Democracy in America

Tocqueville repeatedly emphasizes that he lives and writes in a democratic age because aristocracy has become a nearly obsolete system. Since the end of the feudal system, the driving trend of human society has been “equality of conditions” (3). Tocqueville argues that the aristocratic system saw peasants recognize their social position as natural, and “souls were not degraded” (8) because this sense of being diminished comes only when citizens see inequality as “oppressive” (8). Tocqueville presents aristocratic ages as less tumultuous, reserving most of his discussion of social conflict for revolutions and democracy. For all of his admiration of America, Tocqueville argues openly that aristocracy was a natural system for its time and that inequality is not inherently evil.

Tocqueville’s nostalgia for aristocracy is particularly clear in Volume 2, in which he discusses the cultural impacts of democracy at great length. In his discussion of the publishing industry in democracies, Tocqueville is particularly scornful of writing for a mass audience, declaring:

In aristocracies readers are difficult and few; in democracies it is less hard to please them and their number is enormous. […] whereas in democratic nations a writer can flatter himself that he may get a mediocre renown and a great fortune cheaply (450).

Tocqueville presents aristocratic literary audiences as more discerning, while those in democracies have lower standards. This results in literature that is written purely for commercial gain, which Tocqueville implies has far less artistic or intellectual merit. Tocqueville makes this point in his conclusion when he argues that the democratic age is a time when “genius becomes rarer” (674). At the same time, Tocqueville admits that his taste for aristocracy is “born of my weakness” (674), since God has ordained that equality increase and it is only Tocqueville’s limited human perspective that makes him regret this. He later emphasizes that any of his contemporaries who seek to maintain aristocratic values are performing “honest and sterile work” (675). The juxtaposition of adjectives here suggests that Tocqueville acknowledges the good intentions of those who wish to preserve aristocracy but recognizes that their work is nevertheless futile.

Tocqueville admires the religious convictions and intellectual heritage of the Puritans, declaring, “Proportionately, there was a greater mass of enlightenment spread among those men than within any European nation of our day” (32). He emphasizes that the Puritan dream was to “make an idea triumph” (32). For all of his disdain for the intellectual culture of modern America, he insists that Puritan heritage was an honorable and significant movement that shaped the destiny of an entire new nation.

Tocqueville is similarly approving of the American habit of separating church and state. He argues that Europe has made an “intimate union” of politics and religion (287), such that when a political party or movement falls out of power, religious faith is also damaged. Tocqueville fears this loss of faith because it is the lone bulwark against the tendency of democratic citizens, especially Americans, to pursue wealth and material status rather than more profound projects of spiritual enlightenment. Tocqueville goes so far as to declare that it would be preferable to see citizens “thinking their soul is going to pass into the body of a pig than in believing it is nothing” (519). For all of his sympathy for Christianity, Tocqueville seems to suggest here that any religious practice is better than atheism or pure pursuit of wealth.