de Tocqueville on the welfare state

The Memoir on Pauperism is one of Tocqueville's more obscure works. It was not translated into English until 1968. This latest edition, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, is apparently the first time the work has appeared as a separate publication.

In her informative introduction, Gertrude Himmelfarb explains how Tocqueville first became interested in poverty. In 1833 he visited Britain at the invitation of Lord Radnor, a Radical Member of Parliament. At the time, Britain was in the midst of great social unrest. A year earlier, Parliament had responded to substantial pressure from the public by passing the Reform Act of 1832, which gave the vote to the middle classes for the first time. In addition, the British government was about to dramatically revise the way that the state aided the poor. Since 1795, every Englishman that earned less than a certain level (based on the size of his family and the price of bread) had been given an income supplement by the state to raise his earnings to the state-mandated minimum. The result, Himmelfarb tells us, was that wages fell, the number of unemployed farm workers rose, and the British government spent as much as 20 percent of its budget subsidizing the poor. "By the early 1830s," she writes, "the demand for reform of the poor laws was almost as insistent as the demand for a reform of the electoral laws."

With Lord Radnor's help, Tocqueville was able to observe several court sessions where judges determined whether poor people were entitled to alms. He then returned to France, where he finished the first volume of Democracy in America. Then he wrote the Memoir on Pauperism, which was published in French in 1835.

Tocqueville begins the memoir by noting a paradox that was "very extraordinary and apparently inexplicable." Travel in an impoverished country such as Portugal or Spain, he writes, and you will see very few beggars. But in England, the wealthiest country in Europe, "you will discover with indescribable astonishment that one-sixth of this flourishing kingdom live at the expense of public charity."

What is the explanation for this paradox? Tocqueville writes that there are two motivations for people to work - to provide the necessities of life and to improve themselves. But "a charitable institution indiscriminately open to all those in need, or a law which gives all the poor the right to public aid" removes both these motivations by eliminating the need to work and not denying aid to people who do not want to better themselves. The result is the creation of a system in which "the most generous, the most active, the most industrious part of the nation devotes its resources to furnishing the means of existence for those who do nothing or who make bad use of their labour."

Tocqueville then criticizes people who argue that the state should create jobs for the idle poor and leave it to government overseers to make sure the jobless work hard. "Is there always public work to be done?" he asks. "But even supposing that there would always be work to do, who will take responsibility for determining its urgency, supervising its execution, setting its price? That man, the overseer, aside from the qualities of a great magistrate, will therefore possess the talents, the energy, the special knowledge of a good industrial entrepreneur. ....Would it be wise to delude ourselves? Pressured by the needs of the poor, the overseer will impose make-work or even - as is almost always the case in England - pay wages without demanding labour."

"Any measure which establishes legal charity in a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form," Tocqueville writes, "thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class."

If government is the wrong instrument for aiding the unfortunate, then what about individuals? Here Tocqueville asks questions for which he does not provide answers. "Individual charity is a powerful agency that must not be despised," he writes but "it seems quite weak when faced with the progressive development of the industrial classes and all the evils which civilisation joins to the inestimable goods it produces."

The Memoir on Pauperism concludes with a promise of a sequel that would explain how pauperism could be alleviated. This "Second Memoir on Pauperism" was never completed, and the fragments that survive suggest that Tocqueville was unable to devise a way to fight poverty that did not rely on the state.

Alexis de Tocqueville was the first important intellectual who understood that government aid to the poor does more harm than good. The questions he raises about the dangers of state aid to the poor are important ones which remain pertinent today. The Memoir on Pauperism is an important and neglected document in the history of philanthropy, and the Institute of Economic Affairs deserves a great deal of credit for bringing it back into print.

 

Martin Morse Wooster is a visiting fellow at the Capital Research Center and the author of The Great Philanthropists and the Problem of Donor Intent.

http://www.bigeye.com/tocque.htm

Interesting.  I'm surprised no one else has said anything about this.

Indeed, welfare systems enslave people. However, is it rational and ethical to advocate the complete abolishment of the welfare system, considering that some people are genuinely unable to work. How would, for instance, the terminally ill, or the severely disabled survive in a society with absolutey no safety net. Which leads to another question: If a limited safety net were put in place, for the disabled, say, then how would it be possible to curtail abuse of the system by the lazy but able bodied in society?

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

Indeed, welfare systems enslave people. However, is it rational and ethical to advocate the complete abolishment of the welfare system

If you admit that welfare systems enslave people how could abolishing one be anything but rational and ethical?

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

How would, for instance, the terminally ill, or the severely disabled survive in a society with absolutey no safety net.

 Well if you just stop asuming your fellow man is some sort of heartless monster it's pretty easy to see how they would survive. Also what is a saftey net exactly? Do you mean a welfare system you dirty little propagandist. Didn't you just admit those things enslave people?

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

Which leads to another question: If a limited safety net were put in place, for the disabled, say, then how would it be possible to curtail abuse of the system by the lazy but able bodied in society?

Um we already have one of these "limited safety nets" in place and as you can see it is quite impossible to curtail the abuse of it.  No to mention it also enslaves people as you so readily admit. I hate to keep beating that drum but seriously how does one admit something is so unjust and than go about thinking of ways to justify it's existence?

Oh, you like to bite don't you, Copperhead. Note how I did not state that it wasn't rational and ethical to abolish the welfare system. I merely inquired into the ethical and practical difficulties of completely abolishing welfare, particularly in relation to those genuinely in need. A genuine question, it seems, to which you've provided no answer. Perhaps one answer would be to develop a system that isn't funded by income tax but, rather, by corporation tax. But still, the question of people abusing the system remains.


You question whether I consider my fellow man to be some sort of heartless monster. Did I state or infer that? That's not what I think. There are a lot of good people in the world. However, there are certainly plenty of examples of humans treating others inhumanely to refer to. The world is not innocent to the sight of genocide and other murderous actions. Consider Darfur, Saddam Hussain slaughtering the Kurds, or the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. One may even look at Wall Street or Main Street to witness immoral actions against individuals and society. The issue of the moral nature of man goes right to the heart of the ideological argument between socialism and capitalism: and whether man is innately moral, immoral, or amoral. Like all value judgements, it's impossible to come to an objective conclusion. Ultimately, the most one can say is that some men are good and some bad. Look at what I wrote again. I did not make a statement; I merely asked a valid question to which you have provided no answer, again. And again, you infer that the question I asked points to an opinion. Remember, to find the right answers one must first ask the right questions.


To conclude, there will always be winners and losers in society. There will always be the sick, disabled and vulnerable. So how does society care for those who can't care for themselves? What if many of these people have no family to help or support them, as well as no means to survive? Does a libertarian and capitalist society ignore them on ideological grounds? Is that what you propose? Or does society help those who genuinely, through no fault of their own, can't help themselves? If it does help, then how does it help? And, ultimately, if this means some kind of limited safety net, then how could this system be devised and run so as to prevent abuse from the merely lazy? Would a guaranteed minimum wage well above the income of welfare be a starting point, or is that idea an anathema to the doctrine of pure capitalism? And should pure ideology be determining the structure of how society works, or should it be a combination of ideology and pragmatism? Questions, questions, questions.

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

Oh, you like to bite don't you, Copperhead. Note how I did not state that it wasn't rational and ethical to abolish the welfare system. I merely inquired into the ethical and practical difficulties of completely abolishing welfare, particularly in relation to those genuinely in need. A genuine question, it seems, to which you've provided no answer. Perhaps one answer would be to develop a system that isn't funded by income tax but, rather, by corporation tax. But still, the question of people abusing the system remains.

Welfare has shown itself to open itself up to abuse. Welfare collectors may abuse it, the recipients may defraud it and the like. A coerced welfare monopoly may be the one that is in danger of abuse the most. So if there is some competition, this can limit the bad effects as well.

Scounderl, folks here tend to seem to have a problem into responding from a ammoral, practical POV, but c'mon some more patient there! ;)

I admire the anarchist ideal and all that, however given that the state isn't going to be gone any time soon (or late!), I try to think in ways to make it smaller and more efficient. With regard to welfare, I like Friedman's suggestions to give vouchers and stuff to the poor instead of the government supplying itself stuff in kind. You could e.g. give to the homeless a voucher for a place to sleep, food and stuff and then let free enterprise compete to provide the best accomodations. If you narrow down these services to the essential, you shouldn't get a lot of free loaders. However, you'll always have those -- right now, there are actual movements that teach people how to live off of welfare and actually advocate not working as the moral thing to do to combat the system or something. I don't recall how this movement is called... (I can try to find it for you if you're interested though...)

Anyway, in a stateless society, or one where the government doesn't provide for this kind of individual welfare, you could still have safety nets. In the past, you already had with the Benefit Societies, before government got into the business. You never know if you'll have an accident, if your child is going to be born with some chronic defect, or something, so it makes sense to subscribe to such welfare program. I know of people whose wife stays at home with the kids, so they have an insurance in case something happens to them and they can't provide for the family. Insurance is another way to socialize the costs of these unexpected events. Anyway, if more than half of the people is voting for the welfare programs to build houses for the needy and whatever, then it seems as if they'd be willing to subsribe to an organization that would provide such services anyway.

In economics, you have something called public goods (like the city streets) where it is hard to figure out those that want them so they pay for them, and this is the concept used by economists to draw a line whether government should have some influence in providing them or not. In what respects to welfare, I think there are ways to make it a private good, but I guess at least social workers may be needed to direct immigrants and other people to these services. I personally don't see at least some city-state ever going away (you can call it neighboord association or whatever, it's still a form of government in my book).

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

Perhaps one answer would be to develop a system that isn't funded by income tax but, rather, by corporation tax.

By the way, I wonder why you like corporate taxes? A corporate tax is a tax in a firm's profits. Not only they substract the costs of the business from the profits (the labour, resources, etc), but they substract whatever you use to invest in capital, to enlarge the firm or something. In the end, it's the same thing as an income tax, only that it applies to business men, or whoever owns the business. The incidence of the tax however is going to be on the workers, customers or whatever: a tax won't perfect competition.

I understand that people find the income tax to be intrusive -- and maybe that's reason enough to replace it -- but you have to keep in mind it's the most progressive form of taxation there is. If you make it a flat tax in particular, you have the most transparent tax there is.

As as been discussed in another thread, the USA seems to prefer direct taxes (e.g. income), and I think that's a major reason why the government there still remains much smaller relatively to the rest of the world. When you start going the indirect tax way (e.g. sales), it wraps people's view on the cost of government and businsses. All the suddenly, business operate as IRS agents, and people seem to start to feel like goods provided by the market are very expensive, and lose confidence in free enterprise as the government seems to provide stuff much more cheaply (government services, at least here, including health care and all, always have an user fee, that's mostly symbolic, but I guess is meant to discourage wasteful use). In the rest of the world, where indirect taxes are the major form of government revenue you see a large increase in government. These forms of taxation are also regressive (even though there are ways to try to fight that), so I guess that also helps to explain why people always seem to not be able to get by without govermnent assistance (as they are supporting it, instead of themselves).

Sorry for posting again. I just want to add that if the reason why you like corporate taxes is because you dislike firms making profits, then it doesn't help it at all. In fact, it might actually be conter-productive. If you want to reduce the firms profits, you want to motivate people into ventures and stuff, so you want to promise them you won't tax them, you want to cut on the time and hurdle to take a businsess licenses, etc.

Notice that the firms profits approach zero, as competition kicks in, as firms compete for customers and workers. So, you want to promote competition, not discorage it. This reminds, by the way, that when you introduce corporate taxes, then government officials may feel tempted to "work" with businesses, passing laws to make it harder to get a business licence, regulations, etc in order to increase the profits of firms and get more revenues. And btw the USA is not ranked very well in what comes to crony capitalism and corruption -- maybe its high corporate taxes have something to do with it.

I find corporate taxes to be a totally archaic form of taxation. It doesn't make any economic sense to me, but maybe there's something I don't see about them, so I'd be really happy if you would tell me your perspective on them.

Does a libertarian and capitalist society ignore them on ideological grounds?

No, individuals have the right to choose whether or not to aid the needy. This, of course, does not entail a coercive redistributive mechanism. If individuals are willing to let a behemoth of a state tax them out of huge chunks of their income, I'm sure they'd be willing to privately aid the poor as well in the absence of said behemoth. And as for those who advocate eleemosynary action at the expense of others, but will not contribute a dime or minute of their time, privately, well they'll be revealed for the frauds they are.

-Jon

Something that should be mentioned and deserves to be stressed is the motivation of private charity and government aid as it will affect how these services are provided and their effect. As I see it, private charities have an incentive to rehabilitate people to show results to the donors. Government departments on the other hand, have a vested interested in keeping up providing these services as their jobs depends on them, and they have their life facilitated into influencing how those things are shapped as they already working within the political process. At least de-coupling government from the welfare industry, so they operate only as a gateway for funding is essential I find.

I have acquainteces who are school teachers so they have a first experience with welfare parents, and it doesn't seem like they actually do much progress. Government here even gives away a highschool diploma to welfare receipients, they just need to frequent one year of classes (no tests or exams needed!). People just get accustomed to welfare, and stay there for life. Economic conditions are also not the best, you pretty much need a full time job to support a household here, and the government is to be blamed for the relatively expensive cost of life. Giving money per each child to their guardian seems devious as well -- I know of a first hand account of a feral child -- this kid had been locked in a room before school age and hadn't even fully develop language because the parents wanted the child money. Something controversy as well is girls getting pregnant to get "independence". When it involves kids, especially as they get older, it gets difficult to see a solution, but at least for younger ones, adoption, finding foster parents.

With respect to mentally challanged people that can't do any work (they can always do some work, but whose wage in the market would be something miserable, not enough to support the individual), I think this are very obvious cases. Besides they are very limited as well. Not only are they a small minority, but most of them have families that can support them. I tend to think that charities would be enough. Most people in welfare however get lazy and there are a bunch of social issues that they develop as well, so they would benefit better from charities and churches were the incentive is to get them straight up and productive.

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

You question whether I consider my fellow man to be some sort of heartless monster. Did I state or infer that?

Well if you truly believe that men must be forced into helping their fellow man than I don't think that's an odd conclusion for me to come to.

DirtyRottenScoundrel:

There will always be the sick, disabled and vulnerable. So how does society care for those who can't care for themselves?

In a truly free "society" men would simply have the choice of whether to aid their fellow man or not. I believe that most men would choose to do just that because I believe most men are basically good, thus the less fortunate among us would be well taken care of.  You on the other hand seem to believe that man is some sort of heartless animal that must be forced at gun point to do anything remotely selfless. And yes that is what you imply by insisting that "society" or the state as you undoubtedly mean, must instill virtue in individuals.

I don't even know what else to say, you just sort of rambled on there a bit about good and evil so forgive me if I haven't answered all of your questions or shattered your arrogant assumptions.