Democracy in America vol. I by Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville has a Frenchman who visited America in 1831 to report on how the American project and democracy work out in practice, and he published the first volume of his finding in 1835. It was an early work of political science and sociology. It’s so densely packed with ideas that any chapter would easily fill a book if written today. Because it’s so dense, and because of the academic standards of the time, it doesn’t have the mathematical and historical rigor one would expect from a modern work. His analyses are determined largely by personal experience, intuition, and inspired by a handful of historical examples. But as a work of popular science, it compares favorably to something one might read today especially in one regard: he makes a number of specific predictions by which we can judge his models, and we’ve accumulated enough history by now to do so! Remind me to take another look at Turchin in 100 years. I’ve made a point to note all of Tocqueville’s predictions and score him. However, it’s hard to say how obvious these insights were at the time – many of his predictions were widely believed.
“Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce.”
As far back as history can recall, Europe had been ruled by hereditary aristocracies, mostly feudal monarchies. While Europe progressed toward democracy is slow, stuttering steps, the unique geographical and cultural initial conditions of America led to it being the most advanced democracy in the world. Tocqueville uses the term “democracy” almost interchangeably with freedom, equality, and liberalism, all of which seem to reinforce each other.
The Americans are descended principally from the English, and especially by the Puritans, who had a disproportionate impact on American culture. With vast amounts of arable land in America, and no landed gentry hoarding it, each man could generally provide for his own income. And as a rapidly expanding country, if some man were to acquire a great deal of land, it would often be better to move West than to pay rentiers. This produced an impressive level of equality, by 19th century French standards. In Europe, the rich and the politically powerful are almost synonymous; when most men are of comparable wealth and power, democracy is a natural form of government.
1830’s America was a limited democracy in which voting rights were heavily restricted to varying degrees depending on what state one was in, but the franchise had been gradually expanding over the past decades, especially in the North. The state and federal governments were smaller and weaker than in Europe, or in 2021. American experience with democracy was dominated by local government in towns. Custom carried as much force as law, as both drew their authority from the will of the majority. Those living in the most Puritanical parts of the country were strictly bound by social norms, but they were voluntarily accepted, as it was easy enough to seek fortune elsewhere. While free, Americans are not generally independent. Rather, they organize in civil society to debate government affairs and organize interventions. Equality engenders freedom, which leads to travel, assimilation, commerce, and liberalism. Just about every aspect of American society and government follow from this structure.
Tocqueville lays out the three branches of government and the system of state and federal government. Tocqueville continually remarks on how little power the federal government and the president have, compared to European royalty, whereas the judiciary is stronger in America than in Europe. Here, it not only resolves disputes between individuals, but between arms of the government, which it can do by appealing to the constitution. Tocqueville saw a potentially dangerous exception to this rule: in the case of impeachment, Congress takes on the role of the judiciary. His next prediction:
“We must not be misled by the apparent mildness of the American legislation in all that relates to political jurisdiction. It is to be observed, in the first place, that in the United States the tribunal which passes sentence is composed of the same elements, and subject to the same influences, as the body which impeaches the offender, and that this uniformity gives an almost irresistible impulse to the vindictive passions of parties. If political judges in the United States cannot inflict such heavy penalties as those of Europe, there is the less chance of their acquitting a prisoner; and the conviction, if it is less formidable, is more certain. The principal object of the political tribunals of Europe is to punish the offender; the purpose of those in America is to deprive him of his authority. A political condemnation in the United States may, therefore, be looked upon as a preventive measure; and there is no reason for restricting the judges to the exact definitions of criminal law. Nothing can be more alarming than the excessive latitude with which political offences are described in the laws of America … But I will venture to affirm that it is precisely their mildness which renders the American laws most formidable in this respect … By preventing political tribunals from inflicting judicial punishments the Americans seem to have eluded the worst consequences of legislative tyranny, rather than tyranny itself … When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments.”
I’m giving half credit for this one. Impeachments are very rare, but many would argue they’re sometimes politically motivated, and no credit for the claim that the republic will degrade due to ease of impeachment.
I can’t help noting his thought on freedom of the press:
“The characteristics of the American journalist consist in an open and coarse appeal to the passions of the populace; and he habitually abandons the principles of political science to assail the characters of individuals, to track them into private life, and disclose all their weaknesses and errors.
Nothing can be more deplorable than this abuse of the powers of thought; I shall have occasion to point out hereafter the influence of the newspapers upon the taste and the morality of the American people, but my present subject exclusively concerns the political world … The individuals who are already in the possession of a high station in the esteem of their fellow-citizens are afraid to write in the newspapers, and they are thus deprived of the most powerful instrument which they can use to excite the passions of the multitude to their own advantage.”
If nothing else, this led me to reconsider whether there’s been any significant change in the practice of journalism recently.
De Tocqueville is interested in the nature of American democracy in large part because it represents the future of Europe, which (due to initial conditions) is approaching democracy more slowly. Next prediction:
“And to no people can this inquiry be more vitally interesting than to the French nation, which is blindly driven onwards by a daily and irresistible impulse towards a state of things which may prove either despotic or republican, but which will assuredly be democratic.”
And much later in the book:
“Those who hope to revive the monarchy of Henry IV or of Louis XIV, appear to me to be afflicted with mental blindness; and when I consider the present condition of several European nations—a condition to which all the others tend—I am led to believe that they will soon be left with no other alternative than democratic liberty, or the tyranny of the Caesars.”
Mostly correct. France would soon enter the Second Republic and soon the second Empire, as Napoleon was elected and later emperorized. And in the long run, France became a first world democracy.
While the American government is smaller (per capita) than European contemporaries,
“I have no hesitation in predicting that, if the people of the United States is ever involved in serious difficulties, its taxation will speedily be increased to the rate of that which prevails in the greater part of the aristocracies and the monarchies of Europe.”
Correct, this happened only decades after publication.
One of the most obvious problems with democracy, even at the time the constitution was drafted, was tyranny of the majority. In this free society, the majority may have even more power than in France, as the majority has the government behind it, and the government has more moral authority when it represents the people as a whole.
“In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond them … If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.”
Fact check: free institutions not destroyed yet.
The last major section of Vol I addresses the questions of race which presented obvious problems for American society. Tocqueville is pessimistic regarding the fate of Native Americans. He almost never cites statistical evidence, such as estimates of the Native American population, relying entirely on his personal observation. But, those are quite compelling.
“A few European families, settled in different situations at a considerable distance from each other, soon drive away the wild animals which remain between their places of abode. The Indians, who had previously lived in a sort of abundance, then find it difficult to subsist, and still more difficult to procure the articles of barter which they stand in need of … At length they are compelled to acquiesce, and to depart … it is insinuated that they have not the means of refusing their required consent, and that the government itself will not long have the power of protecting them in their rights … Half convinced, and half compelled, they go to inhabit new deserts, where the importunate whites will not let them remain ten years in tranquillity … I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed to perish.”
The Native American population continued to decline after Democracy in America was published. In New England, they were almost completely displaced. But, the Native population leveled off, and has been growing as a fraction of the population since circa 1950.
“Since the first settlement of the British colonies, the number of inhabitants has about doubled every twenty-two years. I perceive no causes which are likely to check this progressive increase of the Anglo-American population for the next hundred years; and before that space of time has elapsed, I believe that the territories and dependencies of the United States will be covered by more than 100,000,000 of inhabitants, and divided into forty States.”
Correct! In 1935 there were 48 states with a total population of approximately 127 million.
“But the case of Texas is still more striking: the State of Texas is a part of Mexico, and lies upon the frontier between that country and the United States. In the course of the last few years the Anglo-Americans have penetrated into this province, which is still thinly peopled; they purchase land, they produce the commodities of the country, and supplant the original population. It may easily be foreseen that if Mexico takes no steps to check this change, the province of Texas will very shortly cease to belong to that government.”
100% correct.
De Tocqueville advocates for no particular policies in the book, only making observations and predictions, but his preferences are often clear. He describes slavery as an evil, harmful to Black people, and Whites, and society generally. Historians sometimes argue that slavery diverted resources away from industrialization in the South, contributing to its loss in the Civil War. Tocqueville goes further, and argues that the institution of slavery caused any kind of work at all to be associated with Blackness, and discouraged European Americans from laboring any more than necessary, or even desiring the wealth that labor might provide. At the time of the writing of Democracy in America, the North was in the process of eliminating slavery, state by state. But whenever a Northern state is about to do so, it’s slaveowners immediately sell their slaves to the south before they lose value. As such, the number of slaves in the US stays almost constant, but they’re increasingly concentrated in the South. As a result, the Southern slave states have an ever increasing investment in the institution of slavery, and more to fear should it be overturned. This incremental advance of abolition could never convert the entire country, as the whites in the last remaining slave holdouts would have too much to lose. With national and global mood turning towards abolition, this was clearly unsustainable, and Tocqueville thought the result would be a civil war; but he imagined it as a slave revolution, a war between the Southern Blacks and Whites. Tocqueville thought that a civil war between states was very unlikely, as each had too much power of self governance for the Union to stop them from seceding.
“By the choice of the master, or by the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to ensue. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the South, they will in the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given, they will abuse it ere long.”
75% credit. The Civil War happened not too long after publication.
“The time will therefore come when one hundred and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal in condition, the progeny of one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and preserving the same civilization, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under the same forms … The Americans of the United States must inevitably become one of the greatest nations in the world; their offset will cover almost the whole of North America; the continent which they inhabit is their dominion, and it cannot escape them. What urges them to take possession of it so soon? Riches, power, and renown cannot fail to be theirs at some future time”
True.
“I am strangely mistaken if the Federal Government of the United States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from public affairs, and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is naturally feeble, but it now abandons even its pretensions to strength. On the other hand, I thought that I remarked a more lively sense of independence, and a more decided attachment to provincial government in the States. The Union is to subsist, but to subsist as a shadow; it is to be strong in certain cases, and weak in all others; in time of warfare, it is to be able to concentrate all the forces of the nation and all the resources of the country in its hands; and in time of peace its existence is to be scarcely perceptible … the Government of the Union will grow weaker and weaker every day.”
This is completely wrong; the federal government has been gradually growing in power relative to the states. We’ve been fighting wars most of the time since WWI, maybe that did it.
“There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place amongst the nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time … Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
Not bad!
“… the Spaniards and the Anglo-Americans are, properly speaking, the only two races which divide the possession of the New World. The limits of separation between them have been settled by a treaty; but although the conditions of that treaty are exceedingly favorable to the Anglo-Americans, I do not doubt that they will shortly infringe this arrangement. Vast provinces, extending beyond the frontiers of the Union towards Mexico, are still destitute of inhabitants. The natives of the United States will forestall the rightful occupants of these solitary regions. They will take possession of the soil, and establish social institutions, so that when the legal owner arrives at length, he will find the wilderness under cultivation, and strangers quietly settled in the midst of his inheritance … The province of Texas is still part of the Mexican dominions, but it will soon contain no Mexicans; the same thing has occurred whenever the Anglo-Americans have come into contact with populations of a different origin.”
Right again.
I’ve skipped over a lot due to length. Tocqueville addresses the natural geography of North America; the maritime trade; religion; details of French and British society; and more. In Vol II, which I haven’t addressed, he discusses philosophy among the Americans, the arts, the situation of women, capitalism, the military, and more.
I’m left with a few impressions. One is that despite Tocqueville’s protests, the book is suffused with historical determinism; the fate of peoples was marked out long ago by their initial conditions. He opposes this view on the grounds that it’s everyone’s chosen actions that create these trends. And yet he continually makes predictions about what, precisely, everyone will choose. In some cases, he makes his case very strongly, his predictions have borne out, and we can even see them borne out repeatedly as more countries democratize.
Another is that his predictions are sometimes wrong. Social scientists today seem to have just as much difficulty despite what appear to be huge advances in theory and data collection. Every historical pattern has exceptions, all patterns are debated, and making reliable predictions seems impossible. It’s unclear whether any level of intelligence and rigor can solve this problem.
Is there value in studying history and social science beyond academic curiosity? If study of these field can make reliable predictions, that would suggest historical determinism is true; and if determinism is true, studying social trends will make no difference. Maybe there’s a historical trend that they’re useful to people who study them, but not in a way that affects society at scale? Or maybe we should just be happy with academic curiosity.