Thus, the “fourth paradox” is really more of a question—and a fairly simple one at that: Is the slide into soft despotism inevitable? In the Toquevillian analysis, democracy can generate feelings of weakness and isolation, which would cause individuals to turn to government, rather than each other, to solve social problems such as poverty. Doing this creates even more feelings of weakness, isolation, and impotence, until the very idea of associating to solve their own problems is impossible. Yet the solution Tocqueville offers to the problems of democratic isolation and impotence is precisely what democracy makes so problematic: turning to each other. In one sense, this is very Tocquevillian and very in keeping with Tocquevillian arguments such as the best remedy to the dangers of liberty is more liberty. But in another, it is more complicated, for once a people has begun to turn to government to solve its problems—as had happened in England well before Tocqueville penned the Memoir—it is not clear that this slide into soft despotism can be reversed. But perhaps it can be slowed, and certainly, encouraging voluntary associations and other nongovernmental solutions to social problems would slow that slide.
In the Second Memoir Tocqueville wonders briefly whether industrial workers’ associations might obviate the need for excessive concentrations of capital, but he dismisses this solution as not yet ripe. Desiring voluntary and local solutions, Tocqueville concedes that some form of governmental assistance to the poor seems necessary in the modern world and possibly—in the cases of free schools for children of the poor, for example—even desirable. Private initiative might be stronger and more effective than public initiative theoretically, but once poverty relief begins to be a governmental task (as Tocqueville believes it inevitably will), can it ever be returned to private hands? Skeptics from a modern public choice perspective, echoing Tocqueville’s observation of the tensions here, would remind us that agencies have their own interests, and once empowered, agencies would be reluctant to return their powers to private associations or even to diminish the sphere of their own jurisdiction. In the Memoir, Tocqueville acknowledges something of this issue in his criticisms of bureaucrats and in his discussions about the coordination problems associated with public relief efforts. But the deeper Tocquevillian concerns about whether the movement to governmental solutions can be reversed, I think, are the psychological ones about whether a people that has begun voluntarily to cede its liberty—and has begun the slide into soft despotism—can ever reclaim it.
Tocqueville does not directly address the question of whether soft despotism can be reversed by reinvigorating citizens’ desires to take care of themselves and to find private solutions to social problems. Indeed, Democracy in America’s rather bleak ending, in which Tocqueville warns of the dangers soft despotism poses to liberty, suggests that a reversal might not be possible and that once people begin to turn to public agents to find solutions to problems such as poverty, their abilities to find their own solutions will be gravely and irrevocably weakened. Yet two moments in Democracy in America suggest that reversing the descent into soft despotism might be possible. The first comes in the discussion of how free institutions and local political participation combat what Tocqueville sees as the harmful effects of individualism. Tocqueville believes the exercise of political rights constantly reminds the individual of his connections to his fellow citizens and of the fact that “the duty as well as the interest of men is to make themselves useful to their fellows.” Political participation might originally be motivated by interest or feelings of duty, but over time, the activity of promoting the general interest becomes habitual and eventually a consciously sought end, both within a political context and beyond that context. Describing this process, Tocqueville writes, “You first get involved in the general interest by necessity, and then by choice; what was calculation becomes instinct; and by working for the good of your fellow citizens, you finally acquire the habit and taste of serving them.”
The second moment comes just pages later, in Tocqueville’s discussion of the importance of civil associations.There, he warns of the dangers of “social power”—later explicitly identified as government—sapping individuals’ ability to solve their problems without its assistance. He writes, “The more it puts itself in the place of associations, the more individuals, losing the idea of association, will need it to come to their aid.” Again, only the practice of associative life can halt this process, and in the discussion that follows, Tocqueville makes clear that the practice of associative life can also reverse the process, restoring independence and initiative where they have been lost. He states, “Sentiments and ideas are renewed, the heart grows larger, and the human mind develops only by the reciprocal action of men on each other” (emphasis added). Thus, perhaps it is possible to turn the tide, and to renew citizens’ desire and ability to find private solutions to their problems. But Tocqueville is explicit that government cannot legislate this process of re-invigorating citizen initiative. He writes, “It does not depend on the laws to revive beliefs that are fading.” Government cannot legislate this civic renewal, but it can and should act indirectly, by awakening our natural instincts to help each other. In the context of poverty relief, government can encourage and strengthen what Tocqueville considers a natural sentiment to provide assistance to the needy, but it can do this only by stepping back and allowing individuals to fill the vacuum and to find their own responses to this problem.
In the Second Memoir, Tocqueville had begun to think about how economic empowerment through land ownership and personal savings might help protect people from the exposure to chance in a world dominated by manufacturing economies and the production of luxury goods. Against the problems set out in Democracy in America, we can consider how economic responsibility might also assist in the development of the capacity of social action by individuals and voluntary associations. Today, we should not read Tocqueville’s Memoirs on Pauperism as failures in their inability to offer blueprints for a solution; rather, we can approach them as invitations to us to re-engage in thinking about these issues and how to find creative, new solutions to what Tocqueville observed was a characteristic tension between liberty and equality in the modern world.
