ABSTRACT
Introduction In his well-known book, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1840: 932-4) argues that revolutions in aristocratic societies are less likely because people get used to their poverty and do not strive to get material well-being “because they despair of gaining it and do not know it well enough to desire it”. In democracies, however, he maintains that everyone wants the comforts of a good life and so “the desire to gain well-being occurs to the imagination of the poor, and the fear of losing it to the mind of the rich” so much so that “The love of well-being has become the national and dominant taste”. Does this mean that we should expect revolutions to happen more easily in democratic societies? No. Tocqueville gives a thoughtful and subtle explanation to this seemingly disappointing answer. First, he notes that:
Nearly all the revolutions that have changed the face of peoples have been made in order to sanction or to destroy inequality. Take away the secondary causes that have produced the great agitations of men, you will almost always arrive at inequality. It is the poor who have wanted to steal the property of the rich, or the rich who have tried to put the poor in chains. So if you can establish a state of society in which each man has something to keep and little to take, you will have done a great deal for the peace of the world (emphasis added).
