In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

January/February 2007 ¦ Historically Speaking 33 In Tocqueville's Footsteps Once Again Roger Williams In a penetrating recent essay, Alain Supiot of the University of Nantes contends that the French state is in crisis and may be coming apart. He notes that France in the past several decades has legislated reforms meant to accommodate a traditionally protectionist country to the realities of globalization. Attempts to conform to international standards have aroused suspicion that the governing elite has been abandoning unique French standards, provoking an upsurge of nationalism. The concurrent passage of legislation —presumably progressive and humane —abandoning the distinction between children born in and out of wedlock was also open to the claim that the state was abandoning the traditional notion of legitimacy. Did this signal the political ascendancy of an elite that meant to eliminate the distinction between right and wrong? Recent rioting and arson, moreover, has exposed the inexcusable fact that the state has developed no workable policy to cope with an increasingly turbulent Muslim minority, a substantial portion of which rejects the legal separation of church and state. Does sustained inaction mean a fear of action or simply an inability to perceive a resolution? Supiot estimates that the French are in a state of délitement, an unbedding, a geological term applied to rocks that have shifted from their bed. The history of France since the fall of the monarchy in 1792 suggests that the likely response to a regime coming apart will be to summon a constitutional convention. A new fundamental document would be drafted, presumably eliminating the perceived deficiencies of the preceding constitution , but in fact serving as a mirror of the principles and interests of whatever party or faction that has led the movement to dislodge the prior elite. The process illustrates, by the way, that the concept of loyal opposition has been absent in France since 1792. To be sure, the Fifth Republic may yet survive its current crisis if a more commanding leadership should soon emerge. But the apparent revival of national consciousness or patriotism indicates that predictions of the death of the nation-state have been premature. Meanwhile, the fact that since 1792 the French have experimented with two monarchies, one consulate, two empires, and five republics, plus one interim military regime enjoying more popular support than it is fashionable to admit, surely suggests chronic instability despite the preservation of superficial national unity. Louis XVI drinking a toast to the nation after an angry crowd Invaded the palace and made the King put on the traditional revolutionary Phrygian cap 1792. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZC2-3561]. Tocqueville's diagnosis for the source of that instability would lead us to recognize the overthrow of hereditary, legitimate monarchy in 1792 as the original délitement and all subsequent revolts and coups merely as aftershocks. On assuming power in 1799, Bonaparte gave assurance that the Revolution was finally established upon the principles which began it: "It is ended." But by 1 830, Tocqueville recognized that the revolutionary virus was far from dead: the Revolution had established a precedent for the removal of grievances with indefinite consequences. For good reason, the Revolution of 1789 has been seen as a sharp break with the past: the downfall of an ancient regime that for several centuries had cultivated the machinery of absolutism , effectively making the king above the law. The Old Regime was replaced by a republic that defined every man as equal under the law and gave each the right to vote, so that the General Will could be ascertained and enforced. Tocqueville observed that this sharp break concealed the fact that the Old Regime's pursuit of strong, central authority at the expense of local liberties had been, in fact, gready advanced by the revolutionary institutions , making the new state an admirable instrument for dictatorship. The contemporary notion, received from Rousseau, that a man is most free when his individual will coincides with the General Will seems, in retrospect, a recommendation for conformity. By that reckoning, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity could mean absolutism by consent of the governed. Tocqueville did not miss the logical result: the enforcement of equality would...

pdf

Share