Also seeTocqueville American Experiment 

 

 

Democracy in America

In Democracy in America ( Democracy In America (The Book) in HyperText), published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through America in the early 19th century when the market revolution, Western expansion, and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life. He saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. A critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that association, the coming together of people for common purpose, would bind Americans to an idea of nation larger than selfish desires, thus making a civil society which wasn't exclusively dependent on the state.

 

Tocqueville's penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of American civic life. In describing America, he agreed with thinkers such as Aristotle, James Harrington and Montesquieu that the balance of property determined the balance of political power, but his conclusions after that differed radically from those of his predecessors. Tocqueville tried to understand why America was so different from Europe in the last throes of aristocracy. America, in contrast to the aristocratic ethic, was a society where money-making was the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites, where hard work and money dominated the minds of all, and where what he described as crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.

 

The uniquely American mores and opinions, Tocqueville argued, lay in the origins of American society and derived from the peculiar social conditions that had welcomed colonists in prior centuries. Unlike Europe, venturers to America found a vast expanse of open land. Any and all who arrived could own their own land and cultivate an independent life. Sparse elites and a number of landed aristocrats existed, but, according to Tocqueville, these few stood no chance against the rapidly developing values bred by such vast land ownership. With such an open society, layered with so much opportunity, men of all sorts began working their way up in the world: industriousness became a dominant ethic, and "middling" values began taking root.

 

This equality of social conditions bred political and social values which determined the type of legislation passed in the colonies and later the states. By the late 18th century, democratic values which championed money-making, hard work, and individualism had eradicated, in the North, most remaining vestiges of old world aristocracy and values. Eliminating them in the South proved more difficult, for slavery had produced a landed aristocracy and web of patronage and dependence similar to the old world, which would last until the antebellum period before the Civil War.

Tocqueville asserted that the values that had triumphed in the North and were present in the South had begun to suffocate old-world ethics and social arrangements. Legislatures abolished primogenitureentails, resulting in more widely distributed land holdings. Landed elites lost the ability to pass on fortunes to single individuals. Hereditary fortunes became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.

 

This rapidly democratizing society, as Tocqueville understood it, had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass, through hard work, vast fortunes. Such an ethos explained, in Tocqueville's mind, why America was so different from Europe. In Europe, he claimed, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth, while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar, and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money; many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. These cultural differences, identified so remarkably by Tocqueville, have led many subsequent scholars to explain that in 19th-century Europe, workers could see elites walk down the street wearing fancy attire and demand class warfare and revolution, but in America, at the same time, workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries.

 

These unique American values, many have suggested, explain American exceptionalism and shed light upon many mysterious phenomena such as why America has never embraced socialism as dramatically as other leading Western countries. To Tocqueville, America was set apart by its peculiar democratic mores. But, despite maintaining, with Aristotle, More, Harrington, Montesquieu, and others that the balance of property determined the balance of power, Tocqueville argued that, as America showed, equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In fact, it did quite the opposite. The widespread, relatively equitable property ownership which distinguished America and determined its mores and values also explained why the American masses held elites in such contempt.

 

More than just imploding any traces of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior talent and intelligence. These natural elites, who Tocqueville asserted were the lone virtuous members of American society, could not enjoy much share in the political sphere as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too much power, claimed too great a voice in the public sphere, to defer to intellectual superiors. This culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, Tocqueville argued, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted, as he put it, a middling mediocrity.

 

Those who possessed true virtue and talent would be left with limited choices, choices which many have suggested shed light on American society today. Those with the most education and intelligence would either, Tocqueville prognosticated, join limited intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing society which have today become the academic or contemplative realms, or use their superior talents to take advantage of America's growing obsession with money-making and amass vast fortunes in the private sector. Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American history, Tocqueville's Democracy in America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values.

 

Also see:Tocqueville and the American experiment.  by Professor William R. Cook.(See Below).

 

Professor Cook leads you on an engaging and energetic discussion on Alexis de Tocqueville, his journey, his writing of Democracy in America and, most of all, his thoughts on the young nation he was observing. For Tocqueville, it seems, had opinions about almost everything he encountered in America, and not exclusively politics and "classical" issues such as the nature of the judiciary and the role of freedom of the press.

 

Tocqueville and the American Experiment

(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)

Course No. 4863

Taught by William R. Cook

State University of New York at Geneseo

Ph.D., Cornell

 

• The meaning of family in a democracy
• Race and the damage done by slavery
• Women's crucial role
• Religion as a moral guide
• The dangers of turning religion to political ends.

Seeing Ourselves Through a Foreigner’s Observations

 

"Tocqueville," notes Professor Cook, "provides the brilliant observations of an outsider that still allow Americans to understand themselves better for having encountered his writings.

 

"Furthermore, in a time when America is encouraging nations around the world to adopt democratic values and is engaged in nation building, Tocqueville can be both a guide and a reminder of the cultural context in which democratic institutions can develop and flourish.

 

"Whatever we feel about particular American policies," he continues, "we as a nation are trying to build democracies in other places.

 

"To do that, we have to ask, what in America is transferable to other cultures and other histories, and what isn’t? What are the most fundamental things, and what are secondary and tertiary in importance? What kind of education is needed to create not just a democratic institution, but what Tocqueville himself calls the ‘habits of the heart,’ [the American characteristics that] make a democracy more than a form of government but a way of life?"

 

A Professor’s Very Personal Interest

 

Professor Cook will be familiar to Teaching Company customers. He has taught subjects that range from Dante to St. Francis to St. Augustine, but his interest in Tocqueville comes from a very different place than his background as an award-winning medieval historian.

 

Ever since his days as an undergraduate, he has been fascinated with democracy, and in 1998 decided to take a semester off to run for Congress, describing his campaign as a kind of "laboratory" for examining how democracy works. A careful reading of Democracy in America was part of his preparation.

 

Although he lost that race, a course in Tocqueville has since become part of the wide-ranging array of subjects he teaches at his own campus.

 

It is especially interesting to realize that as Professor Cook describes Tocqueville’s journey and illustrates Tocqueville’s insights with examples from his own small town in upstate New York, that many of those insights were gathered in the same district in which Professor Cook ran for Congress.

 

Tocqueville spent several weeks in that area, including significant time as the guest in the Canandaigua, New York, home of a man named John Canfield Spencer, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives, held two Cabinet offices in the presidential administration of John Tyler, and was a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Spencer was instrumental in the American publication of Democracy in America. He contributed an introduction and some corrective footnotes—but his greatest contribution may well have been in the long conversations he had with Tocqueville.

 

Though Tocqueville never mentions Spencer's name in his book, he did record some of those conversations verbatim. Professor Cook points out how those discussions, included in his letters and his journal, not only influenced Tocqueville’s thinking, but offer a window to us today into how that thinking evolved over the years between Tocqueville’s journey to America and the appearance of his book.

 

Freedom of the Press and Centralized Government

 

A primary example of Tocqueville’s changing opinions over the nine-year interval between his visit and the completion of Democracy in America concerns freedom of the press.

 

Describing those changes in the same friendly, conversational style that marks his presentation of the entire course, Professor Cook notes how Tocqueville was initially quite nervous about the unbridled freedom of the press he found in America, fearing that a dominant press might acquire too much power. But Tocqueville was used to the far more centralized press of France, with only a small number of major newspapers. It is fascinating to see how his views evolve as he learns more about the vibrant American press and how its many outlets serve to prevent the centralization of power.

 

Tocqueville constantly cautioned against the centralization of governmental administration. He believed that if Congress or a state legislature passes a bad law that is administered centrally, for example, the bad effects are felt everywhere. But if those laws are administered locally, there will always be places where the application will be less rigid and the impact of the bad laws thus less onerous. This would provide an opportunity for public demonstrations that would make changes in those laws more likely.

 

What Else Did Tocqueville Believe?

 

As Professor Cook traces Tocqueville’s journey and thoughts about the society he is exploring, you’ll see certain concerns emerge repeatedly.

 

Tocqueville believed, for example, that the forces that held democracy together and made it work most efficiently bubbled up through society, rather than trickling down from government.

 

He thus saw serving on juries—especially juries in civil cases—as a crucial part of the education of the citizenry, a "school free of charge," to use Tocqueville’s own words.

 

"I think," Cook quotes Tocqueville, "that the practical intelligence and good political sense of the Americans must principally be attributed to a long use that they have made of the jury in civil matters."

 

Cook shows how Tocqueville saw much of American daily life as education in good citizenship, with both political and civil associations providing fertile training grounds.

 

In the case of political associations, participants would have an opportunity not only to advance causes they believed to be in their own self-interest, but to gain practical experience in learning what he called "self-interest well understood." In giving up their time and energy, and working with other people, citizens would learn how individual self-interest had to be placed within the context of the common good.

 

In the case of civil associations, Professor Cook uses the story of a cat rescue group in his own town of Geneseo to illustrate Tocqueville’s notion of how civil associations help make life better.

 

Concerns as Deep as His Admiration

 

But even as he saw and admired the vibrancy of citizen participation at the base of the American democracy, Tocqueville also saw things that deeply concerned him.

 

As a system dependent on the will of the majority, democracy needed always to be vigilant against the tyranny of that same majority, the danger that it could rule almost absolutely over the minority.

 

That danger wasn’t likely to come from government, for there were constitutional safeguards in place. Instead, Tocqueville saw the threat of majoritarianism in the speech that swirled around him, even going so far as to note that despite all of the opinion he heard being voiced, he had found less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion in America than any place he had been!

 

Though the circle of discussion in America is very broad, he said, its perimeter is clearly delineated. Those whose views fall outside of that circle, though their views are permitted, are cut off from power, with political careers closed to them. They can become the butt of jokes and, in the worst of cases, the victims of social persecution.

 

Tocqueville was also concerned about the long-range implications of what he called "equality of conditions," a term roughly equivalent to what today is referred to as equality of opportunity. For Tocqueville, equality of conditions was fundamental to democracy, giving "a certain direction to public spirit, a certain turn to the laws, new maxims to those who govern and particular habits to the government."

 

But in a society in which such a principle pertains, a society without built-in privilege, Tocqueville also saw a danger. He feared that people might well seek other ways to experience the feeling of being special, either by withdrawing into the family or by the selfish pursuit of material wealth.

 

Tocqueville even coined a term—individualism—to describe this threat, and urged renewed attention to maintaining vibrant local governments and political and civil associations that will constantly demonstrate the advantages of entering and participating in the activities of the public square.

 

 

 

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