Monday, February 13, 2006

Unpacking Tocqueville: A Voice of Honorable Caution

Tocqueville critically assesses the democratic republic of America, revealing both its unique virtues and inherent conflicts. One of these conflicts within America’s politics revolves around the concept of honor. Tocqueville finds that a democratic society erodes this concept, thereby eroding the integrity of the common will that America vests its political authority within. This paper first asks, what does honor mean to Tocqueville? Second, how does he view this concept’s effect on American society? What emerges from this discussion is a dual-pronged notion of honor that, for Tocqueville, plays a critical role in sustaining the ability of the public will to remain truly sovereign; but at the same time, is promised to degrade within America’s democratic society. This paper will argue that Tocqueville’s logic behind his concept of honor neither confirms or denies Publius's hopes for a successful American state. Rather he sounds a voice of caution to all established and emerging democratic societies. This paper will offer its own solution to this threat: the creation of a new honor system, that of partisan honor.

Tocqueville holds that honor is that which directs society to levy blame or heap praise (Tocqueville 590). They are social categories readily apparent and universally applied that give people a grid to proper or improper behavior. This is not to be confused with the notions of 'good’ or ‘bad’ behavior, but rather behavior which society condones or expels. Tocqueville argues that within a feudalistic society, these categories give shape to the opinions of the mass; thus giving us the form of acceptable behavior in the public realm, which then allows us to fill these categories with details, passions, and direction. This stands separate from virtue, which Tocqueville considers a purely individual question best summed up by: “how do I act well?” Instead, honor asks, “How does society-at-large regard the public activities?” And this categorizing concept of honor is dual: operating both within society and, at the same time, composing a national honor. Implicit within this definition is that the needs of honor are separate from the common needs of society-- but are often blurred by the public. And why is it that people profess particular desires instead of substantive desires? Tocqueville justifies this divide by the one true divine inequality: the inescapable difference of intellect between humans (513).

Honor stands divorced from “common” interests (599). Instead honor seeks to give direction aid the public will, a direction towards substantive or true interests. Who constructs this social grid map in America? As Tocqueville points out, America does not have the same social divisions as Europe, where the feudal basis of honor arises. Yet, it seems the promulgators of honor come from an analogous section of society: those learned members that can discern the nation’s substantive interests. Tocqueville points out that any government that places its sovereign within the public will risks loosing the distinction between the policy of “blame or praise” (meaning in line with the true interest of the nation). Democracy does this by leveling the social distinctions that gave birth to honor, blurring the ability of the public will to have grasp clear direction (598).

Tocqueville also views honor as playing a role on the nation-state level. Instead of speaking to relations within the state, Tocqueville speaks of national honor: the identity and international policies a nation-state as a whole espouses (598). This dimension of honor seems related to Tocqueville’s expertise in foreign relations, evinced by his role as French foreign secretary (xxi). Again these interests may be at odds with the common interests. Using a contemporary example, what natural allegiance does a bank teller have to his nation’s policy of taxing for the maintenance of a standing army, air-force and navy? Only with honor, can a national identity and national policies be supported that may not meet the immediate, or abstract, interests of society. Thus, for Tocqueville, honor serves a dual purpose: internally, it allows the nation to adjudicate between competing priorities, while simultaneously constructing a national honor that permits the nation to pursue international policies critical to its continued existence.

These pernicious effects seemed shared by many of America’s Founding Fathers. Tocqueville’s guardians of societal honor seem identical with the “natural aristocracy” that Jefferson hopes will arise from the mechanisms of the Constitution. By both dividing authority and relying on indirect selection of national politicians on all three branches of American government Constitutional proponents hoped to distance power from the people, allowing particular or abstract interests to be filtered out of the national government. The large size of the republic, indirect selection of the President, senators, and the federal judiciary were meant to instill independence in national leaders; thus, these leaders were structurally conditioned to advocate the policies of “praise,” or those according to the public will.

So does Tocqueville confirm or deny the hopes for republican governance as laid out by the Federalist papers? Simply put, he does neither. Tocqueville speaks of the qualities of an ideal type democratic state: and indeed, this state would destroy honor. Yet, at the same time, Tocqueville does not claim a socially or economically equal America. In fact, Tocqueville would loathe such an occurrence:

When all the prerogatives of birth and fortune are destroyed, when all professions are open to all, and when one can reach the summit of each of them by oneself, an immense and easy course seems to open before the ambition of men, and they willingly fancy that they have been called to great destinies. But that is an erroneous view corrected by experience every day. The same equality that permits each citizen to conceive vast hopes rends all citizens individually weak. It limits their strength in all regards at the same time that it permits their desires to expand. (513)

While Tocqueville applauds the new path staked out by America, favorably reviewing America’s policies on land inheritance and dispelling of the stigma of bankruptcy, he perceives that any ability to completely level the social and economic playing field would be ruinous for the nation. Why? Such a leveling would lead to a leveling in the national priorities of the nation: leading the country to elect abstract interests that the public immediately desires over substantive interests that the public will needs. America is not a completely equal place in Tocqueville’s mind, but instead achieves a more just, relative equality that promises stability that the old way of monarchism can no longer provide.

The necessary placement of the public will as the sovereign power of the state is also dangerous. A democratic society erodes the notion of honor by having its members all blurring into a shared and nebulous social class with ill-defined direction. Equality thus makes identity impossible; thereby destroying the ability of society to move forward. Instead it will reach a static equality that will be ruinous to general good (617). This fear is neither extinguished nor promised by the tenants of the Constitution. He thus takes a position that diverges from either of these staunch conclusions: neither completely extolling the republic nor condemning it. Instead, Tocqueville offers an objective analysis of the risks inherent in governing by the general will that no system, even one of the genius of the Constitution, can fully eliminate.

Tocqueville does not offer democratic aristocrats to fill the need for preserving honor within a democratic society. Indeed he fears the closest entity America possesses to an aristocracy (532). So it seems that Tocqueville would advocate the continuation of the earlier Federalist solution: a Constitution that promotes honorable interests through indirect election and separation of powers. Yet it is clear that Tocqueville doubts the ability of such devices to work in perpetuity (168). Both perhaps the solution rests in an entity that both Publius and Tocqueville miss: the development of national parties. Publius and Tocqueville view political parties as dangerous; risking to violate the very rights a democratic republic is supposed to protect. Yet, national parties have become the partisan aristocrats of our time. Both parties share a common goal and protocol, maintain close links and construct national norms. Furthermore by going to the people for periodic elections, national parties force competing notions of national honor both through domestic and international policies. While parties may fall prey to particular interests, their large size forces national priorities to emerge within their platforms. Additionally, the stability of our two party system and the shared views of both parties allow considerable insulation from abstract desires that threaten to derail substantive policies. Yet such a notion forces one to endorse a pluralist notion of interest: where the merging of multiple interests leads to an acceptable general interest. For Tocqueville as well as Publius, the general will was separate from particular interests and had to remain as such. This is not a fault of their logic, but rather their inability to fully embrace a modernist view of interest. Such a fault in no way limits the importance of either Democracy in America or the Federalist Papers. This discussion merely seeks to answer why Tocqueville’s fear of degraded honor has, as of yet, not destroyed the American republic.

Tocqueville thus emerges as a nuanced and objective observer of American politics. Tocqueville does not extol America’s social leveling or argue that it was the only current of American history. While extolling the virtues of American democratic society, he was keen enough to point to the same fears of democracy apparent in the letters of Publius. Yet he recalibrated these fears and added depth to the dilemmas of the public will as sovereign power. His discussion of honor did not confirm or deny the hopes of Publius; instead, Tocqueville sounds as a voice of caution. And one finds that American political society responded to this voice of caution, by looking outside the Constitution to reconstruct national political parties. And it is these parties that today constitute our nation’s partisan aristocracy.

Works Cited

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (University of Chicago Press, 2002), translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop.

Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1955), Chapter 1,

Rogers M. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America.” American Political Science Review, vol. 87, No.3 (September 1993): 549-566.