Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”

Paul Marks feels that Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read.

I have been re-reading this work (no, security guards do not have a lot of time to read – that is, sadly, a myth).

There is a lot of ‘good stuff’ in Democracy in America and it is well worth reading (although please be careful that you do not buy or borrow an edition with bits cut out, it only takes a few seconds to check – by reading what the translator has to say for himself).

However, I would warn anyone against treating Democracy in America as an accurate picture of the United States in the 1830’s.

Firstly De Tocqueville is fond of making sweeping statements (I almost find myself typing ‘like so many Frenchmen, De Tocqueville is fond of making sweeping statements’). For example, we are told that Americans know little of the various schools of philosophy. The majority of Americans may have indeed known little of such matters, but the United States had perhaps the highest proportion of people with a university educaion of any nation in the world – and many American universities taught philosophy well (the preference for the Scottish ‘Common Sense’ school was already in evidence in the 1830’s, but that does not mean other schools of thought were ignored).

Also we must remember the vast informal network of learning in the United States (especially in the North East) in the 1830’s, which was very far from being just concerned with ‘practical subjects’.

More damaging (from a political point of view) is De Tocqueville’s statist bias. A ‘statist bias’ ? But De Tocqueville is one of the good guys, often quoted by pro liberty folk and a hero of F.A. Hayek’s.

Well yes, De Tocqueville was a hero of Hayek’s (great man though Hayek was, for someone to have been one of his heros is often a bad sign).

However, ‘one of the good guys’? Well by the standards of today yes – De Tocqueville was a strong anti-socialist and most ‘interlectualls’ today are socialists (the Berlin Wall might as well not have fallen for all the effect it has had on their thinking). But by the standards of the United States in the 1830’s De Tocqueville was not one of the good guys.

Basically De Tocqueville is a Henry Clay Whig (although he tends to avoid mentioning Clay’s name, or even the name of the Whig party – De Tocqueville does refer to the opposing Democratic party).

Some members of the American Whig party were not statists (President John Tyler is an obvious example), but Clay Whigs were statist – ‘internal improvements’ (government financed public works schemes), protective tarriffs (to pay for the above and to encourage American industry), and a national bank (to play credit money games for the benefit of the politically connected) – these were the principles of a Clay Whig (see the first political speech of Abraham Lincoln [the Henry Fonda film biopic of Lincoln is at least accurate about this speech] – opposition to slavery is not stressed, Lincoln did not start beating that drum till 1854).

De Tocqueville may well have had doubts about a protective tarriff (as he know something about political economy), but he strongly supports the feds right to impose such a protective tarriff (anyone who opposes such a right is a dangerious extremist who will destroy the Union – the idea that the pro tarriff people were harming the Union by insisting on a tarriff which hit people in some [mostly Southern] States for the benefit of certain politically connected manufacturing enterprises is an idea that does not carry much weight to De Tocqueville).

However, De Tocqueville fully supports the national bank and the internal improvements – he marvels at the endless roads, canals and other such that various governments were building in the United States.

De Tocqueville also takes it as read, not only that state education and poverty relief are what democratic governments natually do – but also that such statism is a good thing

“It [the government] looks after the poor, distributes annually millions to schools, pays for all services, and rewards its humblest agents liberally. Though such a way of government seems useful and reasonable to me, I am bound to admit that it is expensive”

This is in the section of the first volume of Democracy in America entitled Can the Public Expenditure of the United States be Compared with That of France – as there as so many editions of “Democracy in America” giving a page number is not wildly useful – however the quotation is from page 219 of the Fontana Press single volume [1994] edition in front of me).

De Tocqueville does not favour wild spending, but he does favour what would be called today the ‘public services’. Someone reading De Tocqueville would never realise that such things were the objects of fierce dispute in the United States of the 1830’s. Yes such things as government education were on the march – but they were being strongly resisted and not just by wicked Southern slave owners. Two of the States most interested in ‘internal improvments’ were Virgina and North Carolina (both Slave States – indeed West Virgina’s secession from the rest of Virgina was partly a matter of long term dislike of the debts and taxes built up by the ‘internal improvements’ built for the low land slave owners) and one of the strongest movements against internal improvements and government education were the strongly anti slavery Democractic Party ‘Barnburner’ faction of free New York. The idea of a mass movement of ordinary people believing that the best government is the least government did not fit De Tocqueville’s sociological theories – so he ignored it.

One last point on finance. The only State that De Tocqueville gave any government finance details on was Pennsylvania. Now this State government went bankrupt (thanks to “internal improvements”) before De Tocqueville even published the first volume of “Democracy in America” (hence the limitations on government borrowing in the new Constitiution of 1833) – but De Tocqueville is silent on the matter in both volumes.

Lastly De Tocqueville proved (thankfully) to be a poor prophet on racial matters.

De Tocqueville holds that it will be impossible for black people and white people to both live in freedom together – in the North blacks will be driven out and in the South something terrible will happen. Race relations in the United States are far from perfect – but both in the North and the South whites and blacks manage to avoid war with each other.

He also thought that the South could not fight the North as it would face a slave revolt at home. The Civil War was the worst war the United States has ever faced. Over half a million people died (out of population of less than 30 million), and there was hardy a single white family in the South where at least one man did not die in the war, with most of them away fighting. White men were badly outnumbered in many States of the South – and the slaves did nothing. Even today a race riot is rather more likely in the North than in the South – Southerners were (and to, some extent, still are) a martial people and De Tocqueville did not really understand them.

De Tocqueville also confidentally predicted the inevitable extermination of the America Indians (it is horrible, but it is matter of social forces…). Even the Indians of the North East did not die out (have a look at a skyscraper construction site some time – you will see Indians working there). And in the West some of the hardest Indian fighters turned out to be the strongest defenders of Indian rights – think of Kit Carson and the Nevada Navaho.

Cruel though some Americans were it is interesting to note that they were not as cruel as the enlightened sociological expert thought they would inevitably be.

Paul Marks