Tocqueville and Marx: Not opposites

Ever since scholars rediscovered Tocqueville after World War II, they have generally viewed him in contrast to Marx, for some a liberal and pluralist answer to Marxist tyranny. Writing at approximately the same time, diagnosing the social and political ills of the mid-nineteenth century, and predicting the future, Tocqueville and Marx appear as contrasts, because both their analyses and their conclusions are usually different. Nonetheless, there are significant similarities between Tocqueville and Marx including their predictions of an irresistible historical march toward equality, their uses of class analyses, and their hopes for some new kind of association – they use the same word – to save humankind from a new tyranny.