Democracy in Cupidity

De Tocqueville on Capitalism in America

Having posted last week about Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, I turn this week to another great work and its reflections on capitalism, de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. That work is not typically regarded as a book about capitalism. On the face of it, it is about democracy. But as we’ll see, much of the book has to do with capitalism, at least with the forms that capitalism was taking in the United States.

In 1831, the young French aristocrat and aspiring politician, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States. In 1835 and 1840 he published the two volume work, Democracy in America (DA), which would become a classic work of social science and influence American self-understandings. Tocqueville was not the first European to visit America looking for ideas about the future of Europe, nor was he the last. But he has remained the most famous – and for good reason.

Tocqueville’s analysis has an uncanny quality about it. Though written over a century and a half ago, much of it still seems to contemporary readers to provide a recognizable portrait of the US. And it is an ambivalent portrait, one that reflects de Tocqueville’s own ambivalences about democracy in general and American democracy in particular.

The Aristocrat Who Came to Study Democracy

A bit of background about De Tocqueville himself. He was born in 1805. He came from a background that was the antithesis of American democracy. As the “de” in his name indicates, he came from an aristocratic French family, a family of military origins (one of his ancestors had fought at the Battle of Hastings in 1066), a family that had owned land for many generations, and had governed the peasants on their land in a traditional paternalistic manner. That is to say, the peasants were expected to look up to their aristocratic lord, while the lord was expected to act with a certain noblesse oblige, looking out for the well-being of his peasants. The peasants owed the lord rent as well as a variety of obligations, such as providing a number of days of labor each year and paying the lord dues for the use of his mill.

During the radical phase of the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville’s grandfather and grandmother had been guillotined in 1794, and his parents had been imprisoned. After the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon, came the era known as the Restoration. It was a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, but with a constitution that reflected the changes brought about during the early, liberal phase of the revolution. That meant, above all, equality before the law – no longer was there a separate law for titled aristocrats, for example. It also meant that France now had a parliamentary government, though one based on a restricted franchise that favored those with property. Only the top one thirtieth of adult males had the right to vote. Equality before the law, however, didn’t mean that the habits of behavior of the old regime were gone – habits based on the hierarchical society of the Old Regime. But it did mean those habits were beginning to fade.

Tocqueville studied law. Then, as a young apprentice judge, Tocqueville and his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, arranged to be sent to the United States, ostensibly to study the American penitentiary system. Tocqueville’s plan was to write a book about his experiences that would launch his political career.

Tocqueville and Beaumont arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, in May, 1831, took a steamboat to New York City, and spent the next nine months traveling across the country, meeting simple people and people of note. They visited upstate New York; the Great Lakes region, from Detroit to Green Bay; New England; then travelled down the coast to Philadelphia and Baltimore; then over to Ohio and Kentucky, then south through Nashville, Memphis (where they met then-congressman Davy Crockett), down to New Orleans. Then northward through the southern states until they reached Washington, where they met President Andrew Jackson. All in all, a remarkable journey, that took them to the very different regions and cultures of the United States. Their informants included Josiah Quincy, the former mayor of Boston and president of Harvard University. They had dinner with former President John Quincy Adams, with whom Tocqueville discussed southern slavery — in French. They even met Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was then ninety-four.

Tocqueville’s observations and analysis in Democracy in America were informed not only by his experiences and his extensive reading in contemporary sources, but by his reading of Rousseau, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

The first volume of DA was published in 1835, the second volume in 1840. The book was a great success in France, in England, and in the US, where it has continued to be read ever since. Because it is a long and rich book, and because it reflects Tocqueville’s ambivalences, it has been read and interpreted in many different ways. That, you might say, is what makes it a classic.

Tocqueville was a liberal, who believed in the idea of equality before the law: that, above all is what he meant by democracy. As Tocqueville analyzes it, America (at least outside the South), was characterized by equality, not in the sense of equality of wealth, but rather in the sense of equality of legal condition, without the inherited hierarchies of European society. Tocqueville thought that democracy in that sense was the wave of future in Europe as well. He thought that this democratic revolution was an irresistible element of modern history. He visited America to see democracy in its most pristine form, undiluted by the traditional hierarchies of European society. The portrait of democracy that emerges is informed not only by Tocqueville’s hopes for the future, but by his attempt to provide a sober analysis of American democracy, with its inherent advantages and flaws.

In his book of 1948, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, the great mid-twentieth century American historian, Richard Hofstadter, offered this description of American political culture:

[T}he range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise. However much at odds on specific issues, the major political traditions have shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition; they have accepted the economic virtues of capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man…. The sanctity of private property, the right of the individual to dispose of and invest it, the value of opportunity, and the natural evolution of self-interest and self-assertion, within broad legal limits, into a beneficent social order have been staple tenets of the central faith in American political ideologies… American traditions also show a strong bias in favor of equalitarian democracy, but it has been a democracy in cupidity rather than a democracy of fraternity. (Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948, p.viii.)

I suggest that Hofstadter’s characterization of the United States as “a democracy in cupidity” is very close to Tocqueville’s own view. Hofstadter’s use of the term “cupidity” was a way of characterizing the pursuit of economic self-interest as a vice. Tocqueville didn’t use the term “cupidity” because he recognizes that the pursuit of material self-interest has its positive side as well as its negative elements. Tocqueville didn’t use the word “capitalism,” a word not widely used at the time. He speaks of “commerce” and uses related terms, by which he means more or less what we’ve since come to call “capitalism.”

A Commercial People: The European-Americans and Their Capitalist Ethos

Some of Tocqueville’s most striking observations about capitalism in the United States comes in volume one, chapter 10, “Some Considerations Concerning the Present State and the Probable Future of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States.” That’s the last chapter of volume one, and it’s often less read today. The three races to which he refers are the “Europeans” (Americans of British origin), the “Indians” (indigenous tribes), and “Negroes” (those of African origin, either enslaved or free people of color).

He characterizes the European-Americans as “a commercial people,” and draws a striking contrast between them and the Indians. (Page references are to the Library of America edition, translated by Arthur Goldhammer; p.365)

In eighteenth century thought, with which Tocqueville was familiar– in the work of Adam Smith, for example – there was a theory that classified societies into types, that is a sort of model of the types of societies, based on their differing means of production and organization and the character traits that each type of society fostered. There was the stage of hunters, who live by hunting animals, and change their homes by following the animals they hunt; the stage of pastoralists, that is livestock herders who move with their flocks in a regular pattern; the stage of settled agriculture, in which people lived in one place and grew their crops; and the stage of commercial society, characterized by commerce, manufacturing, and more extensive government. The first two stages were sometimes termed “barbarism”; the latter two, and especially the stage of commercial society, was known as “civilization.” It’s important to keep in mind that Smith and others used these terms for classification, not evaluation. They thought that there were characteristic virtues connected with each sort of society.

In his discussion of the Indians, Tocqueville comments that it is very hard for hunters to move into agriculture or commercial society, because “Men who have tasted the idle and adventurous life of the hunter feel an almost insurmountable distaste for the constant, disciplined labor required by agriculture” or industry (p.378). Through their contact with the Europeans, the Indians have acquired new tastes – for firearms, iron, fabrics and whiskey -- but not the means of satisfying them (371), and it is difficult for them to adapt to this “civilized” – that is, commercial -- form of life. Worse yet, “It has been the misfortune of the Indians…to come into contact with the most civilized – and, I would add, the greediest – people on earth at a time when they themselves are still half-barbarous.” By the most civilized and greediest, Tocqueville makes clear, he means the British Americans (382).

Note that for Tocqueville, “constant, disciplined labor” is characteristic of capitalist societies – a theme that would later be central to Max Weber’s characterization of “the spirit of capitalism.” Attitudes toward constant, disciplined labor also distinguish the Euro-Americans of the North from those of the South.

Free Labor vs. Slave Labor: The Moral Economy of North and South

Early in the book (I, I, ch.2) Tocqueville introduces the theme of slavery as distinguishing the South from the North.

“Slavery…dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and, with it, ignorance and pride, poverty and luxury. It saps the powers of the mind and lulls human activity to sleep. The influence of slavery, combined with the English character, explains the mores and social state of the South. (35)”

He develops this theme in the chapter on the three races at the end of Book I. Tocqueville notes that colonies without slavery (in the North) are more prosperous than those in the South, where slavery prevails. That is partly because Tocqueville thinks that free labor is more economically productive than slave labor. More importantly, for our purposes, is the fact that slavery versus free labor leads to different attitudes toward labor itself. In the South, labor is identified with slavery, so it is dishonored, while in the North it is honored. In the North “The White applies his industriousness and intelligence to labor of every kind.” (398ff). Not so in the South. Like the hunters (i.e. the Indians), the slave owner is

“contemptuous not only of labor but of all enterprises that succeed by virtue of labor. Living in idle comfort, he has the tastes of idle men. Money has lost part of its value in his eyes. What he seeks is not so much fortune as excitement and pleasure, and to that end he invests energy that his neighbor employs elsewhere. He has a passionate love of hunting and war. He enjoys the most violent forms of physical exercise. He is familiar with the use of arms, and as a child he learned to risk his life in single combat. Thus slavery not only prevents the White from making a fortune but diverts his will to other ends.

For two centuries, these factors, tending in opposite directions, have been constantly at work in the English colonies of North America, and they have led to a prodigious difference in the commercial abilities of southerners and northerners. Today, only the North has ships, factories, railroads, and canals. This difference is apparent not only when the North is compared to the South but also when southerners are compared to one another. Almost all the men who engage in commercial enterprises and seek to use slavery in the southernmost states of the Union come from the North. Every day, northerners spread throughout this part of the country, where they have less to fear from competition. They discover resources that the residents had failed to notice and, adapting to a system of which they disapprove, capitalize on it more effectively than the people who founded it and still support it. (401)”

So, for Tocqueville, commercial society based on free labor of the sort found in the North is characterized by greater energy and resourcefulness.

Tocqueville offers an ambivalent evaluation of such a supremely capitalist society. That ambivalence is on display in one of his most famous pronouncements:

“What do you want from society and government?…Do you wish to impart a certain loftiness to the human mind, a generous way of looking at the things of this world? Do you want to inspire in men a kind of contempt for material goods? Do you hope to foster or develop profound convictions and lay the groundwork for deep devotion? Is your goal to refine mores, elevate manners, and promote brilliance in the arts? …. If, in your view, these are the main objectives that men in society ought to set for themselves, do not choose democratic government, for it offers no guarantee that you will reach your goal. But if it seems useful to you to turn man’s intellectual and moral efforts to the necessities of material life and use them to improve his well-being; if reason strikes you as more profitable to man than genius; if your purpose is to create not heroic virtues but tranquil habits…and if, finally, the principal purpose of a government is not, in your view, to make the nation as a whole as glorious or powerful as can be but to achieve for each individual the greatest possible well-being while avoiding misery as much as possible; then equalize conditions and constitute a democratic government.” (281-282)

Tocqueville thought that the great advantage of democratic government compared to aristocratic regimes was that there was no inherent divergence of interest between the governors and the governed. The governors in a democracy might not govern well in terms of efficiency and wisdom; but that was outweighed by the fundamental overlap of interests between the governors and the governed.

The Democracy of Cupidity: Wealth as the Universal Measure of Status

American society, as Tocqueville saw it, was characterized above all by the search for well-being, understood largely as material wealth.

“Men who live in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either culminate or originate in the love of wealth. This is not because their souls are pettier but because money in such circumstances really is more important.,” (722) he writes. Now, this was a profound point. In a traditional, hierarchical society of status -- what Tocqueville calls “aristocratic society” -- your status is determined largely by who you are, and who you are is determined largely by who your parents and ancestors were. While in the US -- and in every democratic society insofar as it is democratic -- inherited status doesn’t matter, so most social distinction is determined by wealth.

One effect of the lack of inherited status in America is that people are more anxious about their status, and believe that they can change that status by getting richer. If you’re ambitious in a dictatorship or in a monarchy, you might get ahead by serving the monarch, or flattering the dictator. If you’re ambitious in an aristocratic society, you might try to become ennobled by military accomplishment. But in a democratic society, the main way to get ahead is by becoming richer. That is why Tocqueville says that democratic society casts all ambition in a commercial mold.

It’s essential to keep in mind, that for Tocqueville, the “equality” in democracy is not so much equality of possession as it is equality of the possibility of possession. The fact that this possibility exists means if you are not rich, it is your own fault. And it is the very potential openness of all roles to all persons in a democratic society like the US that creates restlessness – perhaps the quality of Americans that most struck Tocqueville.

One effect of this is to make Americans much more active and industrious in pursuit of bettering their condition. And it means that Americans have a different ethos, that is, a different valuation of character traits. What Europeans chastise as “love of gain” or “immoderate desire for wealth” Americans regard as praiseworthy industriousness. What Europeans regard as moderation of desire, Americans call faintness of heart. That’s because in aristocratic societies, the rich take their material well-being for granted, while the poor can’t aspire to it or imagine it. But in America, Tocqueville says, no one is guaranteed well-being, while at the same time, all can imagine it for themselves and aspire to well-being.

Restlessness and the Pursuit of Well-Being

This taste for material well-being is coupled with a social state “where neither law nor custom still keeps anyone in his place” (626) which creates a kind of restlessness of spirit. Americans, as Tocqueville describes them, are tormented by the goods they don’t possess, or by fear “of not having chosen the shortest way of getting there.” And the tragic irony is that the desire for improved well-being grows even as it is fulfilled. That is, once one attains some degree of material well-being, one wants more of it.

Among Tocqueville’s striking examples of this are people he met who left their original homes on the East coast to come to Ohio; then left the homes they’ve built in Ohio, in search of better prospects in Illinois. (326)

Now, the fact that in America there is no legal privilege and professions are open to all promotes ambition. But because all are striving for these positions, there is great competition, and therefore many don’t make it. Thus, ambition leads many people to a certain dissatisfaction and disappointment.

This restless activity is reflected in both political and commercial life. The ethos of trade spills over into politics, with some positive effects:

The passions that move Americans most deeply are commercial rather than political, or perhaps it would be better to say that Americans take habits formed in trade and carry them over into the world of politics. They are fond of order, which business needs if it is to prosper, and in their mores they particularly prize regularity, the foundation of any sound enterprise….” (329)

Individualism vs. Egoism: The Privatizing of American Life

Among the greatest drawbacks of this capitalist democracy, Tocqueville thought, was that as they get wrapped up in the search for personal wealth and well-being, people have a propensity to become isolated from one another. But there were certain forces in American society that helped to counteract that.

Tocqueville claims that American society is characterized not by “egoism,” but by “individualism.” What does he mean by that distinction? Egoism, he says, is a kind of blind instinct “a passionate and exaggerated love of self that impels man to relate everything solely to himself and to prefer himself to everything else.” Individualism, by contrast, is self-concern pursued in a more rational way. Tocqueville defines it as “a reflective and tranquil sentiment that disposes each citizen to cut himself off from the mass of his fellow men and withdraw into the circle of family and friends, so that, having created a little society for his own use, he gladly leaves the larger society to take care of itself.” (585)

“Individualism”, then, is preferable to egoism, on two grounds. First it extends our self-regard beyond ourselves, to our family and friends. Second, it has an element of cool prudence that is lacking is egoism: individualism is “calm and considered.” But it leads to an exaggerated and dangerous privatizing of life. As conditions equalize, one finds more and more individuals who have acquired enough wealth to take care of themselves.

“These people,” Tocqueville writes, “owe nothing to anyone, and in a sense they expect nothing from anyone. They become accustomed to thinking of themselves always in isolation and are pleased to think that their fate lies entirely in their own hands.” Thus democracy “leads him back to himself and threatens ultimately to imprison him altogether in the loneliness of his own heart.” (585)

This has two effects: on the personal level, loneliness. On the collective level, it leads to the opposite of civic virtue; that is, it leads to a lack of concern for the common good and away from political involvement.

Self-Interest Rightly Understood: Virtue by Another Name

Yet Tocqueville’s portrait of America is one in which the intrinsic dangers of individualism are counter-acted in a number of ways. He thought, for example that one source of counteracting individualism was religion, because it drew men away from short-term materialism by turning attention to more long-range considerations (of salvation), and by preaching duties toward others, reminded them that there was more to life than egoism and individualism.

Then, there is what Tocqueville famously called the ideology of “self-interest rightly understood.” Short-sighted self-interest was transformed into what Tocqueville called “self-interest rightly understood.”

People in such a society think primarily in terms of self-interest, and are accustomed to justifying everything in terms of self-interest. Paradoxically, they often act in a way that is not self-interested, but they explain it in terms of self-interest. (You might say that is because they don’t want to be taken for a sucker.)

If you want to get such people to act virtuously, you have to reason with them in terms of self-interest. Or, to put it another way, in a society where everyone thinks in terms of self-interest, the question is how men will interpret self-interest.

In America, Tocqueville writes, even preachers of morality don’t speak of virtue as beautiful, but as useful:

“American moralists do not hold that a man should sacrifice himself for his fellow man because it is a great thing to do; they boldly assert, rather, that such sacrifices are as necessary to the man who makes them as to the man who profits from them…. They do not deny, therefore, that each man may pursue his own self-interest, but they do their utmost to prove that it is in every man’s interest to behave honorably.” (610)”

Tocqueville thinks this sort of thinking in terms of self-interest is already dominant in America and is the wave of the future in Europe as well. So the question is whether there too, moralists will find a way of linking people’s understanding of self-interest with something more than pure individualism.

“Of all philosophical theories, the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me the most appropriate to the needs of my contemporaries; I see it, moreover, as the most powerful tool they have left to protect them from themselves. It should therefore be the primary focus of today’s moralists….It is to be expected, therefore, that individual interest will become more than ever the principal if not the sole motive of human action, but it remains to be seen how each person will interpret his individual interest.” (613)

That understanding of self-interest in turn influences the nature of patriotism in a democratic, capitalist society. Monarchy, Tocqueville says, is based on an “instinctive patriotism” acquired through tradition and habit. But modern, commercial republics must be based on “considered patriotism” in which people are committed to their country because they see it as serving their own interests. As he put it:

“In the United States, the common man has understood how the general prosperity affects his own happiness — a very simple idea, yet one of which the people in most countries have only a very limited grasp. What is more, he has become accustomed to looking upon that prosperity as his own handiwork. He therefore identifies the pubic fortune with his own, and he works for the good of the state not only out of duty or pride, but, I would almost venture to say, out of greed. (271)”

(Recall Hofstadter’s phrase, “a democracy in cupidity.”)

Tocqueville thought that self-interest properly understood creates virtuous habits; not great virtues, but important minor ones. “The doctrine of self-interest rightly understood does not inspire self-sacrifice on a grand scale, but it does prompt small sacrifices every day,” he writes. It creates “citizens who are disciplined, temperate, moderate, prudent, and self-controlled. And if it does not lead men directly to virtue by way of the will, it gradually draws them to it by way of their habits.” (612) A point that Adam Smith too had made.

The Art of Association: Civil Society as a Counterweight to Individualism

It also leads Americans to associate. In a famous chapter called “How Americans combat individualism with the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood,” Tocqueville describes how self-interest rightly understood leads people to learn to combine with others for their own advantage. And that experience leads to a balance between private and public interest, by demonstrating to people how concern for the interests of others in the long run serves one’s own interest.

According to Tocqueville, one important way in which the development of self-interest rightly understood occurs is through political involvement. “When citizens are forced to concern themselves with public affairs, they are inevitably drawn beyond the sphere of their individual interests, and from time to time their attention is diverted from themselves,” he says. “As soon as common affairs are dealt with in common, each man sees that he is not as independent of his fellow men as he initially imagined and that, in order to obtain their support, he must often lend them his cooperation.” He thought this was most expressed through participation in local affairs.

“It is difficult to draw a man out of himself to interest him in the destiny of the entire state, because he has little understanding of what influence the destiny of the state can exert on his lot. Should it become necessary to construct a small road through his property, however, he will see at a glance how this petty public affair relates to his most important private affairs, and he will discover, without having it pointed out to him, the close connection that exists between the particular interest and the general interest. (590)”

He thought that this involvement in public affairs won’t occur if government takes over all functions, or if men resign themselves to be ruled by others because it is more comfortable than the effort involved in political association.

The great advantage that Americans had compared to the French, Tocqueville says, was their propensity to form associations. For this knowledge of how to associate is “the fundamental science” that is needed in democratic societies. (599)

Tocqueville is often portrayed as the prophet of what has come to be called “civil society,” that is voluntary associations outside of market relations. But if we read DA with care, we see that by “civil associations” he means both non-business associations (like temperance clubs) and business associations.

He suggests that the habit of association is mutually reinforcing in politics and in the market. Association in business (such as partnerships) leads people to become familiar with the habits of associating, and this facilitates political association. And, conversely, political association often develops economic associations, in that habits of cooperation learned where material matters are not at risk teach men to engage in joint ventures in business. (604-5) Tocqueville, therefore, saw Americans as engaged in a mutually reinforcing culture of political association and economic association.

The Dark Side of the Division of Labor: A New Industrial Aristocracy

The society that Tocqueville described in the United States of the 1830s was made up primarily of small farmers, of merchants, and of artisans and craftsman. Though not yet an industrial society, it was in the early stages of becoming one. Toward the end of DA, he expresses the fear that the development of industry in the US could lead toward a new sort of aristocracy.

Tocqueville had learned from Adam Smith both about the economic advantages of the division of labor, and the dangers posed by the division of labor to the humanity of workers. He expresses the economic advantages in terms that are almost copied from Book 1 of Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

“It has been found that when a worker spends every day working on the same detail of a product, the finished article is produced more easily, more quickly, and more economically. These truths have been dimly recognized for a long time, but in recent years they have been conclusively proven. (649)”

Tocqueville goes on to describe the psychic and cultural costs of the division of labor in terms that are largely a paraphrase of Smith’s analysis in Book 5 of The Wealth of Nations, but with a twist of Tocqueville’s own:

“When an artisan devotes himself constantly and exclusively to the fabrication of a single article, he eventually develops a remarkable dexterity in doing that job. But at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. Every day he becomes more skillful and less industrious, and we may say of him that the man is degraded as the workman in perfected.

What should we expect of a man who has spent twenty years of his life making pinheads? And to what can he henceforth apply that powerful human intellect that has often stirred the world, other than the search for the best way of making pinheads?

When a worker has spent a considerable portion of his life this way, his thought invariably revolves around the daily object of his labors. His body acquires certain fixed habits that it cannot shed. In a word, he belongs not to himself any longer but to the occupation he has chosen. (650)”

Here is something that Smith had not discussed. While the workers are degraded by this industrial division of labor, the masters are actually raised by it. For they need to know something about a wide range of things to succeed, and so, as Tocqueville puts it, the master’s mind expands, while the worker’s contracts:

“As conditions in the body of the nation move toward greater and greater equality, the need for manufactured objects spreads and increases in intensity, and the low cost that brings such objects within reach of modest fortunes becomes an increasingly important ingredient of success. Every day, therefore, increasingly opulent and enlightened men devote their wealth and knowledge to industry and seek, by opening large plants with a strict division of labor, to satisfy the new desires that crop up on every side. (651)”

Note Tocqueville’s logic here. In a democracy, everything is open to anyone who can purchase it. Since status is not inherited and not guaranteed, people in search of status want to earn more and to buy more things. The division of labor (i.e. factory work) makes it possible to produce more goods more cheaply, so that more people can buy them. That in turn means that there is a growing opportunity to make a profit, by organizing labor in ways that can produce goods more efficiently. That profit motive, in turn, draws smart and ambitious people into the process of production of consumer goods. And some of those people become successful, and now have capital to invest in new enterprises. And because they are restless and ambitious, they are not satisfied with their existing wealth, but rather seek out new opportunities in which to invest. Over time, Tocqueville says, these people become a new sort of aristocracy, removed in habits and habitation from the workers in their enterprises. But unlike the French aristocracy, they do not have the ideals of noblesse oblige. Nor, says Tocqueville, do they have a sense of belonging to a common caste, in the way that pre-capitalist aristocrats do. (650-652)

Tocqueville was concerned that this could lead to a new social polarization, one that was at odds with democracy and its promise of social mobility. For Tocqueville, this social polarization was a possibility, a dark cloud on the horizon of capitalism.

Tocqueville’s America: Dynamism, Danger, and Democratic Promise

To sum up Tocqueville’s analysis of America in the 1830s. Capitalism, when based on free labor, is a tremendous source of dynamism in America. It has its intrinsic hazards, dangers, and drawback, but these can be mitigated by counteracting forces. It has come at a tremendous price to the indigenous inhabitants, the Indians. The absence of free labor in the South exacts a heavy price on the enslaved people of African origin of course, but it also saps the dynamism of their white masters.

I hope you can see why Democracy in America is open to so many interpretations. And also why it repays reading – and re-reading.