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219:. In France, both before and after the Revolution, people relied on central authority instead of becoming economically or politically active themselves. By contrast, in the United States, political action permeated to even the lower levels of society. There, private individuals formed the basis of economic and political life, but, in France, the centre of political gravity resided in a chaotic bureaucracy answerable only to the monarchy form of government.
174:", and investigates the forces that caused the Revolution. It is one of the major early historical works on the French Revolution. In this book, de Tocqueville develops his main theory about the French revolution, the theory of continuity, in which he states that even though the French tried to dissociate themselves from the past and from the autocratic old regime, they eventually reverted to a powerful central government.
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was a foremost symbol, nor to create a state of permanent disorder. The revolution should be read, he maintained, primarily as a movement for political and social reform. Contrary to the views expressed by the participants in the
Revolution themselves, there was an increase in neither the power nor
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Another theme of the book is the complete dissociation between French social classes, called the
Estates, of which there were three – the clergy, the nobility, and the common people. Although this dissociation arose from social divisions imposed by the feudal system, the gradual disintegration of
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that system after the Middle Ages resulted, paradoxically, in social dissociation becoming increasingly complete. Whereas the feudal lord had at least a partial symbiosis with his tenants, the post-feudal nobility became
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the jurisdiction of the central authority. Instead, control of these forms was wrested from the monarchy and transferred in quick succession first to the People themselves and from there to a powerful autocracy. The
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never intended to change the whole nature of the traditional society. The chief permanent achievement of the
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of religious faith as to tear down all forms of the Ancien RĂ©gime, of which the established
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was the suppression of those political institutions, commonly described as
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The Alexis de
Tocqueville Tour: Exploring Democracy in America
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182:Tocqueville argued that the aim of the
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263:. New York: Anchor Books (1955).
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235:See also
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