[wesleychen]

I would not characterize my comments as excessive charity. It’s an accurate summary of Toqueville’s essay and a rough comparison of his claims to the way history unfolded.

The 1848 revolutions you talk about occurred in different ways, but a way to generally characterize them is that they were all democratic with the aim of removing the old monarchical structures (regardless of the actual participants). This aligns with Toqueville’s claim that revolution stems from social division (which liberalism eliminates) and not other forms of inequality. The same is true of the Paris Commune; the third republic was initially dominated by monarchists and the Paris Commune as government was organized as a rival to the national government in Versailles/Bordeaux.

The American Civil war is another example that supports Tocqueville. The social stratification of slavery led to war but not the extreme inequality of the 1920s. Neither has the inequality of the present.

Tocqueville’s observation of the connection between social class and revolution also explain why the 20th century movements in Europe played out the way they did. Communist revolution occurred in Russia but not Germany. The fascist movements in liberal Germany and Italy took power without bloody revolution but the movement in Spain was tied to monarchists and thus there was civil war.

His main point is that liberalism provides off-ramps from violent revolution because people have other ways of wielding political power. In societies with strict social classes, the classes without political power have much greater incentives to fight. I imagine you wouldn’t disagree with this claim.

[RedCondor]

You can spin it however you want, his prediction was abysmally wrong, both in Europe and America and everywhere else.