Lesson 1.2 · Unit 1 · CA HSS 12.1.2
The promise and the perils, as a visitor saw them
In 1831 a young French magistrate spent nine months traveling the United States and then wrote the book that is still the most quoted account of American democracy. The standard names him because he saw both what the system does well and what it threatens.
- Tocqueville's central observation is that equality of condition, more than any law, is the fact from which everything else in American life follows.
- He praised the American habit of association, noting that Americans form societies for every purpose instead of waiting for government, which is the subject of unit 3.
- He praised local self-government as the school in which citizens learn to govern, arguing that liberty is practiced in the township before it is exercised in the nation.
- He identified the tyranny of the majority as democracy's characteristic danger: not a tyrant seizing power but a majority overwhelming dissent through opinion and social pressure.
- He warned about individualism, by which he meant the withdrawal of citizens into private life, leaving public affairs to others.
- He warned about a soft despotism, a mild, orderly government that provides for people's needs so thoroughly that they stop governing themselves.
- He treated religion as politically important, arguing that it restrained the appetites that equality unleashed and that its separation from the state was what preserved its strength.
Where students lose marks: treating Tocqueville as simply an admirer. The standard asks for promise and perils, and his warnings are more original than his praise.
The source. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume one 1835 and volume two 1840, in the standard English translation. Public domain.
Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. The majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.
Step one: read the first passage as an observation about mechanism. Tocqueville is not praising Americans for being sociable. He is identifying how a society without an aristocracy gets collective things done: where a French village would petition the state and an English one would look to a great landowner, an American one forms a committee.
Step two: state why that matters politically. An association is a body of citizens acting together outside government, and a society full of them can resist government pressure, supply what government does not, and train citizens in cooperation. Tocqueville treats association as a substitute for the aristocracy that democracies abolish.
Step three: read the second passage carefully. He is not describing censorship. He specifically says a writer may write what he pleases inside the barriers. The constraint is social: the cost of unpopular opinion is exclusion rather than prosecution.
Step four: explain why he thinks this is worse, not better. A censor can be identified, resisted and eventually defeated, and a persecuted writer gains sympathy. A writer disapproved of by the majority has nobody to appeal to, because the majority is also the audience, the jury and the source of office. There is no higher authority in a democracy to which a minority can appeal against the majority.
Step five: connect the two passages. The same equality of condition produces both. Without fixed ranks, people must combine voluntarily to accomplish anything, which is the strength. Without fixed ranks, no individual or group stands outside majority opinion with independent standing to defy it, which is the danger. One cause, two consequences.
Step six: apply the warning about individualism. Tocqueville coined the term to mean something specific: the tendency of each citizen to withdraw into a circle of family and friends and leave society to itself. He regarded this as more dangerous than selfishness, because it is not a vice but a reasonable response to equality, and it quietly empties public life.
Step seven: state the soft despotism warning. He imagined a government that is not tyrannical but paternal, providing for people's security and pleasures so completely that they need never think about public matters. Its danger is that it is comfortable, so nobody resists it, and citizens become subjects without any moment of conquest.
Step eight: assess how well the warnings have held up. The tyranny of the majority argument is directly relevant whenever popular opinion punishes dissent outside law. The individualism warning is the ancestor of every argument about declining civic participation. The soft despotism passage is quoted by critics of the modern welfare state, and it is also quoted selectively: Tocqueville's remedy was not less government but more local government and more association, which is a different prescription from the one it is often used to support.
Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.
- What did Tocqueville identify as the fundamental fact of American life?
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Equality of condition
- What did he praise about American local government?
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That it is the school in which citizens learn to govern themselves
- Define the tyranny of the majority as he meant it.
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A majority overwhelming dissent through opinion and social pressure rather than through law
- What did he mean by individualism?
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Citizens withdrawing into private life and leaving public affairs to others
- Describe his soft despotism.
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A mild, paternal government providing for people's needs so completely that they stop governing themselves
- Why does Tocqueville treat association as politically important rather than merely
pleasant?
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Because it is how a society without an aristocracy accomplishes collective things. Where a French village petitions the state and an English one looks to a great landowner, an American one forms a committee. Associations can resist government pressure, supply what government does not, and train citizens in cooperation, so they perform the functions an aristocracy performed in the societies democracy replaced. Their absence would leave individuals facing the state alone. It substitutes for the aristocracy democracy abolishes, giving citizens collective capacity
- What exactly is he describing in the second passage, and what is he not describing?
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He is describing social pressure, not censorship, and he says so explicitly: within the barriers an author may write what he pleases. No official suppresses the book and no law forbids the opinion. What follows an unpopular view is exclusion, loss of standing, and the closing of doors. The constraint operates through the audience rather than through the state, which is why it does not appear in any statute book. Social exclusion rather than legal censorship
- Why does he consider majority pressure worse than a censor?
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Because a censor can be identified, resisted and eventually defeated, and persecution often wins sympathy for the persecuted. A writer disapproved of by the majority has nobody to appeal to, since in a democracy the majority is simultaneously the audience, the jury, the electorate and the source of every office. There is no higher authority standing outside it to which a minority can appeal, so the pressure is total in a way a government's is not. There is no authority above the majority to appeal to
- Show how one cause produces both his praise and his warning.
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Equality of condition produces both. Because no fixed ranks exist, people must combine voluntarily to accomplish anything, which produces the habit of association Tocqueville admired. Because no fixed ranks exist, no individual or group stands outside majority opinion with independent standing from which to defy it, which produces the tyranny of the majority he feared. The same social fact generates the strength and the danger, which is why he treats them as inseparable. Equality creates both the need to associate and the absence of independent standing
- How is the soft despotism passage often used selectively?
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It is quoted by critics of the modern welfare state as a prediction of what government provision does to citizens, which is a fair reading of the passage itself. What is usually omitted is Tocqueville's remedy, which was not less government but more local government, more association and more participation, since his diagnosis was that citizens stop governing themselves rather than that government does too much. The prescription does not match the use. His remedy was more local self-government, not less government