Democracies Towards Sweet Despotism: Is Tocqueville’s Prophecy Coming True?
No, Italy has never been a liberal country. Although the peninsula has given birth to illustrious economists, politicians and thinkers, starting with Camillo Benso di Cavour up to Benedetto Croce or Luigi Einaudi, Italian politics has always preferred to subordinate the individual to society, the private to the public, freedom to the promise of control and protection.
From the beginning of the Fascist period to the successes of the PCI in the midst of the First Republic, Italy's cultural mindset has always detached itself from the principles of Anglo-Saxon-style liberal constitutionalism, from the idea that the government should be limited and characterized by a permanent accountability .
To date, the US Democrats, the progressive left, the pro-Europeans in favor of further centralization of powers within the European Union are confusedly defined as "liberals" and "libertarians". Not to mention the term "liberal", often assimilated to economic anarchy, to the protection of multinational companies – with a good dose of conspiracy theories in tow – to the defense of the famous one percent that continues to enrich itself behind the 99 percent of the world population. In reality, as the last thirty years above all show, since the fall of the Soviet Union onwards, the capitalist and liberal world has always shown itself to be far more advanced than closed and communist systems.
Innovation, technology, health, the economy, the improvement of living conditions, and many other factors, continue to progress, day after day, within open systems; where individualism prevails over collectivism; where the community is nothing other than the set of actions of each individual; where power is delegated by the citizen, and not the other way around.
In essence, "liberal" and "libertarian" is the one who places freedom above everything in any field, and not intermittently as a certain progressive left – in favor of abortion and at the same time an advocate of cancel culture – or as a certain social right – flag of reopening in the pandemic context, then contrary to freedom on ethical issues.
The true liberal believes, as Milton Friedman, the 1976 Nobel laureate economist, argued that without economic freedom there can be no civil and political liberties. The true liberal believes that the individual escapes from pre-existing constructivist or paternalist designs; that the government, taking up the Reagan formula, is not the solution, but often the problem. The thought of the true liberal originates from John Stuart Mill, according to which free expression is the necessary precondition for founding a liberal-democratic system.
According to the proponents of constructivism, the State must assume the role of tutor, capable of forming the thought of the individual, of addressing the objectives of each individual, of creating a community aimed at achieving social interests, above those of each individual .
On this point, Alexis de Tocqueville identified at least two risks in a democratic state: the dictatorship of the majority and mild despotism. In the first case, Tocqueville praised democracy, but identified a first pathology in the prevarication of the thought of the majority, which risked nullifying the needs and voices of minorities. Many times, illiberal outcomes also occur in full compliance with democratic procedures, but the delegation of powers by almost the entire population constitutes the practical risk of a transition from democracy to tyranny in the popular name:
“If democratic peoples replaced the absolute power of the majority in place of all the various powers that prevented or delayed the impetus of human reason, the evil would only have changed its character. Men would not only have discovered, which is difficult, a new aspect of servitude … For me, when I feel the hand of power weigh down on my forehead, I don't care who is oppressing me, and I am no longer willing to put my head in under the yoke only because a million arms hands it to me ”.
According to the French thinker, therefore, the authoritarian character, within a democratic order, is not expressed in the same way as in an oligarchy: "The boss no longer tells you: think like me or you will die". Rather: “You are free not to think like me; your life, your possessions, everything will remain with you, but from this moment you are a stranger among us ”.
Regarding mild despotism, Tocqueville appears prophetic:
"If I try to imagine modern despotism, I see an immense crowd of similar and equal beings circling around themselves to procure small and petty pleasures that feed their souls … Above this crowd, I see an immense power to protect , which deals alone to ensure the well-being of the subjects and to watch over their fate. He is absolute, thorough, methodical, provident, and even mild. It would resemble paternal power if it had the purpose, like that, of preparing men for virility. But, on the contrary, it tries only to keep them in a perpetual childhood. He likes to work for the happiness of the citizens but he wants to be the only agent, the only arbiter. He provides for their safety, their needs, facilitates their pleasures, manages business, industries, regulates succession, divides their inheritances: wouldn't that also take away their strength to live and think? "
The current condition of Western democracies, Italy in the lead, strikingly resembles the scenario imagined by Tocqueville: a political power, from right to left, which shapes a society founded on constructivism and unanimism.
The continuous leaderization – or verticalization – of power, which we have been witnessing for decades, imposes the knowledge of a political or technocratic fringe on the rest of the population, in fact pretending that the democratic mechanism gives way to the principle of homogenization of thought.
Institutions have often shown themselves ready to restrict the field of freedom, precisely by virtue of promises of protection and safety of peoples. In the words of the English historian Lord John Dalberg-Acton, “the history of the state is a history of deceit and illusions”. And this narrative is unlikely to change. Indeed, there is the risk that it could continue cyclically, precisely in the name of the two feelings we became most familiar with during the pandemic: fear and unanimity.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/democrazie-verso-un-dispotismo-dolce-si-sta-avverando-la-profezia-di-tocqueville/ on Mon, 14 Feb 2022 03:54:00 +0000.