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 511 (start at chapter 13 heading) – 514 (stop at chapter 14 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a Frenchman, and one of the most important European social and political thinkers of the nineteenth century. Yet his most famous work was about America, which he visited for nine months in 1831, and then analyzed in his book Democracy in America (1835-40). He saw the United States as a pioneering nation moving in the front ranks of human history. In America, one could gaze upon “the image of democracy itself, of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions”—and having so gazed, could perhaps take away lessons that would allow leaders in his own country to deal more intelligently and effectively with the democratic changes coming to Europe.
He was firmly convinced that the movement toward greater social equality—which is what he meant by the word “democracy”—represented an inescapable feature of the modern age. And he was in favor of it. There would be no going back. But he also saw some downsides to democracy and insisted on pointing them out. His chapter on “Why the Americans Show Themselves so Restive in the Midst of Their Well-Being” is a perfect illustration of his position.
The chapter revolves around De Tocqueville’s contrast between aristocratic societies and democratic societies. For De Tocqueville, an aristocratic society was one governed by inequality, with a small, privileged class at the top of the social pyramid. It was a society in which one’s social status was assigned at birth and kept for life, a status bound up in the place of one’s family.
In the democratic society, however, matters were quite different. There was a general “spirit” of equality; the people are sovereign, and the right to vote is widely extended; hierarchies are abolished, and any legal status or privilege extended to the well-born few is abolished; rights are universal, or tending toward universality, as is literacy and access to education; families are comparatively weak and changeable, even ephemeral; there a constant pressure toward the scattering of inherited wealth, with the breaking-up of large estates and large fortunes; and a resulting tendency toward social and economic fluidity, the fading of class distinctions, leading to universal sameness.
It would be our natural tendency, wouldn’t it, to choose the democratic society over the aristocratic one. We like the idea of individual opportunity, of going our own way. But De Tocqueville opens this chapter with a paradox that might cause us to think twice.
In remote parts of the Old World, he observes, there were ignorant and impoverished people who were nevertheless happy and contented. But in America, where prosperity and liberty were widely enjoyed, there was unhappiness. “It seemed to me,” he says, “that a sort of cloud habitually covered [the Americans’] features; they appeared to me grave and almost sad.”
Why the difference? He has an explanation. The residents of the Old World are locked into an unchanging social structure, so one’s standing in the world is unlikely to change.
Families remained in the same place for centuries, every man remembered his ancestors and anticipated his descendants, and strove to do his duty to both. The individual person was so enmeshed in the fabric of society that it was impossible to imagine him or her apart from it—as implausible as swimming in the air, or breathing beneath the waves.
In democratic societies, however, it was completely different. The principle of equality reigned, such duties and fixities were lost. Aristocracy had made of all citizens a long chain that went from the peasant up to the king; democracy breaks the chain and sets each link apart. The word for the latter condition is “individualism.”
We greatly prize individualism, don’t we? Is it possible, though, that our individualism is a source of the restlessness that De Tocqueville describes? That’s what De Tocqueville thought. The reason the isolated peasants are more content is because they accept the negative aspects of their lives, since they can’t imagine anything better would be possible for them. But the democratic souls do not accept inequality. They are ambitious, and “dream constantly of the goods they do not have.”
But here comes the downside: “men will never find an equality that is enough for them.” And this: “When inequality is the common law of a society, the strongest inequalities do not strike the eye; when everything is nearly on a level, the least of them wound it. That is why the desire for equality always becomes more insatiable as equality is greater.”
Which is why, he says, the Americans are restless in the midst of their prosperity. It seems that there is a price to be paid for any social system, including ours. Much of the rest of De Tocqueville’s great book is devoted to considering how we can lessen that price, and keep the pursuit of equality from crowding out all other values, including the spirit of liberty.
Does De Tocqueville’s analysis ring true to you? Many scholars and thinkers believe that it does, even though Democracy in America was written almost two centuries ago.
Wilfred M. McClay is Professor of History at Hillsdale College, and the author of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. He served for eleven years on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, and received the Bradley Prize in 2022. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University.
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.