Tocqueville, Weber, and Democracy: The Condition of Equality and the Possibility of Charisma in America (Part II)

Democratic Equality

The defining characteristic of American liberal democracy, i.e., mass democracy, for Tocqueville is the “the general equality of condition among the people,” a force so pervasive that:

“I soon perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less effect on civil society than on government; it creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that this equality of condition is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated” (DA1 3).[20]

This equality of condition has manifested itself most fully in the New World, although it inevitably will reach Europe, as Tocqueville retraced the history of western civilization as one long march towards democracy (DA1 14). What motives men towards social equality is the belief that “exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive” (DA1 9). With the Christian belief of spiritual equality and the Enlightenment dogma of political equality, the previous awe and wonder citizens had felt towards their rulers dissipated into collegial contempt: “The spell of royalty is broken, but it has not been succeeded by the majesty of the laws. The people have learned to despise all authority, but they still fear it” (DA1 10). The problem that confronted the democracies of Europe is to transform this scorn and contempt into reverence and respect for a new authority: republican self-rule.

For Tocqueville, this new authority of republican self-rule was possible only if citizens felt a sense of connection with each other. What concerned Tocqueville the most was the sense of isolation and alienation among a citizenry which, in turn, leads to a sense of powerlessness over political events. As Tocqueville wrote in a letter in 1851, he complained about the condition in Europe as “the most salient characteristic of the times is the powerlessness of both men and of governments on the general movement of both ideas and political events” (SL 155). Unlike an American, a European “looks upon all these things [civil society] unconnected with himself and as the property of a powerful stranger whom he calls the government” (DA1 96). Tocqueville was deeply concerned about the privatization of society which eventually leads to a sense of powerlessness among the citizenry:

“When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels pride that he is equal of any one of them; but when comes to survey the totality of his fellows and to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality that renders him independent of each of his fellow citizens, taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number” (DA2 11).

In other words, Tocqueville saw the severance of traditional ties in society and the pursuit of individual private interests as the contributing causes to a sense of powerlessness.

In America, the citizens are philosophical Cartesians, seeking “the reason of things for oneself, and in oneself alone,” which further isolates them from each other (DA2 3). The philosophical school of thought that Americans unconsciously subscribe to is one where individual applies his own effort to his own understanding, since all citizens are equal in social status and therefore lack an external source of authority to compare their own judgments (DA2 3-4). Because all judgments are generated within, Americans practices the Cartesian method of clear and distinct principles and deny all those phenomena that cannot be comprehended (DA2 4). The affinity between Cartesianism and social equality is the rejection of authority in favor of individual judgment whether in scientific, philosophical, or political matters (DA2 5). The result of this reliance on individual judgment is to reduce everything to its practical or utilitarian value—a philosophical pragmatism—that “accept tradition only as a means of information, and existing facts only as a lesson to be used in doing otherwise and doing better . . . to tend to results without being bound to means, and to strike through the form to the substance” (DA2 3).

This is particularly true in America where social classes almost have disappeared due to the laws of inheritance as equal division. Besides the physical features of the American geography, its Puritan origins, and English heritage, all of which have contributed to the condition of social equality, the laws of inheritance brings the material concerns of the citizens to the forefront (DA1 48-49, 20-45; DA2 194-195). The equal partition of property not only severs the connection of the family for Tocqueville, but it also forces all members of the family to seek a livelihood for their material existence. If the sons aspire to be wealthy as their fathers, they must resign themselves of not possessing the same property and therefore must seek fortune in capital and other speculative, financial projects (DA1 49). Generations of the same family will rise and fall; but “it is rare to find two successive generations in the full enjoyment” of the same wealth and social class (DA1 51). The final outcome of this condition of fluctuating wealth is to focus the intellect on pragmatic concern of material existence, where everything is seen as means to the fulfillment of the material passion of wealth. Cartesianism therefore contributes to a condition of isolation and alienation among the citizenry because it constricts all evaluations and judgments to oneself, usually in the pursuit of material self-interest.

This sense of isolation, alienation, and privatization among the citizenry Tocqueville referred to as individualism:

” . . . a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself” (DA2 98).

Whereas in previous regimes, subjects have suffered from selfishness, democratic regimes with their equality of condition promote a new vice known as individualism. The primary difference between these two is that individualism leads to a radical isolation of citizens, while selfishness does not seek to escape from familial, societal, and political bonds (DA2 98-99). Individualism consequently is the more harmful of the two, because it destroys any sense of obligation for citizens to pursue action past their self-interests. This sense of standing alone in society is reinforced with a Cartesian pragmatism orientated towards material wealth. Because citizens see themselves as independent from each other in their pursuit of wealth, they lay down the foundation for despotism: “Equality places men side by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder” (DA2 102). Despotism is most likely to succeed in democratic rather than aristocratic societies, because the equality of condition tends to separate instead of bind citizens.

The form that despotism presents itself in democratic regimes is majority tyranny, as Tocqueville described:

“Several particular circumstances combine to render the power of the majority in America not only preponderant, but irresistible. The moral authority of the majority is partly based upon the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual, and that the number of the legislators is more important than their quality. The theory of equality is thus applied to the intellects of men; and human pride is thus assailed in its last retreat by a doctrine which the minority hesitate to admit, and to which they will but slowly assent. Like all other powers, and perhaps more than any other, the authority of the many requires the sanction of time in order to appear legitimate. At first it enforces obedience by constraint; and its laws are not respected until they have long maintained” (DA1 255).

Furthermore, the majority rule is based on the utilitarian principle that the interests of the many outweigh the interests of the few, which becomes a moral argument with the equality of condition (DA1 256). The power of the majority eventually becomes legitimate over time, once it has controlled all the institutions of government from the legislature to the executive to the courts. Minorities in some communities can “never hope to draw the majority over to their side, because they must then give up the very point that is at issue between them,” namely equality of condition (DA1 256). All they hope for is to become the majority sometime in the future; in the meantime, they recognize the rights of the majority to rule in both law and opinion.

Simply put, Tocqueville did not believe that institutions will provide an effective barrier against majority tyranny, for “social power [is] superior to all others” (DA1 260). The problem of majority tyranny is that the injured party has nowhere else to appeal to:

“If to the public, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority and implicitly obeys it; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority and serves as a passive tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain states even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd of the measure of which you complain, you must submit to it as well as you can” (DA1 261).

The power of the majority is such that it precludes freedom of opinion and even thoughts of dissent: the socialization of its citizenry is so complete that one cannot even think a condition other than social equality (DA1 264-265). Even the political leaders of the country, those who managed to rise above the condition of equality, continue to flatter the people’s intelligence and virtue, even if they do not believe it themselves. The result is a lack of patriotism, or what Weber had called “ethics of conviction” (DA1 267-268). By being sycophants to the majority, the political leadership becomes a cynical cadre that pursues power without either conviction or responsibility.

Of course, the ultimate danger that results from majority tyranny is the destruction of liberal democracy in what I call administrative despotism (DA1 95-97; 268-269). This state is centralized with authority and power where, with the condition of equality, everyone is equal, alike, and isolated from each other: the citizen “exists only in himself and for himself alone” (DA2 318). In pursuit of their “petty and paltry pleasures” of material wealth, these citizens seek to take power upon themselves to achieve their objectives by making everything uniform, fashioning people to the state’s will, in the name of the sovereignty of the people (DA2 318-319). By governing in the name of the people, the administrative despotic state satisfies the two, contradictory passions in the people: the desire to be free and the desire to be ruled (DA1 55-58). The principles of centralization and popular sovereignty are combined to provide consolation to the citizenry: they are governed despotically by their own choice (DA2 319). The desires to be free and to be ruled, therefore, are equally satisfied in the routine and detailed subjection of society to the administrative state. We are left with Weber’s rational-legal form of legitimization in the administrative bureaucratic state.

However, this fate is avoidable for democracies, according to Tocqueville, who looked to liberty in the political culture, participation, and social organizations to prevent administrative despotism in democratic regimes (DA2 322). Beginning with democratic political culture, Tocqueville acknowledges the deficiencies of it: the mediocrity, the vulgarity, and the materialism that pervades democratic societies (DA1 252-253; DA2 13-93). Nonetheless, there are two features of democratic political culture that draws citizens out of their self-contained spheres of isolation and self-interest: the family and religion. With its equality of condition, the democratic family treats all members of the household the same but the natural ties still exist and consequently bind the members of the family together. The “social ties are loosen, but the natural ones are tighten” in democratic families (DA2 197).

For Tocqueville, there is sentiment that familial affection is permanent in human nature and manifests itself more clearly in democratic families than aristocratic ones where the ties are more social and conventional than natural (DA2 192-196). The moral bedrock of this attachment is the Protestant woman of the household, where, given again equality of condition, they are educated and responsible for their own choices and actions (DA2 198-203). Women in America are able to select their own husbands, maintain their own public opinions, and are governess of the household while still submitting to the husband as the authority of it (DA2 205, 212). Although not flattered as their European counterpart, American women are held in high esteem and equal respect by their husbands (DA2 213). Thus, the American woman provides the moral education to the American family, which is bound together by the natural ties of familial affection.

Religion is the second feature of American political culture that prevents citizens from slipping into individualism and material self-pursuit. When an American attends church, they “steal an house from himself, and, laying aside for a while the petty passions which agitate his life, and the ephemeral interests which engross it, he strays at once into an ideal world, where all is great, eternal, and pure” (DA2 143). Religion, with its doctrine of the immortality of the soul, becomes a counterweight to the materialism that threatens democracies, for democracies “encourages a taste for physical gratification; this taste, if it becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only” (DA2 145). Believing the soul to be immortal, the American will hold the body and its material needs secondary (DA2 146). The threat that materialism poses to democracies is the encouragement of individual material pursuits at the expense of any cultural, social, or political interests which require the cooperation of other people in liberty. Religion, besides being an instrument of moral education for the populace, directs American minds to non-materialist realities, thereby allowing them to consider the possibility of non-material values as necessary for human existence and betterment (DA2 143-144).

In addition to political culture, Tocqueville also looked to political and civic participation as ways to prevent democratic tendencies towards administrative despotism. The political party may be a “necessary evil in free governments,” but they can affect gradual change in society when they “cling to principles rather than to their consequences; to general and not to special cases; to ideas and not to men” (DA1 175). America used to have great political parties with the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, but now no longer, because the democratic passion in political parties rules over the aristocratic element (DA1 175-176, 178). Like Weber, Tocqueville favored the aristocratic element (or what Weber called the charismatic principle) in political parties—principles rather than consequences; ideas instead of men—as a political force in the regime to counter the excitable material interests of the masses (DA1 177). Without principles or ideas to unite its followers, the political party collapses into “a thousand minute shades of difference upon questions of detail” that result in citizens pursuing their own material self-interest and entering into a Cartesian individualism (Ibid.). Thus, it is unlikely that political party could be one of the mechanisms in the political process to draw citizens out of their spheres of isolated interests.

But political participation in local communities in a decentralized administrative structure (federalism) does mitigate democratic tendencies towards administrative despotism. The federal arrangement of the American political system permits the national government to focus on a small number of objects, while the state and local communities busy themselves with most of the governmental tasks at hand (DA1 271-272). Tocqueville was particularly impressed with the New England townships and to a lesser extent the counties, where administrative tasks are divided among the populace and therefore bind the citizenry together:

“Every individual is always supposed to be as well informed, as virtuous, and as strong as any of his fellow citizens. He obeys society, not because he is inferior to those who conduct it or because he is less capable than any other of governing himself, but because he acknowledges the utility of an association with his fellow men and he knows that no such association can exist without a regulating force. He is a subject in all that concerns the duties of citizens to each other; he is free, and responsible to God alone, for all that concerns himself” (DA1 64).

The New Englander is attached to his township because he is a free member of this community and therefore is responsible for it (DA1 66). The township also satisfies those who seek public esteem but without stirring ambition in citizens, for federal office is what the truly ambitious seek, while the township office is for those that desire “the taste for authority and popularity” (DA1 67).

This pursuit of self-interest, whether in material wealth or public esteem, needs to be channeled to coincide with the social and political interest of society: “the inhabitants of the United States almost always manage to combine their own advantage with that of their fellow citizens” in the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood (DA2 121). All actions are explained by Americans in terms of self-interest rightly understood: how sacrifices made by them are actually in their own long-term self-interests (DA2 122). This psychology comports with their Cartesian psychology in that Americans must devise for themselves a justification for their actions that is apart from external references of authority. Given the equality of condition, the easiest justification for their actions is self-interest, even “when they fail to do themselves justice” in avoiding the language of virtue, nobility, and sacrifice (Ibid.). Although this doctrine does not aspire towards greatness of character or mind, it is the most suitable for democratic regimes, because it draws citizens out of their individualism into social and political communities (DA2 123). The psychology of self-interest rightly understood therefore can be applied to politics, commerce, or civil society to form the social and political bonds among the citizenry into a single community.

Of these elements in society, the social and civic organizations, “civil society,” have been given the most attention by political scientists, or what Tocqueville called “free institutions and public associations.”[21] According to Tocqueville, civil society emerges from the sense of powerlessness among a citizenry that is equal: they are powerlessness unless they cooperate with each other to achieve non-political objectives (DA2 107). In these social and civic organizations, citizens acquire “social capital”—the values, norms, and skill sets required for democratic politics—and become drawn out of their individualism into a community (DA2 109-110). Furthermore, these social and civic organizations provide an additional barrier to the state and local governments between the national government and its citizens, thereby countering democratic tendencies towards administrative despotism. Although greatness is unlikely to emerge in democracies because of their equality of condition, civil society does provide the necessary venue to train the ordinary citizens in the practices of liberty against administrative despotism. Thus, Tocqueville sought hope against administrative despotism in the liberty of social and civic organizations, as well as the political culture and participation, of the American citizenry in order to justify mass liberal democracy.

Notes

[20]  Citations for Tocqueville’s works are as follows: DA1 is Democracy in America Volume 1, trans. Phillips Bradley, (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990); DA2 is Democracy in America Volume 2, trans. Phillips Bradley (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990); and SL is Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. Roger Boesche, trans. James Toupin and Roger Boesche, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

[21]  Refer to endnotes 15-17.