Tocqueville's Warnings

"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
--Morpheus (The Matrix)

GMU's Dan Klein discusses some important points from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. In 1831 Tocqueville and a colleague were sent by the French government to study America's prison system. For the better part of a year, they toured the US and some parts of Canada. 

After returning home and reporting their findings, Tocqueville continued on, writing a two volume set with the first volume published in 1835 and the second in 1840. Although titled Democracy in America, Tocqueville's work was really a treatise on democracy in general, a phenomenon that in his view had been in motion for centuries.

Klein focuses primarily on Tocqueville's conclusions, or warnings, many which appear near the end of volume two in a chapter entitled, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear." It turns out that Tocqueville had been worried about the ultimate outcomes of democracy for some time, and his whirlwind tour of the US did not quell his fears. According to Klein, Tocqueville feared two scenarios in particular.

One was despotism from a "tyranny of the majority." Tocqueville was not the first to envision such an outcome, as similar concerns appear in the writings of our founding ancestors. Tyranny of the majority is bad not only because it rules by shallow, group-inflicted dogma (rather than by rule of law), but because of its constant expansion of government and its dominance in social affairs. Even if citizens do not regard it as tyranny, Tocqueville argues that it is because it is not in each citizen's interest. It "monopolizes movement and existence" even though "it does not ride roughshod over humanity."

Tocqueville's point is that tyranny of the majority can subtle, gradual, and perhaps even enticing enough for citizen subjects to demand it.

This leads to a worse scenario. Citizens "renounce the use of their wills" and lose "little by little the faculty of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves." They outsource their faculties to rulers believed to make decisions in their interest--often under the guise of equality of condition.

Such a belief is delusional. Tocqueville writes that a small group inevitably assumes control of the machinery of government for its own interests. Tyranny of the majority becomes tyranny by minority rule. The power proceed to destroy or modify institutions and customs. 

Ironically, people come to prefer "equality in servitude to inequality in freedom." Wow. Well said.

A citizen enjoys "goods as a tenant, without spirit of ownership." A "miserable person" can understand "robbing the public treasury or selling favors of the state for money...and can flatter himself with doing as much in his turn."

At the time of his writing, Tocqueville opined that "the majority...still lacks the most perfect instruments of tyranny...If ever freedom is lost in America, one will have to blame the omnipotence of the majority"

It is difficult not to spot manifestations of Tocqueville's warnings in current affairs.