“Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville is a seminal work that offers a comprehensive analysis of American society, politics, and culture in the 19th century. Tocqueville’s treatise provides valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of democracy, the role of civil society, and the challenges facing democratic governance.
Tocqueville begins by examining the origins and nature of democracy in America, highlighting the unique conditions that contributed to its emergence. He emphasizes the importance of equality and individualism in American society, which he sees as essential characteristics of democratic governance.
The author explores the structure and functions of American government, including the separation of powers, federalism, and the role of local government. He argues that these institutional arrangements help to promote political stability and prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single authority.
Tocqueville discusses the role of civil society in American democracy, emphasizing the importance of voluntary associations, civic engagement, and community involvement. He argues that these intermediary institutions play a crucial role in fostering social cohesion, promoting democratic values, and holding government accountable to the people.
The author examines the relationship between religion and democracy in America, arguing that religious faith contributes to the moral and social foundations of democracy. He emphasizes the importance of religious tolerance and the separation of church and state in preserving the integrity of both religious institutions and democratic governance.
Tocqueville explores the concept of individualism in American society, highlighting its positive and negative implications for democracy. He argues that while individualism fosters a sense of personal freedom and initiative, it also contributes to social atomization and a lack of community solidarity.
The author discusses the challenges facing democracy in America, including the potential for tyranny of the majority, the dangers of mob rule, and the erosion of civic virtue. He emphasizes the importance of education, civic engagement, and political participation in safeguarding the principles of democracy.
Tocqueville examines the role of political parties in American democracy, arguing that while parties are essential for organizing political competition and mobilizing voters, they also have the potential to undermine the integrity of the democratic process. He emphasizes the need for a strong and independent judiciary to protect against abuses of power by political parties.
The author explores the concept of “soft despotism” in democratic societies, referring to the gradual erosion of individual liberties and the expansion of state power through administrative bureaucracy and social conformity. He warns against the dangers of complacency and apathy in the face of encroachments on freedom and individual rights.
In conclusion, “Democracy in America” offers a nuanced and insightful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy in the 19th century. Tocqueville’s treatise continues to be studied and debated as a foundational work in political philosophy, providing valuable perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing democratic governance.
As society becomes more civilized and more stable with time, the different relationships among men become more complicated and more numerous. The need for civil laws is intensely felt. Then jurists arise; they emerge from the dark precinct of the courts and from the dusty recess of the clerk’s offices, and they go to sit in the court of the prince, alongside feudal barons covered with ermine and iron.
Kings ruin themselves in great enterprises; nobles exhaust themselves in private wars; commoners enrich themselves in commerce. The influence of money begins to make itself felt in affairs of State. Trade is a new source of power, and financiers become a political power that is scorned and flattered.
Little by little, enlightenment spreads; the taste for literature and the arts reawakens; then the mind becomes an element of success; knowledge is a means of government; intelligence, a social force; men of letters reach public affairs.
As new roads to achieve power are found, however, we see the value of birth fall.
During the 700 years that have just passed, it sometimes happened that, in order to struggle against royal authority, or to take power away from their rivals, the nobles gave political power to the people.
Even more often, you saw kings make the lower classes of the State participate in government in order to humble the aristocracy.
In France, kings showed themselves to be the most active and most constant of levelers. When they were ambitious and strong, they worked to raise the people to the level of the nobles, and when they were moderate and weak, they allowed the people to put themselves above kings. The former helped democracy by their talents, the latter by their vices.
From the time when works of the mind became sources of strength and wealth, each development of science, each new element of knowledge, each new idea had to be considered a germ of power put within reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, memory, mental graces, fires of the imagination, depth of thought, all these gifts that heaven distributes at random, profited democracy, and even when they were in the possession of democracy’s adversaries, they still served its cause by putting into relief the natural grandeur of man; so democracy’s conquests spread with those of civilization and enlightenment, and literature was an arsenal open to all, where the weak and the poor came each day to find arms.
When royal power, supported by the aristocracy, peacefully governed the peoples of Europe, society, amid its miseries, enjoyed several kinds of happiness, which are difficult to imagine and appreciate today.
The power of some subjects raised insurmountable barriers to the tyranny of the prince; and kings, feeling vested in the eyes of the crowd with a nearly divine character, drew, from the very respect that they caused, the will not to abuse their power.
Placed an immense distance from the people, the nobles nonetheless took the type of benevolent and tranquil interest in the fate of the people that the shepherd gives to his flock; and without seeing the poor man as their equal, they watched over his lot as a trust put in their hands by Providence.
Not having conceived the idea of a social state other than their own, not imagining that they could ever be equal to their rulers, the people accepted the benefits and did not question the rights of their rulers. They loved them when they were lenient and just and submitted without difficulty and without servility to their rigors as to inevitable evils sent to them by the hand of God. Custom and mores had, moreover, established limits to tyranny and founded a kind of right in the very midst of force.
It is not the use of power or the habit of obedience that depraves men; it is the use of a power that they considered as illegitimate and obedience to a power that they regarded as usurped and oppressive.
On one side were wealth, force, leisure and with them the pursuit of luxury, refinements of taste, pleasures of the mind, devotion to the arts; on the other, work, coarseness and ignorance.
But within this ignorant and coarse crowd, you met energetic passions, generous sentiments, profound beliefs and untamed virtues.
The social body organized this way could have stability, power, and above all glory.
The division of fortunes has reduced the distance that separated the poor from the rich; but by coming closer together, they seem to have found new reasons to hate each other, and, eyeing one another with looks full of terror and envy, they mutually push each other away from power; for the one as for the other, the idea of rights does not exist, and force appears to them both as the only reason for the present and the sole guarantee of the future.
The poor man has kept most of the prejudices of his fathers, without their beliefs; their ignorance, without their virtues; he has accepted, as the rule for his actions, the doctrine of interest, without knowing the science of interest, and his egoism is as wanting in enlightenment as his devotion formerly was.
Society is tranquil, not because it is conscious of its strength and its well-being, but on the contrary because it believes itself weak and frail; it is afraid of dying by making an effort. Everyone feels that things are going badly, but no one has the necessary courage and energy to seek something better; we have desires, regrets, sorrows and joys that produce nothing visible or lasting, similar to passions of old men that end in impotence.
I notice virtuous and peaceful men placed naturally by their pure morals, tranquil habits, prosperity and enlightenment at the head of the populations that surround them. Full of a sincere love of country, they are ready to make great sacrifices for it. Civilization, however, often finds them to be adversaries; they confuse its abuses with its benefits, and in their minds the idea of evil is indissolubly united with the idea of the new [and they seem to want to establish a monstrous bond between virtue, misery and ignorances so that all three may be struck with the same blow].
Nearby I see other men who, in the name of progress, try hard to materialize man, wanting to find the useful without attending to the just, wanting to find knowledge far from beliefs and well-being separated from virtue. These claim to be champion of modern civilization and they arrogantly put themselves at its head, usurping a place that is abandoned to them and that their unworthiness denies to them.