Climax and Dénouement 795
“What then does the future hold? No one can say.”^26
Here was no prediction of revolution to come, no conservative theory, as with
Friedrich Gentz, that one revolution must lead endlessly to another, to show what
a great evil the French Revolution had been; no neo- revolutionary message, as
with Karl Marx, to show that since one revolution that he called “bourgeois” had
occurred, another that he called “proletarian” must surely follow. It was only a pre-
diction that the future would see an increasing equality of conditions, brought
about in ways that could not be foreseen, and were not prescribed. It was a predic-
tion that even inequalities of wealth and income, like others, would be reduced
either by revolution or otherwise. Such has in fact proved to be the case.
For Tocqueville it was a troubled anticipation, in which difficulties and losses
were to be expected as well as gains. In substance, however, it was the anticipation
that had inspired the last days of Condorcet, who had rejoiced to see, in 1794, at
the end of the “Progress of the Human Mind,” the vision of a future world in
which all invidious differences between human beings would be erased.
All revolutions since 1800, in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, have
learned from the eighteenth- century Revolution of Western Civilization. They
have been inspired by its successes, echoed its ideals, used its methods. It does not
follow that one revolution need lead to another, or that revolution as such need be
glorified as a social process. No revolution need be thought of as inevitable. In the
eighteenth century there might have been no revolution, if only the old upper and
ruling classes had made more sagacious concessions, if, indeed, the contrary ten-
dencies toward a positive assertion of aristocratic values had not been so strong.
What seems to be inevitable, in both human affairs and in social science, must be
put in contingent form—if x, then y. If a sense of inequality or injustice persists
too long untreated, it will produce social disorganization. In a general breakdown,
if a constructive doctrine and program are at hand, such as were furnished in the
eighteenth century by the European Enlightenment, if the capacities of leaders
and followers are adequate to the purpose, and if they are strong enough to prevail
over their adversaries, then a revolution may not only occur and survive, but open
the way toward a better society. The conditions are hard to meet, but the stakes are
high, for the alternative may be worse.
26 Démocratie en Amérique, in Oeuvres (Paris, 1951), Vol. I, Part I, p. 4. The standard English trans-
lation (Reeve- Bradley, New York, 1946, I, 6), by calling les bourgeois “tradesmen,” betrays its mid-
Victorian origin and misses the full relevancy for modern times. The other quotation from Tocqueville
alluded to here appears as this book ’s epigraph, and is from L’ancien régime et la Révolution, Book I,
Chapters III and V. The quotation from Aristotle is from the Politics, V, I, Jowett translation.