Views on democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

De Tocqueville -- Democracy in America

In human history many events change the course of nations, not intentionally, certainly not at the exact time of action, but later, as events domino from each other into what becomes a mythological event captured in writing, art, popular music, and even the heritage of a nation. One such event was the rather unheard of colonial rebellion between a distant set of colonies and a huge, megalithic world power, now known as the American Revolution. This even so struck most Europeans, who had witnessed a number of failed attempts at democratization and the French Revolution's Reign of Terror and resulting Napoleonic debacle, that they simply could not understand this great experiment across the ocean.

Alexis de Tocqueville, an aristocratic and well-educated Frenchman, came to America in 1831 under the reque4st of the French Government to study prisons and penitentiaries in America. While he did publish a report to that effect, it was his 2-year study of life, culture, and government in America that became his Democracy in America, first published in 1835. What followed was Europe's first scholarly encounter with American democracy of the time; written from the perspective of a rather detached social scientist. And, we must also remember that this was a time when the market revolution, westward expansion and the arrogance of Jacksonian democracy were dramatically changing American culture. What de Tocqueville saw was a burgeoning nation, Christian at its heart, that was trying valiantly to balance liberty, equality and yet rugged individualism as well (Damrosch, 2010). For example:

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live (de Tocqueville, 2007, 222).

There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor (Ibid., 223).

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country (Ibid).

It is also interesting that, as a social scientist, de Tocqueville sees economic inequality as an incentive for the poor to better themselves and thus become rich. He was from an aristocratic family, of course, and a system in which protective laws in Europe protected landed estates and preserved wealth. In America, he saw a nation where this was not the case, which likely was somewhat responsible in years to come of the European view of America as the land of opportunity.

If we as a modern audience really analyze de Tocqueville's purpose and relative bias it would probably be that he was prone to be more positive about the American experiment because he was disgusted with what had happened in France since 1789, and in particular, Bonapartism and the various tyrannical reactions to social and human debate in Europe. He states that he wanted to understand the nature of American political life through describing culture and the way property was a real basis of political power. In a way, he seemed to be searching for a way to justify the anti-aristocracy paradigm of Europe in what we now know was the last 1/2-century of monarchism.

What he found, in contrast to Europe, was that the American social ethic was not based on aristocracy, and in fact Americans seemed to have a deep-seated fear and loathing of European titles (at least the middle and common classes). Instead, Americanism was based on a system in which hard work and money-making (e.g. aggressive capitalism) was the dominant ethic of the time. In this period of radical change and development, he perceived that the common (free) person never deferred to elites and where one was rewarded for being a greedy individualist. He writes: "Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living… Labor is held in honor; the prejudice is not against but in its favor" (Ibid., 398).

What is also interesting is that, at times, no matter how unbiased a historical or sociological account portends, what is excluded is often as important as what is included. There was, by all accounts, a clear aristocracy in the South -- based on money, land, and power. This aristocracy controlled slaves, vast wealth through plantations, and was tied more to Great Britain in some ways than it was to the northern colonies. De Tocqueville was at least somewhat aware of this but thought that the direction of America was such that the philosophical ideals of the North would move not only Westward, but South as well. He saw a population that was democratizing, and rapidly, which explained why America was so very different from Europe. What he did not see, though, was that it would take an extremely bloody and vicious war, the assassination of a President, and over a decade of policies designed to put America back together to even begin to realize what he thought was just around the corner. To his credit, though, as he observed from Europe the events leading to the Civil War he noted:

I do not think it is for me, a foreigner, to indicate to the United States the time, the measures, or the men by whom Slavery shall be abolished…Still, as the persevering enemy of despotism everywhere, and under all its forms, I am pained and astonished by the fact that the freest people in the world is, at the present time, almost the only one among civilized and Christian nations which yet maintains personal servitude; and this while serfdom itself is about disappearing, where it has not already disappeared, from the most degraded nations of Europe.