Democracy in the United States of America has never been an easy or a facile thing. It’s complicated – it has always been complicated – and those realDemocracy in the United States of America has never been an easy or a facile thing. It’s complicated – it has always been complicated – and those realities are singularly well illustrated in the best book ever written about life in the U.S.A. I refer, of course, to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840, Democracy in America astonishes the modern reader, because de Tocqueville’s observations from almost 200 years ago apply so well to life in America today.
It may seem strange that a French aristocrat, from an old family of Norman nobility, would turn out to be such an astute student of American democracy. But then, the U.S.A. has always been a country that changes people. A printer from Philadelphia, notable for his efforts to reconcile Great Britain and her American colonies, becomes an American arch-rebel. A Virginia slaveholder becomes the author of one of the most important freedom documents in the history of the world. An orphan from the Caribbean island of Nevis reinvents, virtually single-handed, the financial system of the Western world. This country changes people; and Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations of life in the United States, collected over many months of travel throughout the states and territories of the country during the 1830’s, certainly changed him.
De Tocqueville begins Democracy in America by reflecting that “Of all the novel things which attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of social conditions” (p. 11). He felt that aristocracy was on the decline throughout the Western world, and that democracy was on the rise – a change that he saw having many good consequences, along with some potentially troubling ones. Democracy in America was the text through which he set down and systematized his observations of life in the United States.
Among de Tocqueville’s thoughts regarding American life are these considerations of how the origins of the American colonies might have encouraged the growth of democracy:
Every new European colony contained, if not in a fully developed form, at least the seed of a fully grown democracy. There were two reasons for this: in general, it can be stated that when they left their mother country, the emigrants had no particular concept of any superiority of one over another. It is hardly the happy and the powerful who choose exile; poverty, along with wretchedness, offers the best guarantee of equal status known to man. (pp. 39-40).
With a strong focus on how the township system developed in the New England colonies, de Tocqueville suggests that the colonists’ focus on local government first, and then on colonial government after, may have done much to mold Americans’ uniquely democratic outlook: “In most European nations, the initial movements of power resided with the upper echelons of society and passed gradually, and always in a partial manner, to the other sections of society. By contrast, in America we can state that the organization of the township preceded that of the county, the county that of the state, the state that of the Union” (p. 52).
De Tocqueville is impressed with how American civilization has developed, and suggests that “This civilization is the result (and this is something we must always bear in mind) of two quite distinct ingredients which anywhere else have often ended in war but which Americans have succeeded somehow to meld together in wondrous harmony – namely, the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty” (p. 55).
No area of American life goes unexamined by de Tocqueville. Manners? Not as polished as in Europe, but avoiding the extremes of both elegance and vulgarity. Attitudes toward money and material prosperity? Acquisitive – as, in an egalitarian democracy, one of the few ways in which one can stand out from one’s neighbors is by having more money than they do. Business practices? Characterized by sharp dealing -- caveat emptor! National pride? Expressed much more loudly, and more stridently, than in Europe.
One sees how de Tocqueville’s status as an aristocrat who believes in democracy affects the way he sees American institutions. When considering, for example, the division of the U.S. Congress into a Senate and a House of Representatives, de Tocqueville makes a point of informing his French audience that “By dividing the legislature into two, Americans have, therefore, intended not to create one hereditary house and another elected; they did not mean the one to be aristocratic, the other democratic; neither did they aim to make the first an adjunct of the establishment, while leaving to the other the concerns and passions of the people” (p. 100). He knows that he needs to remind his French readers regarding the differences between the French and American systems.
While de Tocqueville praises American democracy, he does not depict American society as a perfect society. He sees democracy as a levelling tendency that can discourage individuals from seeking to stand out in areas like education or erudition: “I do not think that there is a single country in the world where, in proportion to the population, there are so few ignorant and, at the same time, so few educated individuals as in America” (p. 65). Only in America, among the major industrialized nations of the world, is “overeducated” an insult. Getting an education in order to make more money – Fine, admirable. Good for you! Constantly learning more for the sake of learning itself, questioning societal norms in the process, building an outlook based on inquiry and critical thinking – what the hell is wrong with you?
De Tocqueville is particularly eloquent when warning about the potential for majoritarianism, the tyranny of the majority. When he writes that “I know of no country where there is generally less independence of thought and real freedom of debate than in America” (p. 297), I find myself thinking about the times when people have felt distinctly unsafe expressing unpopular ideas – opposing McCarthyism during the Red Scare of the 1950’s, for example.
That tendency toward majoritarianism, for de Tocqueville, has much to do with democracy itself. In an unequal society, he points out, many citizens may “take as a guide for their opinions the superior reason of one man or one class” (p. 399). Yet exactly the opposite thing tends to happen in a democracy:
When the man living in a democratic country compares himself individually with all those around him, he sees with pride that he is equal to each of them; but when he happens to contemplate the huge gathering of his fellow men, and to take place beside this great body, he is straightway overwhelmed by his own insignificance and weakness. This very equality which makes him independent of each of his fellow men delivers him alone and defenseless into the hands of the majority. (p. 501).
De Tocqueville finds that newspapers are of great importance against the vast expanses and distances of the United States, writing that a newspaper is “the only way of being able to place the same thought at the same moment into a thousand minds” (p. 600). He adds that “as men become more equal and individualism more of a menace, newspapers are more necessary. The belief that they just guarantee freedom would diminish their importance; they sustain civilization” (p. 600). At the same time, newspapers can be molders of mass opinion, not just deliverers of information. Looking at the power and influence of newspapers and other media in the United States, de Tocqueville writes that “the predisposition to believe in mass opinion increases and becomes progressively the opinion which commands the world” (p. 501).
Modern readers are likely to take particular interest in de Tocqueville’s remarks on race and slavery. He was writing, after all, at a time when slavery was entrenched in the Southern states, but was gradually being abolished across the Northern states. “Slavery,” de Tocqueville writes, “brings dishonor to work; it introduces idleness into society, together with ignorance and pride, poverty, and indulgence. It weakens the powers of the mind and dampens human effort. The influence of slavery, together with the English character, explains the customs and the social conditions of the South” (p. 41).
With his classical education, de Tocqueville is well-qualified to discuss how slavery in the United States is different from slavery in the ancient world, because American slavery is linked with race. In a famous passage, he asks readers to imagine themselves as travellers on the Ohio River between slaveholding Kentucky and free-labour Ohio: a sleepy, idle tableau of inactivity on the Kentucky side, a bustling commercial society on the Ohio side. The reason, de Tocqueville tells us, is simple: “On the left bank of the Ohio, work is connected with the idea of slavery, on the right bank with the idea of progress; on the one side, it is a source of humiliation, on the other, of honour” (p. 405).
He anticipates that American society will be combatting race prejudice long after the formal abolition of slavery, and observes that, in those Northern states where slavery has been abolished, “the legal barrier separating the two races is tending to come down but not that of custom. I see slavery in retreat, but the prejudice which arises from it has not moved at all” (p. 401). Almost 200 years after de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, and more than 150 years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States, de Tocqueville’s words regarding the lingering nature of race prejudice still apply. Heaven knows they do.
With regard to gender, de Tocqueville sees that “Americans…have allowed the social inferiority of women to remain”, but insists that “nowhere does [woman] enjoy a higher status” (p. 699) than in the United States. I can’t help wondering: how much did de Tocqueville actually consult the opinions of American women before writing these words, and how did American women of those times respond when they read what de Tocqueville had written regarding gender in American society? Still, de Tocqueville’s admiration for American women remains unmistakable: he writes that “if I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation, I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their women” (p. 700).
A striking chapter, near the end of Democracy in America, speculates about “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear.” De Tocqueville writes that he will worry about the future of any democracy when he sees, within that democracy, a critical mass of citizens who are “turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls” (p. 804). And what kind of despotism might be constructed atop the wreckage of American democracy?
De Tocqueville is quite specific regarding how he thinks such a despotism could take shape, saying that “it prefers its citizens to enjoy themselves, provided they have only enjoyment in mind. It works readily for their happiness, but it wishes to be the only provider and judge of it.” Over time, it “reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range, and gradually removes autonomy itself from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all this, inclining them to tolerate all these things, and often even to see them as a blessing” (p. 805)
Around the world, one can observe may examples of governments that hold power within a system of “authoritarian capitalism” or “managed democracy.” People can make money as they like – and indeed, a degree of “buy-in” from the well-to-do seems to be required for these systems to work. Everybody has the prospect of dreaming of a McMansion, with a Cadillac Escalade out front, and a wall-sized plasma-screen TV on the walls. Social media technology tracks our likes and interests, often anticipating the next thing we might want to buy or do. You can vote; you're free to vote. But one political party, one leader, is always in charge. Everyone knows what they can or cannot say regarding government policy. And in those places where populist nationalism has taken hold, there is one acceptable way of being a “true” patriotic citizen, and one religion that has an “authentic” formative role in the life of the nation, and – often – there is hostility toward members of various cultural, ideological, and/or religious minorities. Where is the United States of America on that continuum today?
This Penguin Books edition of Democracy in America also includes the essay “Two Weeks in the Wilderness” – a work that shows the sort of work that de Tocqueville did in compiling the materials for what became Democracy in America. We see how much de Tocqueville and a colleague endured whilst travelling under rough conditions from Buffalo, New York, toward Saginaw in what was then Michigan Territory. Having wanted to meet some Indigenous Americans, he finally gets to do so; and in the process, he sees how often and how outrageously Indigenous Americans are cheated in their dealings with Anglo-American pioneers and traders. To that observation, de Tocqueville adds that “Besides, it is not only Indians that the pioneers take for fools. We were daily victims ourselves of their inordinate greed for gain. It is very true that they do not steal. They have too much enlightenment to commit such an unwise act, but I have never seen a big town innkeeper overcharge with more impudence than these inhabitants of the wilderness” (p. 904).
Complete with a sometimes daunting set of footnotes doubled with appendices, Democracy in America is unrivalled in the completeness with which it sets forth the promise and the problems of American life. I will close by repeating what I said at the outset: this is the most important book ever written about life in the United States of America....more
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