Alexis de Tocqueville and three revolutions: France (1789-), Japan (1867-), China (1911-)

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to think through the three revolutions, using Tocqueville's theory of “democracy” as a key. For Tocqueville, democracy is a society with “the equality of conditions” - in other words, a society that has no hereditary status system. In this sense, Chinese society since the Song Dynasty has been “democracy” as Tocqueville himself pointed out repeatedly. In his understanding, contemporary China was a “democratic society” and its form of government was highly centralized “despotism”; in sum, it was “democratic despotism.” Tocqueville was warning against the possible Sinification of America and Europe. Moreover, he thinks what the French Revolution brought about were mainly “the equality of conditions” and the establishment of centralized state power. The Meiji Revolution also realized these two things because it had not been “democratic” and the polity had been federal. On the other hand, in China, both had been actualized since the tenth century. Therefore, the Chinese Revolution which ended up with the establishment of the communist rule is very different from the other two revolutions.