US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1023

On April 26 2014 18:40 Introvert wrote:
Many ideas bleed into other sections , for the record.

One of his most famous quotes, which Danglers provided, talks of soft tyranny [volume 2, part 2, ch 6].

Volume 2, part 4, chapter 4:



Equality isn't bad (he likes it! Though I'm not sure you and him have the same criteria for what is equality, so let's be careful) but it is a tool used to reach despotism.

He preached against permanent classes- something conservatives agree with. His criticisms of the exploitation of industrial workers he viewed as the exception, not the rule [Vol.2, Pt 3, Ch7.]

He also advocated a powerful yet narrow central authority [numerous places, including the cite I gave before:Volume 1, part2, ch 8]- exactly what the Constitution was meant to be after the Articles. He never advocated that people's wealth be taken from them, so far as I know. There should be no guarantee of success. To try and spin him into a high taxing, high regulation advocate just shows you using your very warped lens in viewing him. Just because he didn't like primogeniture doesn't mean he would march the state in to take it.



I think your primary misunderstanding is that he emphasized the citizen of the US, not the state. He talked of many ills, but how were they to be prevented? With a just, Judeo-Christian value system, Catholics in particular. (Volume 1, part 2, chapter 9.). Not an all powerful central government. He also considered culture and morality of utmost importance. So much of his book comes back the idea that America needs a strong moral, religious society.

You could pick out every quote on equality from him and I doubt find any sort of backing for the type of action you want taken.

Thanks for making me look back at my book- I've been itching to read it again.

On April 28 2014 15:39 IgnE wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

If we are going to discuss de Tocqueville honestly, let us at least use the terms he uses in the sense that he meant them. So when he writes of "socialism" as Danglars quoted, he wasn't talking about what passes for socialism on Fox News (i.e. anything you want), he was talking about planned economies that involved some degree of state ownership of the means of production, probably with a rationalist, scientific bent. Socialism has been debased in today's verbal coinage to such an extent that you have Danglars quoting a French liberal aristocrat talking about early 19th century socialism and applying it to liberal democratic taxation. To pretend that the democrats aren't a capitalist party makes you look like you don't know what you are talking about.


So let's start off with this peremptory dismissal of de Tocqueville's criticisms of industrial aristocracy. Introvert said:



I'm not really surprised by this laconic summary, but an honest appraisal of the text reveals a somewhat different complexion to de Tocqueville's actual thoughts on the matter. In the passage you cite:

"I think that, upon the whole, it may be asserted that a slow and gradual rise of wages is one of the general laws of democratic communities. In proportion as social conditions become more equal, wages rise; and as wages are higher, social conditions become more equal. But a great and gloomy exception occurs in our own time. I have shown in a preceding chapter that aristocracy, expelled from political society, has taken refuge in certain departments of productive industry, and has established its sway there under another form; this powerfully affects the rate of wages. As a large capital is required to embark in the great manufacturing speculations to which I allude, the number of persons who enter upon them is exceedingly limited: as their number is small, they can easily concert together, and fix the rate of wages as they please. [. . .] This state of dependence and wretchedness, in which a part of the manufacturing population of our time lives, forms an exception to the general rule, contrary to the state of all the rest of the community; but, for this very reason, no circumstance is more important or more deserving of the especial consideration of the legislator; for when the whole of society is in motion, it is difficult to keep any one class stationary; and when the greater number of men are opening new paths to fortune, it is no less difficult to make the few support in peace their wants and their desires. "

So you completely ignore here the fact that he says that where this supposedly rare exception occurs, legislators should take especial note. This seems to be calling for express action on the part of government to do something about preventing an underclass of laborers for whom wages don't raise, and wherein social inequality worsens. Wages haven't risen since the 1970s for the average worker in the United States. That's an entire generation without rising wages across a country far larger, far more productive, and far more diverse than the one de Tocqueville was writing about. It seems clear that he did not anticipate the degree to which capital came to dominate labor in the United States. A closer look at some of his other writings shows that he drastically underestimated the danger that capital posed to freedom in a democratic country.

Earlier in the second volume he says this:

"But this kind of aristocracy by no means resembles those kinds which preceded it. It will be observed at once, that as it applies exclusively to manufactures and to some manufacturing callings, it is a monstrous exception in the general aspect of society. The small aristocratic societies which are formed by some manufacturers in the midst of the immense democracy of our age, contain, like the great aristocratic societies of former ages, some men who are very opulent, and a multitude who are wretchedly poor. The poor have few means of escaping from their condition and becoming rich; but the rich are constantly becoming poor, or they give up business when they have realized a fortune. Thus the elements of which the class of the poor is composed are fixed; but the elements of which the class of the rich is composed are not so. To say the truth, though there are rich men, the class of rich men does not exist; for these rich individuals have no feelings or purposes in common, no mutual traditions or mutual hopes; there are therefore members, but no body [. . .] I am of opinion, upon the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest which ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted that this is the channel by which they will enter. "

So he clearly says that his views are predicated on a society where those who are relatively rich rise easily and fall just as easily, based on merit, not on inheritance. But he singles out the "manufacturing" or capitalist aristocracy as the harshest which ever existed in the world, before wrongly assuming that the social equality in democracy would prevent the rise of such a class. All of the evidence available to us shows growing inequality in the United States, decreasing social mobility, and the rise of a rich 1% and super rich <0.1% that have effectively insulated themselves from the tumult of democracy and the necessity of labor for their descendents. Why does de Tocqueville view this capitalist aristocracy as the harshest in existence? Because the capitalist aristocracy has no bond to the working man and does not trouble himself to share the prosperity. The "manufacturing" aristocracy does not feel a duty to the working man beyond paying him the lowest price he can for his labor.

This is one point where it is very obvious de Tocqueville's peculiar context leads him to underestimate the balance of power in a democracy, which has as its defining characteristic, a social equality that is a necessary precondition for its existence. For de Tocqueville, freedom and equality are in tension, but equality is the fundamental foundation for the democracy that makes freedom possible.

"When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of birth have ceased to be, and when every man derives his strength from himself alone, it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity between the fortunes of men is the mind [. . .] In free and enlightened democratic ages, there is nothing to separate men from each other or to retain them in their peculiar sphere; they rise or sink with extreme rapidity. All classes live in perpetual intercourse from their great proximity to each other."

De Tocqueville himself describes the equality in the America he is writing about as such:

"The number of large fortunes there is small, and capital is still scarce. Yet no people in the world has made such rapid progress in trade and manufactures as the Americans: they constitute at the present day the second maritime nation in the world; and although their manufactures have to struggle with almost insurmountable natural impediments, they are not prevented from making great and daily advances. In the United States the greatest undertakings and speculations are executed without difficulty, because the whole population is engaged in productive industry, and because the poorest as well as the most opulent members of the commonwealth are ready to combine their efforts for these purposes. The consequence is, that a stranger is constantly amazed by the immense public works executed by a nation which contains, so to speak, no rich men."

It is true that de Tocqueville says that equality can lead to despotism:

"I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism—but they will not endure aristocracy. This is true at all times, and especially true in our own. All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion, will be overthrown and destroyed by it. In our age, freedom cannot be established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its support."

But this is not the depotism of democratic taxation and redistribution. There is nothing despotic that is inherent to redistribution. For de Tocqueville, democracy, i.e. the participation of the citizens in government, is anathema to despotism. The association of free citizens in "free institutions" is the cure of despotism. It is a shame then, that those who are so afraid of despotism as to dismantle all government have knowingly aided and abetted the destruction of those institutions that tied the mass of people together and kept them involved in politics. Labor unions, workers' groups, and leftist groups that grew up during the great depression and briefly thrived in the middle of the century were systematically dismantled in favor of an atomized working class, comprising nuclear families who were unable to stand up to the repeated assault on the masses' rights and interests by corporations throughout the 70s and 80s. In contrast to the virtuous individualism espoused by conservatives, de Tocqueville lambasts individualism and egotism, saying:

"In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made. Amongst the laws which rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased."

Indeed, it is odd that anyone who has read de Tocqueville would assert that he would be opposed to taxation and redistribution, especially in light of the facts that inequality is increasing, millions remain unemployed and out of work, and oligarchy has swallowed up our political process. To suggest that he would be for reducing income taxes, capital gains taxes, and inheritance taxes is a bridge too far.

"The Americans, on the contrary, are fond of explaining almost all the actions of their lives by the principle of interest rightly understood; they show with complacency how an enlightened regard for themselves constantly prompts them to assist each other, and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the State."

Near the end of the second volume, he writes that to preserve free institutions, a requirement for freedom to flow in democracy, a legislator must "take equality for his first principle and his watchword." To establish a free government, he says:

"[T]he power of government amongst them must be more uniform, more centralized, more extensive, more searching, and more efficient than in other countries [. . .] [A]mongst aristocratic nations, the mass is often sacrificed to the individual, and the prosperity of the greater number to the greatness of the few. It is both necessary and desirable that the government of a democratic people should be active and powerful: and our object should not be to render it weak or indolent, but solely to prevent it from abusing its aptitude and its strength."

These are not the words of a man who is for "small government" whatever that means. While it must be admitted that de Tocqueville saw dangers in the equality inherent in democracy, a reading of his work grounded in his historical context puts the lie to the idea that the man was a Tea Partier before his time. Equality was a necessary precondition for the liberal democracy he envisioned, and while he longed for the great men that were nobly born in more ancient regimes, his foundational assumptions were that democracy is strongest when prosperity was spread amongst the society, when associations between men were politically active and strong, when wages rose with increasing productivity. It is a macabre intellect that would turn his arguments for the protection of private rights into a libertarian screed. Reasonable taxation and redistribution legislated and executed by democratically elected officials are a far cry from the despotism he warned about.