Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner
The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 484 (start at Chapter 3 heading – 485 (stop at Chapter 4 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.
De Tocqueville turns his sights to France in the third chapter. In this discussion, he notes that Americans had “the great advantage” of “being born equal instead of becoming so.” Because of this advantage, he thinks, the U.S. was able to escape some of the childhood diseases of the democratic condition. In particular, the American institutions that help to check the results of individualism are more likely to be successful than those in Europe.
Yet this chapter is not really written for or about Americans. It gives us an important clue, however, to the political science and political psychology that De Tocqueville is describing in the book. Classical political philosophy taught that each form of government – monarchy, aristocracy, and so on – created a distinct psychology in the citizens. The classical ideal was an aristocracy composed of liberally educated, moderate gentlemen who provided the solid base of virtuous citizens. In the middle ages, the ideal was the beneficent prince. De Tocqueville (along with J.S. Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among many others) thought that the changes created by “equality of conditions” demanded a new psychology. “Individualism” is a key finding of this new psychology. The democratic citizen is hard working, practical, and concerned with the well being of himself and his family, but he lacks the concern for others born of aristocracy.
In Europe, the aristocracy remains. But what to do with them? They are not truly welcome in the new society or comfortable in it. How does one move from a society where status is fixed at birth, and where classes are rigidly distinct, to a society where status is earned and classes are fluid? America never had to make the transition, so it provides a good case study of Europe’s destiny.
It came as no surprise to De Tocqueville that American literature often featured stories where people re-invent themselves. Examples would come to include Emerson’s Essays, Whitman’s poetry, or Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
When self-invention is the social norm, everyone is invited to try their hand at it. But this game is unknown in Europe. How does one play the game without knowing the rules or when the rules are changing quickly? This is a particular problem when society changes within a generation. Those who were at the top cannot forget their lost status, and cannot help but see their new equals “as oppressors whose destiny cannot excite their sympathy.” Meanwhile, they see their former peers as no longer sharing a common bond or purpose. Those who were at the bottom of the hierarchy, meanwhile, feel no kinship with the former aristocrats. The result is that at the beginning of a democratic society “citizens show themselves the most disposed to isolate themselves.” The factors that help control individualism are not yet powerful enough to do their job.
The result of this desire to isolate is to shrink the citizens’ social inclinations. People no longer feel any connections with others, and just after the revolution society has not yet had a chance to create or support institutions that might encourage them to think of their fellows. Citizens become victims of the illusion that all that is needed is to take care of themselves and their family, and the society will look after itself. This is powerful enough to keep people apart if allowed to take hold, and so newly democratic societies must take special care to combat it.
Americans are fortunate, again, because they were “born equal.” The nature of American society, for this reason, has always accepted the need to create one’s own place in the world. Moreover, the American government, by nurturing the habits of social cooperation, keeps Americans from falling victim to the idea that they do not need anyone else. In particular, the moral method of Americans – self-interest rightly understood – reinforces the idea of social bonds as necessary in society.
De Tocqueville does not offer any guidance to Europe on how to merge democratic social conditions with democratic government. He simply says that Americans have done it, and that the diseases of democratic social conditions are most likely to show themselves at the beginning.
Democratic citizens are prone to certain virtues, but also subject to certain vices. Americans can be self-reliant, skeptical, cooperative, and religious. But they can also be indifferent to others, superstitious, competitive, and dogmatic. Democracy threatens to separate individuals from each other in a way that makes them forget that they depend on each other. The ease with which they can reinvent themselves allows them to think that the invention was completely their own.
De Tocqueville will go on to show how America’s free institutions help to combat individualism. In these two short chapters, he has identified the issue that will most powerfully threaten the democracy that Americans have been born to.
Jack Barlow is Charles A. Dana Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Juniata College, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He teaches courses on public law and political theory, and has written on Cicero and American political thought, most recently on Gouverneur Morris. In 2012, he published a collection of Morris’s writings, To Secure the Blessings of Liberty, with Liberty Press.
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