Tocqueville's Utopian States of America

[encephalon]

In recent decades, Alexis de Tocqueville has risen from relative obscurity as a historical figure to ideological prominence, most especially called upon near-religiously by American Conservatives in their rhetoric. His name is invoked as though he were a savior by many American politicians, from Eisenhower to Nixon, Reagan and Clinton, desperately seeking to cash in on the timeless cant of patriotism. Tocqueville has even been graced with having a radically religious right-wing magazine named after him, The Tocquevillian, which must stem from the several misconceptions attributed to him: though a large advocate of free trade and capitalism, he also believed in therapy rather than punishment for crimes committed, a little publicized, “liberal” fact. An educated guess concerning the source responsible for Tocqueville's association with the religious right might be the following quotation, perhaps his most popular and favorite among American politicians, including those stated above:

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great."

One of his most popular statements, indeed—and one he never stated. Such mis-attribution to Tocqueville is likely to have originated in response to fears of communism, as the phrase began circulating the political hemisphere at the beginning of the cold war and the American backlash against secularism that followed. And what better figure to attribute such a speech: not only did Tocqueville glorify and idealize the American system to such an extent as to imply all other systems are inherently flawed, but Tocqueville is also considered the political antithesis of Karl Marx, a contemporary of Tocqueville's and the theoretical father of future world-wide revolutions that Tocqueville feared so much.

Yet Tocqueville is not only loved, albeit in some cases falsely, solely by the religious right in America. He is also favored among many economists, at least those in favor of uninhibited free trade, and has a countless number of special interest groups named after him by those faithful capitalist adherents as well—despite the fact that one of the most substantial criticisms of Tocqueville is his lack of emphasis on the manner in which economic factors dictate society and its public institutions.

The most important contribution of Tocqueville, it seems, was not his objective analysis of American society but his Utopian vision of America, from its explosive beginning through his contemporary time and forever beyond. This flattery is the vision that fascinates and inspires the United States, not his particular anti-socialist political view or economic stance—even though these too have been adopted in the name of patriotic fervor. Tocqueville imagined a land of infinite abundance, in wealth and liberty. He imagined a shining democratic republic, comparable to Classical Rome yet immune to the social ills that plague a civilization from class systems, lack of resources and overpopulation; and more than anything, Tocqueville saw in America a great anti-Europe, his own personal heaven. Sadly, he suffered from acute historical, social and political myopia.

Tocqueville must be understood, as any historical figure, not as a divine source of inspiration and the prophet of a flawless American democracy, but instead as a product of his time and the social climate in which he lived. Born in Paris almost halfway between the French revolution of 1789 and the revolution of 1848—both massive failures—Tocqueville experienced firsthand the tyranny of aristocratic rule by Napoleon II as well as the tyranny of lower-class mobs intent on revolution and destruction of the old social order. His aristocratic yet comparatively liberal grandfather was beheaded during the “Reign of Terror” by the now infamous guillotine. His parents were imprisoned at the same time to await their own execution for months only later to be released, driving his father to suffer from chronic anxiety and his mother to become a near-invalid. In his youth, Tocqueville himself faced the constant fear of imprisonment and torture by the hands of a still restless underclass as well as fearing that his aristocratic loyalty to the current French regime, as shaky as it may have been, would work against him in an instant under a new regime by way of a coup.

It was this fear of both the ruling class and the underclass of France that led Tocqueville's gaze towards America, and not simply in an ideological sense. With another regime change during the revolution of 1830, in which Charles X abdicated and Louis-Philippe acceded to the throne, Tocqueville's comfortable position as apprentice magistrate at the Versailles court of law became threatened. His family had always been loyal to the Bourbon family of Charles X, a fact Louis-Philippe frowned upon. Tocqueville also predicted yet another violent revolution in response to Louis-Philippe's anti-democratic policies, and now feared action from above and below, though he carried sympathy for both classes. Tocqueville wanted out before it was too late, and with the pretext of studying prison reform he gained permission to leave for America.

It is, of course, this nine month stay in America for which Tocqueville is most famous. In this short span of time, Tocqueville saw in America exactly what he yearned for: no threat from above, none from below. Indeed, Tocqueville observed no class distinction at all, except for that of owners and slaves—which he miraculously saw as nearly incomparable to a class system. He explored a seemingly boundless, uninhabited land—never mind the natives--full of resources to be distributed equally among all people. He bravely conjectured, or perhaps pretended, that America in fact had no poor at all and never would—not because of a socialistic, government mandated compulsion to tend to the care of all people large and small, but through individual association into charitable groups intent on caring for and redeeming the destitute.

Nor did he observe America to have much of a government at all, but instead a collective synthesis of these same individual Americans grouping together to form the basis of their social and political aims; namely, profit. The days of central government, through his rosy lenses, were gone along with the threat of revolution. No aristocracy existed to impose rule upon those below, and no underclass existed to disrupt the established social order. Tocqueville had found heaven at last, and upon returning to France spread the glorious word in his work Democracy in America (Volume I), published in 1835. Upon this religious experience, Tocqueville gradually moved towards the political left in Europe, composed primarily of Democratic and Republican proponents, positive that democracy modeled after that of America was the only system worth pursuing, though by transition rather than revolution. In his time away, the revolution he feared had not yet taken place.

This first volume of Democracy in America could not have been intended to paint a purely honest picture of American society and politics unless Tocqueville was so influenced by the fears he faced in Europe that he was blinded by sincere hope in his observations. No objective judgment can be made on his intentions. However, judgment can be applied generously to his observations as well as his predictions for the future of this heavenly republic.

One observation of immediate notice to a contemporary reader of Tocqueville's work is his notion of boundless, uninhabited land—enough for every American that wanted a piece. Even the most ardent supporters of Tocquevillian ideology know quite well that the land itself has proven to end, as all land eventually does, and that it was occupied by the native Americans, a fact the Tocqueville himself knew quite well. Yet Tocqueville cannot be entirely blamed for believing the land to be uninhabited, at least by the prevalent Euro-centric world-view of the era: he was a product of the imperialistic thesis that bore him. Non-Europeans were still seen as human, but inferior. Nor was assuming control of their land and culture seen as mass thievery, but instead seen as the gift of western civilization to the respective native population.

Tocqueville can be blamed, however, for his short-sightedness in thinking that the land would be distributed fairly among people enough to prevent poverty and eventual urbanization, by his own conjecture leading to an underclass. Nor was this supposedly non-existent underclass in his own time supported by egalitarian institutions of wealthier Americans. From his own aristocratic background and education, and indeed the imperial conflicts of the recent past (relative to him) over the New World and Africa, he should have seen that the distribution of resources rapidly stratifies regardless of abundance, and with it comes the stratification of society. Those voluntary unions to serve the common interest he praised so highly differed very little in the voluntary unions of Europe: the Guilds to protect economic interests of the already established artisans and merchants, leading to greater capital and property into fewer hands, and the union of the elite to counteract the manpower of those masses who they control, eventually synthesizing into an upper-class consciousness. If anything, Tocqueville should have seen the class-consciousness in the ownership of slaves, more so than his brief mention, and it does not take a vivid imagination to extend the same concept to that of wealthy vs. poor, nor does it take great insight to envision a ruling class of elites based on bloodline replaced by a ruling class based on wealth—and, provided the wealth stabilizes, that wealth-based class system turning once again to bloodline.

Furthermore, Tocqueville claimed that America had not developed through a democratic revolution, and this was his main thesis regarding why it was not a failure, like many European revolutions; only briefly mentioning the role that abundant resources play in successful capital democracies. Even then, however, the separation of America from England was well known to be of a revolutionary nature. Tocqueville must have had knowledge of the American revolution, and in this his intentions have to fall into question. It is possible that in rewriting the history of America to the populous of Europe, he could possibly influence future European history, thus avoiding the revolution he feared and formerly suffered by so much. Published years later, much of Volume II of Democracy in America is aimed largely at France, and not a warning to America at all—giving insight into why he focused so much attention upon America. Regardless of intent, this American myth affected little in way of French revolution, and yet another boiled over in 1848. Upon the following coup of the new French Republic by Napoleon the II—of which Tocqueville played a prominent role in shaping until his dismissal by the then-president Napoleon—he was briefly jailed, as his parents had been, for refusing allegiance to the new despotic government, though this time by the aristocratic element instead of an unruly mob. Exiled from political life, he suffered a physical breakdown and a decade later died of Tuberculosis.

Long before Tocqueville and the European powers of his time, a small republic existed in the midst of a seemingly infinite spread of land and resources, uninhabited save the barbarous and uncouth natives sparsely populating ill-defined territories. This republic grew quickly, riding on the economics of slavery and overtaking the vast land and its resources. The people of this modest republic justified their imperial ambitions by providing the barbarians with the great civilization and infrastructure of their society, soothing the natural objections of the natives with a level of comfort beyond their own devices. Free Trade was abundant. Within centuries, select families gained wealth and privilege far beyond that of the majority of the people. They ruled the government and military with the power of their sheer wealth alone, and dictated culture by only funding that which expressed a continuation of their rule. This Republic, as everyone in the modern world knows, was Rome. Eventually, Rome's economy collapsed, and with it the empire. The wealthy military families were last to fall, leaving the infrastructure for a new European aristocracy: a class system first based upon wealth, which ruled the Roman military, then transforming to a basis of bloodline as Roman society synthesized with that of the barbarian elements and the near disappearance of a trade economy. The basis of power changed from property in the form of capital to property in the form of land.

It is by no coincidence, in Tocqueville's era, that America was being consciously modeled after the Roman empire in government, economy and society as a whole. Until the early modern era, American currency showed little deviation from classical Roman modeling. Unlike Rome, however, compulsory American slavery ended and native barbarian resistance was overcome. The rise of consumerism (i.e. the fetishism of commodities) led to the short-sighted underclass support of a naturally exploitative system, even when contrary to their own best interest. People are given the legal right to speak freely, in many cases at least, even if they do not have the right to be heard above the roar of a ruling elite. People are poor, but not starving by the millions in America (ignore everyone else in the world). That's inevitable, right? The poor will always be poor. People will always starve. Such is the basic tenant of modern Tocquevillians, after all: the supposedly inevitable and systematic exploitation of the many to the benefit of the few in the name of liberty, property, free enterprise and small government. Unfortunately, Tocqueville would find himself facing the same fears today from above and below that he so earnestly wanted to escape.

The basic nature of capitalism to which Tocqueville seemed unnaturally blind was the eventual consolidation of wealth into the hands of the few, and through that wealth the power to control the free institutions that comprise a democratic government, leading to greater consolidation of power into fewer and fewer hands—eventually dismantling the core principles of democracy itself. Until this basic flawed coupling of capitalism and democracy is undone, the liberty that Tocqueville saw, however errantly, is fleeting and illusory. Ironically, one statement of Tocqueville's above all others remains true:

"If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads."

And sadly unfulfilled, save for the association of an emerging American aristocracy.

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Sources


Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America, Volume I. Provided by The Gutenberg Project, 1997. (Original work published 1805-1859).
<http://www.gutenberg.org>

Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America, Volume II. Provided by The Gutenberg Project, 1997. (Original work published 1805-1859).
<http://www.gutenberg.org>

Whitfield, Stephen J. “A Century and a half of French Views of the United States”. Historian, Vol. 56 Issue 3, p. 531

Frederiksen, Robert C. Alexis de Tocqueville. Retrieved Nov. 8, 2004.
<http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/tocqueville.htm>

GradeSaver.com. Classic Notes: Alexis de Tocqueville. Retrieved Nov. 8, 2004.
<http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Authors/
about_alexis_tocqueville.html>

Tocqueville.org. In Search of Tocqueville&#39;s Democracy in America.
Retrieved Nov. 8, 2004. <http://www.tocqueville.org/chap3.htm>

Tocqueville.org. The Tocqueville Fraud.
Retrieved Nov. 8, 2004. <http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm>

[encephalon]

Originally posted by Guest@Dec 26 2004, 04:37 AM
It needs to be cleaned up a bit. One you&#39;ve got to space the paragraphs and two put in quotation marks.

overall pretty good.

yeah.. it was a cut-n-paste job, and didn&#39;t think about reformatting stuff until after posting it :P Sorry, everyone&#33;

[Monty Cantsin]

how come this one didnt get through?

[Nick Yves]

Ver very awesome, the last two paragraphs are very powerful & hard hitting.

[Lenin's Law]

I have always been interested in reading a socialist rebuttal to Tocqueville. Congratulations to you for this article, I read it with interest and will be looking forward to reading other critiques on Tocqueville from a working class persepective.

One thing that must be remembered is that Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who basically socialized with other aristocrats when he entered America. This idea that the US system represents a "third way" between rich and poor is of course a myth that the bourgeois love to repeat over and over again.

I have also heard of a correspendonce between Marx and Tocqueville, does anyone know if this is true, where I could read them online? Thanks.