To be sure, centralization can easily impose a certain uniformity on men's external actions, and in the end one comes to desire that uniformity for itself, independent of the things to which it is applied, just as religious fanatics will worship a statue and forget the deity it represents. Centralization easily succeeds in imposing an appearance of regularity on everyday affairs; in cleverly regulating the details of social organization; in suppressing minor disorders and petty crimes; in maintaining a social status quo that is, strictly speaking, neither decadence nor progress; and in maintaining the social body in a state of administrative somnolence that administrators are in the habit of describing as proper order and public tranquility. In short, it excels at preventing, not at doing. When it is a matter of stirring a society to its depths or of spurring it forward at a rapid pace, centralization's strength deserts it. If even the slightest cooperation is required of individuals, the vast machine turns out to be astonishingly feeble. It is suddenly reduced to impotence.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (pp. 102-103)
(tr. Goldhammer)
No comments:
Post a Comment