Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to match 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 labours, 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 care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted in The Constitution of Liberty, by FA Hayek, page 251.
This paragraph remains a superb summary of the essential flaw in what we nowadays call the “nanny state”. Unlike a proper nanny caring for little children, the paternalist state has no interest in raising children into adulthood, but instead, infantilises the public, hence finding ever more justifications for treating the populace like five-year-olds.
At least the moral scolds of the early 19th Century as related in entertaining fashion in this book at least relied, in part, on moral exhortation rather than outright bans all the time, although there was plenty of that. But De Tocqueville and other great classical liberal writers spotted the authortarian dangers of do-gooderism from an early stage in modern, industrial countries. It seems a shame that the lessons have still not been fully learned.
On a related point, I see that California, which seems to be in the grip of puritan buffoons, is now referred to in some parts as “Nannyfornia”. In fact, if you Google up the term, it says, “Did you mean California?”. That’s gotta hurt.
First, what’s the original source? Secondly, it’s surprising you quote Tocqueville, considering that (i) he was a redoubtable critic of the sort of rationalist progressive politics you espouse and (ii) he propagated an idelogy of active civic participation that I would have thought was anathema on Samizdata.
Firstly Gabriel, who cares? We are not an academic journal. Check the footnotes of the Hayek book if you want to know. Secondly, so what? Even you, like a stopped watch, are correct occasionally, and de Tocqueville was right about many things. Should we only quote people who are certified 100% Samizdata Politically Correct? I have been known to quote Mao on occasion when I thought he was on-the-money.
It is not clear. It could either be Democracy in America, his book on the Ancien Regime, or his published letters and essays. In the absence of a direct source, I cited the page in the book in which it was used, which I trust.
By “active civic participation”, he championed the voluntary efforts of Americans, for example, in areas such as charity and so on. His book, Democracy in America, is famous for its passages on his points on that score. The key word here is “voluntary”, a concept that you clearly find hard to reconcile with your own authortarian brand of conservatism. (If you think I have discribed your views inaccurately, then I do so on the basis of the comments you have made on our threads thus far).
Well yes and no. He had, like Edmund Burke, a wariness of attempts to create society ex-nihilo from first principles, as I am, but he was certainly not a defender of the status quo, as neither was Burke, for that matter (scourge of corruption, supporter of the American colonists, etc).
It’s from Democracy in America. The whole thing is worth a slow, measured read.
Democracy in America, in my paperback edition it is on page 303. That entire chapter containing that quote is on the web here. The entire book is available on line here.
Gabriel, as usual, is 180 degrees off course. One need only to read this chapter to understand what in fact Tocqueville thought of pure democracy. It was the thing he feared most. All of his writings and recommendations were to the end of preserving individual liberty.
Democracy in America and Atlas Shrugged are the two books that stand alone in forming my political meta-context. Everything I’ve read since has built on that original foundation.
Heh! Space Nerd beat me. I’m too long winded.
Actually we refer to it as the People’s Republic of California.
Midwesterner and Space Nerd thankyou; I only ever read L’ancien Régime at all properly and that is undoubtedly an omission on my poart especially since I have wasted rather a lot of time reading secondary literature on the man. Though, Midwesterner, I have no idea what Total Democracy has to do with my comment.
Well, obviously. that doesn’t mean his understainding of individual liberty was the same as yours. There seems to be some sort of assumption here that either you are that all politics operates on a single linear spectrum between Collectivism and Individualism. I don’t have a translation to hand, so what I’ll quote in French (sorry about the lack of accents I don’t know how to do with my keyboard,) then translate as best I can.
Now, if Samizdata stands for anything it is in defence of this véritable individualisme, wheras Tocqueville was, even in his more sanguine moments, ambiguous about it and considered it, and the democratic society that went along with it, to have a very poor affinity with liberty. As it happens, my “authoritarian brand of conservatism” (which at my last outing here entailed me opposing JP’s scheme to confiscate tens of thousands of British children and put them into state care) has rather more affinity with Tocqueville’s than whatever it is you believe in.
JP
Well, I won’t pass comment on a book that I’ve only flicked through, but it is undountedly the case that Tocqueville’s version of civic participation is not Samizdata’s version. Participation in local and national government on his lines is voluntary in the sense that no-one is to be press-ganged into doing it, but it is not in any sense extra-governmental and, right or wrong, Tocqueville did not subscribe to the rigid distinction between state and civil society which you (and for what little it’s worth I) would demand. Now, perhaps Samizdata is not a purveyor of militant individualism and in fact advocates radical decentralisation of power to local governmental structures with strong co-ercive powers, but if so you should make yourself rather more clear.
Of course not, he was an extremely subtle thinker who fundamentally feared a course of events that he thought were inevitable and sort ways to ameliorate the problem, vacillating in how far he thought that could be done. You may have noticed that whatever it is I do, it isn’t defend the status quo.
Finally, as regards the source, it was a simple question because I was interested. No need to get all steamed up about it.
Of course that is simplistic, but I prefer the idea of a continuum with collectivism at one extreme and complete liberty at the other. It is far more meaningful in attempting to pin where a person stands on their broad political views than the tired and increasingly vacuous distinctions between left and right.
So let me get this right, he thought that individualism had a “a very poor affinity with liberty”. Riiiiight.
We have made ourselves pretty clear for years – I don’t know how long you have been reading us – that we are all in favour of what, to use the old word, is meant by civil society: that web of autonomous, voluntary institutions that enrich the lives of their members as well as others as a whole. It has been the position of most of the writers here that one of the most destructive features of Big Government has been the destruction and weakening of such institutions, over a period of years, a process that has accelerated in the past few decades. We have seen, for example, how charities have been co-opted by government and in the process, robbed of part of their independence.
So I don’t disagree with part of your analysis of what Tocqueville stood for; he was a skeptic about democracy. But then so are we: as we have pointed out a good deal, liberty and democracy are at best kissing cousins, but often enemies.
Yeah, someone has fundamentally different assumptions to you. Must be a spin-out, no? Like drinking a slushy too fast.
Where does this leave, for example, an established church, a council of aldermen, the Duchy of Lancaster? Answer: you don’t know and you can’t even begin to answer the question. Despite your ideological system being completely inadequate to describe reality, though, you insist on assimilating the viewpoints of everyone else into a framework provided by it. No wonder you have Popper in the top corner.
If I make so bold, Gabriel. Samizdata stands for nothing more nor less than what the Samizdatistas stand for.
Gabriel,
Where does this leave, for example, an established church, a council of aldermen, the Duchy of Lancaster? Answer: you don’t know and you can’t even begin to answer the question. Despite your ideological system being completely inadequate to describe reality, though, you insist on assimilating the viewpoints of everyone else into a framework provided by it. No wonder you have Popper in the top corner.
I have no idea what you mean here.
Indeed.
Which is a strange statement because individual liberty and democracy are as related as cream cheese and motorcycles. There is simply no such things as liberty except individual liberty.
You make an assertion that there was some sort of conflict betweeen individualism and liberty, on the face of it, quite a big statement, to put it gently. So defend it and explain it.
It leaves all such institutions needing to justify why a church, for example, has certain privileges not shared by the rest, such as seats in the House of Lords, or the ability to exclude certain people of other denominations from public life (as happened in the 19th century with the Anglican church before Jews, Dissenters, etc, got the right to stand as MPs, and so on). It means that a council of aldermen should be democratically elected, rather than get their positions as of right, and that their powers, like those of central government, should be held under a set of checks and balances. And so on.
And then of course, you do. And with many erroneous details of your own manufacture. That is how opponents sabotage the ideas they attack. It is classic straw man tactics. You equate his observations with his advocacies.
In the very last paragraph of the entire work, Tocqueville separates the individual from the community by the act of identifying them separately in a single sentence. And I think the first two sentences of his concluding paragraph explains your deep animosity towards him.
For the benefit of the lurkers in the gallery, I recommend reading the conclusion of Democracy in America beginning here, and continuing to here and here. When Tocqueville uses the word ‘equal’ he means the equality that arises from the removal of privilege and monopoly, not from redistribution. While reading those last chapters, you will perhaps be stunned by Tocqueville’s prescience. Lastly I remind them that commenter Gabriel is no expert on, but in fact an opponent to, the values and principles shared by most members of the Samizdata community. It is his intent to defeat, not enrich the ideas and values we hold.
Perry
First, whether it’s a strange statement or not is nothing to do with me. Secondly, I said that, according to Tocqueville, Democracy and individualism are related and both are destrictive of liberty, (which is proper to aristocratic societies). Now, at various stages in his career, Tocqueville departed somewhat from the bleakest version fo this viewpoint – most notably when he visited the U.S. and in 1848 – but that is certainly where he ended up by the time he wrote the work for which he is most justly famous.
As it happens, I don’t entirely agree with him, but that’s neither here nor there.
Sure fine, and I agree though I have the decency to recognise that not everyone does. That does not mean that individual liberty is equatable or best nurtured by individualism.
Nick M
I mean that (i) the sort of Libertarianism espoused here does not have the adequate tools to properly analyse the complex inter-relations between state and society and (ii) typeboxing people into categories based upon your own idelogical system, especially if it is a narrow one, is a dumb thing to do. No less dumb that Popper making a mad dash round the western philosohical tradition – and more besides! – putting everyone into neat boxes marked for and against the Open Society.
JP
It’s not my assertion. The argument, however, is really very simple. Divided we fall. Atomised individuals are incapable of resisting a strong central state. Furthermore they are incapable of organising effectively to satisfy their own needs and so create a vacumn for said state to fill and even demand that it does so.
As for me, I think that the argument has some merit, but fails to adequately recognise the ability of a properly functioning market economy to pick up a great deal of the slack.
Midwestener
My comments were entirely based upon L’Ancien Régime, a work I have read 3 times in the original as well as various biographical and interpreative pieces I have read over the years. Very few commentators would recommend focussing on Democracy in America, great work though it is undoubtedly is, for an authoritative view of Tocqueville.
As for your ciriticism of me, I have to plead confusion. All I have said is that Tocqueville opposed the Rationalist way of thinking as well as the individualism (acutally mourned would be a better word) that Samizdata prides itself on, and laid a particular stress on the importance of a multifarious state with a wide diversity of different independent institutions -preferably traditional – possessed of co-ercive power, for the maintenance of liberty. For Samizdata’s view on these I refer you to JP’s comment.
Funny, I thought I was trying to distract myself from the work in front of me. As for expert, I tried reading Atlas Shrugged, but it was shit so I looked for something with a bit more literary merit, like a computer manual or a menu or something.
And what are these vices?
!!
I will not waste my time fetching and shredding all of the straw-man arguments Gabriel is scattering about. I will make no response to his dissembling beyond repeating my previous recommendation to read this, this and this. You can the judge for yourselves instead of trusting his carefully extracted and translated fragments.
While I’m at it I might as well make people’s heads really spin. Samizdata’s socio-political theory is not only anti-Tocquevillian, it is actually Hobbist. This is the original source of the complete separation between a civil society based upon purely voluntary associations and a unified state, emancipated and above its social context, possessed of all co-ercive powers. There are differences, to be sure, in Hobbes’ and the Samizdatist’s specific evaluation of the proper powers and organisation of the state, but a basic agreement on what it is and must be. (And, of course, you’re all snooty atheists).
No problem with me, Hobbes – orginally through Oakeshott – has been quite important to me and I still have some regard for him.
I’m actually going to have break my rule on commenting on Democracy in America. It doesn’t really take long to see that Tocqueville sees the saving grace of American Democracy (not a political system, but a sociological fact), in contrast to the French, as lying in the township. Now, what the hell do you think these were exactly except for local governments?
And that’s it really, beneath Tocqueville’s eccentric attempt to marry Romatic Conservatism and Republicanism (check out these guys by the way) and his desire for a lost organic society is a local government fetishist.
I also just noticed this
You mean on the rare occasions when they weren’t doing it?
I’m sensing harsh attitudes towards Gabriel that I do not feel are entirely merited regarding de Tocqueville. D.I.A. is, in my view, a rather subtle work that seemingly straddles the ‘sides’ of this argument.
The remark of ‘snooty atheists’ has raised a smile especially.
I cannot elaborate right now as I have plans to get extremely drunk soon and have already had a few. 😉
Gabriel writes:
I said that, according to Tocqueville, Democracy and individualism are related and both are destrictive of liberty, (which is proper to aristocratic societies)
Districtive? Seriously, how is individualism – the stress on the primacy of the individual as an end in himself and herself, of not being subservient to some collective other, damaging to liberty? The two things are intertwined, surely. If you read books such as The Origins of English Individualism, by Alan Macfarlane, it is clear that the tradition of such individualism, of allowing persons the sense that their lives were their own and not in the gift of some collective, provided the rich soil in which liberal political values were able to grow. Individualsm and liberal values feed off one another. What you are perhaps talking about is destructive narcissism and short-term grasping after happiness with no heed for the morrow. But to attack individualism per se seems quixotic, to say the least.
Which is why civil society, and a rich culture encouraging voluntary institutions – Burke’s “little platoons” – is a part of the mix in preventing such problems. Tocqueville wrote eloquently about such matters.
Well indeed. The key is not just the market, but the propensity of people to form voluntary associations if left unmolested.
I dunno. I think it pays to look at his work as a whole to form a judgement on what his views were. One might as well say that one should judge Marx on the basis of the Communist Manifesto, rather than Das Kapital or Grundrisse. Anyway, writers develop as they get older, or at least I hope they do as they acquire more experience.
Just as important to a multiplicity of institutions is that they should be checked and constrained by each other, which is essentially the doctrine both of the US in its original form as envisaged by the Founding Fathers, and by those who brought about the Glorious Revolution in the late 17th Century in England.
Which gets us nicely to your assertion about Thomas Hobbes:
John Locke is the more likely influencer of some of the authors of this blog. Hobbes, the man who is often – not always accurately – held up as the defender of the strong state, is a man whose doctrines were held to be rationalisations for strong monarchies and the like. It was in reaction to the “divine right of Kings” etc that modern liberalism, as we know it, bore fruit in the late 17th centuries and through until the 19th until the rise of Fabianism, etc.
This comment by Roger Scruton, in his Dictionary of Political Thought (page 205), is worth quoting because it shows what a complex thinker Hobbes was:
“His principle that there ca be”no obligation on any man which ariseth not from some act of his own” introduces a great strain into his theory, however, in that it seems to suggest that all legitimacy and political obligation must eventuually be traced to contract or consent.”
As for whether those of us on this site are “snooty atheists”, all I can say is that as a lapsed Christian-turned-mild atheist, I have had enough twists and turns in my journey away from faith to be snooty, least of all arrogant. That said, atheists these days are less inclined to keep quiet, so you will just have to deal with it.
In response to my point about do-gooderism, Gabriel asks:
Well, if you look at the quote in the original post, it is quite obvious unless one is being dishonest that Tocqueville clearly did see the dangers of a paternalist state. Read that whole passage again and tell me that it cannot be read in such a fashion. He would have been horrified, I am sure, by the sort of NewLab puritanism of our own time, for instance.
In response to Nick M’s rather understandably bemused question, Gabriel writes:
On point 1, I think libertarians, classical liberals, call them what you will, are quite able to figure out and see the “complex inter-relations” between state and society, but what seems to get up your nose is that when it comes to our views on what the relationship should be, we conclude, in the main, that the role of the state should get a lot smaller.
Writers whom we quote from time to time, such as Hayek, had a lot to say about such “inter-relations”, and spent a lot of time talking about such things as “public choice economics” for instance, which explains how states grow in size despite the original intentions of political parties, and so on.
A shame this thread deviated off a bit about the dangers of the nanny state.
Gabs, I am not a snotty atheist!
I am a snotty esoteric Christian! So there!
‘NANZI’ is a word I recently coined for nanny-staters, or mini-nazies. It could also mean Nano-Nazi, dwarf nazies. I think this describes them perfectly. Feel free to use it as appropriate.
Gabriel,
You really have jumped the shark. That a fair few folk around here are atheist or agnostics is totally irrelevant even if they are “snooty” which I don’t think they are.
Oh, and what JP said on Hobbes vs. Locke. Locke influenced my political thinking (such as it is – I tend to think of it as more anti-political thinking) vastly more than Hobbes. Actually, I have never read Hobbes (I have read of Hobbes) but I have read Locke and I suppose it’s an oddity that I comment on a website in the C21st given over to Libertarianism largely because of a chap who wrote stuff hundreds of years ago.
And basically JP’s last comment in toto.
Tired of distorting an argument over exegesis into a supposed attack on Tocqueville or Samizdata or both at the same time, you’ve now moved on to massive sense of humour failure. It was a gd joke. Funk.
No-one’s disputing that; only that Tocqueville was in this regard or any other a typical classical liberal. Have you ever taken a look at the legislative history of the 19th century? You don’t think it was Tories in the National Temperance Federation do you?
Yep, I’m really a big bad statist who wants to jack up taxes and ban sin.
Umm, the nanny state is bad. Fun thread.
Ah, the old bully-boy tactic. So you were not being serious, but just toying with us to get us all mad with all those points, eh? What a feline bugger you are.
Fuck off.
Gabriel.
What about……
Very well.
The Dutchy of Lancaster – I like old titles, inspite of my political hero Edmund Burke targeting this (and much else) for the economy axe.
An Established Church:
Not the same as a State Church – you would not expect me to make that mistake.
However, do you see the weakness Gabriel?
It is a double one.
Firstly being “Established” can lead to people being led to believe that the property of a Church is somehow “public”.
This was not just the thinking of the French Revolutionaries or the “liberal” filth in Italy, Latin America (and so on) in the 19th century.
Even the Church of Wales was attacked as it was “wrong” for a Church that did not represent anyone to be “given” the income from so much “public” property – hence the demand for “disestablishment”.
If the Church has not been established (i.e. given special status) it would have been far more difficult to present private property as somehow “public” property that it was O.K. to take.
But there is also another problem.
The harm establishment may do to the Church itself.
The state link (for example) prevented reform of the French Catholic Church (or rather the “Catholic Church in France” – as it should have been) from being reformed in line with the Council of Trent – because the French state would not allow such reform. And thus made it an easy target for anti clericals – some of whom were actually Bishops (and so on) in the Church itself, thanks to the French state (which poor Louis XVI had very little control over – although he did make a stand against an athiest Bishop of Paris being appointed).
In Britain is Rowen Williams (Blair’s parting gift) really a good leader of the Anglican Church?
And would you approve of the Israeli government appointing the leading Orthodox Rabbi?
And what about how discredited the Russian Christian Orthodox Church has been – because of its links to the Russian state (i.e. to criminals such as Putin).
Of course an Established Church does not have to be like this – but it is a danger.
As for Aldermen:
As I said – I like old titles.
But do not expect too much from them.
For example, I seem to remember that the members of Chicago City Council are called “Aldermen”.
Has this stopped the Daley-Durbin Cook County Machine being both violent and wildly corrupt?
Or has it stopped the Machine (since the 1960’s when they were enemies) becomming so interconnected with the Marxist, Obama, left, that the Machine and the far left in Chicago are now one and the same?
As I said – do not expect too much from old titles.
Pomp and ceremony is nice (I am in favour of it), old titles are nice (I am in favour of them) – but (yet again) they do not alter reality.
What amazing diatribes generated by writings intended to describe the manner in which individuals in America had organized themselves into a society using the process of democracy – basically a recognition that democracy is a process and not a condition.
FFS JP, the quip about atheists was meant in jest, other things weren’t. Grow a brain.
Paul I dont disagree with much of what you say (though I’ll have to take issue with your endorsement of Tridentine Catholicism), but that’s not what I was getting at. I meant that a binary opposition between one monlithic state and a civil society composed exclusively of voluntary groupings is not a sufficient analytical framework to describe how societies actually work.
The CofE, for example, is not the State, nor is it the arm or appendange of the State, but it is also categorically distinct from a federation of congregational churches in its relation to the public sphere.
Gabriel,
As far as how things “actually work” going onto a website and telling one of it’s principle contributors to “grow a brain” is probably not a sharp move.
Neither does your last (if only!) post making no bloody sense at all to me whatsoever.
But let’s go back to “grow a brain”.
You state:
“the quip about atheists was meant in jest, other things weren’t.”
Which was not apparent from your post. It was not apparent that the atheist jibe was a “quip” or indeed that the rest wasn’t. I think you just made that up post-hoc.
Personally, I have no problem with Gabriel calling me a “snooty athiest”. In fact, it made me smile (in my snooty, arrogant way)!
The quotation which Johnathan included in the beginning his post is excellent, but it’s a shame that Hayek omitted the succeeding two paragraphs from his excerpt. Permit me to remedy this:
The penultimate paragraph in this chapter reaches the obvious and inescapable conclusion:
Who can deny that this is the stage we have now reached?
Midwesterner, thanks for posting the links to Democracy in America. It’s a long time since I’ve read it; I had forgotten what a good writer and incisive thinker de Tocqueville was.
The replies are like from Guardian readers, intellectuals without left-hemisphere function.
It is the maternalist state that has no interest in raising children into adulthood… They live in the “Motherland” geddit?
You are so psycho-socially imprinted you blamed the father for everything.
Apologies in advance if this makes little sense. Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing.
Gabriel said:
The local communities and primarily the total of the various (and mostly voluntary) interactions between the people in them with each other?
In a town, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker will generally be able to sell each other steaks and donuts and matchsticks without needing a great deal of help from governments, even local ones. Not disputing that governments play a role, but let’s be real here: even the roles that governments SHOULD play don’t actually contribute anything.
Yes, I just said that. I happen to think that police, courts, and external defense are legitimate roles for governments. However, I (in my official capacity[1]) don’t actually produce anything. Looking at this as an accounting problem, I (try to) reduce loss but I don’t contribute to income. Similarly, the courts don’t grow tomatoes or bake bread or fabricate truck parts. By providing a dispute-resolution framework other than blood feuds they reduce loss, but that’s not the same thing.
In most towns, if the city government abolished itself, the town wouldn’t dry up and blow away. Here, at least, the trash would continue to get picked up, the hospital would continue to received patients, and people would still buy groceries and eat them. You can insist that it’s really complicated, maybe even too complicated to understand, how people interact with government (aka The State, I think most are calling it) and get this: I’ll actually agree. It is complicated. Life is complicated. Everything is complicated.
My educational background was actually in ecology: not the green global-warming bullshit but the legitimate science. It’s almost an article of faith that nobody can understand ALL of the interactions in an ecosystem, but a, that doesn’t stop people from trying (and nor should it!) and b, we can still get a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
BTW, Kinderling, what was that supposed to mean? Would it be asking too much for you to quote whoever you’re responding to so that people might have some idea what the f*** you’re talking about?
[1] In my unofficial capacity, I just contributed two cases of California Common Lager to the Labor Day block party, but it would be illegal for me to sell it or even try to recoup my costs of production, thanks to liquor licensing laws which are about 90% rent-seeking by established distributors. Thanks to those bastards, I’m actually not 100% certain that leaving 48 bottles of untaxed beer in a bucket of ice for adults to help themselves is legal.
Again, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be arguing against here. Is this your model for society you are opposing to what you take to be mine, or is it a claim about the nature of the society Tocqueville described and advocated?
When Tocqeuville describes people meeting in a town or village hall to vote on matters of importance to the own in question, after which their decisions are put into effect, how am I supposed to interpret that as referring to anything except local government?
I’m not arguing that Tocqueville’s critiques are not very often accurate or that the sort of society he advocated did not give more scope for individual liberty than the one we endure at present, only that what he advocated bore any relation to the sort of thing Samizdata advocates.
Nick M.
It was obviously a quip; what serious point could possibly have been intended?
More specfically, I wanted to bring to attention this. The mindset which states that there are two things, the individual and the state (and that anything else can only either be an appendage of the state or an aggregate of individuals) was something Tocqueville abhorred. I recommend reading his comments on the physiocrats (people this website can genuinely claim to be the intellectual descendants of) Book 3 Ch. 3 if you want to see what I mean.
Kinderling:
A distinction without a difference. The fundamental point is that state that treats citizens as kids creates bad consequences. Sure, there are degrees of paternalism in terms of the weight of bossying that goes on and how much harm that causes, but as Tocqueville’s quote makes quite clear, the fundamental problem with all paternalism is the risk of infantilsing the populace at large, let alone its assult on freedoms per se.
Laird, thanks for those two quotations, very apt.
A typical strawman argument used by some is that classical liberals see only individuals and the state, and nothing in between. Which is quite wrong, since individuals, if left free to their own devices, form institutions all of the time, form churches, clubs, social networks, charities…..the list is endless. Tocqueville, in his journeys around the young USA, picked up on this point. Even today, the majority of US firefighters, for example, are volunteers. In the UK, we have organisations like the RNLI, formed and supported by volunteers. Such a spirit is essential for a free society to survive since it avoids the deadening impact of dependency on the state.
There was a comic who used to do a lot of performing at student venues. He would invariably open by saying “I f**king hate students” and receive a massive cheer from people convinced he couldn’t possibly be talking about them. Adherents of every religion and denomination have a remarkable facility for pointing out instances of idolatry, polytheism, impiety etc. amongst their rivals but invariably react with a mixture of bemusement, contempt and anger at those who could be so stupid as not to understand why they themselves – plainly, obviously! – are immune from such a charge.
So when someone talks about the corrosive impact of individualisme upon a society he couldn’t possibly be talking about us. I mean, our individualism isn’t corrosive at all!!!!
“So when someone talks about the corrosive impact of individualisme upon a society he couldn’t possibly be talking about us. I mean, our individualism isn’t corrosive at all!!!!” — Gabriel
Only a dyed-in-the-wool communitarian could make a bizarre statement like that. If it is even possible for “individualism” to be “corrosive” to a society, it is the society itself which is at fault. Such a society must have become so twisted and dysfunctional that it has lost sight of the fact that it is merely the sum of the individuals within it, and only exists for their benefit (not the other way around).
(Oh, and please spare us the gratuitous use of Français. “Individualisme“, indeed! And you have the nerve to call me “snooty”! Merde!)
Apparently I’m many things to many men, but again there seems to be some confusion between message and messenger. Tocqueville talks about the negative effects of individualism on society. That doesn’t even merit the title of interpretation, so obvious is it.
Seriously, are all the people here in such a Libertarian bubble that they are actually incapable of understanding the ideas of people who disagree with them? Roughly the same level of intelligence is on display as when a Leftist accuses a free-marketeer of being a stooge for corporate interests.
Uh-huh, it’s the term Tocqueville uses. C.f. the passgaes I quoted above. It helps to use the original language whenever possible because translations are always interpretations.
I am sure that Laird, Perry, me, Sunfish, NickM and many others are able to understand the ideas of those they disagree with. I understand the ideas of communitarians, conservatives, fascists, social democrats, religious conservatives, Henry Georgists, islamists, fundamentalist Christians, communists, anarcho-capitalists, syndicalists, etc. I understand their ideas only too well. That is why I don’t share them. QED.
One of your tactics is to bark out some sort of assertion, such as that Samizdata contributors only see the state on the one hand, and the isolated individual, on the other. When I point out that this is a misrepresentation, as I did by pointing out to the various institutions that emerge voluntarily, all we get is a long, sarcastic rant, and a statement that you were only relaying someone else’s views, not yours.
This is your tactic, and I’ll openly admit I find debating with you to be an angering process because there is this lack of good faith in your remarks. I guess I should not allow myself to rise to the bait. You obviously enjoy firing off your little hand grenades into comment threads and then, several comments later, smugly argue that all you were doing is winding us up. The proper description of folk like you is a troll.
Don’t push your luck.
My, aren’t we clever? Inserting a French word so you can shift the blame. Those are your words, not de Tocqueville’s (or undoubtedly you would have provided all of them en français). Don’t pretend otherwise.
And your second point is nonsense, too. Yes, in some situations a translation can miss a subtle nuance, but not one single word having a perfect English equivalent. In fact, you knew this, since the word is so close to the English equivalent that no translation was necessary. The only reason for using it here was to flaunt your oh-so-considerable erudition. It’s a wonder that you don’t drown in the rain. Mirabile dictu! (I can throw around foreign phrases, too.)
It must really gall you that French is no longer the language of diplomacy, and in fact is totally irrelevant in the modern world.
Laird:
I have quoted extensively in French twice on this thread (Aug 21st 5:06 and 7:51). You will note that in one passage Tocqeuville repeatedly uses the term ‘individualisme’. Since I had already quoted it I thought it not inappropriate to use the original French term again whenever I was making a point that hearkened back to the quoted passage. If you truly feel so strongly about excessive use of foreign quotations, or any other similar point, you have obviously missed your true calling as an editor of academic journals. Finally, whatever French is and is not useful for, it is very useful when discussing the works of French authors. Given the particular focuses of the English education system it is still reasonable to assume that a moderately educated Englishman can understand a passage in French if he knows roughly what it will be about anyway. (I have and will below provided my own translation for the benefit of any Americans reading, as I understand it is usually Spanish that plays the equaivalent role there).
JP.
First of all Perry understood perfectly well what I was saying as evidenced by him making two relevant rebukes at 1:58 and 6:20 on Aug 21st. Secondly, the particular form of incomprehension shown by you and Midwesterner is of this sort: you are incapable of understanding that a critique made by Tocqueville might be applicable to you. The point is not whether his critique is sound, but that you are the sort of people it was aimed at. I stand by my comment at 6:25, Aug 24th as the best statement of the point I have been trying to make.
Look at my first post. It is not hard as it is the first on the thread. I said that it is it’s surprising you quote Tocqueville, considering that (i) he was a redoubtable critic of the sort of rationalist progressive politics you espouse and (ii) he propagated an idelogy of active civic participation that I would have thought was anathema on Samizdata. So as you can see, my argument proceeded nothing as you described. Perhaps, your anger would be better diverted towards the concept of linear time as it is this that seems to lie at the source of your agitation.
Now, I thought point (i) at least as important as (ii), but seeing as it was on (ii) you chose to make your stand, that is where I argued.
Finally, as I doubt you took my advice, I’m going to quite form book 3 Ch. 3 of L’Ancien Régime (again apologies for the lack of accents, I only know how to make one with my keyboard and I don’t have time to faff about with the symbol function of MS Word. I don’t have an english translation to hand and I can’t find one on the internet).
[emohasis mine]
Ring a bell? Of course not.
Actually, I don’t have a problem with Gabriel using French expressions. That is hardly a shooting offence. After all, entrepreneur is one of my favourite words!
The problem, Gabriel, is that we are “not the sort of people” you imagine that Tocqueville was criticising. We are not utopians, we are not blind to the dangers of such things. You keep trying to liken us to the French Revolutionaries, which very obviously ignores my own hatred of, for example, the statism and obsession with centralised control and planning that considerably shaped the thinking of the Physiocrats and which animated the demented forms of social planning loved by Robspierre and the rest of them (later to be copied by Lenin and others, of course).
There are several myths, or straw men arguments, that I come across from opponents of classical liberalism over and over. One classic example is the idea that libertarians fail to understand the importance of community and shared associations. That is utter rubbish. The market economy, after all, is about one of the most remarkable examples of voluntary co-operation ever known, the classic example of a “spontaneous order”. There are countless other examples too. I have made the point about such non-state institutions until I am blue in the face but the point just does not sink into that little nut of yours, Gabriel.
By all means criticise our views, even rudely. But have the good manners at least to accurately represent our opinions rather than turn them into caricatures. That achieves nothing other than suggest that you are a bit of a berk.
You still don’t get it.
“non-state institutions” =/= des assemblées délibérantes, des pouvoirs locaux et secondaires
Whch is why I said
Perhaps ‘anathema’ should be replaced with ‘beyond the boundaries of comprehension’.
Gabriel, by “active civic participation”, do you mean, for example, compulsory activity – like serving in the army, or jury service, for example, or what? One might argue, as even a minimal statist could, that jury service and defence of the realm are duties logically arising from the rights of freedom and protection against violence that we all enjoy, but such duties must be clearly demarcated and limited to prevent abuse, growth of state power, etc, etc. Or maybe “active civic participation” means something else without the element of compulsion.
Unfortunately, Mr T. is dead, so we cannot really ask him, even if we do speak excellent French.
We can’t ask him, but we can’t read him. At the end of L’Ancien Régime, Tocqueville includes an appendix on the pays d’états (though only really on Languedoc) which were the parts of France that successfully resisted centralisation under the Bourbons. I’ve managed to find a reliable English language link; unfortunately it has pages missing (to get you to buy the book) but there’s enough to get the content and tone. Starts on p250 (also takes an age to load I’m afraid). (Link).
Anyway, ask yourself honestly, is that anything like what you want to bring about?
As I have tried to make clear, I am deeply ambiguous at best about Tocqueville’s advocacy of active local government. Though I am interested in ideas of competitive governance, I can’t help but remember that an indispensible part of the the Thatcher Revolution was to reign in municipal socialism.
One of the problems with Mrs Thatcher’s reforms was that by centralising such powers, she gave a gift to future socialist governments, like the present one. She should have read a bit more of Tocky, and perhaps the Federalist Papers, while she was at it.
The original quote by T, whatever you think of his writings on the whole, beautifully nails the problem of paternalism/maternalism, of all hues. And that is my final word on this matter.
Thanks for the link. My laptop cannot really handle it, so I will rely on reading the book eventually.