A critical perspective on Tocqueville strengthens his own work and anyone's understanding of America

 July 13, 2022

A critical perspective on Tocqueville strengthens his own work and anyone's understanding of America, native or foreign.

Tocqueville was a Frenchman. His analysis of the early Republic was written from the perspective of a foreigner. But this also gave him what Rawls may have called a "veil of ignorance" - ignorance not of "if" the nascent American administrative structure had considered what Tocqueville considered to be the barriers to instituting democratic government in France, but acknowledged ignorance of "how" the American's early Republic had done it.

Tocqueville had some very problematic beliefs and thoughts. But he was at least so voluminous a writer that even if we disagree with him on some things, anyone can probably find something in there that we agree with. Tocqueville was an aristocrat, and had strong identification with aristocratic policies. For an American, this is problematic. However, he wasn't that bad a guy on a forgiving personal level. And this is mostly due to the fact that he was able to critique the three-tier social hierarchy that he had been taught to rely on, as a French aristocrat. Even though he opposed "levelers" he was still able to say up front:

"As society becomes in time more civilized and stable, the different relations among men become more complicated and numerous. The need for civil laws makes itself keenly felt. Then jurists are born; they leave the dark precincts of the courts and the dusty recesses of the registries and go to seat at the court of the prince beside the feudal barons covered with ermine and mail.

The kings run themselves in great undertakings; the nobles exhaust themselves in private wars; the commoners enrich themselves in commerce. The influence of money begins to make itself felt in the affairs of the state. Trade becomes a new source opening the way to power, and financiers become a political power that is scorned and flattered.

Little by little enlightenment spreads, one sees the taste for literature and the arts awaken; then the mind becomes an element in success; science is a means of government, intelligence a social force; the lettered take a place in affairs."

Tocqueville may have just seen the writing on the wall, but he didn't misread it. He may have scorned and flattered the nascent early Republic, but at least he went to and explored the place that frightened him into existential terror.

On the Corruption and Vices of those who Govern in Democracy; on the effects on public morality that result (Tocqueville, Vol. I, Part 2, Chap. 5, Sec. 12, pg. 210)

This is an interesting and relevant discussion from Tocqueville on government corruption, and "what is it that we're talking about when we talk about corruption."

Tocqueville points this out: in aristocracy, positions in government are effectively bought - but suggest that in democracies there may be no fewer men running for office that are for sale, but there may be fewer buyers. And surely the corruption of aristocratic governments who run the country into the ground, making a fortune at the expense of the state is much greater than the level of that same type of corruption seen in a democratic government.

However, he does try very hard to make the point that people in democracies even such as America, should not believe that there is no corruption. His first suggestion at what that is hints at the ideas that the corruption exists not in the use of power attained, but in the gaining of that power. This is true, but the corruption can't logically exist only in the deleterious effect of that, those rumors, on the public conscience, as he suggests.

I think Tocqueville was resistant to the idea of social contract as applied to the analysis of American government, because he saw America only as the breakdown of the old social contract, of Europe's barely reformed feudalism. He does say that social relations become more numerous, but in general he is predicating his analysis on the assumption that social contract theory completely broke down into purely the granular notion of a multitude of private contracts, in the formation of American democracy, or any democracy for that matter. This I don't fully agree with.

Both Tocqueville's theory and the assumption that the social contract has broken down into a multitude of private contracts, both lend credence to one of the Anti-Federalist arguments published as "on the preservation of parties, liberty depends".

This has to be dealt with on both the rhetorical and factual level, but the rhetoric can be disposed with quickly. It is true that there are all sorts of people, who differ in the scope of their power and utility. All can be included, but don't have to be propped up.

But on a factual level, this has to be seriously deliberated. The notion is being presented in this paper as a vague sort of threat - as in "if I was to be corrupt what I would do would be to take over a local political party." This is absurd.

Federalist Papers #10 considered the same question, and concluded that there are distinct classes in society - without distinction of rhetoric and fact - but assures us that it should be established understanding that "no man is allowed to an a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgement, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity." (Emphasis mine.)

Let's apply some practical sense to this. Corruption, in this proper and American analysis, is a lack of diversity: of interest, scope, and class. If assembly of men(/people) is constituted in such a way that men show up there when their interests are implicated, there will be lessened potential for the corruption that is in its essential character the lack of diversity. Now, it stands to reason, that there must be some diversity of interest, scope, and class built into the system regulating the convention of the assembly in order to ensure that those whose interests are implicated in the deliberation of an assembly, show up. That's why the same Anti-Federalist argument can't be discarded, but it's subsumed into the Federalist Paper #10 argument.

Tocqueville's suggestion that corruption is implicit in the American system at the level of the party system, devolves to this Anti-Federalist argument. This current-day Republican Party assuredly doesn't succeed in not being corrupt on this point.

But even that is not my point in full. Tocqueville is asserting that there is no social contract in America except at the level of individuals. Yet Federalist Papers #10 asserts that it must exist to ensure that there is diversity at the common assemblies - and therefore to prevent corruption.

What is the corruption that does exist in our system, according to the tenth Federalist Paper?

They make the argument that they always cheekily recur to that the corruption in America is the corruption of preventing corruption, and so on and so on. But it's a turn to this point, which is factual and not rhetorical.

That is, corruption is a solvable problem in this particular point in America, because corruption is sort of like that old saw "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing," also considered as people may be lost about what is actually being talked about - it's a communication problem.

But even more than an "accident" or natural ignorance with intention to learn, the cause and not the effect of this corruption is the sectarianism of information; actual corruption would be some cult-like figure that says "read and/or consume only this set of information; limit yourself to one expertise." An echo chamber is the province of religion, but not philosophy of government. But echo chambers have always been around: the choice to confine yourself to one kind of information has always been as debilitating as Howard Hughes' lifelong diet of cookies and milk, and just as gross of an elitist, status-seeking power play. But let's distinguish between what is in the discourse now that we are calling "echo chambers" from any of the real corruption of the cult-like gatekeeping of information that still exists in America. And now we finally catch up to the modern point that I wanted to get to, here.

The consumption of information by the American body politic has increased dramatically due to the internet. But this has also decreased people's trust in the standard sources of information about their country. Even by osmosis only, the average American has more information than before. But the bar has been raised, and a lot of the standard banal platitudes on the comms that we read no longer satisfy - and so more people want something more "edgy" because they want something both new and real. This can't really be done by substituting only new genres without higher quality as well. I reject the theory of the frenetic ADHD American consumer of information. I lean in to a certain qualified optimism that the bar has indeed been raised, and the common guy can handle a little bit more, than perhaps before. We can broaden our view, and deepen it too.