Can Tocqueville Answer Piketty?

     

I found the most recent comments of Daniel Mahoney and Aurelian Craiutu most interesting. I have been thinking about them as I travel in the areas that Tocqueville travelled in Sicily. I will limit myself to two comments.

First, Tocquevillian analytics. I know that Aurelian tried to promote this form of analytics as a way of making explicit what in Tocqueville is implicit, a particular framework of analysis. But I am afraid I have lost track of the reception of Tocquevillian analytics. Maybe Aurelian can remind us if what he proposed has been applied and met some success.

The  second is directed to Dan as well as Aurelian. Glad that reference is made to the work of Pierre Manent for placing in sharp relief the tension in Tocqueville’s mind between liberty and equality. I know this is an old theme, and I am away from the sources and cannot do justice to them by memory. This old theme has been given renewed emphasis as Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century is gaining traction in academia -- that is, that wealth has produced and is producing greater and greater inequality and that this state of affairs raises serious questions about the prospects of maintaining a liberal order. What kind of liberty can exist in a social and political order marked by greater and growing inequality? Should we find in Tocqueville a way of addressing Piketty?

Just some thoughts.