Jon D. Schaff – Constituting America

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 553 – start at chapter 6 heading) – 563 (stop at chapter 9 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.

Alexis De Tocqueville came to America in the 1830s. At that point industrialism had already made significant progress in Europe. In the United States, industrialization would not really explode until after the Civil War in the 1860s. In the first two chapters considered here De Tocqueville seems to be anticipating American industrialization. De Tocqueville ponders how, as a democracy, America’s economy will develop differently than that of aristocratic Europe.

Economically, America was distinct from Europe in two important ways, according to De Tocqueville. First, America had vast expanses of undeveloped land. Land was relatively easy to acquire. Also, America had rejected the aristocratic practice of primogeniture, the notion that all land is inherited by the eldest son. Put these two notions together, you get an America without enormous estates that pass undivided from one generation to the next. Any grand estates in America get divided amongst all children (at the least the males, in this era) and anyone seeking land can acquire it cheaply.

America simply did not have the entrenched wealth that existed in Europe. Entry into agriculture or industry was relatively easy, De Tocqueville argues. He channels James Madison’s arguments Federalist 10 wherein Madison argues that the commercial society of America will produce a diversity of economic interests. In America there will not be the landed few against the landless many. America is the land of entrepreneurship, we might say.

For this reason, De Tocqueville thinks wages will be high in America. With many employment opportunities available to laborers, employers have to treat employees well or the employees can simply leave for another job. In De Tocqueville’s time there was an emerging economic vision in America called “free labor”. The free labor ideology held that the best economy was one where each person could easily set to work on his own, essentially becoming a small business owner. This might be a small farm, a small shop, a small factory. Free labor thinkers opposed slavery as they saw it as an institution that favored large landowners over more modest operations. The mantra of the free labor movement was “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men.”

De Tocqueville does warn against the dangers of centralization of economic power. Anticipating American industrialism of the late nineteenth century, De Tocqueville worries that most laborers will simply be wage earners, i.e., they will work for someone else. This is contrary to the free labor idea that most people will work for themselves. Those who work for wages lose some of the habits of self-government. Also, as economic power consolidates, it gives employers more power to dictate wages. Workers may have to band together to press their case. In this sense, De Tocqueville foresees the rise of labor unions.

This discussion of economics dovetails in a peculiar way with one of the most provocative chapters in all of Democracy in America, namely his chapter on the democratic family. De Tocqueville, in his discussion of economics, has suggested a fluidity in American circumstances that stands in stark contrast to aristocratic Europe. In America, life is in constant motion, what De Tocqueville sometimes calls an “inquietude” or a kind of unsettled state. Family is not exempt from such forces.

The aristocratic family is governed by tradition and usually affiliated with a particular place. Aristocratic families are typically dominated by a father, a patriarch whose family has lived in the same house for many generations. Being first born son offers definite privileges. Familial relations are often cold and formal. Even as children reach adulthood, the father still rules over them.

None of this is so in the democratic family. Think of the typical family in a television comedy show. This is essentially what De Tocqueville sees coming for the democratic family. Democracy is uneasy with tradition, established forms, authority that does not arise from consent. De Tocqueville describes the democratic family as being less hierarchical, less formal, more naturally affectionate. We might think of American families today. How many of us call our father and mother “sir” or “ma’am”? We usually use informal terms such as “dad” and “mom.” When American children grow older, they set out on their own. They now view themselves as equal to their parents. The idea that grown adults would still be subservient to their father strikes us as odd.

De Tocqueville is uncertain whether the democratic family represents a gain or a loss. While he is sure that as individuals we benefit from a more loving, affectionate family, he speculates that society may be worse for this change. The “inquietude” of democracy leaves Americans adrift, unable to find steady sources of meaning. It is just this divorce from traditional sources of meaning such as religion and family that makes De Tocqueville fear that democracies are more, not less, susceptible to despotism. While we may have more affection in our lives, the breakdown of family may leave us democrats looking to the government as a substitute parent.

Jon D. Schaff is Professor of Political Science at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he has taught since 2001. He teaches classes in American political thought, American political institutions, as well as politics in literature and film. He is author of multiple articles and book chapters as well as two books: Abraham Lincoln and the Limits of Liberal Democracy and Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Literature and Film (co-authored with Anthony Wachs). He co-edited Humanitas History of America II: From Revolution to Reconstruction, 2 Vols for Classical Academic Press.

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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 506 (start at chapter 10 heading) – 509 of this edition of Democracy in America.

Starting roughly in the 17th century, Europe found itself moving from an agricultural economy to one based on trade, banks, and industry. Aristocratic society consisted of a few wealthy, aristocratic landowners and the many who worked the land. In the emerging commercial society, there were various avenues of access to a comfortable living. In short, we were starting to see the rise of the middle class. Wealth went from being based on family and landownership to something that one could gain from hard work, knowledge, and thrift.

Many people connect the rise of the middle class to the ascent of democracy. The essential notion is that if people of a non-aristocratic background could acquire wealth, which included paying taxes, they deserved some say in how government operates. Government was not the plaything of people who happened to come from the right family. Free markets and a budding commercial class promoted various democratic principles such as the rule of law, the notion of consent, the right to property, and basic liberties.

America was no different. If anything, America’s democratic ethos was more advanced than in Europe as aristocracy never really had a hold in America. We might think of Ben Franklin’s famous essay “The Way of Wealth” and his aphoristic advice regarding how to get ahead in the world. “A penny saved is a penny earned” and “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” put gaining material comfort at the heart of happiness. In the early 19th century Americans developed the idea of the “self-made man,” the notion that through hard work, sound habits, and frugality a person could rise from meager circumstances to relative success. The biographies of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln illustrate this theory well.

These concepts undergird De Tocqueville’s discussion of American “taste for well-being” and “the love of material enjoyments”. As is typical of Tocqueville’s style, he makes a distinction between aristocratic and democratic times. Throughout Democracy in America, De Tocqueville notes that aristocratic times tend to be characterized by the love of virtue, an appreciation of beauty and grandeur, an elevation of mind, and building things of enduring value. Democracy, by contrast, tends to aim for what is useful. It elevates the notion of material comfort to a key virtue, to the neglect of public affairs and noble enterprises.

In these two chapters, De Tocqueville posits that aristocrats do not generally focus on deriving pleasure from material things. Recall that what makes an aristocrat is not the possession of great wealth. The key features of aristocracy are the possession of inherited wealth, especially land, and the fact that the aristocrat is at leisure, i.e., does not work for a living. He uses his leisure to pursue goals more elevated than mere money making. Businessmen may have great wealth, more even than some of the nobility, without being members of the aristocracy.

However, De Tocqueville notes that some aristocrats do find immoderate pleasure in worldly goods. In his other major work, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, his meditation on the French Revolution, De Tocqueville criticizes the pre-revolutionary French aristocracy. He argues that French nobility had all the trappings of aristocracy, namely wealth and privilege, without serving a public function. They were merely decadent. The resentment of the people toward such an aristocracy is one of the causes of the Revolution, De Tocqueville claims. In these two chapters, one encounters De Tocqueville’s description of such a corrupt aristocracy.

In these chapters De Tocqueville is a friendly critic of democracy. He believes democratic citizens are too materialistic. Because fortune is uncertain in America, regularly gained and lost, everyone thinks more about material things. The wealthy know their riches may be evanescent while the poor have sufficient examples to believe that wealth just might be within their grasp if they work hard enough and get a little lucky. The rigid class structure of aristocracy causes rich and poor alike to think less about money, as the aristocracy knows it cannot lose it and the poor know they cannot gain it. In contrast, the fluid nature of democratic society causes nearly everyone to think about money and well-being, i.e., acquiring relative comfort.

The concern for well-being amongst democrats undermines virtue. Unlike virtue, De Tocqueville argues, well-being can be purchased. This makes well-being attractive to democratic people; anyone can make enough money to be comfortable while only some are able to be truly virtuous. Money-making is more democratic than moral excellence. Further, the love of comfort may render democratic people complacent. If they have material well-being, they may forget about defending their liberty. As long as I can afford various pleasures, why do I care if I have the right to vote or free speech? A despot may take advantage of a lack of virtue and the peoples’ lack of vigilance to subvert democracy.

Jon D. Schaff is Professor of Political Science at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he has taught since 2001. He teaches classes in American political thought, American political institutions, as well as politics in literature and film. He is author of multiple articles and book chapters as well as two books: Abraham Lincoln and the Limits of Liberal Democracy and Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Literature and Film (co-authored with Anthony Wachs). He co-edited Humanitas History of America II: From Revolution to Reconstruction, 2 Vols for Classical Academic Press.

Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Click here for the essay schedule with today’s essay and previously published essays hyperlinked.

Essay 83: “How Democratic Institutions And Customs Tend To Raise The Cost And Shorten The Eleventh Of Leases”, “Influence Of Democracy On Wages” & “Influence Of Democracy On The Family” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 6, 7 & 8)

Essay 72: “The Taste For Material Prosperity In America” & “Particular Effects Of The Love Of Physical Pleasures In Democratic Times” (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Chs. 10-11)