Editing Alexis de Tocqueville (section)

== ''Democracy in America'' ==
{{main|Democracy in America}}
[[File:Page from original working manuscript of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.jpg|thumb|250px|A page from original working [[manuscript]] of ''[[Democracy in America]]'', {{circa|1840}}]]
In ''Democracy in America'', 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 the United States in the early 19th century when the [[Market Revolution]], [[Manifest destiny|Western expansion]] and [[Jacksonian democracy]] were radically transforming the fabric of American life.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

According to [[political scientist]] Joshua Kaplan, one purpose of writing ''Democracy in America'' was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading [[Aristocracy|aristocratic order]] and an emerging [[Democracy|democratic order]] and to help them sort out the confusion.<ref name=twsC11r44/> Tocqueville saw democracy as an enterprise that balanced [[liberty]] and [[Egalitarianism|equality]], concern for the individual as well as for the community.<ref name="Lakoff1987">{{cite book |last1=Lakoff |first1=Sanford |chapter=Liberty, Equality, Democracy: Tocqueville's Response to Rousseau |editor1-last=Feaver |editor1-first=George |editor2-last=Rosen |editor2-first=Frederick |title=Lives, Liberties and the Public Good: New Essays in Political Theory for Maurice Cranston |date=1987 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |isbn=978-1-349-08006-9 |pages=104, 113 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-08006-9_6 |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-08006-9_6}}</ref> On a negative note, Tocqueville remarked that "in democracies [[manners]] are never so refined as amongst aristocratic nations." 
<ref>{{cite book |last=Tocqueville |first=Alexis de|author-link=Alexis de Tocqueville |translator=Henry Reeve |title=Democracy in America |year=1840 |publisher=Saunders and Otley |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/democracyinamer13tocqgoog/page/n130/mode/2up 116] |oclc=1064604970 |title-link=Democracy in America }}</ref>

Tocqueville was an ardent supporter of liberty. He wrote: "I have a passionate love for liberty, law, and respect for rights. I am neither of the revolutionary party nor of the conservative. ... Liberty is my foremost passion." He wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying: "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom."<ref>Volume One, Part I, Chapter 3. In the original, "Il y a en effet une passion mâle et légitime pour l’égalité qui excite les hommes à vouloir être tous forts et estimés. Cette passion tend à élever les petits au rang des grands, mais il se rencontre aussi dans le cœur humain un goût dépravé pour l’égalité, qui porte les faibles à vouloir attirer les forts à leur niveau, et qui réduit les hommes à préférer l’égalité dans la servitude à l’inégalité dans la liberté."[https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/De_la_démocratie_en_Amérique/Édition_1848/Tome_1/Première_partie/Chapitre_3]</ref>

The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote because of previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation by Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet such as "Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom",<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/slavery_quotes.html|title=Slavery Quotes|publisher=Notable-quotes.com|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120419033033/http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/slavery_quotes.html|access-date=23 June 2012|archive-date=19 April 2012}}</ref> but the text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere.<!--I don't see what's so wrong with this translation, and I think this paragraph can be dropped.-->

His view on government reflects his belief in liberty and the need for individuals to be able to act freely while respecting others' rights. Of centralized government, he wrote that it "excels in preventing, not doing".<ref>Volume One, Part I, Chapter 5, George Lawrence translation.</ref> Tocqueville continues to comment on equality by saying: "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence".<ref>[[q:Alexis de Tocqueville]].</ref>

Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for the poor to become rich and observes that it is not often that two generations within a family maintain success and that it is [[inheritance law]]s that split and eventually break apart someone's estate that cause a constant cycle of churn between the poor and the rich, thereby over generations making the poor rich and the rich poor. He cites protective laws in France at the time that protected an estate from being split apart among heirs, thereby preserving wealth and preventing a churn of wealth such as was perceived by him in 1835 within the United States.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

=== On civil and political society and the individual ===
{{Liberalism in France}}
Tocqueville's main purpose was to analyze the functioning of political society and various forms of political associations, although he brought some reflections on civil society too (and relations between political and civil society). For Tocqueville, as for [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] and [[Karl Marx]], civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by [[civil code]].<ref name=zaleski>{{cite journal|last=Zaleski|first=Pawel|url=http://zaleski.wex.pl/2008%20tocqueville%20on%20civilian%20society.pdf|title=Tocqueville on Civilian Society. A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality|journal=[[Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte]]|volume=50|publisher=Felix Meiner Verlag|year=2008|issn=0003-8946|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181009053108/http://zaleski.wex.pl/2008%20tocqueville%20on%20civilian%20society.pdf|archive-date=9 October 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref> As a critic of [[individualism]], Tocqueville thought that through associating for mutual purpose, both in public and private, Americans are able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active [[political society]] and a vibrant [[Civil society#Modern history|civil society]] functioning according to political and [[civil code|civil laws]] of the [[State (polity)|state]].<ref name=twsC11r44/><ref name=zaleski/>

According to political scientist Joshua Kaplan, Tocqueville did not originate the concept of individualism, instead he changed its meaning and saw it as a "calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of family and friends ... . [W]ith this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look for itself."<ref name=twsC11r44/> While Tocqueville saw [[egotism]] and [[selfishness]] as vices, he saw individualism not as a failure of feeling but as a way of thinking about things which could have either positive consequences such as a willingness to work together, or negative consequences such as isolation and that individualism could be remedied by improved understanding.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

When individualism was a positive force and prompted people to work together for common purposes and seen as "self-interest properly understood", then it helped to counterbalance the danger of the [[tyranny of the majority]] since people could "take control over their own lives" without government aid.<ref name=twsC11r44/> According to Kaplan, Americans have a difficult time accepting Tocqueville's criticism of the stifling intellectual effect of the "omnipotence of the majority" and that Americans tend to deny that there is a problem in this regard.<ref name=twsC11r44/> Others such as the Catholic writer Daniel Schwindt disagree with Kaplan's interpretation, arguing instead that Tocqueville saw individualism as just another form of egotism and not an improvement over it.<ref name="Daniel Schwindt">{{cite web|url=https://ethikapolitika.org/2014/01/06/refuting-tocqueville-way-tocqueville/|title=Refuting Tocqueville by Way of Tocqueville|author=Daniel Schwindt|date=January 2014|publisher=Ethika Politika|access-date=24 August 2016}}</ref> To make his case, Schwindt provides citations such as the following:<blockquote>Egoism springs from a blind instinct; individualism from wrong-headed thinking rather than from depraved feelings. It originates as much from defects of intelligence as from the mistakes of the heart. Egoism blights the seeds of every virtue; individualism at first dries up only the source of public virtue. In the longer term it attacks and destroys all the others and will finally merge with egoism.<ref name="Daniel Schwindt"/></blockquote>

=== On democracy and new forms of tyranny ===
{{Conservatism in France|Intellectuals}}
Tocqueville warned that modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny because radical equality could lead to the materialism of an expanding bourgeoisie and to the selfishness of individualism. "In such conditions, we might become so enamored with 'a relaxed love of present enjoyments' that we lose interest in the future of our descendants...and meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic force all the more powerful because it does not resemble one", wrote ''The New Yorker''{{'}}s James Wood.<ref>James Wood. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/17/tocqueville-in-america "Tocqueville In America"]. ''The New Yorker''. 17 May 2010.</ref> Tocqueville worried that if [[despotism]] were to take root in a modern democracy, it would be a much more dangerous version than the oppression under the Roman emperors or tyrants of the past who could only exert a pernicious influence on a small group of people at a time.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

In contrast, a despotism under a democracy could see "a multitude of men", uniformly alike, equal, "constantly circling for petty pleasures", unaware of fellow citizens and subject to the will of a powerful state which exerted an "immense protective power".<ref name=twsC11r44/> Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government to a protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children) as "perpetual children" and which does not break men's wills but rather guides it and presides over people in the same way as a shepherd looking after a "flock of timid animals".<ref name=twsC11r44/>

=== On the American social contract ===
Tocqueville's penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of American political life. In describing the American, he agreed with thinkers such as [[Aristotle]] and [[Montesquieu]] that the balance of property determined the balance of political power; however, his conclusions differed radically from those of his predecessors. Tocqueville tried to understand why the United States was so different from Europe in the last throes of [[aristocracy]]. In contrast to the aristocratic ethic, the United States was a society where hard work and money-making was the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites and where what he described as crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

Tocqueville 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."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch2_18.htm|title=Tocqueville: Book II Chapter 18|publisher=Xroads.virginia.edu|access-date=23 June 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120607070314/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch2_18.htm|archive-date=7 June 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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 [[primogeniture]] and [[Fee tail|entails]], resulting in more widely distributed land holdings. This was a contrast to the general aristocratic pattern in which only the eldest child, usually a man, inherited the estate, which had the effect of keeping large estates intact from generation to generation.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

In contrast, landed elites in the United States were less likely to pass on fortunes to a single child by the action of [[primogeniture]], which meant that as time went by large estates became broken up within a few generations which in turn made the children more equal overall.<ref name=twsC11r44/> According to Joshua Kaplan's Tocqueville, it was not always a negative development since bonds of affection and shared experience between children often replaced the more formal relation between the eldest child and the siblings, characteristic of the previous aristocratic pattern.<ref name=twsC11r44/> Overall, hereditary fortunes in the new democracies became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

[[File:Alexis de Tocqueville.jpg|thumb|250px|A sketch of Tocqueville]]
As Tocqueville understood it, this rapidly democratizing society had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass through hard work vast fortunes. In Tocqueville's mind, this explained why the United States 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 and many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in the United States, 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.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

=== On majority rule and mediocrity ===
Beyond the eradication of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior talent and intelligence, and these natural elites could not enjoy much share in political power as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too much power and claimed too great a voice in the public sphere to defer to intellectual superiors. Tocqueville argued that this culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted mediocrity. Those who possessed true virtue and talent were left with limited choices.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

Tocqueville said that those with the most education and intelligence were left with two choices. They could join limited intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing society, or they could use their superior talents to amass vast fortunes in the private sector. He wrote that he did not know of any country where there was "less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion, than in America".<ref name=twsC11r44/>

Tocqueville blamed the omnipotence of [[majority rule]] as a chief factor in stifling thinking: "The majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it, not that he stands in fear of an inquisition, but he must face all kinds of unpleasantness in every day persecution. A career in politics is closed to him for he has offended the only power that holds the keys."<ref name=twsC11r44/> According to Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville, he argued in contrast to previous political thinkers that a serious problem in political life was not that people were too strong but that people were "too weak" and felt "swept up in something that they could not control".<ref name=twsC11r44/>

=== On enslavement, black people, and indigenous communities ===
Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American history, Tocqueville's ''Democracy in America'' attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values. Although a supporter of colonialism, Tocqueville could clearly perceive the evils that black people and natives had been subjected to in the United States. Tocqueville devoted the last chapter of the first volume of ''Democracy in America'' to the question, while his travel companion [[Gustave de Beaumont]] wholly focused on slavery and its fallouts for the American nation in ''Marie or Slavery in America''. Tocqueville observes among the American races: {{blockquote|The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.<ref>Beginning of chapter 18 of ''Democracy in America'', "The Present and Probably Future Condition of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States".</ref><!-- What edition, whose translation? -->}}

Tocqueville contrasted the settlers of Virginia with the middle class, religious [[Puritans]] who founded [[New England]] and analyzed the debasing influence of slavery: {{blockquote|The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony. ... Artisans and agriculturalists arrived afterwards[,] ... hardly in any respect above the level of the inferior classes in England. No lofty views, no spiritual conception presided over the foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced; this was the capital fact which was to exercise an immense influence on the character, the laws and the whole future of the South. Slavery ... dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man. On this same English foundation there developed in the North very different characteristics.<ref>''Democracy in America'', Vintage Books, 1945, pp. 31–32.</ref>}}

Tocqueville maintained that the friction between races in America was deeper than merely the issue of slavery, even going so far as to say that discrimination against African Americans was worse in states where slavery was outlawed:{{blockquote|Whosoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery, than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.<ref>''Democracy in America'', Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve; Google Books, 1899, pp. 383. [https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QadI6HHEE2p6tSZ-oFLByHRJuH-vheuB9P5p3RwLLgGwgxOxbAlv3i6CvoqErvXyBz99HbYgxSyBIbR50SjwbTjzufcWpY8EdIJTQLlN9j4QAbtvMRbFHkWZieFlqc4hyvRNwP2OmYyzrrIwWeQwzCNZKe7PF2Xz996uP6sEoFUI1SDyNmVRRyXvE23kllDJ7kxzmwa8nxSbQI5rNb6OKxM4VQrEtZZqsmktjtfp9ffhAD89YSZKOZgIBfrnO-ddsI0ujy5h]</ref>}}

Tocqueville concluded that return of the Black population to Africa could not resolve the problem, as he writes at the end of ''Democracy in America'': {{blockquote|If the colony of [[Liberia]] were able to receive thousands of new inhabitants every year, and if the Negroes were in a state to be sent thither with advantage; if the Union were to supply the society with annual subsidies, and to transport the Negroes to Africa in government vessels, it would still be unable to counterpoise the natural increase of population among the blacks; and as it could not remove as many men in a year as are born upon its territory within that time, it could not prevent the growth of the evil which is daily increasing in the states. The Negro race will never leave those shores of the American continent to which it was brought by the passions and the vices of Europeans; and it will not disappear from the New World as long as it continues to exist. The inhabitants of the United States may retard the calamities which they apprehend, but they cannot now destroy their efficient cause.}}

In 1855, Tocqueville wrote the following text published by [[Maria Weston Chapman]] in the ''Liberty Bell: Testimony against Slavery'': {{blockquote|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.<br><br>An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing Slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her detractors, compromise the future career of the Union which is the guaranty of her safety and greatness, and point out beforehand to her, to all her enemies, the spot where they are to strike. As a man, too, I am moved at the spectacle of man's degradation by man, and I hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction, to the dwellers upon earth.<ref>In {{lang|fr|Oeuvres completes}}, Gallimard, T. VII, pp. 1663–1664.</ref>}}

French historian of colonialism [[Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison]] argues that Tocqueville (along with [[Jules Michelet]]) was ahead of his time in his use of the term "[[Genocide|extermination]]" to describe what was happening during the colonization of Western United States and the [[Indian removal]] period.<ref name="Negationnism">{{cite news|author=[[Olivier LeCour Grandmaison]]|title=Le négationnisme colonial|work=[[Le Monde]]|date=2 February 2005|url=http://www.ldh-toulon.net/article.php3?id_article=491|language=fr|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060228040334/http://www.ldh-toulon.net/article.php3?id_article=491|archive-date=28 February 2006}}</ref>

=== On policies of assimilation ===
According to Tocqueville, assimilation of black people would be almost impossible, as was already being demonstrated in the Northern states; however, assimilation was the best solution for Native Americans, and since they were too proud to assimilate, they would inevitably become extinct. [[Forced migration|Displacement]] was another part of America's [[Indian Removal|Indian policy]]. Both populations were "undemocratic", or without the qualities, intellectual and otherwise, needed to live in a democracy. Tocqueville shared many views on assimilation and segregation of his and the coming epochs but opposed [[Arthur de Gobineau]]'s theories as found in ''[[An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races]]'' (1853–1855).<ref>{{lang|fr|Correspondence avec Arthur de Gobineau}} as quoted by [http://www.revue-lebanquet.com/fr/art/2001/299.htm Jean-Louis Benoît]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060216051008/http://www.revue-lebanquet.com/fr/art/2001/299.htm|date=16 February 2006}}</ref>

=== On the United States and Russia as future global powers ===
In his ''Democracy in America'', Tocqueville also forecast the preeminence of the United States and Russia as the two main global powers. In his book, he stated: "There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. ... Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world."<ref>Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Democracy in America'', pp. 412–413.</ref>

=== On civil jury service ===
Tocqueville believed that the American jury system was particularly important in educating citizens in self-government and rule of law.<ref name="Civil Jury">Hans, Valerie P.; Gastil, John; and Feller, Traci, [https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1328/ "Deliberative Democracy and the American Civil Jury"] (2014). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 1328.</ref> He often expressed how the civil jury system was one of the most effective showcases of democracy because it connected citizens with the true spirit of the justice system. In his 1835 treatise ''Democracy in America'', he explained: "The jury, and more especially the civil jury, serves to communicate the spirit of the judges to the minds of all the citizens; and this spirit, with the habits which attend it, is the soundest preparation for free institutions. ... It invests each citizen with a kind of magistracy; it makes them all feel the duties which they are bound to discharge toward society; and the part which they take in the Government."<ref>Tocqueville, Alexis de ([1835] 1961). [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ ''Democracy in America''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070109091450/http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHYPER/DETOC/ |date=9 January 2007 }}. New York: Schocken.</ref>

Tocqueville believed that jury service not only benefited the society as a whole but also enhanced jurors' qualities as citizens. Because of the jury system, "they were better informed about the rule of law, and they were more closely connected to the state. Thus, quite independently of what the jury contributed to dispute resolution, participation on the jury had salutary effects on the jurors themselves."<ref name="Civil Jury"/>