L’Ancien Régime Book II
In the second book, Tocqueville tries to demonstrate a double thesis, which may be summarized as: 1) The centralized authoritarian regime installed by the FR represents continuity with the old regime, not a break with the past, and 2) there is, nonetheless a qualitative difference between the benevolent busybodying of the Bourbons and the revolutionary and egalitarian take-over of private life in the Revolution.
AT lays his groundwork carefully. He wants to show that the Revolution started in France, not because it was either more despotic or more impoverished, but precisely because there were so many land-owning peasants on whom the burden of taxes fell, causing them to hate the privileges of the aristocracy, who no longer were permitted to discharge their duties as responsible local magnates. Local aristocrats no longer had administrative duties, he says, which were assumed by royal officials from the bourgeoisie.
Widespread property ownership began before and not as a result of the FR; indeed, he argues, it was a cause of the resentments that made it possible for the radicals to stage their coup in Paris. "The French peasant had become a landowner, on the one hand, and, on the other, had completely freed himself from the dominances of his lord." Thus he was acutely aware of aristocratic privileges.
In chapter two, he shows to what extent the centralization of the regime had replaced the old feudal political structures and paved the way for the FR's program of centralization.
By the 18th century, the powers to tax, maintain order, and provide public services were no longer vested in the historic municipalities that had secured charters in the later Middle Ages, but in royal officers appointed by the King and his ministers. Even the needs of the poor had been centralized: "No one now had the legal duty of bothering with the poor in the countryside, The central government had taken the foolhardy step of alone providing for their needs."
Tocqueville does concede that for a time "municipal freedom in France survived feudalism." However, the royal government gained control over municipal offices and repeatedly sold them either to individuals or, for a fee, regranted municipal liberties only to reacquire and resell them. In other words, it was a fund-raising scam.
AT makes a general conclusion: "Almost every ruler who has destroyed freedom sought at first to keep its outward form. This has been evident from Augustus down to the present day." This general law is perhaps truer of the USA, where the genus of suckers known as conservatives is forever blathering about the Constitution, deluded by the pious references of the ruling class to that discarded document that all we need to make it morning again in America is to join Glen Beck in upholding a document that he of all people does not understand. Augustus, to his credit, was trying to restore republican virtue and a measure of civil liberties to a society that had been destroyed by greed, class envy, and civil war. What excuse the Americans have I cannot imagine.
Thus in the 18th century, certain outward forms of town government were maintained, but the reality was a network of tiny oligarchies that controlled local life under the authority of royal government. Country parishes and towns did have opportunities and forums at which the people could blow off steam. Thus, "When one compares this empty show of liberty with the genuine powerlessness which accompanied it, you, on a small scale, already see how the most absolute of governments can co-exist with some of the most extreme features of democracy, to such an extent that to this oppression is added the absurdity of being blind to its presence."
Anyone for tea?
(In II.4) One means of centralizing authority, used by the old regime but very familiar to us, was the transfer of judicial responsibility from traditional courts to a system of administrative law. One effect of this transformation was to turn political contests into struggles over administrative control. The administrators' thirst for power is almost always boundless, as is their contempt for the ability of ordinary people to run their own lives. (II.6). "What already typified French administration was the violent hatred it felt against all those nobles and middle-class citizens who wished to run their own affairs beyond the reach of teh government. It was unnerved by the smallest independent body which appeared to want to come into being without its support. The most modest free association. whatever its aims,was irksome to the authorities, which sanctioned only those they had set up arbitrarily and had control over."
One could cite countless examples. Let one suffice. The current belief, held fanatically by virtually everyone in government, that parents cannot be trusted to rear their own children or make decisions about their schooling. The ideal solution, of course, is universal government schooling, but failing that private schools have to be licensed, regulated, and controlled, and independent-minded parents must be subjected to friendly visits from objective-minded experts who only have the child's best interests at heart.
Once again, I have to remind you all, that the Ancien Regime, while it interfered in the political process and regulated economic affairs, did not stick its nose into private life. Even so, it used the technique, so familiar to us, of encouraging a bogus public "freedom of expression" to encourage the delusion that people free to discuss stupid ideas have the reality of political liberty. "Since Frenchmen must always be allowed the sop of a little flexibility, to console them for their enslavement, the government allowed them to discuss very freely all kin of general and abstract theories in matters of religion, philosophy, ethics, and even politics. It was quite willing to tolerate attacks against the fundamental principles upon which society then rested and even arguments about God Himself, provided that is most menial agents were not the subject of their ramblings."
Today, of course, attacks on God and society are the principles on which the regime rests, but it is quite comfortable in tolerating the pseudo-opposition of talkshow hosts and websites so long as they do not get in the way of business. When someone does, say Julian Assange, he finds himself the target of malicious prosecution.
More to come . . .
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AT also describes these royal officials as in theory selected by the community but in reality increasingly agents of the central power who were not representatives of the community. The growing lack of accountability seems to have evolved into immunity.
The more one reads AT - with his copious notes and careful analysis - the more one appreciates this book selection!
Added above:
By the 18th century, the powers to tax, maintain order, and provide public services were no longer vested in the historic municipalities that had secured charters in the later Middle Ages, but in royal officers appointed by the King and his ministers. Even the needs of the poor had been centralized: "No one now had the legal duty of bothering with the poor in the countryside, The central government had taken the foolhardy step of alone providing for their needs."
Tocqueville does concede that for a time "municipal freedom in France survived feudalism." However, the royal government gained control over municipal offices and repeatedly sold them either to individuals or, for a fee, regranted municipal liberties only to reacquire and resell them. In other words, it was a fund-raising scam.
AT makes a general conclusion: "Almost every ruler who has destroyed freedom sought at first to keep its outward form. This has been evident from Augustus down to the present day." This general law is perhaps truer of the USA, where the genus of suckers known as conservatives is forever blathering about the Constitution, deluded by the pious references of the ruling class to that discarded document that all we need to make it morning again in America is to join Glen Beck in upholding a document that he of all people does not understand. Augustus, to his credit, was trying to restore republican virtue and a measure of civil liberties to a society that had been destroyed by greed, class envy, and civil war. What excuse the Americans have I cannot imagine.
Thus in the 18th century, certain outward forms of town government were maintained, but the reality was a network of tiny oligarchies that controlled local life under the authority of royal government. Country parishes and towns did have opportunities and forums at which the people could blow off steam. Thus, "When one compares this empty show of liberty with the genuine powerlessness which accompanied it, you, on a small scale, already see how the most absolute of governments can co-exist with some of the most extreme features of democracy, to such an extent that to this oppression is added the absurdity of being blind to its presence."
Anyone for tea?
Dr. Fleming, to what degree was the centralization of the French state a product put in motion by King Philip Augustus five centuries previous to the French Revolution?
This is a fascinating discussion for me as so much of it resembles our own poor plight ,"TEA ANYONE?" Thank you Dr. Fleming for providing the suggestion to read AT and thank God for the blizzad that has hit and the warm fire to sit by while reading AT.
I really think the best political strategy is for Christians to ban together and refuse to participate except in the most local activities. This of course is offensive to all my friends who have the can do American attitude of our great,great grandfathers. They were good judges of the times,however, and kept heading West for more adventure while we remain fascinated with the East-- the poor defiled East.
I think we can distinguish three phases or aspects of centralization: 1) an inevitable and probably necessary process of expansion and state-building in response to internal and external threats. If Philip Augustus had not expanded his realm and begun to centralize control, he could never have fought off English aggression, and his successors would have lost France permanently to predators like Edward III and Henry V. The second phase was a non-ideological campaign to turn France into the Great Nation, able to beat back challenges both from England and the Empire. If phase I organized and centralized feudal France, phase II subordinated and destroyed feudal France. Phase III was the egalitarian ideological nationalism of the Jacobins, transmitted by Napoleon, who disciplined it, to subsequent generations. While it is true that we can see how each phase leads to the next, I think it a mistake to attribute motives across the ages or even assign guilt. If Philip Augustus, his grandfather Louis the Fat, and his grandson Saint Louis. had not strengthened France, it would never have survived.
I think Dr. Fleming's distinctions are incisive. The question arises, based on these phases, whether the second phase was also inevitable or could it have been accomplished without destroying every vestige of the feudal order. Once that order crumbled it seems to me the third phase, if not inevitable, was certainly easier once the second phase had done its work.
It's unimaginable to me that Philip and the Louis' could have envisioned that their steps ultimately would lead to the FR; they could not have borne the thought.
The examples of the Roman Empire, on the one hand, and England on the other show that it is possible to create a powerful empire with decentralized administration, in the one case, and in the other that an aristocracy can maintain power and privilege and serve a role in the countryside as magistrates and nationally as leaders of the military and parliament. Nothing is inevitable. One problem--and it is just one--is Bodin's theory of unitary sovereignty that haunted the French political mind; another is the memory of the 100 Years War, and still another is Louis XIV's experience with the Fronde to which he overreacted.
So one point which seems to be coming out of the discussion seems to be that it is problematic to go about condemning centralization as inherently evil. Alfred the Great would be an even clearer example of a figure whose centralization of authority & power clearly were for the best with respect to his people, right?
In the beginning of Book II, there's this:
"[n]ous avons vu des hommes qui croiyaient racheter leur servilité envers les agents du pouvoir politique par leur insolence envers Dieu..."
Maybe I'm reading too much into it and making too much of it, but this sounds rather like he's describing hatred of God as -- a kind of opiate of the masses. Rather than do something meaningful to better his downtrodden situation, a certain type of man will instead take comfort in the fact that at least he is free to sneer at his Maker.
Alfred the Great had the great advantage of being the last Anglo-Saxon king standing. The Danes had decimated the kingdoms of Northumberland, Essex, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex and Mercia. Wessex and Alfred held out, regained the initiative, and retook about half of England. Heirs Edward the Elder and Aethelstan finished the job of defeating the Danes and the result was a unitary kingdom. But how successful was centralization in that day and age when most people scratched out a bare existence on the land and the rebirth of the European economy was fitful? Not very. It would seem that the Kingdom of England was not particularly centralized and the king mattered only if he was traveling nearby.
In the end, the Kingdom of England built by Alfred, Edward and Aethelstan proved ephemeral due to weaknesses of successors, especially Ethelred the Unready. The English government was pretty much the Godwin family by the 1060s and when Harold was killed at Hastings in 1066 the whole kingdom collapsed. There was no English bureaucracy to organize resistance to the Normans who, in turn, attempted to centralize England to a degree unknown to the English since its time as a Roman province. And even the Normans desire for a centralized England proved fleeting.
We can compare the centralisation of France with that of Russia. In Russia's case, it seems counterintuitive, considering that the expanse of territory governed was vast even before the expansion east of the Urals. Why would Russia not have become five or six or even fifteen or twenty kingdoms? External threats made unification and centralisation necessary, and in any case, Russia was partly modeled on Byzantium, which itself had become highly centralised beginning with the Arab invasions of Anatolia(which raises the question, off topic here, of how the Romans managed to survive the crisis of the third century without centralising their system as their Byzantine and Russian successors would later do).
Perhaps geopolitical situations play more part in such considerations than we moderns realise, and this applies both to our 'conservatives' who hold the constitution to be holy writ, or our 'liberals' who hold Marx to be holy writ. Neither group seems very realistic or practical.
I am enjoying the read and the commentary. I have an off-topic question (but it is related). My daughter is taking a course at the local community college. [The text is The Western Heritage (Kagan, Ozment, and Turner)]. I read a little about the Habsburg Empire in her text and serendipitously caught a three-part documentary on the Habsburgs that piqued my interest. Can anyone recommend some additional reading on the Habsburgs and their empire that I can look for after we finish with AT?
Mr. Van Sant,
I would recommend Robert Kann's "A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526 to 1918."
Mr. Leaberry:
Thanks for the correction -- I made too much of Alfred's program to rebuild in the wake of the Danish troubles, and didn't adequately reflect upon what is really being meant by the term "centralization" ... even if a throne is recognized by everybody as sovereign, that does not, of course, necessarily mean the lands in question are pervaded by administrative machinery transmitting the will of the sovereign.
Much seems to have hinged on the course taken in feudal times by the "class ... composed originally of the chief men of the nation", and whether this group developed into a real aristocracy as in England, or became, as in France, a caste, that is, a group into which entry was restricted by birth. A.T. traces this back to the French decision to allow their kings to impose taxation without their consent, with the nobles being bought off with an exemption. This "sowed the seed of all the abuses and mischiefs which troubled the old regime during its existence, and led to its violent death...".
Tocqueville thinks it was the love of liberty in the English nobility that led to their willingness to pay tax: it was a price they were willing to pay to avoid being relegated to the status of useless pets, as were their French counterparts; and they seem to have had the foresight to realize that giving up all governing responsibility meant giving up the power to defend their liberty. (The Buffets and Gateses of today have reversed the folly of the French nobility: they will pay the government to leave them alone by supporting high taxes, but still shun government service, where their financial independence might allow them to work for the common good.)
The English/French divergence continues with the English aristos' willingness to mix with the commoner, even to the point of intermarrying, whenever it was necessary to do business or further a political aim, while the French nobles hold the task of governing in contempt and restrict marriage to among themselves. So that, according to A. T., we have the English compromising to hold onto the reality of power and the liberty to increase it; while the French, rather than compromise, sacrifice their liberty, clinging to illusions of power (privilege) and specialness (no intermarriage) and the vagaries of government largesse. The corollary then, to the centrality of liberty for A.T. is the necessity of assuming the responsibility and risk of wielding political power in order to defend it. He seems to suggest, too, if I am not reading too much into him, that one must give up some liberty in order to preserve some portion of it.
Mr. Salyer, you actually helped clarify my understanding of Anglo-Saxon England and Medieval Europe government in general by forcing me to re-examine my understanding of that period in history. A problem with Medieval monarchy is that the central state was often only as good as its ruler. England's 12th Century Henrys, I and II, were excellent administrators who synthesized Anglo-Saxon and Norman governmental concepts. Yet they sandwich a two decade anarchical period in which uncrowned Queen Matilda(daughter of Henry I) fought it out with King Stephen(nephew of Henry I) and royal government collapsed. Further along in English history, ruthless Edward I was a strong administrator while his son, Edward II, a shameless homosexual who placed personal favorites in positions of power, was a terrible administrator and was to be executed in a manner more violent than usual for the times. France even had periods during Medieval times when its strong, centralized royal government broke down.
Gilbert
"Tocqueville thinks it was the love of liberty in the English nobility that led to their willingness to pay tax: it was a price they were willing to pay to avoid being relegated to the status of useless pets, as were their French counterparts; and they seem to have had the foresight to realize that giving up all governing responsibility meant giving up the power to defend their liberty."
Do you believe this to be true?
Mr. Piatak @12. Thank you.
Added above:
(In II.4) One means of centralizing authority, used by the old regime but very familiar to us, was the transfer of judicial responsibility from traditional courts to a system of administrative law. One effect of this transformation was to turn political contests into struggles over administrative control. The administrators' thirst for power is almost always boundless, as is their contempt for the ability of ordinary people to run their own lives. (II.6). "What already typified French administration was the violent hatred it felt against all those nobles and middle-class citizens who wished to run their own affairs beyond the reach of teh government. It was unnerved by the smallest independent body which appeared to want to come into being without its support. The most modest free association. whatever its aims,was irksome to the authorities, which sanctioned only those they had set up arbitrarily and had control over."
One could cite countless examples. Let one suffice. The current belief, held fanatically by virtually everyone in government, that parents cannot be trusted to rear their own children or make decisions about their schooling. The ideal solution, of course, is universal government schooling, but failing that private schools have to be licensed, regulated, and controlled, and independent-minded parents must be subjected to friendly visits from objective-minded experts who only have the child's best interests at heart.
Once again, I have to remind you all, that the Ancien Regime, while it interfered in the political process and regulated economic affairs, did not stick its nose into private life. Even so, it used the technique, so familiar to us, of encouraging a bogus public "freedom of expression" to encourage the delusion that people free to discuss stupid ideas have the reality of political liberty. "Since Frenchmen must always be allowed the sop of a little flexibility, to console them for their enslavement, the government allowed them to discuss very freely all kin of general and abstract theories in matters of religion, philosophy, ethics, and even politics. It was quite willing to tolerate attacks against the fundamental principles upon which society then rested and even arguments about God Himself, provided that is most menial agents were not the subject of their ramblings."
Today, of course, attacks on God and society are the principles on which the regime rests, but it is quite comfortable in tolerating the pseudo-opposition of talkshow hosts and websites so long as they do not get in the way of business. When someone does, say Julian Assange, he finds himself the target of malicious prosecution.
"Today, of course, attacks on God and society are the principles on which the regime rests, but it is quite comfortable in tolerating the pseudo-opposition of talkshow hosts and websites so long as they do not get in the way of business. When someone does, say Julian Assange, he finds himself the target of malicious prosecution."
Yes, this is so true it needs repeating. At the same time a petition for clemency for the spy, Jonathen Pollard, is being circulated amongst our royal families for "peace" , we are told that Julian Assange is a greater threat to peace than open borders, strip searches and the capture of Osama Bin Laden. Huuummnn!!!
#18
Does that mean TV talking heads and pundits are just a group for encouraging faux pas freedom of expression in politics while allowing more room for enslaving elderly TV viewing politics enthusiasts?
Precisely, and, to anticipate future questions, yes also to the conservative websites that encourage unhappy and powerless people to vent their frustrations. So long as people waste time on FreeRepublic, they will never live in one or even come to understand what a free republic might be like.
Mr. Fleming,
Could you please reccomend a good book for people who wanted to have a better understanding/more insight of what a real free republic might look like.
Thanks
Lance, I think that's pretty much the same thing, really.
You don't read about living in a free society; you have to actually live it. Books about political ideas are ultimately the same thing as TV talking heads, newspaper op-eds, or protests and rallies, except they might be more sophisticated. It is all just an impotent expression of something, and it brings you into an introspective bubble away from a harsh world, but it does not make you a free-er person.
It's acceptable, as most people do, to engage in them for entertainment. But to see them as a tool for change is a practice in futility.
I can't speak for Dr. Fleming or others here, but that's how I see it. Why do public schools exist? Because some people want to engineer other children socially. Why do they want to engineer other children socially? Because they have misfit ideas of what makes a good society. Why do they have so many misfit ideas? Because they spend too much time on reading books or attending seminars about what society should be. Had all those people just been involved in long hours of manual labour, hunting, fishing, mountain-climbing, listening to good music, travelling, playing with babies, or sailing, they wouldn't have to poison theirs and other people's minds with ideas, and everyone would be left the freer for it.
That, perhaps, would be a greater key to total freedom than, as Dr. Fleming said, posting on The Free Republic website.
There is no one good book defining republican government which in Ny case has to be understood in a variety of forms and within different historical contexts. Some books however are essential: aristotle's Politics, cicero's De Republica, lives' History and Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. In the American tradition I would study Jefferson and Calhoun and perhaps John Adams. There Re several central themes essential to the republican tradition and I shall mention two or three.
First is the emphasis on law and tradition taking precedence over both the will of the sovereign (whether king or democratic mJority) and raisin d'état. Then there is the acknowledgment of the valid powers of the constituent social authorities of family, clan, region, church sometimes simplistically summed up as subsidiarity. Finalyy I would point to institutional strategies to avoid tyranny especially the tyranny of the majority that AT so feared but also the lesser tyranny of Louis Napoleon in which AT initially acquiesced. We discussed some of these themes in connection with the Politics.
Sorry about the bad typing but I am using my iPhone
Three cheers for Mr Sanjay! I think I'll go have another glass of wine!
I was reflecting last night that it's much more interesting to chase women or guzzle booze than it is to read dry, lunatic ideological books that poison the mind. Boozers and womanisers also make better company than some busy body do-gooder, even if you're not a boozer or womaniser yourself. I'll take Johny Walker over Karl Marx any time.
Seriously, the description of the 'manners and customs' of the French authorities in chapter chapter six reminds me more of modern America than anything else, but then, the entire book keeps reminding me of modern America.
Which of John Adam's writings would be recommended reading on the subject of republican government? I ask because he apparently was a prolific writer.
Robert @16, 3 February,
You have put your finger on a point that has caused me some confusion, and I'm glad to have the opportunity and the impetus to re-examine it.
What led me to the conclusion that A.T. thinks a love of liberty had something to do with the English aristocracy's acceptance of a tax burden - a conclusion with which I agree - is where A.T. says ( II.10.) "It was the spirit of liberty which compelled them [English aristos] to remain within reach of the people, in order to come to an understanding with them when required." And, a little further, "In the eighteenth century, in England, the only exemptions from taxes were enjoyed by the poor, in France by the rich. There the aristocracy had assumed all the burdens in order to enjoy the power of governing; here they steadily refused to pay taxes, as their only consolation for the loss of political power." I suppose what I'm doing is equating a desire for "the power of governing" with love of liberty; theirs, anyway. Up to a point, the exercise of power is certainly a function of liberty, and only crosses the line into tyranny when the elites are no longer "within reach of the people". One is also reminded a little of today's "pay to play" schemes, but the 18th c. English had not yet lost all sense of honor and of something higher than material gain.
Dr. Fleming @ 24 "Some books however are essential: aristotle’s Politics, cicero’s De Republica, lives’ History and Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy. In the American tradition I would study Jefferson and Calhoun and perhaps John Adams."
Of these, I believe that only Livy's History is on the Autodidact Reading List.
Gilbert,
Thank you for the excellent response. I would only add that the English were also more wealthy after their ancestor's confiscation of church rents and monastic properties. In France wealth and Church were integrated more closely. The English were not ashamed to say they had stolen and cheated the Church, but that it was a good thing because She was an imposter whereas Henry VIII and Ann of the Thousand Days were the genuine articles.
Once the looting begins it is like throwing gasoline on a fire to ever attempt to seperate the avarice from its justifications. We can see it plainly enough today when our wealthy leaders are requesting tax breaks for themselves, tax increases for the poor and more wars and foriegn bribes to expand their grip.
Robert,
I think what I was clumsily trying to say was not that the English loved to pay tax but that perhaps they felt it to be less onerous than their French counterparts, since they had some say in its levying, due to their greater degree of liberty.
A.T.'s take on aristocrats is much more nuanced than I am capable of apprehending for now, without further reading, anyway. For instance, after all his criticisms, he devotes a whole page to what amounts to almost an elegy on the French nobility, concluding with "Virile itself, it imparted virility to the other classes of society. Its extirpation weakened its very assailants." Elsewhere he mentions how haughty the English aristocrats were and how they disliked mixing with the commoner, right after praising them for being willing to work with them.
Well Gilbert the conversation has been good for me, clumsy or not, and I do appreciate all the comments for the delight it brings in simply reading a good book along with others. I hope we can meet this year at the Summer School in Rockford.
Dr. Fleming,
thanks for going through the Aeneid. I'm reading it along with your posts now. I want to say Augustine was not a fan, though I'm not of his view on that.
This a much better list than I've seen at other sites:
I won't mention where I saw a bad list, but it reminded of your "Counting People and People Who Count" article. I'm not sure I count, but I've certainly read those books and benefited greatly by them. Something you'll only partly like: the A3P Chairman's recent speech. That's not to say I'm a WN nor a fan of proletarianization (is there a shorter word to use?), but I'm hopeful good comes out of that party, directly and indirectly. It seems to be led by humans and not gremlins.
Apparently there are two (or more?) "Frank"s who post here occasionally, btw.