This article is about the book written by Tocqueville. For the actual system of government of the United States, see
Politics of the United States.
| Democracy in America |
|---|
Title page, Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, printed atNew York, 1838. |
| Author(s) | Alexis de Tocqueville |
|---|
| Original title | De la démocratie en Amérique |
|---|
| Publisher | Saunders and Otley (London), Now in public domain |
|---|
| Publication date | 1835-1840 |
|---|
De la démocratie en Amérique (published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840) is a
classic French text by
Alexis de Tocqueville. A "literal" translation of its title is
Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply
Democracy in America. In the book, Tocqueville examines the democratic revolution that he believed had been occurring over the past seven-hundred years.
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and
Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American
prison system. In his later letters, Tocqueville indicates, however, that he and Beaumont used their official business as a pretext to study American society instead.
[1] They arrived in
New York City in May of that year and spent nine months traveling the United States, studying the prisons, and collecting information on American society, including its religious, political, and economic character. The two also briefly visited Canada, spending a few days in the summer of 1831 in what was then
Lower Canada(modern-day
Quebec) and
Upper Canada (modern-day
Ontario).
After they returned to France in February 1832, Tocqueville and Beaumont submitted their report,
Du système pénitentiaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France, in 1833. When the first edition was published, Beaumont, sympathetic to social justice, was working on another book,
Marie, ou, L'esclavage aux Etats-Unis (two volumes, 1835), a social critique and novel describing the separation of races in a moral society and the conditions of slaves in America. Before finishing
Democracy in America, Tocqueville believed that Beaumont's study of America would prove more comprehensive and penetrating.
[2]
[edit]Purpose of Democracy in America
Tocqueville begins his book by describing the change in social conditions taking place. He observed that over the previous seven-hundred years the social and economic conditions of men had become more equal. The
aristocracy, Tocqueville believed, was gradually disappearing as the modern world experienced the beneficial effects of equality. Tocqueville traced the development of equality to a number of factors, such as granting all men permission to enter the
clergy, widespread economic opportunity resulting from the growth of trade and commerce, the royal sale of titles of nobility as a monarchical fundraising tool, and the abolition of
primogeniture. Tocqueville described this revolution as a "providential fact"
[3] of an "irresistible revolution," leading some to criticize the
determinismfound in the book. However, based on Tocqueville's correspondences with friends and colleagues, Marvin Zetterbaum, Professor Emeritus at
University of California Davis, concludes that the Frenchman never accepted democracy as determined or inevitable. He did, however, consider equality more just and therefore found himself among its partisans.
[4]
Given the social state that was emerging, Tocqueville believed that a "new political science" would be needed. According to him, it would:
. . . instruct democracy, if possible to reanimate its beliefs, to purify its mores, to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of affairs for its inexperience, and knowledge of its true instincts for its blind instincts; to adapt its government to time and place; to modify it according to circumstances and men: such is the first duty imposed on those who direct society in our day.
[5]
The remainder of the book can be interpreted as an attempt to accomplish this goal thereby giving advice to those people who would experience this change in social states.
[edit]Main themes
[edit]The Puritan Founding
Tocqueville begins his study of America by explaining the contribution of the
Puritans. According to him, the Puritans established America's democratic social state of equality. They arrived equals in education and were all middle class. In addition, Tocqueville observes that they contributed a synthesis of religion and political liberty in America that was uncommon in Europe, particularly in France. He calls the Puritan Founding the "seed" of his entire work.
[edit]The Federal Constitution
Tocqueville believed that the Puritans established the principle of sovereignty of the people in the
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The
American Revolution then popularized this principle, followed by the
Constitutional Convention of 1787, which developed institutions to manage popular will. While Tocqueville speaks highly of the America's Constitution, he believes that the mores, or "habits of mind" of the American people play a more prominent role in the protection of freedom.
- Mores, Laws, and Circumstances
- Self-Interest Rightly Understood
[edit]Importance
Democracy in America was published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the other in 1840. It was immediately popular in both Europe and the United States, while also having a profound impact on the French population. By the twentieth century, it had become a classic work of
political science,
social science, and
history. It is a commonly assigned reading for
undergraduates of American universities
majoring in the political or social sciences, and part of the introductory political theory syllabus at Cambridge, Oxford and other institutions. In the introduction to his translation of the book, Harvey C. Mansfield calls it "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.
[6]
Tocqueville's work is often acclaimed for making a number of astute predictions. He anticipates the potential acrimony over the
abolition of
slavery that would tear apart the United States and lead to the
American Civil War as well as the eventual
superpower rivalry between the United States and Russia, which exploded after
World War II and spawned the
Cold War. Noting the rise of the industrial sector in the American economy, Tocqueville, some scholars have argued, also correctly predicted that an industrial aristocracy would rise from the ownership of labor. He warned that '...friends of democracy must keep an anxious eye peeled in this direction at all times', observing that the route of industry was the gate by which a new found wealthy class might potentially dominate. (However, Tocqueville believed that an industrial aristocracy would differ from the formal aristocracy of the past.) What's more, he foresaw the alienation and isolation that many have come to experience in modern life. On the other hand, Tocqueville proved shortsighted in noting that a democracy's equality of conditions stifles literary development. In spending several chapters lamenting the state of the arts in America he fails to envision the literary Renaissance that would shortly arrive in the form of such major writers as
Edgar Allan Poe,
Henry David Thoreau,
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Herman Melville,
Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Walt Whitman. And in dismissing the country's interest in science as limited to pedestrian applications for streamlining the production of material goods he failed to imagine America's burgeoning appetite for pure scientific research and discovery.
According to Tocqueville, democracy had some unfavorable consequences: the tyranny of the majority over thought, a preoccupation with material goods, and isolated individuals. Democracy in America predicted the violence of party spirit and the judgment of the wise subordinated to the prejudices of the ignorant.
- ^ Johri, Vikram. "'Alexis de Tocqueville': the first French critic of the US". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 22 April 2011.
- ^ Tocqueville, Alexis de (2000). Democracy in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 13. ISBN 0226805328.
- ^ Tocqueville, Alexis de (2000). Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226805328.
- ^ Zetterbaum, Marvin (1967). Tocqueville and the problem of democracy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- ^ Tocqueville, Alexis de (2000). Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 7. ISBN 0226805328.
- ^ Tocqueville, Alexis de (2000). Democracy in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226805328.
[edit]See also
[edit]Bibliography
Translations:
- Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Arthur Goldhammer, trans.; Olivier Zunz, ed.) (The Library of America, 2004)ISBN 1-931082-54-5
- Tocqueville, Democracy in America (George Lawrence, trans.; J. P. Mayer, ed.; New York: Perennial Classics, 2000)
- Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, trans., ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
French Studies:
- Jean-Louis Benoît, Tocqueville Moraliste, Paris,Honore champion, 2004.
- Arnaud Coutant, Tocqueville et la Constitution democratique, Paris, Mare et Martin, 2008.
- A. Coutant, Une Critique republicaine de la democratie liberale, Paris, Mare et Martin, 2007.
- Laurence Guellec , Tocqueville : l'apprentissage de la liberté, Michalon, 1996.
- Lucien Jaume, Tocqueville, les sources aristocratiques de la liberte, Bayard, 2008.
- Eric Keslassy, le liberalisme de Tocqueville à l'epreuve du paupérisme, L'Harmattan, 2000
- F. Melonio, Tocqueville et les Français, 1993.
[edit]External links
- Democracy in America, complete, at The University of Adelaide Library
- 1831 Notes of Alexis de Tocqueville in Lower Canada
- Democracy in America, the full book text (Note: this is public domain)
- Democracy in America, Volume 1 at Project Gutenberg
- Democracy in America, Volume 2 at Project Gutenberg
- Booknotes, February 26, 1995 - Interview with Alan Ryan on the writing of the introduction to the 1994 version of Democracy in America
- Booknotes, December 17, 2000 - Interview with Harvey Mansfield on the 2000 University of Chicago Press edition of Democracy in America, which he and his wife, Delba Winthrop, translated and edited. (Audio plays upon load; page includes transcript)
