CHAPTER TEN
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE AND DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE WAS a French thinker and philosopher who lived from 1805 to 1859, and was greatly influenced by Montesquieu. He wrote Democracy in America, which actually combines two volumes—the first written in 1835 and the second written in 1840—based on his travels around America. Whereas Locke and Montesquieu, among others, provided the essential intellectual guidance to America’s Founders and Framers, Tocqueville’s insightful observations about democracy, and particularly the American Republic, several decades after its establishment, are prescient predictions about both the strengths of the American character as well as the allure and peril of what I broadly and repeatedly describe as utopianism.
VOLUME I
Tocqueville wrote, “Many important observations suggest themselves upon the social condition of the Anglo-Americans; but there is one that takes precedent of all the rest. The social condition of the Americans is eminently democratic; this was its character at the foundation of the colonies, and it is still more strongly marked at the present day.”1
He observed, “In America the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence on the course of affairs. The democratic principle, on the contrary, has gained so much strength by time, by events, and by legislation, as to have become not only predominant, but all-powerful. No family or corporate authority can be perceived; very often one cannot even discover in it any very lasting individual influence” (I, 52–53).
In America, Tocqueville saw equality, properly comprehended—that is, in the context of inalienable rights—and as practiced nowhere else. “America, then, exhibits in her social state an extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has perceived the remembrance” (I, 53).
Tocqueville explained, however, that the danger threatening yet motivating most societies is the miscomprehension of equality, resulting in their descent into centralized tyranny. Rather than embracing equality as a condition of natural law and inalienable rights, which underlie a free and diverse society, equality is misapplied politically in the form of radical egalitarianism and to promote equal social and economic outcomes. “There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. Not that those nations whose social condition is democratic naturally despise liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and, if they miss their aim, resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would rather perish than lose it.…” (I, 53–54)
But the strength of the sovereignty of the American people, Tocqueville argued, helps arrest the usual and historic rise of tyranny. He explained: “The Anglo-Americans are the first nation who, having been exposed to this formidable alternative, have been happy enough to escape the dominion of absolute power. They have been allowed by their circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and especially by their morals to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the people” (I, 54).
Tocqueville added that for Americans, the sovereignty of the people is deep-rooted and widespread. By this he meant that Americans have a say in, and are actively involved in, all aspects of their society. The sovereignty of the people includes their influence over their government, but it is bigger than that. It resonates throughout the culture. It is a mind-set. “Whenever the political laws of the United States are to be discussed, it is with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people that we must begin.… In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as it is with some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote consequences. If there is a country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in its application to the affairs of society, and where its dangers and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America” (I, 55).
The American society—the personality of its people and their spirit—is everywhere. It is vibrant and ingrained. America’s government is not coercive or repressive, Tocqueville argued, because it reflects and respects the temperament and disposition of the people, including their traditions, customs, experiences, and mores. The people would tolerate no less. “In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society governs itself for itself. All power centers in its bosom, and scarcely an individual is to be met with who would venture to conceive or, still less, to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate. The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them” (I, 58).
Consequently, Tocqueville observed, the American government is nothing like the governments in Europe, where the latter governments are central to European societies and lord over them, where their societies are formed and directed by their governments, and where their histories and experiences are far different in that they include life under tyrannies. In America, the government is innocuous and dispersed—that is, society does not evolve around the government. “Nothing is more striking to a European traveler in the United States than the absence of what we term the government, or the administration. Written laws exist in America, and one sees the daily execution of them; but although everything moves regularly, the mover can nowhere be discovered. The hand that directs the social machine is invisible. Nevertheless, as all persons must have recourse to certain grammatical forms, which are the foundation of human language, in order to express their thoughts; so all communities are obliged to secure their existence by submitting to a certain amount of authority, without which they fall into anarchy. This authority may be distributed in several ways, but it must always exist somewhere.…” (I, 70) “The administrative power in the United States presents nothing either centralized or hierarchical in its constitution; this accounts for its passing unperceived. The power exists, but its representative is nowhere to be seen” (I, 71).
Tocqueville observed that the shape of the American government, especially and prominently its decentralization of governmental authority, was designed with forethought and intended to preserve and secure the existing American society. “Division of authority between the Federal government and the states—The government of the states is the rule, the Federal government the exception.… The obligation and the claims of the Federal government were simple and easily definable because the Union had been formed with the express purpose of meeting certain great general wants; but the claims and obligations of the individual states, on the other hand, were complicated and various because their government had penetrated into all the details of social life. The attributes of t
he Federal government were therefore carefully defined, and all that was not included among them was declared to remain to the governments of the several states. Thus the government of the states remained the rule, and that of the confederation was the exception” (I, 114–15).
Notwithstanding the authority of federal courts to decide disputes between the federal and state governments, Tocqueville concluded that federal judges were well aware of the limits placed on the federal government vis-à-vis the states. “It is true, the Constitution had laid down the precise limits of the Federal supremacy; but whenever this supremacy is contested by one of the states, a Federal tribunal decides the question. Nevertheless, the dangers with which the independence of the states is threatened by this mode of proceeding are less serious than they appear to be.… [I]n America the real power is vested in the states far more than the Federal government” (I, 143). Therefore, Tocqueville argued, federal judges would refrain from abusing their public trust by remaining faithful to the original intent of the Framers and the federal government’s constitutional limits. He wrote, “The Federal judges are conscious of the relative weakness of the power in whose name they act; and they are more inclined to abandon the right of jurisdiction in cases where the law gives it to them than to assert a privilege to which they have no legal claim” (I, 143). The point being that while federal judges are of the federal government, they are not detached from the character of American society, the history of the founding, and the purposes of the Constitution. Hence, if federal judges are virtuous, they are not a threat to the society for they will not use their positions to aggrandize the federal government and their own roles. In essence, Tocqueville is restating Montesquieu’s case respecting representative government. Montesquieu wrote that “in a popular state there must be an additional spring, which is VIRTUE.… [I]n a popular government when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can come only from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost” (1, 3, 3). Montesquieu added, “There are two sorts of tyranny: a real one, which consists in the violence of the government, and one of opinion, which is felt when those who govern establish things that run counter to a nation’s way of thinking” (3, 19, 3). For Tocqueville, tyranny of the judiciary was alien to American society.
Tocqueville marveled at America’s seemingly endless hurdles to despotism. In addition to America’s historical repudiation of, and foundational limits on, centralized governmental power, manifested, for the most part, in the official behavior of those holding federal office, the obstacles to democratic tyranny, where a majority or faction of the population might seek to impose its will on the whole society, appeared a very difficult undertaking. “In the American republics the central government has never as yet busied itself except with a small number of objects, sufficiently prominent to attract its attention. The secondary affairs of society have never been regulated by its authority; and nothing has hitherto betrayed its desire of even interfering in them. The majority has become more and more absolute, but has not increased the prerogatives of the central government; those great prerogatives have been confined to a certain sphere; and although the despotism of the majority may be galling upon one point, it cannot be said to extend to all” (I, 271).
Besides, argued Tocqueville, the American people will not abide democratic despotism, and the federal government has no way to administratively impose it on the multiplicity of diverse governmental institutions that would resist its enforcement. Therefore it is unlikely to descend to such rule. “However the predominant party in the nation may be carried away by its passions, however ardent it may be in the pursuit of its project, it cannot oblige all the citizens to comply with its desires in the same manner and at the same time throughout the country. When the central government which represents that majority has issued a decree, it must entrust the execution of its will to agents over whom it frequently has no control and whom it cannot perpetually direct. The townships, municipal bodies, and counties form so many concealed breakwaters, which check or part the popular determination. If an oppressive law were passed, liberty would still be protected by the mode of executing the law; the majority cannot descend to the details and what may be called the puerilities of administrative tyranny. It does not even imagine that it can do so, for it has not a full consciousness of its authority. It knows only the extent of its natural powers, but is unacquainted with the art of increasing them” (I, 271 and 272). Tocqueville appears to concur with James Madison and the Federalists, less so with Montesquieu and the Anti-Federalists, that America’s vast territory and diverse communities would strengthen a state-centric republican form of government, making consolidation of governmental power more difficult. However, he was also insistent, as was Montesquieu and all of the most consequential Founders and Framers, on the imperative of federalism.
Tocqueville explained more than once, however, that America’s history and experiences are unique. “This point deserves attention; for if a democratic republic, similar to that of the United States, were ever founded in a country where the power of one man had previously established a centralized administration and had sunk it deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert that in such a republic a more insufferable despotism would prevail than in any of the absolute monarchies of Europe; or, indeed, than any that could be found on this side of Asia” (I, 272).
VOLUME II
Again, Tocqueville warned against the despotism of politically misapplied or imposed equality of social and economic conditions and results. “[T]he vices which despotism produces are precisely those which equality fosters. These two things perniciously complete and assist each other. Equality places men side by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder; the former predisposes them not to consider their fellow creatures, the latter makes general indifference a sort of public virtue” (II, 102).
Tocqueville lauded the American system as antithetical to radical egalitarianism, for it limits federal intervention to certain general matters of national consequence and leaves to local decision-making the countless minor affairs of communities. However, he also distinguished centralized government and egalitarianism from the common interests, shared values, and regular interactions that make “a people.” Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans have combated by free institutions the tendency of equality to keep men asunder, and they have subdued it. The legislators of America did not suppose that a general representation of the whole nation would suffice to ward off a disorder at once so natural to the frame of democratic society and so fatal; they also thought that it would be well to infuse political life into each portion of the territory in order to multiply to an infinite extent opportunities of acting in concert for all the members of the community and to make them constantly feel their mutual dependence. The plan was a wise one. The general affairs of a country engage the attention only of leading politicians, who assemble from time to time in the same places; and as they often lose sight of each other afterwards, no lasting ties are established between them. But if the object be to have the local affairs of a district conducted by the men who reside there, the same persons are always in contact, and they are, in a manner, forced to be acquainted and to adapt themselves to one another” (II, 103). Moreover, local decision-making binds citizens together within communities, for they are more attentive and active in the affairs that directly affect them and the well-being of their neighbors. “Thus far more may be done by entrusting to the citizens the administration of minor affairs than by surrendering them in the public welfare and convincing them that they constantly stand in need of one another in order to provide for it.… Local freedom, then, which leads a great number of citizens to value the affection of their neighbors and of their kindred, perpetually brings men together and forces them to help one another in spite of the propensities that sever them” (II, 104).
While rightly decrying the despotism of radical egalitarianism, Tocqueville also recognized that the
American economic system—with its voluntary commercial interactions and the individual’s right to acquire and retain property—creates more wealth and opportunity for more people than any other system. Indeed, in America, there are no permanent social or economic classes condemning people to a life of poverty or ensuring for others great wealth for all time. As such, the American economic system encourages success and discourages as self-defeating the plundering of the successful. “I am aware that among a great democratic people there will always be some members of the community in great poverty and others in great opulence; but the poor, instead of forming the immense majority of the nation, as is always the case in aristocratic communities, are comparatively few in number, and the laws do not bind them together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury.… As there is no longer a race of poor men, so there is no longer a race of rich men; the latter spring up daily from the multitude and relapse into it again. Hence, they do not form a distinct class which may be easily marked out and plundered; and, moreover, as they are connected with the mass of their fellow citizens by a thousand secret ties, the people cannot assail them without inflicting an injury upon themselves” (II, 252).
Tocqueville observed that in America, the vast majority of people are neither poor nor rich, they desire but are not obsessed with becoming rich, and they are loyal to a stable yet free system in which they are able to benefit and have a financial stake. “Between the two extremes of democratic communities stands an innumerable multitude of men almost alike, who, without being exactly either rich or poor, possess sufficient property to desire the maintenance of order, yet not enough to excite envy. Such men are the natural enemies of violent commotions; their lack of agitation keeps all beneath them and above them still and secures the balance of the fabric of society. Not, indeed, that even these men are contented with what they have got or that they feel a natural abhorrence for a revolution in which they might share the spoil without sharing the calamity; on the contrary, they desire, with unexampled ardor, to get rich, but the difficulty is to know from whom riches can be taken. The same state of society that constantly prompts desires, restrains these desires within necessary limits; it gives men more liberty of changing, and less interest in change. Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property; but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property; not only do they possess property, but they live in the condition where men set the greatest store upon their property” (II, 252–53). In essence, the pursuit and acquisition of private property is crucial to the maintenance of the civil society.