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IdentificationIn connection with a reform of the French legal system, the French sociologist and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) paid a visit to the USA, which at that time was a young and revolutionary democracy without any aristocracy and class distinction. In 1835 and 1840, he published the first and second volumes of his principal work, Democracy in America, which presents American social conditions – the constitution, legislation, press, economy and religion – to the European general public.
Tocqueville used the USA as a model for democracy of the future. In the USA, he found liberty and equality with respect to conditions of life – something that did not yet exist in Europe. No powerful state imposed restrictions on liberty, and aristocrats had to cultivate their own land themselves. This image was most pronounced in the Northern States, where constitutions ensured that power moved from the bottom to the top. The fact that democracy was possible on such a grand scale was an important lesson to Europe, which after the regime of terror in France 1793- 1794 had lost faith in democracy. In Europe, it was not only absolutism that had been abolished, but also the communities in which people found their place – the village, the estate, the church and the class. When people are free and equal, they are severed from tradition. The result is a loss of cohesion. Tocqueville did believe that equality, Christian ethics and democracy could ensure social harmony, but he envisaged with horror “a numerous crowd of people, equal and uniform”. Expert craftsmen are replaced by unskilled and anonymous factory workers. Instead of people aware of their place within a stable framework, they are set free on an impersonal market. The result is asocial individualism, with everybody thinking only of their “petty and vulgar pleasures”. Above them looms a powerful paternalistic state “assuming sole responsibility for their welfare and watching over their lives”. It interferes in all spheres and is “structured, provident and mild”, resulting in civilised slavery. A colourful and magical world based on lack of freedom and inequality must give way to a world in which freedom and equality also imply loss of solidarity. Tocqueville did not believe that an “invisible hand” spontaneously will achieve social harmony, or that a new type of solidarity will emerge when people must collaborate in order to reach their selfish goals. Being an aristocrat, he was deeply suspicious of the unenlightened people and was keenly aware of the dark sides of democracy, populism and demagogy. A democratic society demands that everybody should have the opportunities to become rich, in terms of property, power and knowledge. Tocqueville was a liberal in the tradition of the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). Therefore, he found that only work gives the right to wealth. He was revolted by the mere idea that the poor should be entitled to social assistance. “I have an intellectual preference for the democratic institutions, but I am an aristocrat by instinct, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I have a passionate love for liberty, law and respect for legality, but not for democracy. That is what I find in my heart. I hate the masses for their demagogy, unsystematic mode of action, their violent and poorly enlightened interference in matters, the lower classes’ envious passions, their irreligious tendencies. That is what I find in my heart. am neither of the revolutionary nor the conservative party. Yet, if I must choose I shall prefer the latter to the former. For I disagree with the latter about the means, but not the ends; whereas I disagree with the former about both the means and the ends.
Liberty is my foremost passion. There is the truth.” UNDATED NOTE REPRODUCED IN ANTOINE RÉDIER’S BIOGRAPHY ON TOCQUEVILLE: COMME DISAIT MONSIEUR DE TOCQUEVILLE… , 1925.
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This page is part of the electronic publication "The Danish Democracy Canon"