Summary: Democracy in America

Tocqueville wrote this book following his trip to America, in order to expose the nature and peculiarities of that country's mode of government.

What struck him most was the equality of conditions. This fact influences everything else: laws, morals, etc.

Noting this movement towards equality throughout Europe, since the French Revolution, he conceived the idea for this book.

This march towards equality, in other words, the democratic revolution, is an irresistible phenomenon that has come to us from very far away. In fact, it is the most continuous, longest-running and most permanent fact known to history ¹.

Already, we can see this progress at work in various historical facts: the clergy opening their ranks to all, poor or rich; nobles ruining themselves in private wars, while commoners grow rich through trade; kings involving the lower classes of the state in government, in order to lower the aristocracy, etc. Even inventions like firearms equalise the villain and the noble on the battlefield ².

Tocqueville observes that every half-century brings the noble closer to the commoner. So much so that we have to resolve to attribute a providential character to this march towards democracy. In other words: this is divine will, and thus the destiny of humanity:

The gradual development of equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, it has the principal characters of one: it is universal, it is lasting, it escapes human power every day; all events, like all men serve its development ³.

This inevitability, which greatly impresses Tocqueville, renders null and void the efforts of reaction to overthrow democracy and restore the monarchy. On the other hand, if this democratic movement cannot be opposed, perhaps it is possible to direct it. For this, a new political science is needed for a brand new world ⁴.

As long as we do not have this political science adapted to its time, we have democracy, minus what should mitigate its vices and bring out its advantages ⁵.

Tocqueville shows the contradictions of the troubled times to which he is writing, those closely following the French Revolution, that unique century in which nothing seems to be defended any more, neither permissible nor honest nor shameful, neither true nor false ⁶, such as the opposition of the clergy and the revolutionaries, while Christ also defended freedom, against slavery.

America has the advantage of having organised itself as a democratic country, without having had to undergo a revolution:

I confess that in America I saw more than America; I looked for an image of democracy itself ⁷.

Tocqueville is not seeking to make any kind of value judgement on the historical phenomenon that is the Revolution. It is not a question of seeking whether it has an advantageous or a disastrous character. He takes it as a fact to be analysed, so that it may be as profitable as possible.

When studying a people, for Tocqueville we must first analyse its "social state". This is defined as the product of a fact (e.g. the country's geographical location, its climate, etc.) and its laws.

This social state is in turn the primary cause that determines the laws, mores, ideas of a nation.

The social state of the Americans is eminently democratic, owing to the fact that it is formed of emigrants from Europe, exhibiting, in their condition as migrants, great equality. This is a rare historical phenomenon (a migration of outcasts or adventurers), which generates an unprecedented political situation and social state.

American inheritance law also played a role. Indeed, rather than entrusting the eldest son with the inheritance of the land (which made the aristocracy spring from the soil ⁸), it introduced equal sharing between the sons, which broke up the great estates

¹ De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome 1 et 2, Gallimard, coll. Folio histoire, Paris, 1961, I, p.39
² I, p.40
³ I, p.41
⁴ I, p.43
⁵ I, ibid.
⁶ I, p.50
⁷ I, p.51
⁸ I, p.97