Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville (Volume I)
This is a commentary for Volume I of Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville. The first part of this series is an introduction.#
Part One - Primarily on the institutions and written laws of the United States at the time of Tocqueville.#
Chapter 1: External configuration of North America
Chapter 2: On the point of departure and its importance for the future of the Anglo-Americans
Tocqueville makes the interesting point in this chapter that no other country so easy knows and understands its origins as the United States. This was our "point of departure." The details of this were also important to the democracy that was formed: it was formed by self-exiled lower classes in search of freedom, people who were unlikely to establish a hierarchy of birth or wealth and were willing, as they had to be, to be involved with the governance and success of their colony.
Chapter 3: Social state of the Anglo-Americans
Part of what Tocqueville talks about here is how estate law can be a very powerful tool for establishing equality. When families are forced to divided their property evenly amongst children, rather than giving all to the eldest son, wealth dissipates into the air very quickly.
Tocqueville remarks on what laws like this say about a democratic people:
There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that incites men to want all to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the small to the rank of the great; but one also encounters a depraved taste for equality in the human heart that brings the weak to want to draw the strong to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. It is not that peoples whose social state is democratic naturally scorn freedom; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it. But freedom is not the principal and continuous object of their desire; what they love with an eternal love is equality; they dash toward freedom with a rapid impulse and sudden efforts, and if they miss the goal they resign themselves; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would sooner consent to perish than to lose it. [pg. 52]
One naturally sees in this paragraph a description of the attitudes of a socialistic people, whether in the extreme (or should I say successful?) case of a communist country, or the weak case of the welfare state.
Freedom and Equality. You can maximize one of these quantities, but remember that when you increase equality, freedom WILL decline; whereas increasing freedom only ALLOWS equality to decline. This will be a recurring idea.
Chapter 4: On the principle of the sovereignty of the people in America
The inevitability of universal suffrage in a democracy is explained.
Chapter 5: Necessity of studying what takes place in the particular States before speaking of the government of the Union
This is a discussion of the township system as well as some of the principle divisions of power. There is a strong tendency in this chapter to address the differences from what readers in France will know.
On the lack of a hierarchy of officials:
The right to direct the official presumes the right to discharge him if he does not follow the orders that one transmits to him, or to raise him in grade if he zealously fulfills all his duties. Now, one can neither discharge an elected magistrate nor raise him in grade. It is of the nature of elective offices to be irrevocable until the end of the mandate. In reality, the elected magistrate has nothing to expect or to fear except from the electors when all public offices are the product of election. A genuine hierarchy among officials therefore cannot exist, since one cannot unite in the same man the right to order and the right to suppress disobedience efficaciously, and since one cannot join to the power of command that of rewarding and punishing. [pg. 70]
This is one of the many moments of this book were I reflect on how wonderful the United States used to be before the right of States and local government were taken away and many of this statements were very much true. Tocqueville talks about these people being very involved in theirs towns and governments, and the governments having less centralized administration, but it seems like he's talking about some ideal system, not something that ever existed.
It leads me to think about what kinds of things that Tocqueville warned about actually happened, and makes me wonder about how it could be healed.
Although more will come, Tocqueville identifies many dragons beneath the surface of democracy:
We have seen that in the United States administrative centralization does not exist. One hardly finds a trace of hierarchy there. Decentralization has been carried to a degree that no European nation can tolerate, I think, without profound unrest, and which even produces distressing effects in America. But in the United States, governmental centralization exists to the highest point. [...] Not only is there only a single body in each state that makes the laws; not only does there exist only a single power that can create political life around it; but in general they have avoided gathering numerous district or county assembles for fear that these assemblies be tempted to go outside their administrative prerogatives and impede the working of the government. In America, the legislature of each state has before it no power capable of resisting it. [pg. 84]
Chapter 6: On judicial power in the United States and its action on political society
This explains the judicial system primarily and takes care to point out the legislative power of declaring laws unconstitutional.
Chapter 7: On political judgment in the United States
Chapter 8: On the Federal Constitution
This long chapter explains many things about the Constitution and the political system of the United States. It seems mostly to serve as an introduction to the system and a convenient place to reference back to when referring to some particular office.
In one section, Tocqueville explains why the President is so flawed and unable to do anything right.
To this effect, they concentrated all the executive power of the nation in a single hand; they gave the president extensive prerogatives and armed him with the veto in order to resist the encroachments of the legislature.
But in introducing the principle of reelection, they destroyed their work in part. They granted a great power to the president and took away from him the will to make use of it.
Not reeligible, the president would not be independent of the people, for he would not cease to be responsible to them; but the favor of the people would not be so necessary to him that he had to bend to their will in everything.
Reeligible (and this is true above all in our day, when political morality is relaxed and when great characters are disappearing), the president of the United States is only a docile instrument in the hands of the majority. He loves what it loves, hates what it hates; he flies to meet its will, anticipates its complaints, bends to its least desires: the legislators wanted him to guide it, and he follows it. [pg. 129-130]
Near the end of the chapter, Alexis explains about how great wars always either destroy a country because it loses, or destroy it because it compels people to centralize power and administration. What does this mean for the United States?
The great happiness of the United States is therefore not to have found a federal constitution that permits it to sustain great wars, but to be so situated that there are none for it to fear. [pg. 160]
This idea anticipates General Franks' comment and any observation about the damage war has done to the country.
Part Two - This talks about the people of the United States, the true ringleaders of the country.#
Chapter 1: How one can say strictly that in the United States the people govern
Chapter 2: On parties in the United States
Tocqueville makes distinctions between "great parties" and "small parties." The great ones have ideas contrary to the fundamental ideas about the country, while the small ones bicker over smaller issues. He says that America swarms with small parties.
Chapter 3: On freedom of the press in the United States
Many of Tocqueville's famous quotes come from this chapter and the few following it, but my favourite, perhaps, is this one:
I avow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does. [pg. 172]
This sentiment will be frequently referenced by me in the future when talking about some controversial thing which I support.
And you may be interested in some of the evils of the press:
Peoples in whom this freedom exists are attached to their opinions by pride as much as by conviction. They love them because they seem just to them, and also because they are their choice, and they hold to them not only as something true, but also as something that is their own. [pg. 179]
Chapter 4: On political association in the United States
This is a very thoughtful and astute comment:
But of all the causes that cooperate in the United States to moderate the violence of political association, perhaps the most powerful is universal suffrage. In countries where universal suffrage is accepted, the majority is never doubtful because no party can reasonable establish itself as the representative of those who have not voted. Associations know, therefore, and everyone knows, that they do not represent the majority. This results from the very fact of their existence; for if they represented it, they themselves would change the law instead of demanding its reform. [pg. 185]
Chapter 5: On the government of democracy in America
Another clever nugget, this time about taxation and voting:
Countries where the poor were charged exclusively with making the law therefore could not hope for great economy in public expenditures; those expenditures will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot reach those who vote them or because they are assessed in a manner so as not to reach them. In other words, the government of democracy is the only one in which he who votes the tax can escape the obligation to pay it. [pg. 201]
I don't know if taxation was as crazy as it is now back then, because Tocqueville doesn't seem to put a lot of stress on how ridiculous this idea is.
One of the other things that Tocqueville talks about in this chapter, with regards to taxation, is how by looking at what the people spend their money on, one can tell their values. He gives as an example the absence of "public festivals" in America which shows that "the people do not like to enjoy themselves." [pg. 205] This was particularly interesting to note while in Italy, looking at all the beautiful public spaces.
A golden one on corruption:
In democracies, on the contrary, those who crave power are almost never wealthy, and the number of those who concur in giving [power--ie, voting rather than aristocratic appointment] is very great. Perhaps in democracies there are no fewer men for sale, but one finds almost no buyers there; and besides, one would have to buy too many people at once to attain the goal. [pg. 211]
Although, it doesn't take much to meditate on the relevance of this comment now. This chapter is full of such things that show how much America has fallen:
In America conscription is unknown; they enroll men there for money. Forced recruitment is so contrary to the ideas and so foreign to the habits of the people of the United States that I doubt that one would ever dare to introduce it into the laws. [pg. 213]
Chapter 6: What are the real advantages that American society derives from the government of democracy
Among these are the rights and freedoms that America offers. An interesting one, is what Tocqueville calls "patriotism of all"...
There is nothing more annoying in the habits of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner would indeed consent to praise much in their country; but he would want to be permitted to blame something, and this he is absolutely refused.
America is therefore a country of freedom where, in order not to wound anyone, the foreigner must not speak freely either of particular persons, or of the state, or of the governed, or of those who govern, or of public undertakings, or of private undertakings; of, finally, of anything one encounters except perhaps the climate and the soil; and still, one finds Americans ready to defend both as if they had helped to form them. [pg. 227]
This may be the referenced cause of being politically correct.
Chapter 7: On the omnipotence of the majority in the United States and its effects
Here Tocqueville describes how the majority can do anything in the United States, because it wields the power of the government which has been granted the ability to do anything, and in addition to this it is seen as always right because its might defines morality. This, of course, is a potentially dangerous position. (This section scores major libertarian points.)
What there fore is a majority taken collectively, if not an individual who has opinions and most often interests contrary to another individual that one names the minority? Now, if you accept that one man vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why not accept the same thing for a majority? Have men changed in character by being united? Have they become more patient before obstacles by becoming stronger? As for me, I cannot believe it; and I shall never grant to several the power of doing everything that I refuse to a single one of those like me.
[...]
Omnipotence seems to me to be an evil and dangerous thing in itself. Its exercise appears to me above the strength of man, whoever he may be, and I see only God who can be omnipotent without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. There is therefore no authority on earth so respectable in itself or vested with a right so sacred that I should wish to allow to act without control and to dominate without obstacles. Therefore, when I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether its called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether it is exercise in a monarchy or in a republic, I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws. [pg. 240-241]
Chapter 8: On what tempers the tyranny of the majority in the United States
Among the things that make the tyranny of the majority weaker is the lack of administrative centralization and the power of the courts and the lawyer class. But one problem with this solution is that the lawyers create a kind of aristocracy in a democracy, especially in a law system based on precedent.
Our written laws are often difficult to understand, but each man can read them; there is nothing, on the contrary, more obscure for the vulgar and less within his reach than legislation founded on precedents. The need one has of a lawyer in England and the United States, the lofty idea that one forms of his enlightenment, separate him more and more from the people and serve to put him in a class apart. The French lawyer is only a learned man; but the English or American man of law resembles in a way the priests of Egypt; like them, he is the lone interpreter of an occult science. [pg. 255]
Chapter 9: On the principal causes tending to maintain a democratic republic in the United States
The strongest: material well-being and economic prosperity, due to the boundless continent and lack of limits for growth of wealth. Another important thing mention in this chapter is the propensity of democratic peoples to refrain from general ideas or theoretical discoveries, but at the same to do hang on to them for dear life if it ever grasps one.
Chapter 10: Some considerations on the present state and the probably future of the three races that inhabit the territory of the United States
This very long chapter discusses the Indians and the Blacks, and how they have and will effect the United States. Tocqueville talks about slavery is bad for the Southerners who practice it but also explains why it is very difficult to get rid of it. He predicts the death of the Indians, maybe survived by a few children of mixed familes; as well as a war over slavery, perhaps between the Blacks and the Whites.
On how the Native Americans are treated:
The conduct of the Americans of the United States toward the natives, on the contrary, breathes the purest love of forms and legality. Provided that the Indians stay in the savage state, the AMericans do not mix at all in their affairs and treat them as independent peoples; they do not permit themselves to occupy their lands without having duly acquired them by means of a contract; and if by chance an Indian nation can no longer live on its territory, they take it like a brother by the hand and lead it to die outside the country of its fathers.
The SPanish, with the help of unexampled monstrous deeds, covering themselves with an indelible shame, could not succeed in exterminating the Indian race, nor even prevent it from sharing their rights; the Americans of the United States have attained this double result with marvelous facility--tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without spilling blood, without violating a single one of the great principles of morality in the eyes of the world. One cannot destroy men while being more respectful to the laws of humanity. [pg. 325]
This discussion evolves into ways that the Union will be preserved or ways that it may fall apart. There is a good deal of reflection on the lessons of America:
A republic, according to some among us, is not the reign of the majority, as has been believed until now, it is the reign of those who are strongly for the majority. It is not the people who direct these sorts of governments, but those who know the greatest good of the people: a happy distinction that permits one to act in the name of nations without consulting them and to claim their recognition while riding roughshod over them. A republican government is, furthermore, the only one in which one must recognize the right to do everything, and which can scorn what men have respect up to the present, from the highest laws of morality to the vulgar rules of common sense.
Until our time, it had been thought that despotism was odious, whatever its forms were. But in our day it has been discovered that there are legitimate tyrannies and holy injustices in the world, provided that one exercises them in the name of the people. [pg. 380]
And the last paragraph has an erie prediction that shows Tocqueville was actually from the future:
There are two great peoples on the earth today who, starting from different points, seem to advance toward the same goal: these are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.
[...]
To attain his goal, the first relies on personal interest and allows the force and the reason of individuals to act, without directing them.
The second in a way concentrates all the power of society in one man.
The one has freedom for his principal means of action; the other servitude.
Their point of departure is different, their ways are diverse; nonetheless, each of them seems called by a secret design of Providence to hold the destinies of half the world in its hands on day. [pg. 395-396]