SOCI 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Master Class, Alexis De Tocqueville
Document Summary
Tocqueville sees the beginning of a development of a new kind of a competitive capitalist economy. Emergence of entrepreneurs who bought people"s farms, combine them with larger farms and started to create a new kind of economic order. Lowered the status of the lower class and rose the status of the master class. The new order is the threat to social responsibility and participation in. Equality is not more elevated than aristocracy, it is just more just. Educate equality, provide what is needed to believe in freedom. The lesson: america has equality and they have learned to prize freedom. Juries teach people appreciation for freedom and citizenship. Tocqueville calls the political associations the great free school of politics. We become what we are because of the associations we are surrounded with from the beginning. Everybody can join in associations to change policies. Being able to post advertisements to organize and communicate through press.
