THE TOCQUEVILLE REVIEW LA REVUE TOCQUEVILLE THE TOCQUEVILLE REVIEW LA REVUE TOCQUEVILLE publiée par les Presses de l’Université de Toronto pour La Société Tocqueville avec le concours de l’American University of Paris et de l’Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques President of The Tocqueville Society: Françoise MÉLONIO Former Presidents: Theodore CAPLOW, David RIESMAN, Daniel BELL, Henri MENDRAS, Olivier ZUNZ Directeur de la publication : StepHen W. SAWYER Editors: Michel FORSÉ, Laurence GUELLEC, Jennifer MERCHANT Editorial Board: Catherine AUDARD, Elisabeth CLEMENS, Vincent DUCLERT, ArtHur GOLDHAMMER, Lucien JAUME, Alan KAHAN, Guy LAFOREST, Simon LANGLOIS, Eloi LAURENT, John MYLES, William NOVAK, James SPARROW, Scott SPRENGER, Justin VAISSE, Cheryl B. WELCH, Olivier ZUNZ Council: Arnaldo BAGNASCO, David A. BELL, Edward BERENSON, James CEASER, Nancy GREEN, Pierre GRÉMION, Pierre HASSNER, Stephen HOLMES, Hartmut KAELBLE, James KLOPPENBERG, MicHèle LAMONT, Wolf LEPENIES, Bernard MANIN, Reiji MATSUMOTO, Vincent MICHELOT, Darío ROLDÁN, Pierre ROSANVALLON, Nancy ROSENBLUM, Charles TAYLOR Managing Editor: Laurence DUBOYS FRESNEY The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville (ISSN 0730-479X) is publisHed biannually by The University of Toronto Press Incorporated. ISSN Online: 1918-6649 www.utpjournals.com/The-Tocqueville-Review.html Manuscripts and advertising to: La Société Tocqueville, Laurence Duboys Fresney, 69 quai d’Orsay 75007 Paris (France) or : [email protected] Subscription rates: 1 year: Canada: Can$ 58; USA: US$ 73; overseas: US$73 Europe: 35 €; send address cHanges, orders and payments to University of Toronto Press, Journals Division, 5201 Dufferin Street - Downsview Ontario (Canada M3H 5T8) www.utpjournals.com. Payments in euros can be sent to La Société Tocqueville, 69 quai d’Orsay 75007 Paris (France) Tel. 01 44 18 54 31 - Fax. 01 44 18 54 78 © 2017 by The Tocqueville Society-La Société Tocqueville Cover design by Margaret Holmes Williamson and Desgrandchamps S. A. Printed in Canada - Imprimé au Canada Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement Number 40064102 THE TOCQUEVILLE REVIEW LA REVUE TOCQUEVILLE VOL. XXXVII No. 2 – 2016 CONTENTS From the “Passion for Equality” to the Struggle Against Inequalities: Realities and Representations 7 Françoise MÉLONIO, and Stephen W. SAWYER – Introduction. Investigating inequalities: A new Tocqueville 13 Michel FORSÉ, Simon LANGLOIS, and Maxime PARODI – Contrasting sentiments of social justice in France and Quebec 35 Patrick SAVIDAN – Inégalités et domination: une nouvelle complication démocratique 57 Thomas PIKETTY looks back on the success of Capital in tHe 21st Century 77 Catherine AUDARD – L’Etat-providence face aux inégalités et la « Démocratie de propriétaires » : une comparaison entre Meade, Rawls, Ackerman et Piketty 103 Stuart WHITE – Republicanism and property-owning democracy: How are they connected? Tocquevilliana 127 Elie BARANETS – Guerre et paix : l’héritage méconnu de Tocqueville Tocqueville, America, and Us 153 Marcel GAUCHET – Tocqueville, America, and Us. Preface written in 2016 159 Jacob HAMBURGER – Tocqueville, America, and Us. Avant-propos 163 Marcel GAUCHET – Tocqueville, America, and Us: On the genesis of democratic societies 232 Contributors From the “Passion for Equality” to the Struggle Against Inequalities: Realities and Representations The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, Vol. XXXVII, n° 2 – 2016 INTRODUCTION INVESTIGATING INEQUALITIES: A NEW TOCQUEVILLE Françoise MÉLONIO, and Stephen W. SAWYER On February 5, 2016 we held the first jointly organized symposium by the American University of Paris and The Tocqueville Review. It has grown naturally out of the sHared mission of an international university and The Tocqueville Society, which has had the association of Europe and United States as one of its fundamental traits. Great audacities generally make for short careers. But for more than fifty years the American University of Paris, founded in 1962, has offered higher education to students from all over the world. In the tradition of American “liberal arts colleges,” tHe university is today recognized internationally as an institution that educates citizens of tHe world tHrough interdisciplinary and intercultural education. The Center for Critical Democracy, established with the support of the Mellon Foundation at AUP, seeks to contribute to tHis education of tHe world's citizens by promoting researcH and teaching on critical issues faced by our democratic societies and states in tHe past and today. The CCDS's partnership with The Tocqueville Society and its review are at the heart of this mission. AnotHer audacious endeavor which Has proven to last, The Tocqueville Society and The Tocqueville Review are seventeen years younger than the American University of Paris. The first issue in 1979, which included an article by Raymond Aron, established the ambition of the review to explore democracy and its characteristics. The project has been marked by its bilingualism and its 8 Françoise Mélonio, and Stephen W. Sawyer interdisciplinarity since. Bilingualism was already a risky bet in a scientific world where English Has tended to become the dominant language. But the founders of the journal were convinced tHat the democratic pHenomenon could not be understood without recourse to comparativism and, of course, one does not come to terms with similar problems in the same way in different languages. As for interdisciplinarity, we are inundated witH its praises while its actual pursuit seems systematically challenged: rankings, classifications, career management, habits of language and thought have made it difficult to practice in spite of tHe constant ambitions to do so. And yet, tHe journal has been transmitted from generation to generation and from continent to continent, under tHe presidencies of Ted Caplow, David Riesman, Daniel Bell, Henri Mendras, and Olivier Zunz. A very active editorial committee, several of whom have prepared this symposium, such as CatHerine Audard, MicHel Forsé, Arthur Goldhammer, Alan KaHan, Simon Langlois and Jennifer Merchant, not to mention Laurence Duboys Fresney wHo has literally carried the journal since the presidency of Henri Mendras and played a major role in the organization of tHis symposium. The colloquium presented in this issue is entitled: “From the ‘Passion for Equality’ to the Struggles Against Inequalities: Realities and Representations.” It is faithful to tHe spirit of the journal and tHe Center for Critical Democracy Studies in its ambition to clarify tHe present tHrough tHe past, its trans-Atlantic comparisons, interdisciplinarity, and exploration of the relationship between practices and representations. Coming to terms with the present tHrough the past applies to interpretations of Tocqueville’s work itself as much as tHe problem of inequality. We are all widely familiar with a reading of Tocqueville tHat takes as its point of departure a reflection on tHe passion for equality and the risk of liberticidal government. Such an interpretation is, of course, undeniably present in portions of Tocqueville’s work. It has played a considerable role in the reflection on democracy since the 1970s and in Tocqueville’s resurgence in the decades that followed. But, as the following papers clearly show, sucH a reading of Tocqueville does not exhaust the question of equality in Tocqueville, far from it. For there is also the question of inequality and the discussion of how, in wHat ways, and under what conditions it can be remedied. Tocqueville was far from a monocHromatic tHinker, wHo Investigating inequalities: A new Tocqueville 9 repeated tHe same tHeses without nuance or qualification. It would be impossible to erect him as a theorist with a permanent fear of any intervention by public authorities to tackle problems sucH as inequality. Let us give merely one example of such modalities of public intervention, which he recognized. Tocqueville, who was fascinated by the American selectmen, did not promote a withered state. While he was a fervent critic of a centralized administration, he also praised French public officials, state regulation of transport or education, and even state intervention in times of crisis, including crises of economic inequality. His American investigations pushed him to tHink in new ways about tHe relationship between elected and public officials or between elected officials and experts. The notes to his chapter on New England administration in Democracy in America reveal a kind of fascination with the effective regulation of daily life in New England. “Observe the Town Officer,” remarked Tocqueville, adding the extraordinary display of administrators in the smallest county including “Select men, Assessors, Collectors, Schools, Surveyors of highways.” Amidst this list of administrators, what struck Tocqueville, was not their incapacity to act, but tHeir extraordinary penetration into everyday American life: “law descends into the most minute details,” noted Tocqueville, “it determines both the principles and the means of their application ; it encloses the secondary bodies and tHeir administrators in a multitude of obligations tigHtly and rigorously defined.”1 He tHen provided a series of examples: “tHe State forbids traveling on Sundays without motive… the selectmen authorize tHe construction of sewers, designate places for building slaughterhouses, and wHere it is acceptable to build certain types of commerce tHat may be harmful for tHe neighborhood.”2