Chapter XX: That Aristocracy May Be Engendered By Manufactures
I have shown that democracy is favorable to the growth of manufactures,
and that it increases without limit the numbers of the manufacturing
classes: we shall now see by what side road manufacturers may possibly
in their turn bring men back to aristocracy. It is acknowledged that
when a workman is engaged every day upon the same detail, the whole
commodity is produced with greater ease, promptitude, and economy. It
is likewise acknowledged that the cost of the production of manufactured
goods is diminished by the extent of the establishment in which they are
made, and by the amount of capital employed or of credit. These truths
had long been imperfectly discerned, but in our time they have been
demonstrated. They have been already applied to many very important
kinds of manufactures, and the humblest will gradually be governed by
them. I know of nothing in politics which deserves to fix the attention
of the legislator more closely than these two new axioms of the science
of manufactures.
When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication
of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but
at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to
the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less
industrious; so that it may be said of him, that in proportion as the
workman improves the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who
has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? and to
what can that mighty human intelligence, which has so often stirred the
world, be applied in him, except it be to investigate the best method of
making pins' heads? When a workman has spent a considerable portion
of his existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the
object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits,
which it can never shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to
himself, but to the calling which he has chosen. It is in vain that laws
and manners have been at the pains to level all barriers round such
a man, and to open to him on every side a thousand different paths to
fortune; a theory of manufactures more powerful than manners and laws
binds him to a craft, and frequently to a spot, which he cannot leave:
it assigns to him a certain place in society, beyond which he cannot go:
in the midst of universal movement it has rendered him stationary.
In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrow-minded,
and more dependent. The art advances, the artisan recedes. On the other
hand, in proportion as it becomes more manifest that the productions of
manufactures are by so much the cheaper and better as the manufacture is
larger and the amount of capital employed more considerable, wealthy
and educated men come forward to embark in manufactures which were
heretofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The magnitude
of the efforts required, and the importance of the results to be
obtained, attract them. Thus at the very time at which the science
of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the class of
masters.
Whereas the workman concentrates his faculties more and more upon the
study of a single detail, the master surveys a more extensive whole, and
the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that of the former
is narrowed. In a short time the one will require nothing but physical
strength without intelligence; the other stands in need of science, and
almost of genius, to insure success. This man resembles more and more
the administrator of a vast empire—that man, a brute. The master and
the workman have then here no similarity, and their differences increase
every day. They are only connected as the two rings at the extremities
of a long chain. Each of them fills the station which is made for him,
and out of which he does not get: the one is continually, closely, and
necessarily dependent upon the other, and seems as much born to obey as
that other is to command. What is this but aristocracy?
As the conditions of men constituting the nation become more and more
equal, the demand for manufactured commodities becomes more general and
more extensive; and the cheapness which places these objects within
the reach of slender fortunes becomes a great element of success. Hence
there are every day more men of great opulence and education who devote
their wealth and knowledge to manufactures; and who seek, by opening
large establishments, and by a strict division of labor, to meet the
fresh demands which are made on all sides. Thus, in proportion as the
mass of the nation turns to democracy, that particular class which is
engaged in manufactures becomes more aristocratic. Men grow more alike
in the one—more different in the other; and inequality increases in
the less numerous class in the same ratio in which it decreases in
the community. Hence it would appear, on searching to the bottom, that
aristocracy should naturally spring out of the bosom of democracy.
But this kind of aristocracy by no means resembles those kinds which
preceded it. It will be observed at once, that as it applies exclusively
to manufactures and to some manufacturing callings, it is a monstrous
exception in the general aspect of society. The small aristocratic
societies which are formed by some manufacturers in the midst of the
immense democracy of our age, contain, like the great aristocratic
societies of former ages, some men who are very opulent, and a multitude
who are wretchedly poor. The poor have few means of escaping from their
condition and becoming rich; but the rich are constantly becoming poor,
or they give up business when they have realized a fortune. Thus the
elements of which the class of the poor is composed are fixed; but the
elements of which the class of the rich is composed are not so. To say
the truth, though there are rich men, the class of rich men does not
exist; for these rich individuals have no feelings or purposes in
common, no mutual traditions or mutual hopes; there are therefore
members, but no body.
Not only are the rich not compactly united amongst themselves, but there
is no real bond between them and the poor. Their relative position is
not a permanent one; they are constantly drawn together or separated by
their interests. The workman is generally dependent on the master, but
not on any particular master; these two men meet in the factory, but
know not each other elsewhere; and whilst they come into contact on one
point, they stand very wide apart on all others. The manufacturer asks
nothing of the workman but his labor; the workman expects nothing from
him but his wages. The one contracts no obligation to protect, nor the
other to defend; and they are not permanently connected either by habit
or by duty. The aristocracy created by business rarely settles in the
midst of the manufacturing population which it directs; the object
is not to govern that population, but to use it. An aristocracy thus
constituted can have no great hold upon those whom it employs; and even
if it succeed in retaining them at one moment, they escape the next; it
knows not how to will, and it cannot act. The territorial aristocracy of
former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by
usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men, and to succor
their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first
impoverishes and debases the men who serve it, and then abandons them to
be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence
of what has been said before. Between the workmen and the master there
are frequent relations, but no real partnership.
I am of opinion, upon the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy
which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest which ever
existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most
confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless the friends of democracy
should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a
permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into
the world, it may be predicted that this is the channel by which they
will enter.
The text of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville continues in Volume Two Part Three
Notes
/6-1/
I say a democratic people: the administration of an
aristocratic people may be the reverse of centralized, and yet the want
of newspapers be little felt, because local powers are then vested in
the hands of a very small number of men, who either act apart, or who
know each other and can easily meet and come to an understanding.
/7-1/
This is more especially true when the executive government
has a discretionary power of allowing or prohibiting associations. When
certain associations are simply prohibited by law, and the courts of
justice have to punish infringements of that law, the evil is far less
considerable. Then every citizen knows beforehand pretty nearly what he
has to expect. He judges himself before he is judged by the law, and,
abstaining from prohibited associations, he embarks in those which are
legally sanctioned. It is by these restrictions that all free nations
have always admitted that the right of association might be limited.
But if the legislature should invest a man with a power of ascertaining
beforehand which associations are dangerous and which are useful, and
should authorize him to destroy all associations in the bud or allow
them to be formed, as nobody would be able to foresee in what cases
associations might be established and in what cases they would be put
down, the spirit of association would be entirely paralyzed. The former
of these laws would only assail certain associations; the latter would
apply to society itself, and inflict an injury upon it. I can conceive
that a regular government may have recourse to the former, but I do not
concede that any government has the right of enacting the latter.
/19-1/
It has often been remarked that manufacturers and
mercantile men are inordinately addicted to physical gratifications, and
this has been attributed to commerce and manufactures; but that is,
I apprehend, to take the effect for the cause. The taste for physical
gratifications is not imparted to men by commerce or manufactures,
but it is rather this taste which leads men to embark in commerce and
manufactures, as a means by which they hope to satisfy themselves more
promptly and more completely. If commerce and manufactures increase the
desire of well-being, it is because every passion gathers strength in
proportion as it is cultivated, and is increased by all the efforts made
to satiate it. All the causes which make the love of worldly welfare
predominate in the heart of man are favorable to the growth of commerce
and manufactures. Equality of conditions is one of those causes; it
encourages trade, not directly by giving men a taste for business, but
indirectly by strengthening and expanding in their minds a taste for
prosperity.
/19-2/
Some aristocracies, however, have devoted themselves
eagerly to commerce, and have cultivated manufactures with success. The
history of the world might furnish several conspicuous examples. But,
generally speaking, it may be affirmed that the aristocratic principle
is not favorable to the growth of trade and manufactures. Moneyed
aristocracies are the only exception to the rule. Amongst such
aristocracies there are hardly any desires which do not require wealth
to satisfy them; the love of riches becomes, so to speak, the high road
of human passions, which is crossed by or connected with all lesser
tracks. The love of money and the thirst for that distinction which
attaches to power, are then so closely intermixed in the same souls,
that it becomes difficult to discover whether men grow covetous from
ambition, or whether they are ambitious from covetousness. This is
the case in England, where men seek to get rich in order to arrive at
distinction, and seek distinctions as a manifestation of their wealth.
The mind is then seized by both ends, and hurried into trade and
manufactures, which are the shortest roads that lead to opulence.
This, however, strikes me as an exceptional and transitory circumstance.
When wealth is become the only symbol of aristocracy, it is very
difficult for the wealthy to maintain sole possession of political
power, to the exclusion of all other men. The aristocracy of birth and
pure democracy are at the two extremes of the social and political state
of nations: between them moneyed aristocracy finds its place. The latter
approximates to the aristocracy of birth by conferring great privileges
on a small number of persons; it so far belongs to the democratic
element, that these privileges may be successively acquired by all. It
frequently forms a natural transition between these two conditions
of society, and it is difficult to say whether it closes the reign of
aristocratic institutions, or whether it already opens the new era of
democracy.