Bernie Sanders appears to think all we need to be happy is more money,” says Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, but Alexis de Tocqueville dismantled that idea two centuries ago.

Tocqueville’s first reproach was that socialism—whatever its expression—has an inherently materialistic understanding of humans. “The first characteristic of all socialist ideologies is,” Tocqueville insisted, “an incessant, vigorous and extreme appeal to the material passions of man.” Tocqueville may have wrestled with religious questions for much of his life. Nevertheless, he refused to accept that we’re just another species of animal whose fundamental needs are purely material.

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