Though less quoted than his Democracy in America, Tocqueville’s later book, The Old Régime and the French Revolution, is as rich in X-ray insights.
Speaking of the French Revolution, Tocqueville points out that: “In all the annals of recorded history we find no mention of any political revolution that took this form; its only parallel is to be found in certain religious revolutions.”
And, “The French Revolution, though ostensibly political in origin, functioned on the lines, and assumed many of the aspects, of a religious revolution.”
However, it was fundamentally different from any religion: “It would perhaps be truer to say that it developed into a kind of religion, if a singularly imperfect one, since it was without a God, without a ritual or promise of a future life.”
What are the quasi-religious features of the French Revolution, and are they unique to it? Tocqueville points out that, like the Christian revolution, and unlike the English one, the French Revolution didn’t just demand a redress of specific, parochial grievances or a return to constitutional rectitude.
It invoked universal values and principles that transcended the national boundaries, cultures, languages and traditions. Therefore, the French Revolution completely reshuffled the pack of friends and foes, often turning the former into the latter, and vice versa.
Like Christianity, it sought proselytes all over the world, not just in its country of origin. Like the Reformation, it was able to turn compatriots into infidels and foreigners into brothers. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin were closer to the hearts of French revolutionaries than Chateaubriand and de Maistre.
If one effect of the Reformation was that Germans began to slaughter other Germans (the Thirty Years’ War reduced the population of the German principalities by at least a third), the immediate effect of the Revolution was to turn Frenchmen against other Frenchmen – not on the basis of their liturgy and church structure, but on the basis of class and ideology.
Moreover, like all proselytising religions, the French Revolution immediately issued its gospel and began to spread it all over the world. Above all, it emulated Christianity by appealing to, and trying to improve, the very essence of man, stripped of the outer shell of any civilisational inputs.
Tocqueville didn’t mention the American Revolution in this context, probably deciding he had exhausted that subject in his Democracy. Also, like Burke, he might have regarded the two revolutions as fundamentally different, although, to me, the similarities are obvious.
Like the French revolution, and unlike the English one in the previous century, the American Revolution also claimed the universality of first principles: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” and so on. As an American wit once quipped, these truths had better be self-evident because they certainly are impossible to prove.
The Declaration of Independence did make a perfunctory bow to God (“… endowed by their Creator”), but the Founders’ religion was as secular as that of the French Revolutionaries. The latter’s own Declaration simply stated that: “Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights.”
Tocqueville shows convincingly that the Revolution didn’t succeed in its intention to create a new man, nor indeed even a new Frenchman. It simply repackaged and codified the existing tendencies. He traces the origin of that upheaval back to the early days of modernity, as it emerged out of the feudal Middle Ages.
Evolution towards the modern state began then, and the embryos of revolutionary tyranny steadily grew to maturity. Ancient liberties were assailed one by one, and the state was becoming more and more centralised.
Throughout, Tocqueville compares England favourably to France, showing how English aristocracy took a hands-on part in public administration and business, freely mingling with the middle classes. French noblemen, on the other hand, saw themselves as a caste and increasingly left public administration to the despised middle classes, thereby making themselves expendable.
Tocqueville had a first-rate intellect and a mind custom-made for historical analysis. What he didn’t have was the benefit of hindsight. For chronological reasons, he missed the 20th century revolutions that brought things into sharp focus.
The other day I wrote that the Christian revolution was the only one in history that truly succeeded. Tocqueville approached that view but never quite expressed it, although his identifying quasi-religious features in the French Revolution is helpful.
The reason the English, American and French (later also Russian) revolutions all failed was that they were counterfeit copies of the original, Christian revolution. They faked some aspects of it and created governance by simulacrum. They did succeed after a fashion in creating a new human type, Modern Man, but he is defined by negation, a creature brought to life mainly by resentment.
Modern Man moved into the house built by Christendom, gutted it, destroyed all its contents, and claimed that the counterfeit copies he moved in instead were better than the originals. However, all modern revolutions, but especially the French and Russian ones, proved that no true freedom is possible without the ultimate discipline imposed by a transcendent authority.
When such absolute authority is replaced by politicised relativism, Christian charity becomes the welfare state, liberty becomes licence, equality becomes levelling, and fraternity turns into a faceless mass of humanity bossed around by bureaucrats. Such is the great larceny of modernity, and Tocqueville issued a liberal indictment of it.
What escaped his attention was that his own liberal views were a product of modernity as much as revolutionary violence was. That’s why he (like the Whig Burke but unlike the Tory Dr Johnson) didn’t detect in all revolutions, including the American one, their potential for replacing religions with cults.
What is a cult if not a macabre simulacrum of a religion? Revolutionary modernity offers an extensive menu of cults, those of Solo Scriptura, Democracy, Liberty, Leader, Common Man, Superman, Nature, Diversity etc., and please don’t attack me for lumping all such things together.
All of these are the loot plundered from Christendom by the great larceny of modernity, valuables turned into trash by yanking them away from their original source and perching them atop a totem pole.
It’s the quasi-religious character of revolutions that leaves an opening for a typical assault launched by the cardsharps of modernity. When one of their secular cults turns out to be demonstrably evil, they declare it to be a religion and hence another proof of how pernicious all religions are.
Tocqueville inadvertently contributed to that trend by describing the French Revolution as “a kind of religion, if a singularly imperfect one”. It wasn’t a religion at all, imperfect or otherwise. It was exactly what Chateaubriand and de Maistre saw in it: a diabolical cult, out to produce spinoffs. But then they were reactionaries, not liberals.
P.S. Speaking of cults, as President Trump, the greatest statesman in history and in eternity, looks for new revenue streams for his organisation, I humbly submit to his attention two ideas that might have so far escaped his fecund mind.
First, he could market packs of cards where every card is a trump. His own likeness may appear on kings, Melania’s on queens, Barron’s on jacks and so forth. The earning potential doesn’t quite match that of underhanded deals with Arabs, but every little bit helps.
Then, and this is a more involved project, he can buy the Trajan Column from the Italians (“Money’s no object, Giorgia”), transport it to the US, erect it in Washington’s Tidal Basin next to the Lincoln Memorial, rename it the Trump Column and charge admission from throngs of pilgrims.
Glad to be of help.