Une autre démocratie en Amérique (1824–1844): Orestes Brownson, un regard politique (Another democracy in America [1824–1844]: Orestes Brownson, a political look)

Abstract

In 1939 the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called Orestes Brownson “an American Marxist before Marx” (“Orestes Brownson: An American Marxist before Marx,” Sewanee Review, July–Sept. 1939, pp. 317–23). This posthumous qualifier derived from Brownson's most famous article “The Laboring Classes,” which stood in favor of a radical reform of the right to property (Boston Quarterly Review, July 1840, pp. 758–95). Almost eighty years after Schlesinger wrote his catchy phrase, the French historian Naomi Wulf revisits Brownson's specific view of democracy by showing how his works offered a critical and theoretical reflection on Jacksonian democracy. Her book goes beyond Brownson's polemical article to encompass the rich body of writings published by this leading intellectual of the Jacksonian era. Wulf elegantly describes Brownson's complex intellectual and social world. Rendering the task more difficult are his changing opinions during his fascinating life. Brownson's evolving views have enabled different and sometimes-conflicting interpretations to be formed—from Schlesinger's “first Marxist” theory to Russel Kirk's belief that the Jacksonian reformer was a consistent conservative. According to Wulf, Brownson's view of a flawed democracy cemented his intellectual journey and led him to promote major economic and educational reforms. Such a reformist creed was accompanied by a desire for a more active federal government, particularly interesting at a time when the national government was mainly “out of sight,” to use the historian Brian Balogh's words (A Government out of Sight, 2009). At the heart of Brownson's arguments was a denunciation of the failure of Andrew Jackson's democratic ideal. Far from Alexis de Tocqueville's contemporaneous celebration in his classic Democracy in America (1835), Brownson's work characterized Jacksonian America as incomplete and far from perfect.