De Tocqueville's Democracy in America

By giving his study of American culture and mores the title Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville was calling attention to what he considered the most striking and dominant characteristic of American culture, namely democracy. In de Tocqueville's view, the scope of American democracy extended far beyond the specifics of a formally democratic political system. Indeed, by our standards, political democracy in the United States of the 1830s was distinctly limited; not only could slaves not vote, but nor in practice could free blacks, and nor could women. But to de Tocqueville, American democracy reached beyond the political sphere to embrace a very large part of American culture. Our education, our habits of thought, even our religion were all in his view shaped by deeply democratic impulses. Democracy, to de Tocqueville, was the great distinctive feature of American life.

We may be immediately drawn to ask "distinctive in comparison to what?" Modern Americans, when we consider the alternatives to democracy, or what democracy could be distinguished against as a point of comparison, are likely to answer "Communism," or "fascism," or perhaps, in less specific and ideological terms, to answer "dictatorship," "authoritarianism," or "a police state." De Tocqueville uses none of these terms, but he does use a term with the same connotation, despotism. Despotism, to de Tocqueville, conveys the general connotation of all the modern terms mentioned earlier: arbitrary gover

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arrived in the world before he is confronted on all sides with the idea of necessity, so he learns in good time to recognize for himself the natural limits of his power; he does not expect by force to bend the wills of those opposed to his, and he knows that if wants to get others to help him he must win their favor. He is therefore patient, calculating, tolerant, slow to act, but persevering in his designs (p. 375). The root difference, then, between the aristocrat and the democrat is that the former is born to power, and the latter to the rule of necessity. The aristocrat is, from earliest childhood, surrounded by servants whom he can command to tend to his wants. If his wants are not fulfilled--if he is disobeyed--he responds with anger and punishment; thus he learns to be short-tempered and demanding. These characteristics, in turn, spill over from his dealings with servants (and, more broadly, with his social inferiors) to color even his dealings with other members of his own class. The aristocrat cannot allow himself to be publicly (or even privately) slighted; to permit such will reduce his standing in society and his own self-respect. Thus duelling, the "affair of honor" was characteristic of the aristocrac

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