Essay

When Tocqueville got to have his say, the situation for workers was dire. They would put a person to work on the same task day in and day out, until that was all that person could do. And with no chance for promotion, and no hope for ever getting out. However, this is no longer the case. Nowadays there is still an aristocracy, but it is a reformed one. Now workers can spend many years doing the same task, but there is hope for promotion, and because of the further division of labor, even when they are still stuck doing their job, they can do things after work that will keep their mind active and prevent stagnation.
In the days of old, you were assigned a particular job, and unless you had some great wealth or influence, you would likely be assigned the position that no one else wanted. The people who manufactured the very base essentials of society. A society which considered itself so “reformed”, yet could not exist without the continual effort and destruction of the factory worker. Destruction of their mind, destruction of their spirit, and destruction of any hope they had of being in the society that could not exist without them. But there were those, like Tocquville, who realized this and attempted to at the very least let it be known by future generations what had really happened. And he reported what he saw.
Because of people like Tocqueville, those who saw the darker, more sinister side of society, we now have made not steps, but leaps of progress. In the post-modern world, for the most part has moved beyond such tyranny. And whenever injustice towards workers begins, reporters will let it be known, people will protest, and something that Tocqueville never lived to see, the workers will organize themselves and go on strike. In effect, it is all but impossible for a true aristocracy to develop, for the inequalities shall never grow large enough to allow such an aristocracy to develop.
This is not to say that it is all rosy. There is still a huge number of people whom are forced to work long hours, at repetitive tasks, for the majority of their lives, and without any hope of promotion. And as was the case in the past, they make up the very most base of our society. These people are the most important part of our society, yet the most ignored, and the least thought about. Many of them live in conditions that we would consider uninhabitable, and lead lives that we would think were unlivable. And the worst part? Their misery is completely our fault. It is our fault that they live hoping that tomorrow will be better. Our fault that they must work with little to no hope of something as simple as retirement. And how is it our fault? Because of our insatiable desire for cheapness in money, no matter what the cost is ethically. Because we continue to buy from the companies that own them, they stay in business. We claim to hate these people's plight, yet we complain whenever prices rise. We claim to be compassionate, yet do nothing as more and more companies buy into the scheme. We care for the people, but we care for ourselves more.
When Alexis De Tocqueville wrote his piece, the aristocracy he saw was terrible. Now, the entire world has succumbed to aristocracy, and is simply made up of democracies. Perhaps this is the ultimate end, for every happiness, there is an equal unhappiness somewhere else. Perhaps all that democracy is simply a Sand-castle. You can build it as big and as complex and as stable as you want to, but it will still be destroyed the next time the tide of aristocracy comes rushing in. if this is not so, then how is it that china, the worlds largest aristocracy has an economy matched by none, and the US, now that it has turned it's economy into a democracy, is now floundering? And just think, when you think about it, the entire world is simply one huge aristocracy, with the first world countries on top, being supported by the third world countries beneath.
I still have hope, however. If the human race can evolve past greed, past all prejudice, then all of this is reversible, and a stable democracy can finally be realized.