Tocqueville v Mill (Part Two)

I wrote a class essay comparing two of liberal theory's earliest adherents, Tocqueville and J.S. Mill. I thought that I would share it here. One of the things I find most fascinating about the authors is that so many of their arguments are continued today: the relationship between liberty and equality, for instance, or the role of women in society. Reading the old authors gives context, and a reference point to better understand today's debates.

This is the second of two parts of this essay:

The previous passages are examples of how Mill and Tocqueville tend to unite in message, but deviate in tone. But this is not to say that this is always the case. Both authors speak to the equality of women in society, and in generally positive tones towards women.

In his essay The Subjection of Women, Mill writes at length about the importance of female empowerment, which he considers a major issue confronting democratic societies. Tocqueville echoes this perspective in his short chapter ‘How the Americans Understand the Equality of Man and Woman,’ which he concludes with the hypothetical question: “[Were I] asked to what I think must be principally attributed the remarkable prosperity and growing strength of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of their women.” (Tocqueville, 268)

However, once the two authors are examined critically, one recognizes that there are striking differences between their real opinions on this issue. Mill speaks of the status of women in terms of slavery, while Tocqueville easily assumes the “inferiority” of women compared to men.

“I have not noticed,” Tocqueville writes, “that American women considered conjugal authority as a happy usurpation of their rights nor that they believed that to submit to it was to abase themselves. It appeared to me, on the contrary, that they fashioned for themselves a kind of glory out of the voluntary renunciation of their will and that they placed their grandeur in bending themselves to the yoke and not escaping it. That, at least, is the sentiment that the most virtuous ones express: the others keep quiet, and in the United States one does not hear an adulterous wife noisily clamoring for woman’s rights while trampling on her most sacred duties.” (Tocqueville, 266)

Comparatively, Mill argues forcefully for greater freedoms on the part of women – for an escape from the domestic role that Tocqueville espouses.

“The legal subordination of one sex to the other,” Mill writes, “is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.” (Mill, 119)

In this, it is clear that despite having a similar tone, Mill strongly differentiates himself from Tocqueville, who characterizes the former’s argument as submission to the “despotic empire of women.”

Thus, it is shown that the two men differ greatly on this subject, as they do on other topics such as racial segregation and Mill’s leanings beyond liberalism, towards libertarianism. Still, it is best to note their similarities than to contrast their differences, for both lived in an era where liberalism remained a revolutionary idea.

Tocqueville and Mill share themes in their works. Both authors promote American-style democracy, individual freedom and the role of the middle-class. They both contend with the dichotomies of liberty versus authority, and liberty versus equality. And perhaps the most important similarity of all is their common fear of the tyranny of the majority, which was perhaps best explained thusly by Prof. James Ingram: “It is a fear that the public will become a tyrant, and eventually appoint one.”

For Tocqueville, this fear was vindicated 20 years after the publication of Democracy by the coronation of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as emperor of France.