Is Tocqueville still relevant? Its return to favor corresponded to the collapse of Marxism and totalitarian ideas in the 1970s and 1990s. This period greatly contributed to bringing out of the shadows one of our greatest political thinkers, long forgotten by official doctrine.
However, this renewal has not been without uncertainty. Tocqueville was exploited by some neoliberal authors such as Hayek, who hailed him as the man who warned of the dangers of the “soft despotism” of the state spreading to the West, the tyranny of the majority and the weakening of the individual, citing in particular his 1848 against the right to work. But Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) cannot be reduced to this impoverishing reading.
A famous thesis
He wrote two great important books. the first Democracy in America (1835, 1840), in which he tries to understand how free institutions were able to maintain themselves across the Atlantic despite their democratic character…
Source: Le Figaro
