The social question in Alexis de Tocqueville

Authors

  • Elisa Usategui Basozabal Universidad del País Vasco

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rep.200.04

Abstract

Examining analyses of Tocqueville regarding the social question presents us, once again, with an author who is paradoxical, contradictory and difficult to classify. On the one hand, his critique of legal goodwill, state interventionism, the inclusion of the right to work in constitutional frameworks and his defence of the right of ownership and of free trade and competition, position him alongside liberal approaches. On the other, his distrust in the harmonisation of economic interests, his description of a capitalism inexorably subjected to and gripped by chronic commercial and industrial crises, and his view of a working class exploited and alienated by market uncertainties and by an unscrupulous bourgeoisie, distance him considerably from classical economic liberalism. Tocqueville wished to transcend the limits of his time between an economic liberalism in which state intervention is never healthy or desirable, and a socialism that demands the constant and permanent presence of the state. For Tocqueville, in a democratic state with a high degree of individualism, the state should ensure solidarity with the general interest while encouraging the protagonism of civil society.

Published

2023-07-06

Issue

Section

ARTICLES