The Constitution and Freedom

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Democracy in America – by Alexis De Tocqueville, year 1840
Chapter 6 of Part II - WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR

I had noted in my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society similar to the American model could lay itself open to the establishment of despotism with unusual ease, and I had seen on my return to Europe to what extent most of its rulers had already exploited the ideas, opinions, and needs engendered by such a state of society to enlarge the range of their power.

That led me to think that the nations of Christendom would perhaps end up by suffering some similar oppression to the one which once burdened several of the peoples of the ancient world. A study of the subject in more detail and five years of further meditation have nor lessened my fears but they have redirected them.

 Centuries past never witnessed any ruler so absolute or powerful as to undertake the administration, on his own and without the support of secondary powers, of every part of a great empire; nor did anyone try to subject all his people indiscriminately to the details of a uniform code of conduct; nor, did anyone descend to the level of every common citizen in order to rule and direct him. The idea of such an enterprise never occurred to the mind of man and, had it done so, the lack of education, the defects of administrative machinery, and, above all, the natural obstacles aroused by the inequality of social conditions would soon have stopped his attempts at so grandiose a design.

When the Roman emperors were at the height of their powers, the various nations inhabiting the Roman world still preserve their different customs and manners: although they obeyed the same monarch, most of the provinces were administered separately: they abounded in powerful and energetic townships and, although the whole  government of the empire was concentrated in the emperor’s hands and he remained the arbiter o{ everything when the need arose, the small details of social life and private everyday existence normally eluded his control.

The emperors, it is true, wielded immense and unchecked power which allowed them to indulge freely any strange whims they might have and to use the entire power of the state to satisfy them; they often abused this power to deprive a citizen arbitrarily of his property or his life: their tyranny was an excessive burden on a few people but never spread over a great number; it latched on to a few main objects, leaving the rest alone; it was violent but its extent was limited.

If despotism were to be established in present day democracies, it would probably assume a different character; it would be more widespread and kinder; it would debase men without tormenting them.

Doubtless in an age of enlightenment and equality such as our own, rulers could more  easily manage to gather all public powers into their own hands and to intrude further and more regularly into the realm of private interests than was ever possible for any ancient sovereign. But this same equality which fosters despotism also tempers it. 'We have seen how public customs become more humane and gentler as men grow more alike and equal; when no single citizen has great power or wealth, tyranny is to some extent deprived of opportunity and a field of action. Since all fortunes are modest, passions are naturally limited, imagination restricted, and pleasures simple.  This universal moderation controls the ruler's excesses and constrains the disorderly surge of his desires within certain limits.

 Aside from these reasons borrowed from the nature of the state of society itself, I could add many others which I would be taking from areas beyond the range of my subject but I intend to stay within the boundaries I have set myself.

Democratic governments might become violent and cruel at certain times of great excitement and danger but these crises will not happen often or last long.

 When I consider the trivial nature of men's passions, the mildness of their manners, the extent of their education, the purity of their religion, the gentleness of their morality, their industrious and tidy habits, the restraint they almost all display in their vices as in their virtues, I have no fear that their leaders will be considered as tyrants but rather as guardians.

Thus, I think that the type of oppression threatening democracies will not be like anything there has been in the world before; our contemporaries would not be able to find any example of it in their memories. I, too, am having difficulty finding a word which will exactly convey the whole idea I have formed;  the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable'  this is a new phenomenon which I must, therefore, attempt to define since I can find no name for it.

I wish to imagine under what new features despotism might appear in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them living apart is almost unaware of the destiny of all the rest. His children and personal friends are for him the whole of the human race; as for the remainder of his fellow citizens, he stands alongside them but does not see them; he touches them without feeling them; he exists only in himself and for himself; if he still retains his family circle, at any rate he may be said to have lost his country.

Above these men stands an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after their enjoyments and watching over their destiny. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed. It would be like a fatherly authority, if, father-like, its aim were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood; it prefers its citizens to enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind. It works readily for their happiness but it wishes to be the only provider and judge of it. It provides their security, anticipates and guarantees their needs, supplies their pleasures, directs their principal concerns, manages their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances. Why can it not remove from them entirely the bother of thinking and the troubles of life?

Thus, it reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range and gradually removes autonomy itself from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all this, inclining them to tolerate all these things and often even to see them as a blessing.

Thus, the ruling power, having taken each citizen one by one into its powerful grasp and having molded him to its own liking, spreads its arms over the whole of society, covering the surface of social life with a network of petty, complicated, detailed and uniform rules through which even the most original minds and the most energetic of spirits cannot reach the light in order to rise above the crowd. It does not break men's wills but it does soften, bend, and control them; rarely does it force men to act but it constantly opposes what actions they perform; it does not destroy the start of anything but it stands in its way; it does not tyrannize but it inhibits, represses, drains, snuffs out, dull, so much effort that finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as shepherd.

I have always believed that this type of organized, gentle, and peaceful enslavement just described could link up more easily than imagined with some of the external forms of freedom, and that it would not be impossible for it to take hold  in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

 Our contemporaries are ceaselessly agitated by two conflicting passions:  they feel the need to be directed as well as the desire to remain free. Since they are unable to blot out either of these hostile feelings, they strive to satisfy both of them together. They conceive a single, protective, and all powerful government, but one elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with the sovereignty of the people. That gives them some respite. They derive consolation from being supervised by thinking that they have chosen their supervisors.  Every individual tolerates being tied down because he sees that it is not another man or a class of people holding the end of the chain but society itself.

Under this system citizens leave their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then they return to it. At the present time, many people very easily fall in with this type of compromise between a despotic administration and the sovereignty of the people and they think they have sufficiently safeguarded individual freedom when they surrendered it to a national authority. That is not good enough for me. The character of the master is much less important to me than the fact of obedience.

However, I shall not say that such a constitution is not infinitely preferable to one which brings all powers together and then places them in the hands of one man or one irresponsible body of men. Of all the various forms of democratic despotism, that would be the worst. 'When the ruling power is elected or closely supervised by a genuinely elected and independent legislature, the oppression it imposes on individuals is sometimes greater but is always less degrading because each citizen, faced with these restrictions and his own impotence, can still imagine that his obedience is only to himself and that he is sacrificing to one of his desires all his others.

Equally, I realize that, when the ruling power represents and is dependent upon the nation, the powers and rights taken from each citizen do not simply serve the head of state but the state itself and that private individuals derive some advantage from the sacrifice of their independence to the public good.

Creating a national representative system in a very centralized country is thus to lessen the damage extreme centralization can produce but it does not entirely destroy it.

I see quite clearly that, in this way, individual intervention in the most important affairs is preserved but it is just as much suppressed in small and private ones. We forget that it is, above Subjection in the minor things of life is obvious every day and is experienced indiscriminately by all citizens. It does not cause them to lose hope but it constantly irks them until they give up the exercise of their will. It gradually blots out their mind and 'enfeebles their spirit, whereas obedience demanded only in a small number of very serious circumstances involves enslavement on rare occasions and then burdens only a certain number of people. It will be useless to call upon those very citizens, who have become so dependent upon central government, to choose from time to time the representative of this government; this very important but brief and rare exercise of their free choice will not prevent their gradual loss of the faculty of autonomous thought, feeling, and action so that they will slowly fall below the level of humanity.

I may add that they will soon lose the capacity to exercise the great and only privilege open to them. The democratic nations which introduced freedom into politics at the same time that they were increasing despotism in the administrative sphere have been led into the strangest paradoxes. Faced with the need to manage small affairs where common sense can be enough, they reckon citizens are incompetent; when it comes to governing the whole state, they give these citizens immense prerogatives. They turn them by degrees into playthings of the ruler or his masters, higher than kings or lower than men. Having
exhausted all the various electoral systems without finding one which suited them, they look surprised and continue to search, as if the defects they see had far more to do with the country's constitution than with that of the electorate.

It is, indeed, difficult to imagine how men who have completely given up the habit of self-government could successfully choose those who should do it for them, and no one will be convinced that a liberal, energetic, and prudent government can ever emerge from the voting of a nation of servants.