/lit/ - Literature

>>18472248
>old good new bad
wow amazing thread, anon

>>18472353
but new good old bad

>>18472366
even your reddit memes won’t save this shitty thread, just leave nigger

>>18472389
Oh, you're an incel. I should've guessed.

>>18472353
>yep I'm still online waiting to slide the tocqueville thread

>>18472353
Friendly reminder to the jannies that this redditor has been spamming every single Tocqueville thread. He is constantly online and obviously contributes nothing to the board.
Permabanning him would be a great first step to improving /lit/.
>>/lit/thread/S18259659#p18290389

"WHEN one enters a bookshop in the United States and peruses the American books that fill its shelves, the number of books seems very large whereas the number of familiar authors seems quite small.

First one finds a multitude of elementary texts intended to impart the rudiments of human knowledge. Most of these works were written in Europe. The Americans reprint them in a form adapted for their use. Then there is an almost endless number of religious books, Bibles, sermons, pious anecdotes, controversies, and reports published by charitable societies. Finally, there is the lengthy catalog of political pamphlets: American parties do battle not with books but with pamphlets, which circulate with incredible rapidity, survive for a brief time, and then die.
Amid all these obscure products of the human mind appear the more remarkable works of but a small number of authors whose names are or ought to be known to Europeans.

Although America is today perhaps less concerned with literature than any other civilized country, one does meet many individuals there who are interested in things of the mind and who, if they do not devote their lives to studying such things, nevertheless savor their charms in their hours of leisure. Most of the books these people want are supplied by England, however. Nearly all the great English works are reproduced in the United States. The literary genius of Great Britain still shines its rays into the depths of the New World’s forests. There is hardly a pioneer hut in which the odd volume of Shakespeare cannot be found. I remember reading the feudal drama Henry V for the first time in a log cabin."

>>18472482
that’s not me, maybe try making a good thread?

>>18472615
These have all been great threads. Every one has anons praising them despite your shilling attempts.
But go ahead and post an example of a good thread, and your most recent threads.

Here's one of mine >>18468510

>>18472615
>>18468510
These have all been great threads. Every one has anons praising them despite your shilling attempts.
But go ahead and post an example of a good thread, and your most recent threads.

Here's one of mine >>18437864
Note the comment:
>I wish all /lit/ thread were like this.

>>18472790
yeah, i wish all of lit was schizo wehraboos lol

"Imagine an aristocratic nation in which literature is cultivated. Works of the intellect, like affairs of government, are controlled by a sovereign class. Literary life, like political existence, is almost entirely concentrated in that class or in those closest to it. This suffices to give me the key to everything else.

When a small number of men are concerned with the same things at the same time and form a group whose membership does not change, it is easy for them to agree on certain primary rules, which each of them must then take for his guide. If the subject that concerns these men is literature, strict laws will soon be applied to works of the mind, and no deviation from these laws will be tolerated.

If the position these men occupy in the country is hereditary, they will naturally be inclined not only to adopt certain fixed rules for themselves but also to abide by rules imposed by their forebears. Their laws will be both strict and traditional.
These men have never been obliged to concern themselves with material things, any more than their fathers, hence their interest in works of the mind may well extend back over several generations. They have grasped the technique of literature and ultimately come to love it for its own sake and to take an informed pleasure in seeing its rules adhered to.

And that is not all: the men I am speaking of begin and end their lives in comfort or wealth, hence they naturally entertain a taste for exquisite satisfactions and a love of refined and delicate pleasures.

>>18473284
"More than that, a certain delicacy of mind and heart, which is often the result of such long and peaceful enjoyment of so many goods, leads them to banish from their very pleasures anything that might be too unusual or too intense. They would rather be amused than intensely aroused; they want their interest stimulated but have no desire to be swept away."

"Let us imagine ourselves transported to the heart of a democracy in which ancient traditions and present enlightenment have fostered a sensitivity to the pleasures of the mind. Ranks in this society have mingled and combined. Knowledge, like power, is infinitely divided and I daresay widely dispersed.

It is thus a confused multitude whose intellectual needs are to be satisfied. Not all the new enthusiasts of the pleasures of the mind have received the same education. Not all are enlightened in the same respects. They do not resemble their fathers, and at any given moment they are different from what they were themselves the moment before, for among them places, feelings, and fortunes are constantly changing. Hence no common traditions or habits exist to forge intellectual bonds among the people, who have never had the power, the will, or the time to achieve a common understanding.

Yet it is from this incoherent and agitated multitude that authors spring, and it is the same multitude that parcels out the profits and the glory.

I have no trouble understanding that in such circumstances I should expect to find in the literature of such a people only a few of the rigorous conventions that readers and writers recognize in aristocratic centuries. If the people of one period did happen to agree on certain conventions, it would still be impossible to deduce anything about subsequent periods, for in a democratic nation, each new generation is a new people. In such a nation, it is therefore difficult to subject literature to strict rules and almost impossible to subject it to permanent ones."

>>18472248
Only fags care about this dead cunt's opinions.
Democracy and industrial revolution invented internet and we are all right now shitposting on the internet because we like it so shut the fuck up.

>>18473726
Cope.

>>18472482
You're in no position to talk of spamming or being constantly online when you bump this thread like clockwork the second it reaches page 10 for a week straight. Yes, you're on 24/7, seemingly never even sleeping, replying to yourself to simulate conversation. It's pathetic.

>>18474583
Cringe samefag.

B

>>18472248
Is this supposed to be a bad thing?

>>18476082
What's good about it?

In aristocratic threads Tocqueville is posted relentlessly.
In democratic threads this one faggot reeees repeatedly.

Based

>>18472248
>The ever-growing multitude of readers and their constant need for novelty ensure that even books that readers hold in low esteem will sell.
How did he know?

>>18472403
I'm trans btw

>>18477387
what are some books like that?

>>18472248
>>18473284
>strict laws will soon be applied to works of the mind, and no deviation from these laws will be tolerated
And why exactly is that desirable? Just because some faggot leans on ancient laws of writing as a crutch won't make him a good writer.

>a certain delicacy of mind and heart leads them to banish from their very pleasures anything that might be too unusual or too intense
Oh no, unsual writing! Intense writing even! The horror!

>Democratic literatures are always crawling with authors who see literature as nothing more than an industry, and for every great writer there are thousands of retailers of ideas
So he does concede that there are great writers coming out of democracies, only that they are rare? What then is the point of his rant? After all the aristocratic writer is rare, too, by virtue of there being only few aristocrats to begin with. That's even part of his own argument. It would seem to follow that the number of great writers is about equal in any society, but democracies produce a slew of "retailers of ideas" on top of that. No harm done then? Just ignore the retailers if you dislike them so much.

But arguing these particular assertions is almost besides the point. Even if Tocqueville was actually right on the money with his spicy hot takes, what does it matter? Should literature just exist so that a small circle of carefree nobles can jack each other off while their subjects toil in ignorance and misery? Fuck that. I'd rather sacrifice all the great literature created by nobles if it sets free the peasants to pursue their own literary interests. Fuck the parasitic rent seeking nobility and let them hang from the lamp posts.

I like how de Tocqueville uses the words "democracy" as the counter to "aristocracy" when in reality it's more or less capitalism versus feudalism.

Literally everything he says in Democracy in America that he considers a good thing about the United States is more or less a direct result of feudal aristocracy being abolished.

>>18478084
>capitalism versus feudalism
Definitely not.

>>18478066
>Fuck the parasitic rent seeking nobility and let them hang from the lamp posts.
Ahh,yes,this is purest example of ''seethe''

>>18478687
This is the end result of said "seethe"

>>18478687
Renting is pretty evil.
You don’t live there, it’s not yours. Simple
You did nothing, you get no money for that. Simple.

>>18478066
>And why exactly is that desirable?
Because it crafts a common identity of customs and traditions in a craft, identifying reliable tried and true methods to create competent literature that have been used in the past. Modern retards believe too much in "experimentation" and "unorthodox" creation of art but in the end we know that for a fact it only creates impenetrable, inaccessible, insufferable drivel. Only rarely developing something of wroth.

>Just because some faggot leans on ancient laws of writing as a crutch won't make him a good writer.
Then he shouldn't even write

>After all the aristocratic writer is rare, too, by virtue of there being only few aristocrats to begin with
He's obviously speaking proportionate to population you subhuman imbecile.

>No harm done then? Just ignore the retailers if you dislike them so much.
If those are the majority of the people producing a certain craft, the craft becomes synonymous with their techniques, styles and abilities. It downgrades the work, the art or medium itself, to the level of the people mostly working in it, and lowers the quality standards considerably. Look at what passes as literature nowadays, YA, shitty science fiction and fantasy, endless hordes of bottom feeders trying to create the next cash grab Harry Potter or 50 Shades of Grey. Where are our great literary thinkers? Fucking Jordan Peters and Zizek.

>Should literature just exist so that a small circle of carefree nobles can jack each other off while their subjects toil in ignorance and misery?
Literature should exist so that people can create great art in the form of fictional allegorical storytelling. If they are incapable of doing something well then they shouldn't do it at all, as not to reduce the general quality and dignity of an art form with their inadequacy, this going for both the layman and the aristocrat. And as writing is a technical craft like any art, one that requires learning and training to master, the layman is much more likely to be incapable.

>I'd rather sacrifice all the great literature created by nobles if it sets free the peasants to pursue their own literary interests
"I'm such a Joan of Arc hero of the downtrodden and oppressed, I would destroy all of literature so that more trash and drivel can be produced, just so that more poor people can write books, as being rich is a measure of moral inferiority once you are an economic illiterate who thinks the economy is a zero sum game and can't deal with their own inadequacies."

>Fuck the parasitic rent seeking nobility
"Mommy, they want me to pay rent to live in someone else's fucking property! That is evil and mean!"

Fucking faggot through and through, Tocqueville was right. Mediocrity will only bring further mediocrity, lowering the bar to bring only trash into trash.

>>18478799
>Power-seeking political power players who used criminal factions to rob and kill the poor en masse to obtain power over the country will vindicate us against the rich meanies!

Born to be mass of maneuver and proud of it

>>18478827
The average upper class cracker in an industrialized first world country discovering that mommy and daddy wont live forever and that they will have to work to make money, seething that they can't just live in someone else's property for free

>>18478868
Land isn’t your property. You can’t own Earth. It owns you.

>>18478886
>Y-y-y-you can't because I s-s-said so!

>>18478891
The only reason it’s allowed and honored is brainwashing and cowardliness.
But you, a lowly renter or a neet in his mom’s basement, defend it because the bullies enforce it.

>>18478868
How can a man sneer at those who don't want to work, yet defend the practices of those who don't want to work and then extract rent from those who are forced to work, without experiencing cognitive dissonance?

>>18478907
It's not as if it is the natural order of humanity to extract the elements of nature and the planet around us in order to enhance human life, from animal flesh to water to mining to wood to all sorts of things. We build and improve upon the world by extracting and owning everything we can, but apparently we can't own plots of land because some first world baby who was given every resource to succeed is economically fucked and can not deal with how inadequate they are, seething and coping through reality rejecting ideologies.

>you, a lowly renter or a neet in his mom’s basement, defend it because the bullies enforce it.
>Why don't you perceive yourself as a victim at the hands of one-dimensional omnipotent villains that are stepping on you, and instead defend basic natural and logical human behaviors?
Because I'm not a defective creature resorting to self-preservation instincts to reject reality and cope with my own inability.

>>18478932
By understanding the very nature of property, natural law and providence of services. Also because if somebody owns a property to rent they have produced value as to receive money as to buy that property. Thus, work has been involved at some point.

>>18478933
Eating of the trees and resting in the shade isn’t the same as forcing “rent” situations.
>plots of land
So the executives at Monsanto are perfectly legit in the corporate food supply scheme and they have the right to use whatever pesticides they want no matter how dangerous.
That the board at blackrock can buy up land in multiple states and jack the prices up even though there’s a homeless crisis and a jobs crisis.

You’re an idiot for accepting this artificiality as reality

>>18478944
>inherit house without ever doing anything useful in your life
>extract money from those who need it for shelter, continue do to nothing
>pay a little of that money to people for maintaining the house, continue to do nothing
>the people living in the house work, the people maintaining it work, the one who owns it never worked at all
>yet he's still not a parasite
This is your brain on licking too many boots.
And don't forget the jumping off point for this conversation is the nobility. Which means not even the ancestors of the heir ever put in any productive work into house from which they extract rent. In all likelihood the ancestors were bandits with swords who simply forced the inhabitants of the house to pay rent or else.

>>18478963
>Eating of the trees
>Guys we can just frolic through nature eating from the trees, who needs agriculture?

>So the executives at Monsanto are perfectly legit [...]
>Guys big meanies can use this one thing to do many evil deeds, we must not have this mode of property ownership because of that

It's like saying that bitcoin shouldn't exist because mean criminals can use it, or that box cutters should be illegal so that people don't kill their spouse with it someday.

>>18478980
Fucking knew it, was even going to acknowledge it in the previous one but thought it was not worth it. If a person has a piece of property and they decide to leave it for their children that is their right, they do whatever they want with their things, it is none of your business no matter how much you seethe about it. You are a pathetic child flouncing in the sandbox, comparing yourself to every other kid who has a toy you don't, holding your breath and screaming.

Someone happens to own a piece of property that is theirs, you DO NOT have a right to access it unless you pay no matter how entitled you have become from an extremely pampered upbringing. What you're gonna do, cry like a literal fucking child that this is unfair? That it is unfair that someone else has things and you don't? And act as if it is an act of moral inferiority that another person is allowing you to access their property in a mutually agreed contract for money?

>Which means not even the ancestors of the heir ever put in any productive work
>Man I wonder why we even have infrastructure and an economy superior to this of Ghana and a military to avoid invasions, but these government people ain't doing nothing

>>18478853
>A degenerate faggot on a furry porn website is whining about the cultural degeneracy
Braindead faggot retard

>>18479065
>m-muh property rights
>nobody is allowed to question how and where i got my wealth reeeeeeeeeeeeee
Absolutely spooked. But so are idiots who actually pay rent rather than kill the proprietor.

>>18478066
>greatest work of history in modern times
>rant
You answered all your own questions.

>>18478984
Bad faith and irresponsible arguing. It’s as if you were raised by crocodiles

>>18479065
>parasites are valuable because sometimes they have to fight off invasions from other parasites of the exact same nature
Do statists really?

>>18479177
I guess you can say I answered their call

>>18478066
His argument is that aristocratic society will elevate everyone to the highest. And he is not uncritical of the aristocracy, as he warns that the danger is when the aristocracy sets itself entirely apart from the people.

In terms of literature this results in vulgarity and a type of aristocratic jargon.

>>18479226
To no greater purpose :3

>>18478853
Regarding property and renting, Schmitt is helpful

"Confusion and lack of clarity arise easily through the combination of an ideal concept of constitution with other concepts of the constitution or through the linkage of diverse ideals of the constitution. When parties with contradictory opinions and convictions achieve political influence, they express their political power by giving concrete content to the concepts of state life, such as freedom, justice, public order, and security, all of which are necessarily undefined. It is self-evident that “freedom” in the sense of a bourgeois social order resting on private property means something other than a state dominated by a socialistic proletariat, that the same circumstance which appeared in a monarchy as “endangerment of the public peace, security, and order” would be judged differently in a democratic republic, etc. For the manner of expression characteristic of bourgeois liberalism, there is a constitution only when private property and personal freedom are ensured. Everything else is despotism, dictatorship, tyranny, slavery, or whatever the designations may be, not a “constitution.” For a consistently Marxist perspective, on the contrary, a constitution that recognizes the principles of the bourgeois Rechtsstaat, those concerning private property in particular, is either the constitution of an economically and technically backward state or a reactionary sham constitution, a meaningless juristic façade concealing the dictatorship of the capitalists. Take another example. In terms of a logically consistent “secularization,” which is a state with a strict separation of church and state, a state that does not maintain this separation is not free. On the contrary, for a certain type of confessional and religious conviction, a state only has a true constitution when it respects the social and economic property position of the church, guarantees the free public activity and self-determination of the church, and protects its institutions as a part of the public order, etc. Only then will the church concede that one can speak of “freedom.” For this reason, there are just as many possible concepts of freedom and constitution as there are political principles and convictions."

>>18479323
Where marxists see a dictatorship of the capitalists, what is really happening is the institution of bourgeois law. Private property law, and so renting, is really only an intermediary of the social state law which paradoxically sees the state itself as a private man.

The danger is quite opposite to oppression and exploitation however, as the tendency of bourgeois law is towards sterility. Tocqueville also discusses this in terms of the equalization of property which creates a restlessness and estate conflict of the most meagre benefits.

In a sense, property and renting takes the place of service and inheritance. In a great state a central order of law and wealth will counsel the actions of men. This leads to a much more subtle, but also powerful, type of freedom. Which is why even the slave in the old societies may have greater dignity than the richest private man of the Right's State.
The slave contributes to the highest order, and is in some way a recipient of the whole inherited wealth. A wealth of being rather than having.

>>18472248
Based tocquevillefag

Mandatory reading

"In democracies, it is by no means the case that everyone who is concerned with literature has received a literary education, and most of the people who do acquire some tincture of belles-lettres go into politics or embrace a profession that allows them only stolen moments to savor the pleasures of the mind. Hence they regard these pleasures not as the principal charm of their existence but as a fleeting if necessary relaxation from the serious business of life. Such men can never acquire a knowledge of the literary art deep enough to appreciate its delicacies; the little nuances escape them. Having only a very limited time to devote to literature, they want every moment to be profitable. They like books that can be obtained easily and read quickly and that do not require scholarly research to be understood. They insist on facile beauties that yield of their own accord and can be enjoyed immediately. Above all they require surprise and novelty. Habituated to practical life, to competition and monotony, they have need of intense and rapid emotions, sudden illuminations, and glaring truths or errors to wrench them out of their own lives and plunge them instantly and almost violently into the heart of the subject."

>>18479626
Wagecuckoldry eats away a man's soul, yes. But the goal must then not be to write off the wagecuck as a lost cause, but to improve his material condition such that he gets a fair shot at truly devoting himself to literature if that may be his calling.

>>18479781
>material condition
Yikes

>>18479835
Yes, material condition, you cum gargling faggot. What do you think Tocqueville is talking about when he rhapsodizes that "these men have never been obliged to concern themselves with material things" or "the men I am speaking of begin and end their lives in comfort or wealth"? It's their material condition that allows them to delve into literature, since they need not concern themselves with the daily grind for survival which consumes most thoughts of the wagecuck.

>>18479885
So where is the great neet lit?

>>18479930
Right here.
And all the aristocrats whose works Tocqueville admires must be NEETs by definition, the way he describes them, so they count too.

>>18479626
"Need I say more? Who cannot guess what is to follow?

Taken as a whole, the literature of democratic centuries cannot present the image of order, regularity, knowledge, and art that literature exhibits in aristocratic times. Form will usually be neglected and occasionally scorned. Style will frequently seem bizarre, incorrect, exaggerated, or flaccid and almost always seem brazen and vehement. Authors will aim for rapidity of execution rather than perfection of detail. Short texts will be more common than long books, wit more common than erudition, and imagination more common than depth. An uncultivated, almost savage vigor will dominate thought, whose products will frequently exhibit a very great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will seek to astonish rather than to please and to engage the passions rather than beguile taste."

We need Anti-grifter Surrealism

>>18474583
Still waiting for your threads.

>>18472353
>>18472389
>>18472813
>>18474583
Jannies hate him.
Reddit hates him.
Tradlarps hate him.
Tankies hate him.
Trannies really hate him.
Tedfags hate him.

Is Tocqueville the most based man to ever exist?

>>18480893
God's work

>>18478984
>It's like saying that bitcoin shouldn't exist because mean criminals can use it
And you disagree? Bitcoin offers nothing beneficial except acting as a ponzi get rich quick scheme.

>>18479105
>>18479209
>simplistic reductive one line quips
Cope.

>>18479954
Welcome to the NHK sucks ass friend. PunPun, Lain, and Evangelion are pseud trash too.

>>18479954
What is it? I don't look at anime?

>>18481084
'Welcome to the NHK' is originally a novel, written by a bone fide NEET who went off the deep end.

If Tocquevillefag wrote a twitter novel I'd buy it.

>>18480749
For me its Hypergrift Ultrarealism.

>>18481016
Bitcoin solves inflation and poverty.

>>18472248
Bros, why is he so based?

Is this the thread?

>>18472248
Brainlet take

>>18478980
To be honest, that isn't really too different from welfare recipient, he just doesn't inherit the house, and obviously he doesn't work or maintain the house/apartment and is a parasite.

>>18483902
Nice try

>>18479626
>Above all they require surprise and novelty. Habituated to practical life, to competition and monotony, they have need of intense and rapid emotions, sudden illuminations, and glaring truths or errors to wrench them out of their own lives and plunge them instantly and almost violently into the heart of the subject."
Based

>>18472248
you will never be a nobleman

Hey leftoids, you ever think of just shutting up?
It's not the world's fault you're an untalented nobody, indistinguishable from the millions of others who grift in the megalopolis, bitter and resentful that you could never attain the heroic deeds you despise the aristocrats for. Your bitterness and resentment toward others is directly correlated to your inability to achieve in life.

>>18485166
Massive projection complex

>>18485187
Please re-read :)

>>18485003
Already am.

>>18481115
What's it about?

>>18483902
Explain.

>>18472604
>There is hardly a pioneer hut in which the odd volume of Shakespeare cannot be found. I remember reading the feudal drama Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
Based

>>18473726
cringe

>>18478827
>Renting is pretty evil.
kek no

>>18478886
>You can’t own Earth
Yes, you can.

>>18479105
why do leftie zoomies hate rent so much lmao just pay, faggot.

>>18481395
How?

>>18485187
That struck a nerve, didn't it? You leftie city rat.

Tocqueville answered the landlord question.

"It is important to note that democratic laws have a powerful tendency to increase the number of landowners and decrease the number of tenant farmers. Yet what is happening in the United States must be attributed not so much to the country’s institutions as to the country itself. In America, land costs little, and anyone can easily become a land owner. It also yields little, so that it would be difficult to divide the product between landlord and farmer.

America is therefore unique in this as in other respects, and it would be a mistake to take it as an example.

As I see it, land owners and farmers are found in democratic countries as well as in aristocracies, but the bond between them is not the same.
In aristocracies, rents are paid not only in money but also in respect, affection, and services. In democratic countries, they are paid only in cash. When patrimonies are divided and change hands, and the permanent relation that existed between families and the land disappears, contact between landlord and tenant becomes a matter of chance. They come together briefly to discuss the terms of their contract and then lose sight of each other. They are two strangers bro ught together by self-interest, who engage in a rigorous discussion about a business deal in which the sole subject is money."

>>18488011
"As properties are divided and wealth is dispersed across the country, the state fills with people whose former opulence is in decline and with the newly rich, whose needs grow more rapidly than their resources. For all of these people, the smallest profit is a matter of consequence, and none of them feels inclined to let any advantage slip through his fingers or to forgo any portion of his income.

As ranks become indistinguishable and very great as well as very small fortunes become increasingly rare, the distance between the social condition of the landlord and that of the tenant farmer decreases daily. There is no natural and union-tested superiority of one over the other. Now, between two men who are equal and neither of whom is well off, what could the basis of a rental contract be if not money?

A man whose property comprises an entire district and who owns a hundred tenant farms understands that his goal must be to win the hearts of several thousand men simultaneously. This strikes him as a goal worthy of effort, and to attain such an important objective he is ready to make sacrifices.

The man who owns a hundred acres is not encumbered by such worries. It is of little importance to him whether he has the private good will of his tenant or not."

>>18479105
>I would like to live in this building.
>OK. It will cost a monthly fee.
>You must die now.

>>18488023
"An aristocracy does not die as a man does, in one day. Its principle decays slowly in the depths of the soul before being attacked by laws. Thus long before war breaks out against it, we witness a gradual loosening of the bond that had previously united the upper classes with the lower. Indifference and contempt betray themselves on one side, jealousy and hatred on the other. Relations between the poor man and the rich become more infrequent and less temperate; the price of a lease rises. This is not yet a result of democratic revolution, but it is a sure harbinger of one. For an aristocracy that allows the heart of the people to slip through its fingers for good is like a tree whose roots have died, and the taller it is, the easier for the wind to topple it.

Over the past fifty years, farm rents have risen dramatically, not only in France but throughout much of Europe. The striking advances made by agriculture and industry during the same period are not enough, in my view, to explain this phenomenon. Some other cause, more powerful but more hidden, must be responsible. I believe that that cause should be sought in the democratic institutions that several European nations have adopted and in the democratic passions that have to one extent or another agitated all the others.

In recent years I have often heard great English landlords announce with pride that their estates yield much more money now than they did in their fathers’ day.

They may be right to rejoice, but they certainly do not know what it is they are rejoicing about. They think they are making a clear profit, but in fact they are only making an exchange. They are surrendering their influence in return for hard cash, and what they gain in money, they will soon forfeit in power."

>>18473726
>democracy invented internet
What the actual fuck are you on?

>>18489207
Cope. We all voted the internet into existence.

>>18489902
The internet doesn't actually exist, we are just ants in various ant farms

>>18472248
Wont aristocracies simply choose and co-opt literature that suits them? It is no guarantee of quality.

>>18489902
Woah

>>18488036
>They may be right to rejoice, but they certainly do not know what it is they are rejoicing about. They think they are making a clear profit, but in fact they are only making an exchange. They are surrendering their influence in return for hard cash, and what they gain in money, they will soon forfeit in power.
Refute this.

>>18485187
:3

>>18478047
Plenty of shitty "New York Times Bestseller" books to the point the title means absolutely nothing.

>>18496440
nyt bestseller doesn’t mean the book is actually a bestseller, and the people buying those books probably don’t hold them in «low esteem»

did Tocqueville talk about singular people having aristocratic sensibilities in the age of democracy?

>>18478084
>I like how de Tocqueville uses the words "democracy" as the counter to "aristocracy" when in reality it's more or less capitalism versus feudalism.

for me the counter of aristocracy is oligarchy, so the democractic man should be translated as the oligarch man

>>18488036
>They may be right to rejoice, but they certainly do not know what it is they are rejoicing about. They think they are making a clear profit, but in fact they are only making an exchange. They are surrendering their influence in return for hard cash, and what they gain in money, they will soon forfeit in power."

i don´t understand this, which influence are they losing?

>>18499557
Higher laws, their strength and sovereignty. Perhaps a similar argument to Plato: that economy is the lowest of all virtues.

>>18499715
i mean doesn´t make sense, the King in England didn´t had absolute powers since after Queen Elizabeth, if there´s no king, how come there can be a Aristocratic law? the Parlamentarians had the control, sure you can say that they were also aristocrats but they were the ones who gave the Voting Rights to the common people in the early 20th century

>>18499726
Well it can be understood as the decline of the aristocracy, which could take time to complete, or even occurs over a long period before a democratic revolution.
It is something you can think of more generally, as with the desire for high art: even though the aristocracy is officially abolished this desire remains as part of aristocratic values.

When Tocqueville was writing there was still a strong sense of aristocracy in some people. The monarchy remained, if only as a formality. However, this does not mean the common people cannot have noble or aristocratic values. The strongest nation could exist in a state of democracy or even anarchy without a decline in values - they would perhaps even be strengthened.
Although this is a rare case. As Rousseau said, it is a type of government reserved for gods.

But more simply, in regards to his comment, he is discussing the decline of the aristocracy into mere formalism, or its last breaths. They do not realise themselves they are in decline and have traded values for money contracts.
This decline began well before the revolution. The aristocracy and nobility created the very cultural and technical installations that would be used against them in the revolution.

>>18500482
>This decline began well before the revolution. The aristocracy and nobility created the very cultural and technical installations that would be used against them in the revolution.

seems like it´s in the nature for aristocracies to have suicidal tendencies, the question is why? i´ve heard from moldbug that monarchy ceased to exist because even the monarchs didn´t want to rule anymore