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Democracy in America (Penguin Classics) |  | Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Creators: Isaac Kramnick, Gerald Bevan
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
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as of 7/31/2010 18:35 CDT details
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Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 7307
Media: Paperback
Pages: 992
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.8
ISBN: 0140447601
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.973
EAN: 9780140447606
ASIN: 0140447601
Publication Date: July 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, made a nine-month journey throughout America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the life and institutions of the evolving nation. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing that the egalitarian ideals it enshrined reflected the spirit of the age and even divine will. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America and an indispensable authority on democracy.
This new edition is the only one that contains all Tocqueville's writings on America, including the rarely-translated Two Weeks in the Wilderness, an account of Tocqueville's travels in Michigan among the Iroquois, and Excursion to Lake Oneida.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
 #10 A snapshot of capitalism in practice that is unknown today! May 28, 2010
T. Price (Jax Fl.)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book by the preeminent historian and sociologists of his time, is a very good description of capitalism working in America during the time when it was in full swing when we were closest to actual laissez faire capitalism the mid 1800s.
Comment on the work and the translation April 14, 2010
The Wide Ranger (Australia)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Until now I had only encountered de Tocqueville on the forensic examiner's table, so to speak - excerpts culled form the whole body and examined in isolation, inserted into op-ed pieces which were taken out of context to justify a political viewpoint while providing a semblance of historical authority.
Having read the entire first section, I am now able to discern the genius of de Toqueville at picking up on the features and contradictions in the American "model"; now I understand why he is so often quoted by libertarians, neo-cons and socialists - and everybody in between - to justify their point of view. But the whole work is much greater than the individual parts.
Bevan has achieved a discreet and very approachable translation.
Accurate US History pre-Revisionism era April 8, 2010
Winston Sanders
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Tocqueville was a Frenchman with a strong background in the teachings of the Secularist Enlightenment era of Western Europe. He was intent on determining what aspects of American culture played the greatest role in the successes and blessings of the American people. He initially thought such success could not be achieved any way other than the Secular Humanism he had come to know.
His conclusions were that a government established on the exact opposite principles of Conservative limited government based on Judeo-Christian ethics was what propelled the United States to greatness at such a rapid pace.
This work by Tocqueville is the most concise and exhaustive account of foundational US history every compiled from a not only un-biased perspective, but more astoundingly by an individual who actually had to overcome his own biases which were inherently at odds with that which was being proven before his eyes to bring about the culture, freedoms, and ideals which brought about the greatest Nation ever to exist on earth.
Powerfully Prescient Critique of American Democracy March 26, 2010
Jiang Xueqin (Toronto, Canada)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
As a brilliant French aristocrat whose family and friends suffered during the violent leveling of the French Revolution and as a loyal French citizen whose nation is still recovering from the Revolution and its mad spawn the Napoleonic Wars, Alexis de Tocqueville must be naturally suspicious about American democracy. In his masterpiece "Democracy in America," de Tocqueville ostensibly praises American democracy while dissecting the dangerous qualities of equality.
De Tocqueville makes pains to explain the uniqueness of America so as to avoid nations from blindly copying the American experiment, which he knows would be both dangerous and impossible. America is protected by two oceans, and needs not tax or conscript its citizens. It has boundless wealth and infinite land, and so immigrants can succeed and the poor enrich themselves simply by moving West. Puritanism endows the people with discipline and self-control, and in de Tocqueville's analysis religion is especially necessary in a democracy because as people become freer politically and economically they need to be further restrained socially and morally. But what truly makes the American experiment work is that abstract amorphous variable called "customs," which de Tocqueville formulates as the habits of book instruction and practical learning combined with deep love of religion and liberty.
Even if these special ingredients for the success of American democracy could be replicated de Tocqueville would strongly advise against it because he sees these ingredients as creating dangerous tendencies and habits in America that is restrained by well-respected but ultimately weak institutions. In the book's most powerful section "The Unlimited Power of the Majority," de Tocqueville discusses his most famous phrase "the tyranny of the majority," which means that in America "the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved." Whereas De Tocqueville can be slippery and subtle, contradictory and complex elsewhere here he is at his most clear and direct: "I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." Equality translates into the tyranny of the majority which translates into the despotism of public opinion. Indeed, throughout the text, de Tocqueville finds more similarities than differences between despotism and democracy.
The ultimate difference between despotism and democracy is that in the former people know they are enslaved and in the latter people willingly become enslaved. The people's pettiness and provincialism, ignorance and complacence makes in de Tocqueville's eyes the American experiment unstable. In believing that they are the power the people invest too much power to the magistrates, who may decide to subvert democratic institutions (consider the maneuvers of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to extend presidential prerogatives).
For de Tocqueville American democracy is not even desirable. Let's read the book's thesis paragraph:
"Do you wish to give a certain elevation to the human mind and teach it to regard the things of this world with generous feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantages, to form and nourish strong convictions and keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness? Is it your object to refine the habits, embellish the manners, and cultivate the arts, to promote the love of poetry, beauty, and glory? Would you constitute a people fitted to act powerfully upon all nations, and prepared for those high enterprises which, whatever be their results, will leave a name forever famous in history? If you believe such to be the principal object of society, avoid the government of the democracy, for it would not lead you with certainty to the goal."
And he continues:
"But if you hold it expedient to divert the moral and intellectual activity of man to the production of comfort and the promotion of general well-being; if a clear understanding be more profitable to man than genius; if your object is not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but the habits of peace; if you had rather witness the vices than crimes, and are content to meet with fewer noble deeds, provided offenses be diminished in the same proportion; if, instead of living in the midst of a brilliant society, you are contented t o have prosperity around you; if, in short, you are of the opinion that the principal object of a government is not to confer the greatest possible power and glory upon the body of the nation, but to ensure the greatest enjoyment and to avoid the most misery to each of the individuals who compose it."
De Tocqueville may have written his words in French but he knew that his words would undoubtedly and faithfully be translated into English, and he must make sure to not offend his American readers while informing his French readers of the dangers of American democracy. Americans may find this passage unobjectionable and quite flattering, but here the brilliant French aristocrat is asking his fellow French aristocrats: Does France want to be a land of competent and manufactured mediocrity like America?
In his heart De Tocqueville believes that the aristocracy is the only force that can promote democracy in France. The aristocracy is the buffer between the tyrant and the tyranny of the majority, between the need to dominate and the instinct to level; it is the force that ennobles and lifts the nation. Indeed, de Tocqueville has nothing but respect and praise for the Federalists and nothing but scorn and contempt for Andrew Jackson. (De Tocqueville mentions as an aside how Americans passionately supported the French Revolution, and how George Washington sacrificed his stature in order to prevent America from going war against England in support of the French Revolution - a typical de Tocqueville hyperbole which must have had a profound impact on his French aristocratic readers.)
Like Edmund Burke, de Tocqueville believes that the French Revolution had permanently and irrevocably destroyed the ancien regime, and with it any love and respect, in fact any ties, between the king and the people. The despot was now free to become totally evil, and the people were now free to become totally banal. If de Tocqueville had witnessed the horrors of the twentieth century he would have instantly commented that fascism and Communism were two twins borne out of the mother that is the French Revolution. If he were living today he would be horrified at the global banality created by the dominance of the American idea.
But de Tocqueville would not be surprised. He did not predict the American civil war (which he could have if he had spent some more time in the South, and saw how the economies of the North and South were radically diverging from each other) and he did not predict the American empire (he thought Americans petty and provincial, and would not bother to venture beyond their shores except for commerce) but he saw the intimate relationship between American democracy (the absolute demand for equality), manufacturing (the practical conformity), and the market (the love of profit and commerce), and how these three forces had stunted the growth of philosophy, literature, and thought in America.
Americans can never hope to understand "Democracy in America" because it is too close to the truth about them. The tragedy is that nowadays French aristocrats even can't understand "Democracy in America" because we have all, in one way or another, become American.
Lives up to its billing November 28, 2009
Stan Vernooy (Henderson, NV)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've tackled - or tried to tackle - my share of the great classics. I've been disappointed as often as I've been impressed. Some of them, like "The Education of Henry Adams," simply lack the substantive content that would justify their reputations as classics. Others, like most of Aristotle's stuff, require more effort to read than a lot of people might be willing to put forth. But with Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," we have a book that both lives up to its reputation and can be easily read.
Perhaps some of the credit for the fluidity of the language should go to Gerald E Bevan, the translator of this edition. Regardless of who gets the credit, there is no reason for any ordinary reader to be intimidated by this book. It's long (over 800 pages), but the length is fully justified by the breadth, depth, and richness of Tocqueville's observations and reflections on what he has seen.
There's far too much material in the book for a detailed description of the contents, but here are a few comments that come to mind:
Tocqueville wrote for a French audience, not American. He hoped to examine and evaluate American democracy so that the French could learn lessons from America's successes and failures. The ostensible reason for Tocqueville's trip to America, believe it or not, was to study the American prison system!
Democracy was not then the universally shared aspiration of all nations that it is today. Today, even the most despotic governments claim to be democracies. But in Tocqueville's day, there was serious debate among political theorists about whether democracy was practical at all.
Tocqueville was not an uncritical admirer of American democracy by any means. He found as much to criticize as he did to praise. Even when he approved of certain democratic practices, he expressed reservations about the transportability of those practices to countries which had different cultures, geography, history, and ethnic composition from America's.
Tocqueville did not write the book for the purpose of predicting the future. Far too much emphasis, in my opinion, has been placed on the accuracy of some of his predictions about the United States and the world in general. The fact is that his predictions were wrong about as often as they were right, and those predictions are by no means the primary focus of the book.
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the book is Tocqueville's ability to see us as others see us instead of how we would like to see ourselves. One striking example is the deluded propensity of Americans to proclaim themselves as individualists. Tocqueville puts that false notion to rest when he observes that there is "no country where there is generally less independence of thought and real freedom of debate than in America." He uses as an example the almost total absence of any public displays of religious unbelief - an example that could be repeated, verbatim, with equal truth today. (Can you imagine any admitted atheist or even agnostic ever being elected President of the United States?)
The book provides an interesting picture of what Constitutional government was like in the earlier days of the Republic, when the Constitution was much more of a living document than it is in our day, when it is seen largely as an obstacle to be circumvented when the federal government wants to undertake or regulate something which it has no power to do under the Constitution. Modern readers will chuckle at Tocqueville's assertion that the Presidency is an inherently weak office, empowered to do nothing but administer the laws which Congress has passed. Equally quaint is his interpretation of the entire federal government as nothing more than an agency for conducting foreign policy, since all domestic concerns are handled by the states and localities. As a result, the book spends a disproportionate (to modern minds) amount of its attention on the structure and practices of local and state governments, making careful distinctions between the political habits of New Englanders and frontiersmen, for example.
The book gives little support to those who would (and do) quote it for partisan political purposes. No one who isn't promoting his or her own political agenda could state with certainty that Tocqueville would today be a Republican, Democrat, Socialist or Libertarian; or a liberal or a conservative. Most of the issues that concerned people in the 1830's are far removed from our attention today, and neither Tocqueville nor anyone else of that era could have anticipated the topics of debate that preoccupy 21st century Americans.
Tocqueville credits the churches with many of the aspects of American democracy that he admires. However, he never said, "America is great because she is good, and when she ceases to be good she will cease to be great," - or anything like it.
Tocqueville discusses the problems of the African slaves and the American Indians at considerable length. (That's one way that you can tell that the people who criticize the book for a single-minded focus on White/European people haven't read the book at all.) He is justifiably pessimistic about both problems. There is nothing which we could go back to and say, "If we had only followed Tocqueville's advice, the problems of African-Americans and Native Americans would have been solved long ago." But then, there are few policy prescriptions of any kind in this book - that wasn't Tocqueville's purpose.
This book is, in my experience, incomparable and irreplaceable. I admit to not having yet read Mill, Montesqieu, or Locke. But those men were political theorists rather than observers on the ground, so to speak. If I were the Vice President of Academics for some university, I would eliminate the social science distribution requirement in favor of handing each incoming freshman a copy of "Democracy in America," and requiring an in-depth report on the book before advancement to sophomore status.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
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