I read this in response to my frustration with what I saw as our inability to bring democracy to other places in the world. Chapters 1-42 and 55 - 57 are the most insightful. Others tend to drag. In 1830s de Tocqueville comes to America to figure our why a democratic revolution in France lead to anarchy and despotism, while a democratic revolution in America lead to freedom. What he finds is still relevant to our trying to bring or give democracy to others.

Two things emerge- first there were many natural advantages that America had that the French or any other European nation would never have the good fortune to posses. Other places in the world seeking democracy similarly lacks these natural advantages today. Second and more to the point - regardless of your natural advantages - you cannot "give" democratic institutions to a society that has no practical experience with democracy. Democratic society must precede democratic governments if the institutions are to succeed. If you want to move to democratic governments you must begin with a government that provides order, and begin change on the social level.

idk what to do about a book i technically read for class but didn't really read most if it on my own. i would like to go over it again in the summer though.

Tocqueville's style in Democracy in America can best be described as verbose and exhausting; the young aristocrat perpetually found a way to turn an idea easily described in a paragraph into a multi-page discourse, followed often by virtual restatements pages later. However, Tocqueville's writing style is worth slogging through, as his discourses on political and civil society are both astute and startlingly clairvoyant. As political scientist William Ebenstein noted of Tocqueville's work, "nothing dates as quickly as books on other countries, yet Democracy in America has retained its original freshness and appeal." Equally astonishing, notes Ebenstein, was Tocqueville's "grasp...of American civilization after a stay of only nine months."

Themes that remain persistently relevant from Tocqueville's analysis of "the laboratory of democracy" seem to be:

--The fundamental place of equality within 19th century American society, and democracy's inevitable clash between human equality and human liberty. Writing in a time when it seemed that "the passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the human heart," Tocqueville felt equality represented a great leap forward in human thought, the gradual evolution of which could be seen in hundreds of years of European aristocracy. Tocqueville's view of this unbounded equality comes across as decidedly ambivalent, but doggedly fair. Tocqueville's background among French aristocracy certainly influenced his worldview on equality, but history has proven him correct when he wrote that "democratic nations are at all times fond of equality, but there are certain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it swells to the height of fury...and they cling to it as to some precious treasure which they fear to lose...show them not freedom escaping from their grasp...they discern but one object to be desired in the universe."

--Individualism's inevitable role in democracy had been tempered by America's overwhelming ability to practice the twin arts of free association and free institutions. Tocqueville argued effectively that despotism could actually be deadlier within democracies, given the potential tyranny of the majority. In particular, Tocqueville focuses on what he terms "local affairs," where men can see more closely the connection between public affairs and their own interests, while experiencing firsthand the reminder that "every citizen...in a thousand ways...lives in society." Americans reinforce these free institutions through endless civil and public associations. For once, Tocqueville summarizes simply: "Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government in France...in the United States you seen an association."

--Predictions about society and foreign policy. Much has been written about Tocqueville's predictions about the U.S. and Russia, his concern over the disconnect between workers and their occupations in the new manufacturing class ("the workman becomes more weak, more narrow-minded, and more dependent"), and his discussions over the threat of individual isolation within an individualistic society. Aside from agreeing wholeheartedly with his theory on associations, the aspect of Tocqueville's writing that most impresses me is his ability to remain mostly impartial. Biases show up (e.g. his disdain for and dismissal of American literature writ large), but his coverage of American democracy remains remarkable given his own personal views. Nearer the end of his life, Tocqueville would privately write that " I love passionately liberty, law, and respect for rights, but not democracy. Liberty is my first passion. This is the truth." Given his personal views, Democracy in America remains a work of steady removal, with Tocqueville's earnest, if not always successful, attempts at neutrality leading to an analysis of democracy that remains widely acclaimed to this day.

As I posted in 2019, I studied this book for a semester-long seminar class long time ago. I liked it, but I couldn't keep carrying the big book with me after the class. I wish there had been eBooks at that time.

de Tocqueville is one of those authors that is often quoted, sometimes excerpted, but not always read in full. It's been years since I've last read anything by him. In returning to him, I am faced with the fact that he often repeats himself, and his writing could have been greatly improved with a reliable editor.

He writes about the United States not in specific details, but in broad assertions. His opinions and observations are cited by liberals who favor his opinions on the "equality of conditions", conservatives who favor his slow-walking of reform as well as his admiration of the system as a union of states without an overweening federal government. Tocqueville could even be cited by Marxists - the growth of industrialization, for example, leads him to remark that "all the industrial crises threaten more and more to become political crises."

A good deal of his writing and predictions have the stamp of the 1830s on them. He predicts that the federal government would not become more powerful - not really. He casts aspersions on the state of American literature - give it a few more years and you have Melville, Poe, and Dickinson. He was a comte who was snakebit by the French Revolution - he reports to French readers on democracy that continues to exist without the violent convulsions of the French Revolution that tore apart his fellow aristocrats. Well, no, there was a civil war three decades later.

Even with all these caveats, there are many observations that still show de Tocqueville's perception. Take, for example, the importance of inheritance law, the importance of religious belief, his notes on the power of the judiciary, of elected representatives growing more obsessed with reelection instead of the interests of their constituents, of Americans' tendency to join groups and form "voluntary associations" -- and the terror of a "soft despotism", where the form of democracy is retained and the electorate has no power at all. Or, how the state of slavery was such de Tocqueville, a dyed-in-the-wool colonialist, saw only cruelty and waste coming out of it.

Finally, it is a reminder that for large parts of the 19th and even the 20th century, the United States was seen as a model or as an ideal for later governmental structure or policy reforms. In October 2020, this is not the case. If there is any hope for recovery, and that recovery is a long and difficult process, that might be more evident after November 3rd.

3.5/5 stars

In the 1830s, the period during which this book was written, Europe was still straining under the social structures of The Old Regime (the Helvetian Confederation excluded) while a new democratic state had emerged, ever since its Declaration of Independence on July 4 1776, the United States of America, led by George Washington who seemed to be the modern American version of Solon or Pericles.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat and politician, fascinated by the democracy so easily established in America while his homeland still struggled to free itself from the manacles of social inequality, took advantage of a business trip to the United States with Gustave Beaumont for the purpose of studying the penitentiary system there while they truly intended to analyze the foundations of American society.

Although not a panegyric of America as it would seem, this book exposes the pros and cons of the democratic system and the threat of the tyranny of the majority and provides an exhaustive study of republicanism, federalism, governmental and administrative decentralization and presidency in the United States. It also evokes the capital and indispensable role religion plays in politics while it is separated from political power.

The importance of this oeuvre lies in its chilling prophecies. Tocqueville predicted more than a century earlier the rise of two giants on the global platform - America and Russia and thus heralded the development of the Cold War (1947-1991). He also broached the then-sensitive subject of slavery in America and alluded to the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

This is the core of the current America. As a European America looks very different from "us", sometimes in positive and sometimes in negative ways. Reading this book gives you an insight in the American culture. Of course it's outdated sometimes, but that makes it in my opinion even more interesting. You can see how a new civilization grows and develops it's own culture. Tocqueville has witty observations. He writes down the filosophy of Americans in beautiful passages.

I'm still keeping this at 4 stars because I realize the enormity of it (especially when I consider that Tocqueville wrote this w/ a pen), but, man, am I glad to be done reading this.

REVIEW: https://www.greatbookstudy.com/2019/0...

This is not a review by any means, just a placeholder to indicate that after two months of enthusiasm, two months of stalling, and a final two months of hard reading, I have finally finished Democracy in America. I am no longer a wimp! (nor am I a "twerp", in the words of Vonnegut. Thanks Dion)

In my altered state (the euphoria of having finished such an amazing book), I cannot with sound mind expound upon how awesome this book is. It will take many years of study and careful re-reading to fully comprehend the importance of what I just read. I'll have to write a more substantial review in the future.

In the meantime, I'll leave with this quote:

We ought not strain to make ourselves like our fathers, but strive to attain the kind of greatness and happiness that is proper to us.

As for myself, having come to the final stage of my course, to discover from afar, but at once, all the diverse objects that I had contemplated separately in advancing, I feel full of fears and full of hopes. I see great perils that it is possible to ward off; great evils that one can avoid or restrain, and I become more and more firm in the belief that to be honest and prosperous, it is still enough for democratic nations to wish it.

I am not unaware that several of my contemporaries have thought that peoples are never masters of themselves here below, and that they necessarily obey I do not know which insurmountable and unintelligent force born of previous events, the race, the soil, or the climate.

Those are false and cowardly doctrines that can never produce any but weak men and pusillanimous nations: Providence has not created the human race either entirely independent or perfectly slave. It traces, it is true, a fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave; but within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too with peoples.

We have heard for the last several years that democracy is in danger. In America, such claims will reach a fever pitch over the next year; perhaps beyond it. Whatever their merits, a problem that I have with such analyses is their incredibly limited conception of democracy, one so widespread that it almost goes without notice. Ask most people what democracy is and you’ll likely get a one word response: elections. If you press a bit, maybe something about representative government or the ultimate sovereignty of the people. Yet as Tocqueville observed, democracy is far more than just a matter of voting once every two or four years: it is a continuous activity, a way of thinking, and a culture.

The process of self-organization that underlies a healthy democratic society has profound effects on both individual psychology and on the broader values of a nation. Tocqueville lived in a unique historical moment for understanding the effects of democracy: he observed the first generation of Americans who grew up after the nation’s founding, in a time when democracy was still rare in the world. He spends considerable time trying to figure out the inherent contradictions, the dangers, and the great benefits that he perceived in the American experiment; importantly, he tried to distinguish what is a product of specifically American cultural inheritance vs. the offshoots of democracy in itself.

Fundamentally, he notes that democracy creates a major tension between freedom and equality. These can be balanced for a time, but are ultimately irreconcilable. While they have many good effects on the people, Tocqueville also believed that democracies induce individualism, corrode community ties, and create a society that values money to the exclusion of almost everything else. He felt that the United States was actually quite good at counterbalancing these effects due to the restraining influence of religion and a tradition of independent local government inherited from the Anglo-Saxons. (Of course, he also condemned the Americans on their hypocritical embrace of slavery, which he abhorred and correctly predicted would become one of its most explosive problems.)

One of the most important takeaways from his work is that democracy depends on culture as much as anything else. The relationship is reflexive: democracy influences culture, but it also emerges out of a set of activities and values that must be maintained for the whole thing to work. I think that Tocqueville was mostly right to claim that *local* activity — small scale government, churches, public societies, etc. — is the real foundation of a democracy and that ever-increasing centralization of power can only sap the public energy needed to maintain it. Local activity, which he observed especially in New England of his time, allows for people to influence the mundane affairs that most directly affect them while also building a sort of “democratic muscle” which atrophies when decisions are handed over to technocrats or central administrators. It has been observed in our time that many civil societies and other communal bonds are fraying, as once venerable organizations like the Lions Club, Freemasons, etc. decline to irrelevance along with labor unions, churches, and almost every other traditional anchor of local community (cf. Robert Putnam’s works). Our democratic muscle is weaker than ever because we have so few places to use it.

What Tocqueville could not have foreseen, of course, is the rise of massively centralized forces that stand outside the government and often rival (or exceed) it in power: corporations, most notably, but also major lobbying groups, NGOs, professional guilds, financial conglomerates, academic organizations, etc. None of these allow for any meaningful democracy; none will provide for the self-actualization of ordinary citizens or even most of their stakeholders. This is where Tocqueville’d analysis (understandably) falls short for the modern world — the only feasible way to counterbalance something like a massive multinational corporation is with the central government and its legions of bureaucrats. Yet the paper arms race between non-governmental powers and those of the central government risks leaving ordinary people more disempowered and atomized than ever. The growth of literally non-human power in the form of AI and algorithms, usually allied to these non-democratic organizations and wielded by them for their own ends, will only exacerbate the sense of helplessness.

I make no predictions about how it will all turn out. But I do believe that the fundamental social task of the 21st century will be to find a synthesis that emboldens the central government to fend off alien, inaccessible, and often oppressive sources of corporate power while also empowering ordinary people to organize, build communal bonds, and take charge of their communities. Reading Tocqueville is a useful reminder that democracy, should we wish to keep it, will require us be active citizens far beyond the ballot box — democracy is a verb, not a noun.

The evidence is mounting. I am a philistine.