RICHARD SENNETT
pursuit of those pleasures which are allowed ... it is likely that a
kind of well-meaning malerialism
(materialisme honnete)
is going
lO
be established in the world, one which will not corrupt the soul
but enervate il and noiselessly unbend its springs of action.
417
Let us contrast this fear to the terms in which La Boetie described
the dangers of mass stupor. In Tocqueville's work there is no indict–
ment of the weakness of a contented mob of slaves; there is a mass so
mystified, so deracinated by its own illusions, that it is caught in the
correlated terms of private misery and public apathy. True, the pursuit
of gratification is the rule of this egalitarian society, but gratification is
no mere matter of passing sensual pleasure; it is more psychological,
more the pursuit of "experience" in an attempt to establish a com–
pleted, individualized self. The more frustrating that pursuit, the more
people are enmeshed in it; their very suffering creates commitment,
deluding them more and more into seeking an "inner" answer to what
appears to be an "inner" problem. This mass seeks either to exile or to
coerce into obedience those who challenge this self-slavery, even out of
the best humanitarian motives. A people so withdrawn from public
concern is willing to leave to a paternal government the necessary and
unpleasant tasks of thought reform.
Tocqueville tells us he had only "a glimpse" of such an egalitar–
ian danger forming in the America of the 1830s. Tod<!y we have rather
more than a glimpse of it in Solzhenitsin's documentary writings and
in the works of Hannah Arendt. But these modern echoes are not quite
what they seem.
The premise of Tocqueville's analysis is a society of equality of
conditions, largely achieved. But we do not inhabit such a world.
Neither in North America nor in Western Europe have differentials of
possession, services, or income diminished since Tocqueville's time,
nor has productive action equalized, nor do the facts of property or
action show any real promise of doing so in the future. What then is it
in this egalitarian critique that so illuminates the problems and
discontents of nonegalitarian societies?
I think it is a weakness in his very formulation of equality that,
paradoxically, makes Tocqueville's analysis of such contemporary
relevance. Tocqueville's analysis of equality of condition refers not so
much to an actually established equality as to the belief that such
equality exists. People behave as if they are equal in condition.
If
in
real fact they do not move roughly within the same band of action, in
order to feel that they belong to a common social order they change
their tastes, habits, and outlook to appear as if they do.
