Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837)
For volume 2 of Democracy in America (1840) Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) drew up several drafts of his thoughts on the nature of what he called the “new despotism” which he predicted would gradually emerge and turn the nation into “a flock of timid and hardworking animals”. This draft is quoted at length in James Schleifer’s book on Tocqueville:
Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepared men for all this, predisposing them to endure it and often even regard it as beneficial.
Having thus taken each citizen in turn in its powerful grasp and shaped men to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.
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Pieter Brueghel, Taxation, and Christmas
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Pieter Brueghel the Elder, "The Numeration (Census) of the People of Bethlehem" (1566)[See a larger version of this image 6.5 MB JPG 2439 px] |
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569) was a Flemish painter famous for his landscapes and depictions of peasant life. In this painting he takes Luke's account of the birth of Jesus in the town of Bethlehem and transposes it to mid-16th century Netherlands. The Reformation had taken root in the Netherlands which at that time was ruled by Catholic Spain under the Bourbon monarch Philip II. In addition to religious turmoil and persecution, the Flemish people suffered under heavy taxation imposed by Philip II in order to fight wars against the Ottoman Turks for control of the Mediterranean. In this context it is not surprising that Brueghel would find the biblical story of Joseph and Mary, forced by the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus to return to their ancestral city in order to be taxed, rather compelling. In the left foreground we see a cluster of ordinary people lined up to have their names checked off a ledger and then forced to hand over their taxes to an imperial official. The rest of the painting is taken up with scenes of ordinary people at work and play in the middle of winter. The Dutch Revolt against Spanish imperial control broke out in 1568 shortly after the work was painted. [More]
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