicit aims—that we must seek to understand its
contemporary disappearance from the scene of history? Is it not the
case that this movement has largely fulfilled its historical mission,
despite the ideological mission of total emancipation—viz., the
inclusion as partners in the collective process of all those that had
been heretofore reduced to silence and excluded from social
decisions—that served as its foundation? And is it not also the case,
furthermore, that now that it has more or less achieved its aim that
was the most direct consequence of the logic of equality, it has
undergone a shift in its raison d’être, in its capacity to create and pursue
an alternative vision of society?
My suggestion is not that an untempered form of equality has
become predominant in our societies, for this is far from our reality.
It is, rather, that the workers’ movement has succeeded in
establishing representation as an incontestable right. As a result, the
specific problem posed by the existence of a proletariat excluded
from civil life has been in most tangible senses resolved. In other
words, the basic principles of equality have been established
everywhere in our society. To be sure, this relative inclusion of the
working class does not entail that the political conflict for social
recognition must simply evaporate, nor, as Tocqueville dreamed, that
it will be replaced by a global consensus regarding the general form of
society. This conflict simply changes shape, moves to new
battlefields, uses different means, and, silently, takes on evolved

forms of expression—all this without in the least disrupting the
divergence that has taken place in our collective practice regarding the
existence and final ends of the human community.
To be precise, what we are witnessing today is the detachment of
our willed representations of the social from the concrete
phenomenon that had traditionally lent them their support. This is,
namely, the idea of exploitation: the opposition of interests between
those who benefit and those who suffer from the prevailing
economic organization. Slowly over the years, the object and stakes of
the collective division have shifted towards the social whole itself, or
rather, its natural dynamics and underlying values. Closely related to
this shift was the transition from an image of a social whole
composed of separate groups or blocs, to that of a complex,
integrated pyramid, where the divide between managers and workers
permeates each level. The old social division, animated by the fact of
a system of production and distribution of wealth that by its own
inner logic called the justice of its foundations into question, little by
little gave rise to a division that is no less profound, one that directly
confronts the social whole as such. As a result of this mutation, still in
progress, the political debate and the struggle for power will in all
likelihood take on a hardly recognizable shape. It is far less likely that
they will lose much of their intrinsic radicality, that is, their
articulation of the egalitarian process. Through their open opposition,
men have come to recognize themselves as the same; it is what
divides them that they have found the secret of their common
identity. The same logic will continue to determine their path
forward, though through different means. This is no longer equality
as an indefinite process of creation. The day we are all identical, we
will be in perfect agreement, but the more similar we find ourselves to
one another, the more immediately we discover our fundamental
disagreement.
From the point of view of the symbolic production of the social,
the appearance of an open antagonism within society reveals the
paradox we have seen concerning the State. Once the establishment
of the collective sphere begins to occur directly within the social
process—in State action or the opposition between groups, rather
than via the traditional symbolic subordination to the social whole—
the necessity of such an establishment becomes invisible. In one
224 Marcel Gauchet
sense, it remains as apparent as ever, directly linked to explicit social

practice. But at the same time, this necessity becomes automatic and
unconscious, thereby ceasing to appear or be recognized as a
necessity. The problem that results is the difficulty of maintaining a
space in both our ordinary notions and the rules that govern our
institutions for a reality that inescapably constrains our social life, but
nonetheless escapes our consciousness. This difficulty has given rise
to laborious, fumbling attempts to wed the visible and the invisible, to
adjust for better or worse the conscious to the unconscious.
For conflict is an essential factor of socialization. It is a supremely
efficient mode of integration and cohesion. Capable of calling into
question the established social order as a whole, it is a means of
bringing individuals together to address common questions, rendering
them attentive—often despite themselves—to their belonging to a
structured whole that is both comprehensible and transformable, and
thus within their control. And in its roundabout way, conflict is a no
less stable mechanism than that which had proclaimed a social order
willed by gods and ruled by kings. If it violently sets men against one
another, disuniting them in appearance, the value of social conflict is
that it at the same time affirms a community of belonging more
profound than the differences that separate them: a single society, a
single set of stakes at the center of their confrontation.
Social warfare is therefore in no way similar to warfare between
foreign nations. It is rather a means for all parties present to affirm
the equal collective rights that they share even with their adversaries.
On this point, the lessons of history, and particularly concerning the
nationalist bent of revolutionary workers’ movements in general,
speak for themselves. To struggle against capitalism is at the same
time to claim a possession over the nation as a whole. In contrast to
the illusion of proletarians who have nothing in common with their
masters, what unites workers with the capitalists within their borders
is stronger than what unites the workers of all nations. This became
true precisely from the moment when the social antagonism entered
the political system, despite the values of unity and unanimity and the
myth of the general will, so deeply ingrained in the idea of political
representation.
As social unity is forged through the visible division between
classes, not only does the true function of conflict tend not to make
itself visible, but its deepest reality is in fact in contradiction with the
appearances it creates. It should not surprise us, then, that we have
integrated conflict into society in perfect ignorance of this reality. The
miracle of democracy is the balance it has managed to strike between
the explicit discourse of society, and the unconscious material process
at work behind it. In this light, the entry of conflict into the political
system—via the workers’ parties and all parties based on class—
marks a major turning point in the formation of democracy. Not only
does it represent the assimilation of a necessary element of society
that had long been hidden, but it also reveals the cornerstone that
guarantees the coherence of the democratic mechanism as a whole.
This political assimilation achieves a crucial synthesis between
contradictory and complementary imperatives: the simultaneous
correspondence and separation between power and society. As the
social struggle for power cuts across the collective, society as a whole
is represented in its raw components on the political scene. But at the
same time, the difference is sharpened between the immediate social
reality (viz., class), and the properly sphere in which it is reflected.
Society makes sense of itself through the State, but society, as it is
revealed in terms of its autonomous and spontaneous organization
between interest groups, is distinct from the State. The principle of
the representative sovereignty inherent in equality is thus reconciled
with the actual social articulations that derive no less logically from
the appearance of a world of equals. It is this reconciliation that
constitutes the genesis of democratic societies.
VII
Perhaps I should restrict myself to speak only of the birth of
European democratic societies, for it is clear that a very different
society has developed from the “American starting point.” America’s
is a society founded on a chance encounter between ideology and
reality, where from the very beginning political practice has stemmed
from and corresponded to the abstract principles of democracy:
namely, the original freedom and independence of individuals, the
sovereignty of the people, representative institutions based in real
communities, and the progressive attempt to raise the humblest
citizens to the highest level. The development of American society
has consisted in the convulsive labor of adjusting these principles,
imposed by the nature of a society of individuals from its origins, to
the great changes of history. In other words, its task has been to
226 Marcel Gauchet
insert the novelty of democracy into the historical continuum, to

reconcile the explicit rules of republican government with the socio-
historical conditions that made it possible to re-found the political
order on the normative base of the sovereignty of equal citizens.
The democratic State is a power that emanates wholly, in theory,
from the founding will of all the citizens. In practice, however, this
State that derives its decisive qualities from the birth and
development of equality is secretly reinforced in its role by the
triumph of the latter. It thus becomes equally impossible to absorb
the State into the social body, as it is to give official sanction to the
fact of its detached and autonomous position. Though individuals are
equal in principle, the social facts they inherit from the old aristocratic
order create an immense distance between statuses. The result has
been an explosive contradiction between the defeated norms that
nonetheless remain present, and the ideals openly claimed by
groups—a contradiction that has given rise to no small amount of
struggle to reduce this tension. Hence the rise of the prolonged
revolutionary instability and the periodic ruptures that have led our
societies towards their relatively stable democracies, as well as the
interlacing of the deepening of equality, the growth of the State, and
the institutionalization of civil conflict that ultimately gives them their
particular character.
American society, on the other hand, established more or less on
the basis of egalitarianism, was not forced in the same way to
mobilize an open conflict between its citizens in order to establish
equality as a fact. No more did it have to rely on political
authoritarianism in order to maintain this equality. In America, rather,
free institutions, in charging citizens with “responsibility for the
administration of minor affairs”—in other words, placing the means
to govern their immediate environment, such as the ordinary practice
of political rights and the use of associations, directly into their
hands—provide “in a thousand ways, constant reminders to each and
every citizen that he lives in society” (II, 2.4, 592-3). Similarly, a
vibrant religious life and the active feeling of community that results
from belief have allowed American society to harness its internal
elements of cohesion. It has therefore avoided having to produce a
collective identity either by means of the sweeping administrative
power of the central State, or through a dramatic confrontation of the
totality of the citizenry with the scene of power.
Here again, it is striking how things have evolved since

Tocqueville’s time. In particular, certain crucial historical factors and
social logics—the absence of which was the foundation of the
American situation—have been disarmed to the point that we no
longer take them into account. Perhaps America, not having directly
inherited them, is currently in the process of generating them
internally in its own fashion. Is it inconceivable that little by little, the
autonomous cohesion from below achieved by the American form of
administration is now being replaced by the irresistible growth of the
State? Can we be completely certain that under specific constraints,
political debate will not unconsciously come to oppose to one
another representations of collective ends that are practically and
fundamentally irreconcilable (to say nothing of the profound impact
the American workers’ movement has already had in affecting a
divergence between parties, though less pronounced and
characteristic than in Europe)? And what if, in a certain sense, the
future of America is Europe?
NOTES
[1] One could imagine these remarks of his, for example, as having been
inspired by the spectacle of our television series and our prophetic titans
of the intellect: “One of the distinctive characteristics of democratic
centuries is a taste for easy successes and instant gratification. This can
be seen in intellectual pursuits as well as other areas of life. Most people
who live in ages of equality are bursting with an ambition which, while
keen, is also lackadaisical. They want to achieve great success
instantaneously, but without great effort. These contradictory instincts
lead directly to a search for general ideas, with which they flatter
themselves that they can paint vast subjects with little effort and
command the attention of the public without difficulty. I do not know,
moreover, whether they are wrong to think this way, for their readers are
as afraid of delving into things as they are and usually look to works of
the mind only for facile pleasure and effortless instruction” (II, 1.3, 498).
[Translator’s note: For citations of Democracy in America where Gauchet
provides the full citation, I supply the corresponding passage from Alexis
de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New
York: Library of America, 2004). Parenthetical citations refer to the
228 Marcel Gauchet
volume of Democracy in America, the particular section and chapter

heading, and the pagination of the Library of America (LOA) edition.
Where these citations are not given, translations of Tocqueville are my
own.]
[2] [Translator’s note: The French word adéquation presents particular difficulty
for the English translation, since the most literal English translation
might be a nonexistent neologism such as “adequateness,” viz., the fact
of one thing’s being a proper fit for another, or being in harmony with it.
It is a term employed frequently in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,
and of which Gauchet consequently makes great use. Occasionally,
Gauchet uses relatively synonymous terms such as coïncidence or
correspondence, whose English cognates are less effective than other
English synonyms. Depending on the context, then, I render these terms
as “agreement,” “correspondence,” “coherence,” “harmony,” or
“coincidence,” and include the French in brackets where the cognate is
not used.]
[3] For Tocqueville, though extremely instructive, America’s place in world
history is contingent and places no constraints on it: “I am not at all
convinced that [the Americans] have hit upon the only form of
government that a democracy may adopt” (I, Intro., 14), [Translator’s note:
This footnote appears in the original in parentheses.]
[4] [Translator’s note: This quotation, which Gauchet does not cite explicitly,
appears in Tocqueville’s 1848 preface to the 12th edition of Democracy in
America, which appears in the LOA edition on pages 909-11, note 3.1. I
will refer to further citations from this preface parenthetically with the
abbreviation of Pref. 1848 and the pagination from the LOA volume.]
[5] Tocqueville continues in the second volume: “I am not arguing that a
nation is safe from revolution simply because conditions among its
people are equal. But I do believe that, whatever institutions such a
people may adopt, great revolutions will always be infinitely less violent
and far more rare than is generally assumed, and I can easily imagine a
political state which, when combined with equality, would make society
more stationary than it has ever been in our West” (II, 3.21, 753).
[Translator’s note: This citation appears in the main text of the original.]
[6] [Translator’s note: Here, I have altered Goldhammer’s translation of the
original citation from Tocqueville in order to facilitate continuity with
Gauchet’s word choice and intended meaning. Goldhammer renders
Tocqueville’s original “Ainsi l’esprit humain n’aperçoit devant lui un
champ sans limites” as “Thus boundless opportunity is never what the
human spirit sees before it.” The rest of the citation follows
Goldhammer.]
[7] [Translator’s note: Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, Œuvres
Complètes, tome deux, vol. I, p. 208.]
[8] My allusion here is to Tocqueville’s Souvenirs, an astounding text in that it
confirms the possibility—one that is well known, but always demands to
be rediscovered—of the coexistence within a single individual of the
most clear-sighted genius and the most systematic obtuseness.
[9] Alain Bergougnioux and Bernard Manin, La Social-Démocratie ou le

compromis (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979).
[10] I have developed this point in “Politique et société: La leçon des
sauvages,” Textures, n°10-11, 1975. Cf. in particular pp. 67-78, La puissance
du sacré.
[11] [Translator’s note: Gauchet paraphrases, though he does not cite, these
words from the introduction to the first tome of Democracy in America (I,
Intro., 6).]
[12] [Translator’s note: Here, the closest English equivalents of the French
word instauration, “foundation” or “establishment,” do not capture the
sense intended by Gauchet when he speaks of Tocqueville’s postulat de
l’instauration: namely, that Tocqueville has in mind a complete, or
completely new terrain on which to found institutions. Translator’s note]
[13] [Here, I follow Goldhammer in rendering le semblable as “fellow” or
“fellow man.” The literal meaning of the word semblable is closest to
“similar,” “like,” or “bearing a resemblance,” but in the social context
intended by Tocqueville and Gauchet it clearly refers to one’s fellow
democratic citizens that one recognizes as essentially similar to oneself.
Translator’s note]
[14] [Translator’s note: I have substituted “otherness” for a more literal
rendering such as “the other” in order to avoid confusion, as “the other”
has become something of a term of art in Continental philosophy (cf.
Kojève, Levinas, etc.). Gauchet uses the term as roughly synonymous
with “alterity,” a quality of society rather than the figure of the other as
such.]
[15] I have analyzed in detail, through a somewhat different approach, the
exact nature of the mutation that has been effected from the logic of the
compulsory recognition of the other—and of its corollary, a reciprocal
separation—to an economy of resemblance (the recognition of the self
in the other), or co-penetration, with Gladys Swain in La pratique de l’esprit
humain. Cf. in particular the chapter entitled “La société des individus et
l’institution de la parole.”
[16] This analysis applies as well to Tocqueville’s pessimistic diagnosis of
“the position held by the Negro race in the United States” in the first
volume of Democracy in America. Here, he takes up the essential vestige of
the world of inequality at the heart of an egalitarian society, the locus of
its most persistent pathologies. The race question adds to the mere
appearance of the inhumanity of the other the real practice of servitude
(“this man, who was born in degradation, this alien placed in our midst
by servitude – we scarcely recognize him as possessing the common
features of humanity.... [W]e come close to regarding him as something
intermediate between brute and man” [I, 2.10, 394].), and invests the
status of alterity with a visible means of separation (“the immaterial and
transitory fact of slavery combines in the most disastrous way with the
material and permanent fact of racial difference” [Ibid.]). It is this latter
feature, the establishment of inequality as a natural fact, that Tocqueville
regards as an insurmountable obstacle:
230 Marcel Gauchet
In the past there existed among us great inequalities whose origins lay solely in
legislation. What could be more factitious than a purely legal inferiority! What more
contrary to man’s instincts than permanent differences established between obviously
similar people! Yet these differences persisted for centuries. In many places they persist
to this day. Everywhere they have left traces which, though they exist only in the
mind, time is hardly able to efface. If inequality created solely by the law is so difficult
to eradicate, how can one destroy an inequality that seems to possess an immutable
basis in nature itself? As for me, when I consider how difficult it is for an aristocratic
body of any kind to merge with the mass of the people, and the extreme care that such
bodies take to preserve for centuries the artificial barriers that separate them from that
mass, I despair of seeing the disappearance of an aristocracy founded on visible and
imperishable signs (I, 2.10, 394-5).
If inequality rests on differences merely believed to be natural, what is to
be done with differences that are actually founded on nature? Modern
equality reveals its true face when it collides with barriers of this sort.
[17] This regime had manifested itself most concretely in societies where
there is a strict division of classes based on age, such that the life of a
single human individual appears as a succession of distinct forms of
being.
[18] This investigation into the process of the dissolution of otherness must
also take into account its effects on the social landscape and the
organization of temporality. In societies of former times, difference took
the form of discontinuities in the visible world: on the one hand, the
architecture of daily life, and on the other the materialization of
hierarchical power, or the gulf between the world and the beyond, in the
form of grand monuments. If, as has often been observed, our society is
incapable of erecting authentic monuments in this robust sense, it is
because it is a society of equality. As such, it has lost the sense of an
order of alterity that it would have once sought to capture in stone. Our
world can no longer tolerate images that go against the grain of the
homogeneity that exists between equal fellow citizens. In a similar
fashion, the tendency of our age is to eliminate all major ruptures in the
social experience of time. The fundamental transcendent alterity that had
once expressed itself in rituals and festivals has been replaced by the
banality of the day-to-day passage of time. In other words, egalitarian
temporality is an experience of time devoid of major discontinuities, in
which there is no need to distinguish between radically different
hierarchical orders. The only original form of alterity that exists in our
society consists in the following paradox, more specular than spectacular,
and often exacerbated by the media: on the one hand, democratic society
assures each of its participants that his fellows are as close to him as
possible, in every way similar; but on the other hand, the logic of the
collective imaginary literally projects the image of this fellow into another
world, and invests it with an essential difference. The modern form of
the division of power is the distinction between those who participate in
social visibility and those who do not. Equality thereby falls into its own
trap to the extent that in creating the figure of the fellow, it situates him
in a framework of radical exteriority. Hence the thoroughly political
problem posed by today’s media, a problem that nonetheless derives

from the equality of conditions in Tocqueville’s sense of the term.
[19] For an overview of the essential elements of this problem, see the article
by Louis Dumont, “La conception moderne de l’individu: Notes sur sa
genèse, en relation avec les conceptions de la politique et de l’Etat, à
partir du XIIIe siècle,” Esprit (February 1978).
[20] A major consequence of this relationship is that the production of
equality is necessarily at the same time the production of an important
kind of inequality. The State, despite its radically egalitarian effects,
cannot help but establish its own distinctions of status and power. It
therefore eliminates “natural” dissimilarity in favor of a “functional”
division between managers and workers, governors and those they
govern.
[21] The Revolution’s failure to admit discontinuity, particularly during the
Terror, is excellently discussed in Bernard Manin, “Saint-Just, la logique
de la Terreur,” Libre, n°6 (1979).
ABSTRACT
When it was originally published in 1980, Gauchet's essay provided an
innovative application of Tocqueville to the political world of the late
twentieth century. Appearing now for the first time in a complete English
translation, Gauchet's reading of Democracy in America still offers a strikingly
contemporary portrait of social conflict and personal identity in an age of
egalitarianism.
232
CONTRIBUTORS
Catherine AUDARD, Department of Philosophy, and Chair of The

Forum for European Philosophy, London School of Economics
and Political Science.
Elie BARANETS, docteur en science politique de l'Université de

Bordeaux.
Michel FORSÉ, Directeur de Recherche au CNRS (CMH, Paris).
Marcel GAUCHET is Director of studies emeritus at the Ecole des

Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and editor of Le Débat.
Jacob HAMBURGER is a translator and a graduate student at the Ecole

Normale Supérieure.
Simon LANGLOIS, Professeur titulaire, Université Laval, Québec.
Françoise MÉLONIO, Présidente de la Société Tocqueville.
Maxime PARODI (Sciences Po, OFCE).
Thomas PIKETTY, Directeur d'études à l'EHESS et professeur à

l'Ecole d'économie de Paris.
Patrick SAVIDAN, Professeur de philosophie politique et éthique,

Université Paris-Est (Créteil).
Stephen W. SAWYER, directeur de publication de The Tocqueville

Review/La Revue Tocqueville.
Stuart WHITE, Jesus College, Oxford.

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THE TOCQUEVILLE REVIEW

President of The Tocqueville Society: Françoise MÉLONIO

From the “Passion for Equality” to the Struggle Against

13 Michel FORSÉ, Simon LANGLOIS, and Maxime PARODI – Contrasting

35 Patrick SAVIDAN – Inégalités et domination: une nouvelle complication

57 Thomas PIKETTY looks back on the success of Capital in the 21st

77 Catherine AUDARD – L’Etat-providence face aux inégalités et la

103 Stuart WHITE – Republicanism and property-owning democracy: How are

Tocqueville, America, and Us

163 Marcel GAUCHET – Tocqueville, America, and Us: On the genesis of

Françoise MÉLONIO, and Stephen W. SAWYER

On February 5, 2016 we held the first jointly organized

interdisciplinarity since. Bilingualism was already a risky bet in a

repeated the same theses without nuance or qualification. It would be

administration in the interest of managing specific social problems.

a “tax.” This may be because until 1914 it was considered

CONTRASTING SENTIMENTS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Michel FORSÉ, Simon LANGLOIS, and Maxime PARODI*

Sociologists from many countries have recently paid attention to

that allow social inequalities to be considered normal, justified, and

one explain such a disparity between two very comparable societies? 4

1. SIMILAR EFFECTS OF SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES

It is noteworthy that in Quebec the disparity of the observed

Anglophones in the province do not appreciate the language laws

2. THE ROLE OF MICRO-JUSTICE

observed in France, in Quebec this does not lead to an inversion of

Table 2: Summary of the log-linear analysis of the relationship between micro-justice,

A subjective finding goes in the same direction. There is a 7 point

correlated either with the level of income or subjective social

significantly different in France and in Quebec as it pertains to

Table 3: The effects of self-reported status, subjective intragenerational mobility both

4. THE IMPACT OF INEQUALITIES

disparity between low and high incomes becomes wider. From an

4.1 Indicators of inequality in France, Quebec, and Canada

Graph 1: The evolution of individual disposable income inequality (adjusted by

Source: data from CEPE 2014; graph by authors.

As for the poverty rate, the proportion of the population below

1993. The unemployment rate is slightly higher in Quebec than in

how unemployment is a key economic concern amongst the French

4.2 The perception of inequalities

were asked to answer according to what they considered “ideal or

were asked to answer these questions according to the same four-

Quebec society is … Rather just 2.05

Satisfaction with one’s basic necessities

Quebec society is … Rather just 2.37

Table 6: Relation between the opinion of macro-justice and the sentiment of a

Quebec society is … Rather just 2.65

Based on this premise, it should be noted that Canada (and

opposed to 27% of the Quebec population. Furthermore, Quebecers

reasons that explains why perceptions of inequalities are less

[1] Our translation of « savoirs fondés ».

INÉGALITÉS ET DOMINATION : UNE NOUVELLE

Au cours de ces dernières années, il a été beaucoup question de la

Dans un tel contexte, on peut aisément comprendre le succès qu’y

Rousseau avait déjà compris que le pouvoir économique se mue

décervelée, seulement scotchée à ses écrans divers et variés, ou l’âge

pauvres11 –, elle montre que, jusqu’à un certain point, lorsque la

Depuis 2009, le rôle protecteur et stabilisateur de l’Etat-

seuls cotisants, mais bénéficient à tous, sans distinction de catégorie

TROISIÈME ÂGE DU PRIVILÈGE

De cette évolution, est solidaire un déplacement dans les

Aujourd’hui la lutte s’est en partie individualisée et le type de biens

condamner cependant un tel conflit et de souhaiter qu’il y soit mis un