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.
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 the 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.
Tocqueville pointed out that in democracies there is a tendency for some who fall on hard times to submit voluntarily to government authority for their sustenance, seeing it as the only way out. However, as their reliance on government becomes more complete, Tocqueville argued, they do so proudly for they are no less considered citizens than those who do not submit to government authority. “As in periods of equality no man is compelled to lend his assistance to his fellow men, and none has any right to expect much support from them, everyone is at once independent and powerless. These two conditions, which must never be either separately considered or confounded together, inspire the citizen of a democratic country with very contrary propensities. His independence fills him with self-reliance and pride among his equals; his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of some outward assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them, because they are all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament he naturally turns his eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of universal depression. Of that power his wants and especially his desires continually remind him, until he ultimately views it as the sole and necessary support of his own weakness. This may more completely explain what frequently takes place in democratic countries, where the very men who are so impatient of superiors patiently submit to a master, exhibiting at once their pride and their servility” (II, 294–95).
Even more, Tocqueville explained in greater detail that the tyranny that most endangers free societies is a soft tyranny. It is the gradual imposition of and acquiescence to radical egalitarianism, which is disguised as democratic and administrative utilitarianism. It is the belief in the infinite ability and capacity of elected officials to perfect life and in a vast, neutral administrative state to ensure its proper regulation. Tocqueville wrote, “Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger, but these crises will be rare and brief. When I consider the petty passions of our contemporaries, the mildness of their manners, the extent of their education, and purity of their religion, the gentleness of their morality, their regular and industrious habits, and the restraint which they almost all observe in their vices no less than in their virtues, I have no fear that they will meet tyrants in their rulers, but rather with their guardians” (II, 317–18).
He wrote further, “I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it” (II, 318). Actually, it may be different or novel in the particulars of its evolution and form, but the species is generally known. It is utopianism.
Tocqueville described a nation in which the civil society collapses. He wrote, “I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country” (II, 318).
With the people denuded of spirit and exceptionality, dependent on the government for their welfare, the democracy gradually transitions into a powerful administrative state. “Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits” (II, 318–19).
Tocqueville went on to portray the amorphousness and insatiableness of the administrative state, as it corrals, prods, and directs the individual at will in nearly all aspects of life, where existence becomes bleak and dark. “After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd” (II, 319).
Tocqueville then made the profound observation that this dreary existence is accepted by the people, for they go through the motions of electing their guardians, deluding themselves that they and their fellow citizens remain free for they participate in self-government. However, as the administrative state grows, the vote is less effective and the individual is increasingly disenfranchised. “I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people” (II, 319). Elaborating on this point, he wrote, “Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.…” (II, 319)
In the end, Tocqueville explained, what is left is a hollowed-out democracy consumed by administrative absolutism, against which there is little resistance. “Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity” (II, 319–20).
The irony is not lost on Tocqueville. “The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of their rule, and his masters, more than kings and less than men.… It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people” (II, 321).
In America, however, Tocqueville believed he found a different kind of democracy. Although still fraught with challenges and dangers, as Tocqueville warned repeatedly, and requiring the watchful and active resolve of the people, at the core of American society Tocqueville saw a conviction in the sovereignty of the individual and the people generally, unique in world history. Tocqueville observed that of all societies likely to effectively resist the soft tyranny that overtakes democracies, America would be that society. He believed that the American people would not be easily tempted by radical egalitarianism, dispirited, and willingly ruled over by a centralized governing authority, whether the tyranny of a single despot or an elected assembly and its administrative state, even in the unlikely event such an effort should be attempted. The history, traditions, experience, and mores of the American people, and their love of freedom, independence, pride, and self-sufficiency—as well as the breadth and diversity of American society, with its multitude of local governing bodies—would seem to make such an undertaking impracticable if not impossible. Tocqueville noted that the American constitution itself is a document of forethought and purpose, imposing detailed and defined limits and obstacles on the federal government, and beyond them, walling society from it.
Still, Tocqueville knew that the governing despotism of which he wrote, and which can accurately and broadly be characterized as utopianism, is, for free men, living in civil societies, a perpetual and existential threat—even in America. In the end, he wondered if any democracy could withstand it. He concluded that ultimately it is up to the people. They will decide whether they shall be free or not. “I am full of apprehensions and hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off, mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will it.… The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness” (II, 334).