Today, two great nations of the earth seem to be advancing toward the same destination from different starting points: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.
Both have
grown unobserved and, while men’s attention has been preoccupied elsewhere,
they have climbed up into the leading rank of nations and the world has learned
of both their birth and their greatness at almost the same moment. …
Americans
struggle against obstacles placed there by nature; Russians are in conflict
with men. The former fight the
wilderness and barbarity; the latter, civilization with all its weaponry: thus,
America’s victories are achieved with the plowshare, Russia’s with the
soldier’s sword.
To achieve their aim, the former rely on self-interest and allow free scope to
the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.
The latter
focus the whole power of society upon a single man.
The former
deploy freedom as their main mode of action; the latter, slavish obedience.
The point
of departure is different, their paths are diverse but each of them seems
destined by some secret provisional design to hold in their hands the fate of
half the world at some date in the future.[1]
De Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, Vol 1 (1835)
[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. Gerald E. Bevan (Toronto: Penguin, 2003),
pp. 484, 485. See the final remarks to the Conclusion of Democracy in America, Volume 1.
Thanks also to David Runciman for his Talking Politics: History of Ideas
podcast for the London Review of Books,
“Tocqueville on Democracy”.
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