An Outsider Looking In: Alexis de Tocqueville

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An Outsider Looking InAlexis de Tocqueville

• Now in everything the majority holds sway

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Like God over the Universe

• Above all the institutions and beyond all the
  forms, there exists the sovereign power of the
  people which destroys or modifies them at will.
• What are the results of its unbounded force?
• Institutions of govt not only democratic in
  principal but also in consequence (201)

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Types of Parties

• Parties a fundamental defect of free govt
• Large countries with distinct populations united
  under the same government
• Effectively distinct, competing nations under the
  same govt
• If civil war breaks out, it is closer to war
  between nations than a struggle between sections
  of the same country
• Other type when citizens have different opinions
  on matters of interest to the whole country
• Great and small parties (202-204)

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Types of Parties

• Times of crisis, surrounding basic political
  constitution or even an endangered social fabric,
  produce great parties and revolutions
• Open, bold stands for principle rather than petty
  consequence
• Federalist Democratic-Republican
• Federalists created necessary institutions in
  defiance of the leveling spirit of the age
• Ex the US bank. The educated classes favored
  it, but the people sensed (but did not
  understand) an institution they did not control,
  and agitated to destroy it
• Made possible only by great men among their
  number, DRs, more in tune with the spirit of
  their age, quickly came to dominance (202-207)

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Types of Parties

• Between the centuries of misery and disorder
  there are others when societies come to rest amid
  the human race seems to draw breath. In actual
  fact, such times are more apparent than real.
  Time does not arrest its course for nations any
  more than for men, both move forward daily into
  an unknown future. When we think things are
  stationary, it is because we fail to see their
  movements. Men who move at a walking pace appear
  to be stationary to those who are running.
• There are periods when the changes taking place
  in the national constitution and the social
  structure of nations appear so slow and
  imperceptible that men think they have reached a
  final state. The human mind, believing itself to
  be firmly based upon sure foundations, does not
  seek to look beyond its set horizon.
• This is a time of intrigues and small parties.
  (204)

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Types of Parties

• Small parties
• Lack coherent political credo
• Character imbued with selfishness rather than
  ideals
• Violent language, timid and cautious action
• Despicable means
• Where great parties tear the nation apart, small
  parties agitate it
• Times of stability cause great men to seem to
  vanish
• America today has lost the great parties that it
  once had it has gained, as a consequence, much
  happiness, but has lost much moral purpose.
  (203-204)
• Great and small parties products of their social
  and political context
• Responding to environment more than shaping it
• Do we want greatness?

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Types of Parties

• Aristocratic or democratic passions can easily
  be found at the heart of all parties.
• In America, the democratic tide has forced the
  upper class to praise democracy in public, but
  they resent the rule of the masses
• Popular suspicion of the very wealthy
• Careful to appear at one with the people
  publicly, but privately live in aristocratic
  luxury and resent the imposition of democracy
  (207-209)

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Freedom of the Press

• T. is ambivalent about the freedom of the press,
  supports it for the evils it avoids rather than
  the benefits it produces
• Hed prefer some intermediate position between
  complete independence or entire enslavement of
  thought, but what midpoint is there?
• If you try writers by jury and they are
  acquitted, their ideas immediately become popular
• If judges have power over the press, obscure
  texts leap to prominence at trial
• Besides, the press is only the body of the
  thought, not the thought itself
• Thus, effective regulation of the press requires
  regulation of speech
• You had set out to repress the abuses of freedom
  and I discover you beneath the boots of a
  tyrant. (210-211)

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Freedom of the Press

• Further, the principle of universal suffrage
  demands the absolute freedom of the press
• If people are to be trusted with the franchise,
  they must be trusted to choose between all
  available viewpoints
• Nonetheless, the press is far less influential in
  America than it is in France. Why?
• Freedom of the press a novelty in France, but old
  for Anglo-Americans
• French press highly centralized in a few hands
  due to licensing and difficulty of starting a new
  paper
• Americans able to easily and affordably found
  papers, with the consequence that they are
  extremely numerous
• This means that they are highly decentralized and
  undisciplined, preventing the formation of
  uniform factions but causing political life to
  circulate in every corner of the Union

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Freedom of the Press

• Generally, journalists in the United States have
  a lowly status, their education is rudimentary
  and the expression of their ideas is frequently
  course. Now in everything the majority holds
  sway it lays down certain styles to which each
  person then conforms. The sum total of these
  shared customs is called their spirit there is
  the spirit of the courts, the spirit of royalty.
• The spirit of French journalism is to discuss
  politics in a style that is violent but usually
  dignified and eloquent
• The spirit of American journalism consists of a
  crude, unvarnished, and unsubtle attack on the
  passions of his readers he leaves principles
  aside to seize hold of men whom he pursues into
  their private lives exposing their weaknesses and
  defects (216)

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Freedom of the Press

• Nonetheless, opinions formed under a free press
  are more deeply held than in countries with
  censors
• Nations where this freedom prevails are attached
  to their opinions through pride as much as
  conviction. They love them because of their
  fairness and also because they have chosen them
  they remain loyal to them, not only as something
  true but as something of their own.
• All social theories having been challenged and
  defeated in their turn, all those who who had
  adopted one of them stick to it, not so much
  because they are convinced of its excellence but
  because they are unsure that a better one
  exists. (218-219)

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Associations

• An association consists simply in the public
  assent which a number of individuals give to such
  and such a doctrine and their commitment to help
  in a specific way to make it prevail. Thus the
  right to associate almost merges with the freedom
  to write but already associations wield more
  power than the press.
• When an opinion is represented by an association,
  it has to assume a sharper and more accurate
  expression. It counts up its supporters and
  involves them in its cause these supporters
  learn to know each other and their enthusiasm is
  increased by their numbers.
• Association binds the efforts of disparate minds
  and energetically drives them toward one single
  goal which it has clearly marked out. (220-221)
• First stage of association

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Associations

• Second stage
• Assembling physically
• Centers of action in important places in the
  country
• Seeing each other, planning together, opinions
  spread with a force and zeal the written word
  could never achieve.
• Third stage
• Members electing delegates to represent them in
  central assembly
• Thus, in the first case, men who possess the
  same opinion feel a purely intellectual bond
  between themselves in the second, they gather in
  small assemblies which represent only a fraction
  of the party finally, in the third, they form
  something like a separate nation within a nation,
  a government within a government (220-221)

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Associations

• Nowadays, the freedom of association is a vital
  safeguard against the tyranny of the majority.
• The minority must bring to heart its entire
  moral strength against an oppressive physical
  power. Thus one dangerous expedient is used to
  oppose a still more fearful one.
• There are no countries where associations are
  more necessary to prevent the tyranny of parties
  or the whims of princes than those whose social
  state is democratic.
• Unrestricted freedom of association on the
  American model is dangerous, bringing society a
  step closer to anarchy, but it is a risk the
  Americans run to avoid the greater peril of the
  tyranny of the majority (222-225)

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Associations

• The more I observe the main effects of the
  independence of the press, the more I am
  convinced that this independence, in the modern
  world, is the principal and, as it were, the
  governing element of freedom. A nation,
  therefore, which intends to remain free is
  entitled to demand respect for this freedom at
  whatever cost.
• But unrestricted freedom of association in the
  political sphere cannot be entirely confused with
  the freedom to write. The former is both less
  necessary and more dangerous. A nation may set
  bounds upon it without losing control over its
  own affairs it must sometimes do so in order to
  maintain this control. (222)

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Associations

• Why have Americans not suffered from the risks of
  faction inherent in an unlimited right of
  association?
• Americans see associations differently than do
  Europeans
• In Europe, they are weapons of war prepared for
  battle
• In America, they are to show numerical strength
  and to persuade the majority
• In Europe some political associations are so far
  out of the mainstream that they can never hope to
  persuade the majority, and when such a party
  forms an association, its aim is not to convince
  but to fight.
• But in America, there are no parties with such
  dramatic differences (224-226)

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Democratic Government

• Contrary to theory, American democracy seem to
  have little luck in selecting excellent members
  of government. Why?
• The masses lack the ability to judge the means of
  pursuing the national welfare.
• Would the masses succeed where the greatest
  geniuses go astray? The people never find the
  time or the means to devote to this work. They
  always have to come to hasty judgments and to
  latch on to the most obvious features.
• Thus, they elect anyone who has the ability to
  please them (229-230)

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Democratic Government

• Moreover, it is not always the ability to choose
  men of merit which democracy lacks but the desire
  and inclination to do so.
• One must not blind oneself to the fact that
  democratic institutions promote to a very high
  degree the feeling of envy in the human heart,
  not so much because they offer each citizen ways
  of being equal to each other but because those
  ways continuously prove inadequate to those who
  use them. Democratic institutions awaken and
  flattery the passion of equality without being
  able to satisfy it entirely.
• So anything which exceeds their limitations in
  any way appears to them as an obstacle to their
  desires and all superiority, however legitimate,
  is irksome in their eyes. (230-231)

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Democratic Government

• Why has America been able to avoid the worst
  consequences of this?
• During the revolution, America was fortunate to
  be led and founded by outstanding men who gave it
  wise institutions
• Good intelligence and customs help to restrain
  the worst aspects of democracy
• Thus, New England makes better choices than the
  rest of democracy
• While the House of Representatives is full of
  losers, the Senate is populated by intelligent
  and accomplished people
• This is because the House is directly elected,
  while the Senate is chosen by state legislatures,
  refining public opinion into a nobler and more
  beautiful form (233-234)

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Corruption and Democracy

• In aristocratic government, the positions are
  unpaid, so their holders are in pursuit of power.
  In democracies, positions are paid, and their
  holders often enter politics in pursuit of
  wealth.
• If, therefore, the rulers in aristocratic
  societies sometimes seek to corrupt, democratic
  leaders prove to be corrupt. In the former case,
  the morality of the people is under direct
  attack in the latter, the influence upon the
  public conscience is indirect, which is even more
  fearsome.
• Democratic citizens, seeing someone advance into
  power, attribute it not to talent or effort on
  the part of that person, as that would be to
  admit that they were less talented or able than
  him. They instead ascribe his success to his
  vices.
• They are often correct (257-259)

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Benefits of Democratic Government

• Democratic government is corrupt, sloppy,
  wasteful, and prone to error, while aristocratic
  government is wise and efficient
• However, democracy moves slowly toward the
  benefit of the many, while aristocracy moves
  swiftly to benefit the few (271-272)
• Democratic officials are often inferior in
  capability and in moral standards to those an
  aristocracy would bring to power, but their
  interests are generally those of their fellow
  citizens.

22
Self-Interest

• The common man in the United States perceives
  the influence of public prosperity upon his own
  happiness, and idea so simple and yet so little
  understood by the people Moreover, he has grown
  used to regarding this prosperity as his own
  work. Thus he sees in public fortune his own and
  he works for the welfare of the state, not simply
  from civic duty or from pride, but I would
  venture to say, from greed.
• This sense of the state as their own creation
  makes Americans touchy about criticism There is
  nothing more irksome in the conduct of life than
  the irritable patriotism Americans have. The
  foreigner would be very much willing to praise
  much in their country but would like to be
  allowed a few criticisms that is exactly what he
  is refused. (276-77)

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Self-Interest

• American respect both rights and property because
  they all have both
• In America, the proletariat does not exist.
  Since each man has some private possessions to
  protect, he acknowledges the right, in principle,
  to own property. (278)
• Thus, they support political and property rights
  because it is in their interest to do so (279)

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Self-Interest

• Do you not see the decline of religions? ...
  Do you not notice how, on all sides, beliefs are
  ceding place to rationality and feelings to
  calculations? If, amid this general upheaval,
  you fail to link the idea of rights to individual
  self-interest, which is the only fixed point in
  the human heart, what else have you got to rule
  the world except fear? (279)

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Social Outcomes of Democracy

• Democracy does not make people great, saintly or
  noble, but its equality does does cause them to
  be law-abiding, practical, rational, and
  prosperous, all while minimizing suffering.
  (286-287)

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Democratic Habits

• I am convinced that, if ever tyranny succeeds in
  getting a foothold in America, it will have even
  more difficulty in overcoming the habits formed
  by freedom than in conquering the love of freedom
  itself.
• This constantly renewed agitation introduced by
  democratic government into the political realm
  subsequently passes into civil society. Perhaps,
  all in all, that is the greatest advantage of
  democratic government which I praise much more
  for what it causes to be done than for what it
  actually does. (284)