In a time of economic slowdown, social unrest, and high unemployment, what should the government do for the poor and jobless? Should the state guarantee a job for every citizen and give money to the poor, or let the free market move as it will? Can the government provide for the needy while protecting the right to private property? These are familiar questions to anyone who’s lived through the Great Recession — but they were also familiar to Alexis de Tocqueville.
In a little-known 1848 speech that Daniel Mahoney draws to our attention on the Library of Law and Liberty blog, Tocqueville explains his opposition to a government-backed “right to work” by contrasting the systems of socialism and democracy. After delving into the historical context, Mahoney explains:
Tocqueville’s “Speech on the Right to Work” is both an eloquent political intervention and a statement of his deepest principles. Those principles can be described as “Christian democratic” in juxtaposition to both socialism and to a libertarian or laissez-faire position that denies that the state has any obligation “to expand, consecrate, and regularize public charity.” What Tocqueville opposes is an absolute “right to work,” one whose “fatal logic” makes the state the “sole owner of everything” or at a minimum “the great and sole organizer of everything.” Tocqueville thus begins by making a firm distinction between “public charity,” which he supports, and “socialism,” which he adamantly opposes.
Later:
It should be noted that Tocqueville opposed not only the socialists but those deputies on the right or extreme right who opposed any government provision for the unemployed and the poor. They assumed that misère was simply part of the order of things. But Tocqueville insists that the French Revolution had rightly introduced “charity into politics.” In Tocqueville’s eloquent formulation, “it conceived a broader, more general and higher idea than previously held of the obligations of the state toward the poor, toward those citizens who suffered.” (Given the confiscation of church property this was also a practical necessity since under the Old Regime the church had principal responsibility for the care of the poor.) But once again he aims for a middle way between the tutelary state and public indifference to the poor.
Mahoney’s analysis is well worth reading in full, as Tocqueville’s speech (like his other works) remains relevant to today’s policy dilemmas.
Yet the proverbial “middle way” between socialism and libertarianism — which the U.S. aspires to provide through unemployment insurance, food stamps, cash benefits, worker unions, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and middle-class-friendly tax credits — is tricky to navigate. One needn’t approve of Paul Ryan’s budget plans to see that the current system, which Walter Russell Mead usefully terms “the blue social model,” is under strain between the globalized economy, demographic changes, and technological developments. The question is how to update the model in a way that preserves its benefits and minimizes its downsides for the twenty-first century.
At the risk of offending both right and left, I’ll put some suggestions out there: raise taxes on the rich, promote school choice, means-test Social Security, convert Medicare into a generous premium support model, make the tax code more family-friendly, supplement unemployment insurance with worker-retraining programs, scale back military spending, and reform land use regulations. Now who’d object to any of that?
August 29th, 2012 | 4:03 am
Recall the this speech was delivered i the aftermath of the June Days. The Second Republic had established National Workshops [les Ateliers Nationaux] to give work to the unemployed. Following their closure, the workers of Paris rose in revolt. The Liberals secured a victory over the Radical Republicans, but at the cost of 1,500 dead in the streets and thousands of summary executions of prisoners. The Assembly, one recalls, welcomed the surrender of the last barricade with cries of “Long Live the Republic!” What they got, inevitably, was Napoleon III.
Talleyrand once observed, “Governing has never been anything other than postponing by a thousand subterfuges the moment when the mob will hang you from the lamp-post, and every act of government is nothing but a way of not losing control of the people.” That, pace De Tocqueville, is the true lesson of the French Revolution. Et nunc reges intellegite…
August 29th, 2012 | 9:23 am
Thank you, Anna, for a thought provoking reflection. I wish politicians would pay attention to the Mead’s insights about the “blue social model.” The paradigm is shifting and as a nation we ignore that to our peril.
August 29th, 2012 | 10:39 am
You present a false dilemma, that we either have socialism that grows government and steals private property for redistribution or libertarianism which would eliminate social programs that serve a needed purpose for the most vulnerable in society. Conservatives, who fall outside these categories, would agree with almost all your examples of reform except one big one – raising taxes on the rich. It’s disconcerting to see you fall into class-warfare trap that taxing the rich is a good thing (quite the contrary):
“When tax rates are reduced, the economy’s growth rate improves and living standards increase. Good tax policy has a number of interesting side effects. For instance, history tells us that tax revenues grow and “rich” taxpayers pay more tax when marginal tax rates are slashed. This means lower income citizens bear a lower share of the tax burden – a consequence that should lead class-warfare politicians to support lower tax rates.
Conversely, periods of higher tax rates are associated with sub par economic performance and stagnant tax revenues. In other words, when politicians attempt to “soak the rich,” the rest of us take a bath.”
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/08/the-historical-lessons-of-lower-tax-rates
August 29th, 2012 | 9:33 pm
This is a pretty good list. I so wish the Republican Party would take on the pro-family tax reform. At the very least, it would alter the current debate over taxation, which makes my eyes glaze over. I found that article on reforming land use regulations very interesting. I would also repeal Obamacare and work to move away from the employer-based model of health insurance. Make it easier to buy health insurance across state lines so people can avoid the ridiculous mandates on stuff like Viagra that drive up the cost of insurance. But also generously subsidize insurance pools for people with pre-existing conditions or move to a re-insurance plan that enables those with chronic conditions to have medical care without facing bankruptcy. I wish Republicans would talk more about the challenges those people face. I think we can have the government provide a decent safety net for the poor and those with pre-existing conditions while also getting out of the way for everyone else so the cost of health insurance does not continue to skyrocket. We also need to rein in the special interests on the supplier side who have an interest in keeping the number of doctors low so their salaries are higher.
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