Marx And Tocqueville Analysis

In their analyses of history, both Tocqueville and Marx offer uniquely distinct philosophies. This essay attempts to compare Marx and Tocqueville’s theories of History, tracking each theory’s underlying reasons for progression of history, history’s different stages and its handling of the issue of revolutions. I will begin by drawing out the definitive distinction between Tocqueville and Marx with respect to what is the driving force moving history. I will then proceed to argue why despite this distinction, Tocqueville and Marx are not diametrically opposite and how in fact they share the same underlying principles on the progressing of history despite ascribing it to different factors.
Both Tocqueville and Marx operate within the stadial

However, while Tocqueville outlines his theory of history based on an inexorable march towards equality of conditions guided by the force of Providence, Marx builds his stages of history corresponding to modes of production, increasing complexity of division of labour and different forms of ownership.
Tocqueville saw equality of conditions as having an "immense influence ... on the whole course of society" (Toc: 9). He argued that the general state of equality of condition was "the prime cause of most of the laws, customs, and ideas" (Toc : 50); such that it influenced the formation of social norms, laws and mores besides shaping public opinion in American society. In his brief summary of France’s seven hundred year history, Tocqueville outlines how he thinks society has progressed from aristocracy to democracy. “There is hardly an important event in the last seven hundred years which has not turned out to be advantageous for equality.” (Toc: 11). In the aristocratic age, government was controlled by a few families whose power was derived from landed property handed down from one generation to the next. However, eventually the power of the Church began

For Marx, production is central to life; "…it is a definite form of activity… a definite form of expressing life." (Tucker:150). Mankind and therefore history progresses, as and when, these material productive forces come into conflict with the prevailing relations of production. In other words, whenever the means of production and the relations of production come into conflict, there is a revolution that alters the economic foundations of society causing the entire superstructure to be transformed. For Marx, “real sensuous activity” was the driving force behind history. Marx’s explanation for why history moves is far more sophisticated than Tocqueville’s. Simply put, Tocqueville 's response to the question of what is driving history towards ever-increasing equality is the blind instruments of God. While he is able to highlight the general direction of history, his explanation for why it occurs is “cloudy, mystified, imprecise” (Bate:5). It is important to note that Tocqueville does describe conditions of equality as a “social state” (Toc: 50) and therefore his philosophy of history does have a materialistic hue to it, whereby the interaction of these equitable conditions of wealth, opportunity, social status etc. shape the American society and its prevailing mores and beliefs, yet his mechanism to explain why history moves is not based on an interaction of these equitable conditions but