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980 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 2 0a How Aristocracy Could Emerge from Industry b a. Of the aristocratic make-up of some of the industries of today. I showed how democracy favored the developmentof industry;Iamgoingtoshow in what roundabout way industry in return leads back toward aristocracy. It has been discovered in our time that when each worker was occupied only with the same detail, the work as a whole was more perfect. It has been discovered as well that to do something with less expense, it is necessary to undertake it immediately on a very vast scale. The first of the two discoveries lowers [v: ruins] and brutalizes the worker. The second constantly raises the master. They introduce the principles of aristocracy into the industrial class. Now, as society in general becomes more democratic, since the need for inexpensive manufactured objects becomes more general and more intense, the two discoveries above apply more frequently and more rigorously. So equality disappears from the small society as it becomes established in the large one (YTC, CVf, pp. 35–36). Several ideas from this chapter come from the book of Viscount Alban de VilleneuveBargemont , Économie politique chrétienne, ou recherches sur la nature et les causes du paupe ́risme, en France et en Europe . . . (Paris: Paulin, 1834), 2 vols., which Tocqueville had used for his memoir on pauperism. Chapter XII of the first volume of VilleneuveBargemont ’s book has precisely this title, “The New Feudalism,” and contains in germ the principal arguments of this chapter. See note s of p. 81 of the first volume. b. I do not know where to place this chapter. Three systems: 1. It could perhaps be put in the first volume after the chapter that considersequality as the universal fact. It would show the exception and would complete thepicture. In this case, it must perhaps be developed a bit. 2. It could perhaps be put before the chapter on salaries. In this case, it will have to be shortened. 3. I think, for the moment, that the best place would be after the chapter where I say that democracy pushes toward industrial careers. It would then be necessary to aristrocracy from industry 981 I showed how democracy favored the development of industry and immeasurably multiplied the number of industrialists; we are going to see in what roundabout way industry in turn could well lead men toward aristocracy. It has been recognized that when a worker is occupied every day only with the same detail, the general production of the work is achieved more easily, more rapidly and more economically. It has been recognized as well that the more an industry was undertaken on a large scale, with great capital and large credit, the less expensive its products were.c These truths have been seen dimly for a long time, but they have been demonstrated in our time. They are already applied to several very important industries, and the smallest industries are successively making use of them. get into the matter a bit differently and bring out the link between this chapter and that which precedes. Something like this: I said that democracy pushes men toward industry, and industry, such as it seems to want to be constituted today, tends to lead them back toward aristocracy./ Every society begins with aristocracy; industry is subject to this law (Rubish, 2). c. In the margin, in the rubish: “ 2 July 1837” (Rubish, 2). There is perhaps no point on which modern critics of Tocqueville are in more agreement than on his ignorance of the changes that took place in America and in Europe during the first half of the XIXth century in matters of industry, of the process of urbanization , and the little attention that he gave to steamboats, canals, railroadsandother technicalprogress.Thepublicationof histravelnotesandthebookof SeymourDrescher (Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, New York: Harper and Row, 1968) show, however, that his description of Manchester is largely devoted to the results of industrialization and that, far from being unaware of the problem, he knew about it and was preoccupied by it. If Tocqueville evokes the problem of industrialization only rapidly, it is above all because the purpose of his work, like his anti-materialism, scarcely pushes him there. What interests him is the energy (acquiring money and the taste for material well-being) that creates industry and the effects that itproduces (thenewmanufacturingaristocracy). According to Seymour Drescher again (Tocqueville and England, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press...

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