SOURCE: Boesche, Roger. “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants: Montesquieu's Two Theories of Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 43, 4 (1990): 741-61.

[In this essay, Boesche looks at the theories of despotism present in Montesquieu's De l'Esprit de lois and The Persian Letters. Caught between fear of a too-powerful sovereign and a too-selfish merchant class, Boesche argues, Montesquieu contradicts himself in presenting two significantly different portraits of a despotic society.]

Although he did not invent the word despotism, Montesquieu more than any other author established it in that lexicon of political and politicized words—words such as capitalism, socialism, individualism, and bureaucracy—invented in the last three centuries in response either to specific political necessities or to more general political goals. In this case, the opponents of Louis XIV's arbitrary uses of power apparently invented the French word despotisme in the 1690s. The root of this word is, of course, Greek in origin, and in ancient Greek usage, a despot (despótès) was technically a master who ruled in a household over those who were slaves or servants by nature. For Aristotle, however, the noun despot and the adjective despotic (despotikos) had political connotations, because such despotic rule was in a sense appropriate not only toward most servants and slaves within a household but toward all, such as barbarians, who were unable to be free. “For barbarians,” wrote Aristotle, “being more servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebel against a despotic government” (Politics 1285a19-21). On occasion, Aristotle even used the words despotic and tyrannical interchangeably, but, when discussing the misuse of political power, Aristotle most often focused his attention on analyzing the political phenomenon of tyranny (tyrannus).

The French word despotique first emerged when the pamphleteers for the Fronde attacked Cardinal Mazarin who was ruling in Louis XIV's name, but by the end of the seventeenth century, writers and again especially pamphleteers, were using such phrases as monarchie despotique, pouvoir despotique, puissance despotique, and gouvernement despotique in their protests against the extension of royal power. Although in 1704 Pierre Bayle apparently became the first writer of distinction to use the word despotisme, the word had been coined in the 1690s. And now an old and altered Greek word served a new political French purpose. Those who complained of the despotic power of Louis XIV, writers such as Fénelon and the Duc de Saint-Simon, were by and large defending the interests of the privileged; they protested against monarchical encroachments on the parlements, they supported the traditional privileges of the nobility, and they complained of the moral corruption brought by mercantilism and the new commercial interests. These writers also knew both Aristotle and the Greek language well, and they were quite content, even eager, to suggest that despotisme was a political system appropriate to Asians and barbarians, especially to Chinese and to Turks. And thus, by warning that the French monarchy was becoming a despotism, they were suggesting that France was marching toward the alleged absolutism and unthinking uniformity of Asiatic servitude.

By the time the concept of despotism came to Montesquieu in the first half of the eighteenth century, it had all of these connotations of aristocratic alarm over what was regarded as a French monarchy coming to resemble an Asian empire. Montesquieu at first did little to alter this concept of despotism; he only filled in gaps and smoothed over what was roughly defined. But in the process, he gave to his century an understanding of this word despotisme that had enormous intellectual and political consequences. The word despotisme

became a fundamental element in the political doctrine which contemporaries considered to be one of the greatest achievements of the modern age: [Montesquieu's] De l'Esprit des lois [SL]. This book caused the word [despotisme] to acquire a significance even more momentous than that intended for it by the critics of Louis XIV. It is no exaggeration to say that the concept of despotisme played a part in the intellectual and political unrest which drove the French monarchy down to the Revolution.

(Koebner 1951: 301-302)

But is Montesquieu's theory of despotism as straightforward and clear as his commentators suggest?¹

When we examine Montesquieu's theory of despotism, however, we are confronted with contradictory claims. On the one hand, Montesquieu described a harsh despotism characterized by fear, violence, isolation, and a general poverty supporting at best a subsistence living. On the other hand, he depicted a despotism distinguished by avarice, pleasure, urbanization, and at least enough production and commerce to distribute luxuries to some significant portion of the population. Montesquieu, in fact, offered two theories of despotism. The first reflected his fear of an ever more powerful monarch, swallowing up intermediate institutions, subverting the judiciary, concentrating all power in the monarchy and its Intendants, and transforming nobles into commoners, all of whom would become equal in misery and servitude. This model of despotism, the standard interpretation of Montesquieu's theory, he presented clearly and analytically. The second model was scattered throughout his writings, never analyzed openly, and replete with ambiguities, but it reflected Montesquieu's fear that the mores of France, and of Europe in general, were becoming corrupted by the self-interest, luxury, and license that seemed to be the inseparable companions of the new commercial classes. In short, Montesquieu was an aristocrat with two theories of despotism based on his twin fears of monarchs and of merchants.

THE FIRST THEORY OF DESPOTISM: UNIFORMITY AND MEDIOCRITY

Montesquieu sorted the political world into republics, monarchies, and despotisms, and the sought to classify each type according to its nature, which indicates who rules and how, and according to its principle, which tells us what motivates the people who live under each type of government.² Like a monarchy, a despotism is also controlled by one person, but the nature of a despotism is rule “in which a single person directs everything by his own will and caprice.” The principle of this government, that is, the motivating force or what Montesquieu called “the spring of this government,” is merely fear (SL: Book II, Chapter 1; and III, 9). In describing despotism as rule by one who controls subjects through force and fear, Montesquieu saw himself as describing Asiatic systems of government.

The goal of despotic government, according to Montesquieu, is nothing more inspiring than order and tranquillity. “As fear is the principle of despotic government, its end is tranquillity; but this tranquillity cannot be called a peace: no, it is only the silence of those towns which the enemy is ready to invade” (SL: V, 14). Although other governments use laws to promote justice or to encourage trade and commerce, what laws there are under a despotism aim only at preventing civil disorder and thus simply facilitate the “police” functions of the state (SL: V, 15). The result of any successful despotism is a tranquil servitude, and each subject knows only “passive obedience,” each “blindly submits to the absolute will of the sovereign,” and “man's portion here, like that of beasts, is instinct, compliance, and punishment” (SL: III, 10).

Although despotic government is never absolute, or in modern terminology “totalitarian,” it is destructive enough to reduce its population to uniformity and mediocrity. Whereas moderate government is always an intricate configuration involving division of power and local limits on the central government, despotism is “uniform throughout” with centralized despotic power crushing down upon powerless subjects, while the subjects themselves are all “upon a level,” all the same, “all slaves” (SL: V, 14; III, 8). In The Persian Letters [PL] Montesquieu used a Persian seraglio—a “small empire” in which a prince dominated his wives by means of cruel eunuchs—as a metaphor to illustrate the dynamics and effects of despotism. The job of the eunuch, the agent of despotism, was to introduce silent uniformity to the seraglio. “The head eunuch, the strictest man I have ever seen in my life, ruled there with an iron hand. There was no breath of cabal or quarrel; a deep silence reigned everywhere. All the women were in bed at the same hour from one year's end to the next, and all arose at the same hour” (PL: LXIV, IX; see Vartanian 1969; Hundert and Nelles 1989; Richter 1977: 45-50). This means, of course, that where one finds equality one might find either a republic or a despotism, a lesson not lost on Tocqueville, because in the face of despotic power all live equally in servitude. “In republican governments, men are equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing” (SL: VI, 2; Montesquieu 1964d: 877). The worst despotisms are those in which the despot claims ownership of all land in the realm, because agricultural improvement is neglected, there is no incentive for private commerce or industry, and families build houses that provide only for the most basic necessities.

Although despots must rely upon force and “violent passions” to establish a despotism (Montesquieu 1964d: 947), once the despotism becomes lasting, despots leave the violence to those who rule in their names, while they fall into lethargy or “apathy” interrupted only by ceaseless rounds of sensual pleasures. The typical despot is “lazy, voluptuous, and ignorant”; for example, once Persian despots had chosen someone to administer the state, they abandoned “themselves in their seraglio to the most brutal passions, pursuing, in the midst of a prostituted court, every capricious extravagance” (SL: II, 5; PL: CXIV). In Montesquieu's judgment, the despot is caught in some elaborate web of servitude like everyone else, even if the despot's servitude is considerably more delightful, because every tyrant is a slave to those who provide the pleasures and constantly anxious lest the source of these pleasures should vanish (SL: IV, 3; PL: CLV). Anxious sensuality at the top, coupled with tranquillity, uniformity, and misery at the bottom—Montesquieu painted a powerful portrait of despotism in order to draw a strong contrast between limited monarchical rule and what happens when rule by one person breaks through all traditional restraints.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF DESPOTISM: ABOLISHING INTERMEDIATE POWERS

All executive, legislative, and judicial powers are of course concentrated in the person of the despot, because this is a prerequisite for arbitrary power. “In Turkey, where these three powers are united in the Sultan's person, the subjects groan under the most dreadful oppression” (SL: XI, 6).³ Because there is no give and take among institutions or groups sharing power, because there is no compromise between, say, national and provincial government, then politics under a despotism is always reduced to court intrigues, the whispering of secrets, and the gossipy infighting of the seraglio. Still, the will of the despot must prevail. Although, the will of the ruler must dominate any despotism, nevertheless despots do not rule personally, because, while busying themselves with the pleasures of the court, they allow their intermediaries to rule for them. “The immense power of the prince devolves entirely upon those whom he is pleased to intrust with the administration.” For those living at the bottom of the despotism, it matters little who is the despot, since the power of the despotism strikes them with the same oppressive force. “The invisible ruling power is always the same for the people. Although ten [Asian princes] whose names they do not know may have cut each other's throats one after the other, the people feel no change” (PL: CIII).

Because those accustomed to associating with one another might begin to organize politically, indeed because those who cannot communicate cannot possibly resist a despotism, a successful despot uses the violence of police forces, under the direction of centrally appointed officials, to keep people isolated from one another. “In despotic states each house is a separate government,” wrote Montesquieu, and there is “less communication between young people, who are confined at home” (SL: IV, 3; V, 15). In The Persian Letters, after describing Turkey as a place where no one laughs, Montesquieu explained it this way. “This Asiatic sobriety derives from the dearth of intercourse between people … Friendship … is practically unknown here. They withdraw to their houses … so that each family lives, so to speak, in isolation” (PL: XXXIV). In his description of the Persian seraglio, the women, who of course stand metaphorically for the subjects of any despotism, spend their lives isolated from each other, unable to communicate, and consequently unable to make some common effort to oppose their servitude. “He keeps each of us closed up in her apartment, and although we are all alone there, he makes us live under the veil. We are no longer allowed to speak to each other, and it would be a crime for us to write to each other” (PL: CLVI; also, LXIV, CXLI).⁴ In other seraglios with less forced isolation, the rule of eunuchs can bring about a psychological isolation in which each suspects the other and each becomes anxious to please and gain the meager favors available under the despotism. “We note that the more women we have under our eyes, the less trouble they give us. A more stringent need to please, less opportunity to band together, more examples of submissive obedience—all of this forges chains for them. Some are even attentive to the behavior of others; it would seem that they work hand in glove with us to make themselves more dependent” (PL: XCVI). Both physical isolation, which is imposed by force, and psychological isolation, which results from mutual suspicion, form the cornerstones of despotism, because they prevent communication necessary for any organized political opposition.

Montesquieu's analysis of despotism is partly an attack on the monarchies of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Although apparently Montesquieu had evidence suggesting that in some Asiatic despotisms eunuchs did in fact administer government offices, the eunuch also served as a splendid metaphor for the Intendants who extended the power of the French monarchy throughout the country. For Montesquieu, eunuchs were literally sterile, figuratively unable to create, and metaphorically lacking in all passion and energy (PL: CXIV), and yet they were also harsh taskmasters of those they controlled, all qualities he attributed to the Intendants of the king.

Montesquieu blamed Louis XI (1423-1483) for French servitude, much as Tacitus had blamed Tiberius for bringing despotism to Rome.

The death of Charles VII [who preceded Louis XI] was the last day of French liberty. One saw, in an instant, another king, another people, another political system, another sufferance, and the passage from liberty to servitude was so great, so prompt, so rapid; the means, so strange, so odious to a free nation: one could only look upon all of this as if a spirit of dizziness had suddenly fallen on the entire kingdom.

(Montesquieu 1964d: 929, 952)

In Montesquieu's long list of the crimes of Louis XI, what stands out is Montesquieu's dislike for the king's attack on the power of the nobility and the privileges of local communities. In other words, Louis XI began the attack upon the intermediate bodies through which a genuine monarchy channels its power. One key to a despotism, of course, is the abolition of such intermediate bodies so that the despot can rule subjects directly by appointed administrators. “Abolish the privileges of the lords, the clergy and cities in a monarchy, and you will soon have a popular state, or else a despotic government” (SL: II, 4). Once a monarch such as Louis XI has deprived individuals, corporate bodies, and communities of their rights and privileges, despotism will follow. For example, in The Persian Letters Montesquieu referred to the parlements as “ruins that are kicked about underfoot”; these great institutions, which no longer represent the nation and now perform only a judicial function, have “bowed before … supreme authority, which has swept all before it” (PL: XCII; SL: VIII, 6; see George 1922).⁵

The intermediate body that Montesquieu cherished most was the judiciary, which, if effective, is always the best protection of individual liberty. The hallmark of monarchy, and indeed what saved the French monarchy from being entirely despotic, was a independent judiciary. “It is not enough to have intermediate powers in a monarchy; there must be also a depositary of the laws. This depositary can only be the judges of the supreme courts of justice” (SL: II, 4; see Faguet 1981: 117-23). Whereas in the despotism of Turkey the law is only “the prince's will” and all court cases “are speedily decided,” under a monarchy “the trouble, expense, delays, and even the very dangers of our judiciary proceedings are the price that each subject pays for his liberty” (SL: V, 16; VI, 2). The best judicial system allows appeals and sees advantages in delays, because eventually emotions of the moment will fade, and then juries and judges can offer reasoned decisions “coolly” (Montesquieu 1964d: 884; SL: VI, 5). In Montesquieu's mind, the single distinguishing characteristic of despotism is the control or the elimination of the judiciary as an intermediate institution between sovereign and subject, protecting the latter from arbitrary abuses of power. “Sentences passed by the prince would be an inexhaustible source of injustice and abuse” (SL: VI, 5).

Montesquieu certainly regarded the governing functions and privileges of the French nobility as another intermediate institution threatened by the encroaching power of the French monarchy. In fact, the eunuch is a metaphor not only for the harsh Intendants who represent royal power, but also for an emasculated nobility whose independence Louis XIV captured by bringing them to Versailles. In The Persian Letters the first eunuch wrote, “When my first master … had obliged me by seductions doubled with a thousand threats to separate me forever from myself, I planned, weary of the most laborious tasks, to sacrifice my passions to tranquillity and fortune” (PL: IX). Certainly Montesquieu thought that the French nobility had sacrificed the fiery passions of its ancestors in order to gain the tranquillity and security promised by Louis XIV. Having bought themselves a host of “courtiers” (thus impoverishing the majority of their subjects), French kings had augmented their power to the exact extent that they drew nobles from their lands and attracted them to Versailles. To Montesquieu, this was a shameful development. “I hate Versailles, because everyone there is small” (Montesquieu 1964d: 856, 945; PL: CXXIV). The Persian Letters satirize repeatedly what the nobility had become under Louis XIV. Usbek described his visit to see “a great noble” in one of his letters. “I saw a little man so proud, who took his pinch of snuff with such haughtiness, wiped his nose so ruthlessly, spat with so much phlegm, petted his dogs in a way so insulting to men, that I could not cease admiring him” (PL: LXXIV).

Montesquieu depicted a despot so addicted to pleasure, and thus confined to the seraglio or the court, that such a despot was clearly of no use whatsoever in maintaining the despotism. Capable ministers, provincial governors, and military leaders would all be a threat to seize the despotism, but mediocre administrators and generals could not protect it. It is also a model of despotism that strays occasionally from picturing the real world of tyranny, ignoring, for example, the elaborate bureaucracies in the Turkish and Chinese empires. Even if we must await Tocqueville to invent the word bureaucracy, we need to ask why Montesquieu did not picture despots as ruling through elaborate administrative hierarchies. The answer must be that bureaucracies place intermediate powers between subject and despot, and such bureaucratic structures would deprive Montesquieu of a model that so dramatically criticized the Intendants of the French monarchy. But we also need to ask why Montesquieu did not picture despots as military leaders, but instead saw them as pleasure-seeking poltroons seduced by the sensuality of the seraglio. We know, for example, that Montesquieu marvelled at the efficiency of the Tatars or Mongols, and he certainly knew well the military tyrannies of Julius Caesar or Tiberius, but such military dictatorships do not fit his classifications of government. Indeed, he labelled military governments the “corruption” of despotic government (Montesquieu 1964d: 878). Why would he create a model of despotism that could not account for despotic military leaders? Quite probably, the reports he had at hand of Eastern courts and seraglios provided him with an irresistible opportunity to liken the luxury of Louis XIV to the sensuality of a sultan.⁶

All of this tells us that Montesquieu's model of despotism served two purposes. While it certainly provided, and continues to provide, a highly useful analysis of despotism, it also served the political and rhetorical purpose of subtly attacking the abuses of the French monarchy.

THE DELIGHTS OF SERVITUDE: A CONTRADICTION IN THE FIRST THEORY OF DESPOTISM

Montesquieu's despot is obsessed with satisfying ever-increasing desires for sexual pleasure and luxury. Driven by “the most brutal passions,” a despot surrounds himself with “comforts” and “throws himself into his pleasures” (SL: II, 5; Montesquieu 1964d: 948). Despite outlining in The Persian Letters a female fantasy of a seraglio well-stocked with men, Montesquieu generally thought that the servitude or even “the slavery of women” necessarily accompanies despotism, that under despotism women become “objects of luxury” or “the living instruments of men's felicity” (PL: CXLI; SL: XVI, 9; VII, 9; PL: LXII). And if despotic men violently seize women as objects of pleasure, they also seize, almost uncontrollably, whatever possessions they desire. “When the savages of Louisiana are desirous of fruit, they cut the tree to the root, and gather the fruit. This is an emblem of despotic government” (SL: V, 13). None of this is ultimately satisfying. Those driven by cycles of gnawing desire followed by temporary gratification find themselves constantly anxious and constantly wanting more, because desires act like blackmailers returning again and again. “It is with lust as with avarice, whose thirst increases by the acquisition of treasure” (SL: XVI, 6).

Montesquieu maintained that, on a more modest level, subjects mirror their masters. Thus, like the despot, the people are pushed by desires or “hurried away by their passions” (SL: V, 11). This is possible because the violence of despotic government rarely reaches down to the ordinary citizen, concentrating itself instead on those with enough wealth or power to threaten the regime. “It is necessary that … the lives of the lowest subjects should be safe, and the pasha's head ever in danger” (SL: III, 9). That the subjects of despotism relentlessly chase desires is not surprising. Because Montesquieu regarded any society as an interrelated whole, it would shock him, and us, to find voluptuous despots ruling over self-disciplined subjects. And indeed, Montesquieu suggested that uncontrolled desires for pleasure and wealth are signs that republics and monarchies are declining into corruption and quite possibly into despotism. “No sooner were the Romans corrupted than their desires became boundless and immense” (SL: VII, 2, 7-8).

What is surprising, given his usual unremittingly bleak picture of despotism, is to find him occasionally describe the delights of such servitude. The seraglio, as described in some passages, turns out not to be a brutal place, but instead a place dominated by lazy and voluptuous princes whose very “indolence … renders the eastern seraglios so delightful to those very persons whom they were made to confine” (SL: XV, 11). Montesquieu's language here is no aberration. After he moved beyond both the reality and the metaphor of the seraglio, he offered a full-blown analysis of a despotism that was effective and lasting precisely to the extent that it was at least somewhat gratifying. The Romans, for example, conquered an opposing nation “insensibly”—calling it an ally at first, giving it the appearance of autonomy, providing the leadership of this nation with the pleasures of leisure, and thereby rendering “it a subject people without anyone being able to say when its subjection began.” Similarly, the Greeks, “abandoned themselves to senseless delight and believed themselves free in reality because the Romans declared them so.” And “Augustus, a scheming tyrant, conducted [the Romans] gently to servitude” (Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline [C]: 75, 60, 123).⁷ Of course, the Romans distracted their subjects from their servitude with “bread and circuses,” just as Usbek told a eunuch to “divert [Usbek's wives] with music, dances, delicious drinks,” and “innocent pleasures” (PL: II).

When we see Montesquieu describe despotism as delightful and gentle, we immediately wonder how he can possibly reconcile this with his analysis of despotism as a world of fear, violence, and poverty, a brutal world with neither reliable agriculture nor systematic commerce. In part, Montesquieu was trying to account for the phenomenon of corruption, of how nations fall from virtuous republics or honor-bound monarchies into despotism. Convinced that licentiousness and luxury lead nations to corruption and servitude, he logically described despotism as pleasurable. The people of Rome, for example, remained free so long as they remained virtuous, but “when their morals were corrupted, … upon becoming their own tyrants and slaves, they lost the strength of liberty to fall into the weakness and impotency of licentiousness” (SL: VIII, 12). Similarly, whereas large cities are “extremely pernicious” to republics, since “the mores of a republic are always corrupted there,” such cities are useful and appropriate to despotisms. French mores, for example, had changed principally because the nobility had left the countryside to take up residence in Versailles and Paris. “One abandoned the simple mores of former times for the vanities of the cities; women stopped the knitting of wool and scorned all amusements that were not pleasures” (Montesquieu 1964d: 886, 945).

Montesquieu's attempt to explain moral corruption accounts only partially for this glaring contradiction between a despotism that is a fearful desert and one that is gently licentious, because Montesquieu did not just mention corruption in passing, but instead offered a detailed description of a despotism that depends, not on fear, but on pleasure to solidify the servitude of its subjects. Again we return to The Persian Letters. Montesquieu described the seraglio as an “empire of passion,” and the chief eunuch said to Usbek, “you are more absolute [over your wives] when you caress than when you threaten” (PL: XCVI, and p. 290). When the seraglio is a successful despotism, and it is not always effective since it is constantly prone to revolts, it is successful not so much because of force, but because the despot creates desires in his subjects that only he can satisfy. After Usbek had left Persia, one of his wives wrote that her desires for him returned “each day with renewed violence.” She willingly chose servitude because of her passion for him. “I confess to you, Usbek: a passion much more keen than ambition made me want to please you.” Similarly, another wife declared that she was a “slave by the violence of her love.” Desperately she wrote to Usbek that “it is impossible to go on living in this condition. Fire is flowing in my veins. … How miserable it is for a woman to have such violent desires when she is deprived of him who alone can satisfy them” (PL: III, VII).

Using a literary metaphor, Montesquieu depicted a despotism in which people became attached to their servitude, not because of a fearful obedience, but rather because of some genuine pleasure offered by the despotism. Understanding this contradiction will lead us to Montesquieu's second theory of despotism.

MONTESQUIEU'S AMBIVALENCE TOWARD LUXURY AND COMMERCE: A SECOND THEORY OF DESPOTISM EMERGES

Although Montesquieu argued that luxury undermined the self-sacrificing virtue of republics, indeed, that luxury is “fatal” to a republic, he was not entirely critical of luxury, because he saw it as indispensable to monarchies and quite appropriate to despotisms. In monarchies, luxuries help establish the order of inequality, provide rewards for those who have achieved honor in the service of the monarch, and provide labor for the poor who provide luxury. “As riches, by the very constitution of monarchies, are unequally divided, there is an absolute necessity for luxury. Were the rich not to be lavish, the poor would starve” (SL: VII, 4, 2; XXXI, 16). Luxury also brings with it leisure, and with leisure, the development of the arts and sciences. “The effect of commerce is riches; the consequence of riches, luxury; and that of luxury the perfection of the arts” (SL: XXI, 6). If luxury is essential to monarchies, however, it is also important to despotisms, as a way for a despot to reward supporters. While the despot wallows in “corruption, luxury, indolence, and pleasure,” the officials of the despotism are “avaricious” and motivated in large part by the pursuit of luxury (SL: VII, 7; XV, 18; VII, 14; also C: 62). Luxury is “absolutely necessary” to despotic states, and in one passage Montesquieu just about defined despotism as a combination of “luxury and arbitrary power” (SL: VII, 4; XV, 18).

Montesquieu's attitude toward luxury, however, is not so unambiguous as it first appears. Although he wrote in The Spirit of the Laws that luxury supports monarchy, in other passages he declared that luxury undermines monarchy. This should not surprise us, because Montesquieu himself, who was moderately wealthy, sought no great fortune, looked upon the obsession with wealth as a kind of personally imposed tyranny, and once even wrote that riches are an evil for which one should apologize (Montesquieu 1964d: 992). And, although luxury may well employ the poor in a monarchy, it also contributes to their exploitation. “So that one man may live in delight, a hundred others must labor ceaselessly. A woman has taken it into her head that she must appear at a gathering in a certain attire. From that moment on, fifty workers get no more sleep and are without time to drink and eat” (PL: CVI). With such convictions, it is no wonder that Montesquieu looked upon luxury as capable of corrupting monarchies. “Mores are never very pure in monarchies. This nobility, with its luxury … is the source of all corruption” (Montesquieu 1964d: 876).

This idea that luxury can corrupt monarchy also appeared in Montesquieu's famous story of the rise and fall of the virtuous Troglodytes. As long as the Troglodytes remained cooperative, self-sacrificing, and poor, they maintained their virtuous republic. The Troglodytes surrendered their republic, however, and sought a monarch to rule them at precisely the point when they wanted to satisfy their “ambition, acquire riches, and languish in soft luxury.” In a sequel to this story, which he never published, Montesquieu described a further transformation of the Troglodytes' political order from monarchy to despotism. In this sequel, the people appealed to their king to establish “commerce and the arts,” and they promised to be moderate and live without excess of “avarice.” The king responded that, if both king and people remained virtuous, they would have a wonderful life together, but the king warned the people not to lose their virtue in their quest for riches, because then the king himself would toss off his virtue, and “you [the people] would have to wear yourselves out to make me rich.” Since we know that Montesquieu regarded luxury, riches, and avarice as all destructive of virtue, it is easy to see that, despite some wishful thinking that both people and monarch could remain rich and virtuous, Montesquieu was suggesting that the self-seeking wish for luxury would produce a further decline from monarchy into despotism (PL: XI-XIV, and pp. 284-85).

Montesquieu had a very similar, ambivalent attitude toward commerce. As we can see from his letters, Montesquieu was something of a merchant himself and engaged in a lucrative wine trade between Bordeaux and England, (Montesquieu 1955: 1429, 1439, 1517-18; also Shackleton 1961: 201) so, not surprisingly, he had a great many positive things to say about commerce. For example, because of commerce, the citizens of Marseilles were “laborious,” “just,” “moderate,” and “frugal” (SL: XX, 5). The “spirit of commerce,” Montesquieu suggested, makes every person disciplined and thrifty, and “consequently prevents the growth of luxury” (SL: VII, 2). Whereas commerce may corrupt the most virtuous of nations, it improves the moral character of the vast majority of nations, and because commerce imposes self-discipline on citizens, it is appropriate for certain kinds of republics. Thus Montesquieu noted that “great enterprises … in commerce are … for republican governments” (SL: XX, 4, 1-2). In addition, commerce makes nations flourish, increases the population, and brings peace among nations that are trading partners (PL: CXV; SL: XX, 2).⁸

England's commerce also drew Montesquieu's praise. Montesquieu did not know how to classify England; in The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu called England a republic “disguised under the form of a monarchy,” but he knew England did not have the virtue required of a republic; in his notes he called it a “mixed monarchy,” but he knew England had too much popular government and too few intermediate institutions to qualify as a monarchy (SL: V, 19; Montesquieu 1964d: 878). One commentator has correctly concluded that, for Montesquieu, England was “midway between monarchy and republic” (Masterton: 1972: 312-16; also Richter 1977: 76-77). However he chose to classify England, Montesquieu praised it for its freedom, not only because the nobility, the judiciary, and the legislatures limited the executive power of the monarch, but also because England's commerce produced a disciplined ethic that, if not exactly like virtue, at least replaced it well. England is “the freest country in the world,” precisely because the English “know better than any other people upon earth how to value, at the same time, these three great advantages—religion, commerce, and liberty” (Montesquieu 1964c: 334; SL: XX, 7).⁹

And yet, in his private writings, Montesquieu expressed severe misgivings about England. Here Montesquieu wrote that corruption pervaded all ranks of society, that “money is sovereignly esteemed” while honor and virtue are of little value, and that the English had little respect for religion. Worst of all, “the English are no longer proud of their liberty. They sell it to the king; and if the king gave it back, they would sell it to him again” (Montesquieu 1964c: 332-34). These passages from his “Notes sur l'Angleterre” suggest grave reservations, although we cannot know the extent of his misgivings, because Montesquieu's grandson, as a refugee in England during the French Revolution, destroyed most of the notes for fear that they would offend his English hosts (Neumann 1949: xii). We do, however, have one other insight into his ambivalent feelings about England. In 1749, he responded by letter to Domville who had asked Montesquieu's opinion about the future of England. Montesquieu answered that “in Europe the last sigh of liberty will be given by an Englishman,” and he went on to suggest that “your liberty is linked to your commerce and your commerce is linked in some fashion to your existence” (Montesquieu 1955: 1245). In Montesquieu's Pensées, however, we find the draft of a letter to the same Domville, trying to answer the same question about England's future, but here we find Montesquieu praising England, but also saying, “your riches are causing your corruption” (Montesquieu 1964d: 1041). Montesquieu definitely was not as enthusiastic about England in private as he was in his published writings, and he certainly felt ambivalent about the English political system and English commerce.

In fact, despite all of his praise for commerce, Montesquieu remained frequently critical both of commerce and of the commercial classes (Keohane 1980: 408-19). In his caustic comments about Dutch “avarice” in his travel notebooks he wrote, “The heart of the inhabitants of countries that live by commerce is entirely corrupted” (Montesquieu 1964b: 327). In writing about countries other than England, Montesquieu assumed that commerce destroyed republics. “Having become rich sooner than Rome, Carthage had also become corrupted sooner.” And, if commerce fostered English liberty, it was destructive of the liberty of ancient republics. “Every kind of low commerce was infamous among the Greeks; … [it] clashed with the spirit of Greek liberty” (C: 44; SL: IV, 8, 6). Similarly, the Romans scorned commerce.

[The Romans'] genius, their glory, their military education, and the very form of their government estranged them from commerce. … I am not ignorant that men prepossessed with these two ideas, that commerce is of the greatest service to the state, and that the Romans had the best regulated government in the world, have believed that these people greatly honored and encouraged commerce; but the truth is, they seldom troubled their heads about it.

(SL: XXI, 14; also C: 98-99)

Montesquieu frankly regarded commerce as a petty undertaking, not worthy of a great people. For example, he quoted Cicero to the effect that it was not proper for the same nation to be both master of the world and also the greatest commercial power; this would suppose that the people of such a nation “had their heads constantly filled with grand views, and at the same time with small ones, which is a contradiction” (SL: XX, 4). Indeed, Montesquieu's writings reveal the contempt of the aristocrat for the merchant. Only after the republic had collapsed, he wrote, did Rome become “full of timid bourgeois,” and similarly he contrasted ancient with modern Greece. Greek citizens, “who lived under a popular government, knew no other support than virtue. The modern inhabitants of that country are entirely taken up with manufacture, commerce, finances, opulence, and luxury” (C: 139; SL: III, 3).

In one crucial passage, Montesquieu summed up his view. Commerce can coexist for a long time with democracy, he suggested, because commerce promotes good characteristics such as frugality and moderation, but over time commerce will bring luxury, which will destroy all reason for frugality and moderation.

True is it that when a democracy is founded on commerce, private people may acquire vast riches without a corruption of morals. This is because the spirit of commerce is naturally attended with that of frugality, economy, moderation, labor, prudence, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsists, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is, when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the inconveniences of inequality begin to be felt.

(SL: V, 6)

Despite recognizing all the moral, economic, and political benefits of commerce, Montesquieu was suggesting that, over time, commerce creates luxury and together they can corrupt both republics and monarchies, transforming both into a despotism very different from the harsh Asiatic despotism that he more systematically analyzed. In his misgivings about commerce, Montesquieu outlined a second theory of despotism strikingly at odds with the brutal, fearful, and poverty-ridden despotism modeled after a European caricature of Turkey, Persia, and China.

What exactly did he fear commerce might do? First, commerce at best produces a mediocre nation. “Commercial powers can continue in a state of mediocrity a long time, but their greatness is of short duration” (C: 47). Second, commerce renders the citizens or subjects of a nation frivolous, because “it is the nature of commerce to render the superfluous useful.” In commercial societies men and women busy themselves with chasing yet more wealth, even though “riches do not bring comforts, but more needs.” For Montesquieu this becomes a contemptibly frivolous world in which people are “actuated by an ambition of distinguishing themselves by trifles” (SL: XX, 23; Montesquieu 1955: 795; SL: VII, 1). Third, commerce brings luxury, a claim that of course sits uneasily in contradiction beside Montesquieu's claim that commerce prevents luxury, and yet the contradiction does exist. In one passage, Montesquieu said it bluntly. “The effect of commerce is riches; the consequence of riches, luxury” (SL: XXI, 6; also XX, 4). Fourth, Montesquieu suggested that commerce might well unleash a world based solely on self-interest. In his story of the Troglodytes, Montesquieu had suggested that a society based entirely on self-interest, that is, a society with no internalized sense of morality, would collapse into anarchistic self-seeking. And commerce might introduce just this self-interest that undermines morality. “We see that in countries where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or given, only for money” (SL: XX, 2).¹⁰

Montesquieu also feared the political consequences of commerce, and as a fifth objection, he worried about the urbanization that invariably accompanies commerce. The Romans had been “corrupted by the luxury of the cities,” and Montesquieu complained about cities in which people are “strangers to one another” and in which people forego sincerity in trying to appear what they are not, a complaint foreshadowing Rousseau's claim that we tyrannize ourselves with our own insincerity (C: 40; SL: VII, 1; Montesquieu 1964a: 43-45). Sixth, commerce isolates people, because individuals concerned with their private affairs have little time to devote to public affairs. Montesquieu quoted Xenophon to the effect that people engaged in commerce have no time for their friends or for their communities, and he also noted that, “in proportion as luxury gains ground in a republic, the minds of the people are turned toward their particular interests” (SL: VII, 2; IV, 8). Seventh, Montesquieu regarded commerce as hostile to citizenship, and he observed that people “grow indifferent to public affairs [when] avarice becomes their predominant passion.” Indeed, “with possessions beyond the needs of private life, it was difficult to be a good citizen” (SL: II, 2; C: 98). Finally, Montesquieu feared that, with commerce, a new class would come to dominate politics. Montesquieu admired Florence, because in Florence the nobility still controlled the bourgeoisie, instead of vice versa. In England, however, whereas “other nations have made their interests of commerce yield to those of politics, the English, on the contrary, have ever made their political interests give way to those of commerce” (SL: XX, 7, 10; Montesquieu 1964d: 857).

A SECOND THEORY OF DESPOTISM

Like ancient writers, but unlike some of his fellow philosophes who articulated a theory of progress, Montesquieu analyzed history in terms of cycles of decline. Most often he saw republics becoming monarchies and then collapsing into despotisms, but he did see the possibility of a monarchy becoming a republic.¹¹ Not surprisingly, Montesquieu saw himself as living in such an age of decline; born too late both for the virtue of ancient republics and for the honorable and limited monarchy of the French past, he felt confined to ces temps de barbarie (Montesquieu 1955: 934).

It is the love of country that gave to the histories of Greece and Rome this nobility that our history does not have … When one thinks of the pettiness of our motives, of the baseness of our ways, of the avarice with which we seek vile rewards, of this ambition that is so different from love of glory, one is astonished at the different sights, and it seems that, ever since these two great peoples ceased to exist, men have been cut down a notch.

(Montesquieu 1964d: 938)

Montesquieu longed for the greatness of the past—and even painted the Roman Republic in such strong and pleasing colors that his picture inspired many of his fellow philosophes—but did not think the re-emergence of Cato's republic or Louis IX's monarchy was possible. Instead, he had to analyze and warn against the dangers of the present. In his Pensées he copied a line from Tacitus's Agricola that described his own situation. “Rome of old explored the utmost limits of freedom; we have plumbed the depths of slavery” (Montesquieu 1964d: 1020; Agricola: section 2). Far from thinking that a virtuous republic could be reborn under the ever-enlarging absolutism of Louis XV, Montesquieu resigned himself to trying to hold back the surge of despotism. In a long letter written in 1753, he desperately remonstrated a friend who was afraid to assert forcefully the rights of the Paris Parlement against the crown, and declared to his friend that without these traditional bodies France would experience “the loss of our Constitution” (Montesquieu 1955: 1465-69).

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Montesquieu feared only the power of the monarchy. Montesquieu assumed that one analyzed politics in class terms, described the dominant classes as nobles, bourgeois, laboureurs, and recognized that a new class was becoming increasingly important. The spirit of glory is gone, noted Montesquieu, and “it is the spirit of commerce that dominates today” (Montesquieu 1964d: 997, 1012, 880). Indeed, “the passion for growing rich passes along from social class to social class” (PL: CVI). Nor did Montesquieu like it very much. In The Persian Letters he noted that neither birth nor reputation counted for much, but instead “the first man of Paris” was the one who could buy the best horses for a carriage. “But when one closely examines the sort of people who have [the most wealth], by dint of despising the wealthy, one comes to have a scorn for wealth” (PL: LXXXVIII; XCVIII). In so many ways Montesquieu reminds us of the aristocrat who fears the powerful king and resents the upstart bourgeoisie, who dislikes monarchs and merchants.

Montesquieu thus saw France as threatened by two forces, a powerful monarchy and an ever-enlarging commercial class, and two different kinds of servitude. On the one hand, by using his model of Asiatic despotism, a harsh despotism founded on a fearful violence that eliminates all intermediate institutions, Montesquieu could warn against the encroachments of the French monarchy. Probably he did not really think France would become like Turkey, but it might become like Spain (Hulliung 1976: 6, 48-53). On the other hand, Montesquieu's writings betray an anxiety that a powerful monarch might rule hand in hand, not with the nobility, but with the new middle classes, and that such a despotism would not be a brutal Asiatic oppression, but rather a somewhat pleasant European decadence. Perhaps it would be more absolute to the extent that it seduced rather than forced, to the extent that it pleased rather than brutalized. In an unpublished note, Montesquieu suggested that a despotism would be more effective if it found another basis for its rule than cruelty, and in his own “general maxims” about politics, he wrote that “fear is a motive that must be used sparingly; it is never necessary to make a severe law when a milder one will suffice” (Montesquieu 1964d: 946; Montesquieu 1964e: 799). If an absolute power can control its people by some means more lasting than fear, then it might be an even more frightening form of despotism.

Montesquieu was pointing toward a new despotism with the following characteristics. First, it would be controlled by a monarch who ruled hand in hand with the new middle classes. Second, its principle would not be fear, but avarice. Twice in The Spirit of the Laws, not more than a few pages after he wrote that fear was the principle of despotism, Montesquieu wrote that “the principal motive of action [in despotic government] is the hope of the conveniences of life” (SL: V, 17-18). Third, this government would delight in its citizens pursuing wealth and commerce, because with such private pursuits they would not bother themselves with public affairs. Fourth, people would be isolated from each other, not because of fear and violence, but because the pursuit of wealth and luxury makes people lead private lives. In his notes, Montesquieu complained that all ties between citizens had been severed, that all interests have been “particularized,” and that “each man is isolated” (Montesquieu 1964d: 939). Fifth, such a government would eliminate all intermediate institutions, replacing them with officials appointed by the central power. Finally, such a despotic government might well endeavor to satisfy its subjects' desires for goods and pleasures. Indeed, Montesquieu was beginning to depict a world in which subjects are tied to their servitude, not because of violence, but because such servitude is pleasing. One part of Montesquieu's legacy to Tocqueville and to our own century is this notion of a despotism founded not on fear, but on gratification, a despotism with a panoply of pleasures much like the seraglio in which the master is more absolute when he caresses than when he threatens.

Notes

1. In these first three paragraphs I have relied extensively on Koebner (1951) and Richter (1974). Richter (1977: 44-47, 71-79) provides an excellent discussion of the historical backdrop to the concept of despotism. And Keohane (1980) gives a superb account of the intellectual legacy from which Montesquieu borrowed.

2. Montesquieu outlined his classification of governments, or typologies, in SL: II-V. For discussions of Montesquieu's method of classification, see Baum (1979: 83-119); Keohane (1972); Richter (1969). For discussions of Montesquieu's general method and approach to the study of political phenomena, see Durkheim (1960: 1-18, 36-42); Aron (1968: 13-72); Althusser (1982: 17-30, 43-60).

3. The checks and balances that Montesquieu championed so famously were more complicated than simple institutional checks and balances, because he included allocating power among the various classes. See Vachet (1968).

4. Montesquieu did not think this was only metaphorical; the confinement of women is a sign of despotism. See SL: XVI, 9-10; also Hulliung (1974).

5. Montesquieu enthusiastically supported attempts by the Regent, the Duke of Orléans, to institute a system of aristocratic councils (Ranum 1969). After the Duke died in 1725, Montesquieu wrote a friend that, “The death of the Duke of Orléans has made me regret a prince for the first time in my life” (Montesquieu 1955: 758).

6. On Montesquieu's attitude toward the Tatars, see PL: LXXXI. For Montesquieu's selective use of the information he had on Asian despotisms, see Young (1978). Obviously Montesquieu gave us only an inaccurate caricature of Asian governments.

7. Compare to Tacitus. “And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptations of arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization,’ when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement” (Agricola, section 21).

8. For articles emphasizing only Montesquieu's positive claims about commerce, see Rosow (1984) and Manicas (1981).

9. In my view, the evidence does not support the claim that Montesquieu was a nearly unwavering defender of England, liberalism, and commerce. (See, for an example of this interpretation, Pangle [1973].) And even though Montesquieu was deeply critical of the status quo, he was not a radical republican in disguise. (See, for an example of this claim, Hulliung [1976].) The best book showing Montesquieu's ambivalent attitudes toward England and toward commerce is Keohane (1980: esp. 392-419).

10. For Montesquieu, no society, not even one with the best imaginable laws, can survive without morality. In The Persian Letters he satirized a man who called in a debt and ruined a family, causing the parents to die of grief and rendering the children destitute, but said, “Still I did no more than is permitted under the law” (CXLVI).

11. See the story of the Troglodytes (PL: XI-XIV), and an unpublished letter, Appendix, pp. 284-85; also, (PL: CII, CXXXI, CXXXVI; SL: VIII, 17). As Richter correctly notes, “Montesquieu believed that not progress but corruption was the law of history” (1977: 63).

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