April 24, 2007
This is Part 4 of my attempt to blog Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." I am not a scholar, but a regular guy reading my way through. So there's that. An online version of the book can be found[here.][1]So now we're in Chapter 3. And maybe I'm a bit of a pessimist here, but it seems like Alexis has two main, negative impressions of Americans here, namely:¢ That we're short-sighted.¢ And we're kinda dumb, to boot.He never comes out and just says it like that, but it's kind of hard to avoid taking it that way. These features, he says, are the consequences of a democratic culture.The short-sightedness, he says, comes from one of the chief tools that propped up aristocracies in the Old World: Laws of inheritance. Back there, you got all the land if you were the first-born son. Everybody else was kinda screwed. This allowed estates to maintain their size and grow over generations, reinforcing the concentration of privilege and power in the hands of a few. Under America'sinheritance laws, though, all the heirs (and though he doesn't say it, we can probably assume male heirs) get to divvy up the goods.The result:_What is called family pride is often founded upon an illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself, as it were, in his great-grandchildren. Where family pride ceases to act, individual selfishness comes into play. When the idea of family becomes vague, indeterminate, and uncertain, a man thinks of his present convenience; he provides for the establishment of his next succeeding generation and no more. Either a man gives up the idea of perpetuating his family, or at any rate he seeks to accomplish it by other means than by a landed estate._That last point is kinda key, isn't it? We don't have lords and ladies in this country, but it's hard to argue that we don't have something akin to aristocracy. The Rockefellers and the Kennedys and a few other families seem to have done a good job over the decades and longer holding onto wealth and power, haven't they? De Tocqueville hadn't anticipated a post-agrarian society where land ownership merely represented wealth instead of being wealth itself. In the1830s, though, this must've looked true.As for our dumbness...The inability of most Americans to build up huge family estates didn't end their lust for riches. Here, Alexis offers up a now-familiar observation: "I do not mean that there is any lack of wealthy individuals in the United States; I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property."So what does that have to do with anything. This: In early America, we lacked bored heirs who, in the absence of having to build their own fortunes, devoted themselves to intellectual endeavours. The people who were wealthy had worked hard to accumulate the wealth, so by the time they had time to devote to, you know, smart things, they'd acquired other habits. (It seems like there's a little old-money new-money snobbery going on here - France being Mr. Drysdale, America as Jed Clampett -- that, culturally, has had some staying power. And on those occasions American makes a real and genuine contribution to, say, the arts, France tries to claim it as its own: Jazz, Woody Allen movies, etc.)(I'll avoid the obvious Jerry Lewis joke here.)But since education is so accessible in America, Alexis says, almost everybody has some book learnin'.The result: "A middling standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend."So America: Middle class and middlebrow from the beginning.de Tocqueville, at the end of Chapter 3, offers up some dark warnings about the future of all this middlingess that deserves to be quoted at length:_Now, I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; rights must be given to every citizen, or none at all to anyone. ... There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. ...On the other hand, in a state where the citizens are all practically equal, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power. No one among them being strong enough to engage in the struggle alone with advantage, nothing but a general combination can protect their liberty. Now, such a union is not always possible.From the same social position, then, nations may derive one or the other of two great political results; these results are extremely different from each other, but they both proceed from the same cause. Discuss.The Cup O'Joel discussion of "Democracy in America" appears whenever it darn well pleases._ [1]: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html
Comments
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JohnB (anonymous) says…
Hmm.
"On the other hand, in a state where the citizens are all practically equal, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power. No one among them being strong enough to engage in the struggle alone with advantage, nothing but a general combination can protect their liberty. Now, such a union is not always possible."
Some might say that this very thing has been playing out since the fall of 2001: in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration consolidated powers, either de jure or de facto, in the hands of the Executive Branch, catching most everyone in a moment of traumatized weakness, unwilling (unable) to resist when it seemed a united front was what was required of us just then.
As for your comments on American culture, de Tocqueville (and you) are dead-on, it seems to me: here, for better or for worse, there's a blurry distinction between "high" and "middle-brow" culture because of our then-lack of a sizable aristocracy and most everyone who was educated was educated to about the same level of accomplishment.
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thetomdotdot (anonymous) says…
Detocq is bemoaning the weakening of the class structures that built civilization on slave labor. Good riddance. Yeah, the fallout is people like me (Lynyrd Skynyrd = middle brow, Led Zeppelin = high brow), but thats progress for you. If a better result is a return to aristocracy, then we're gonna need some serfs. Any volunteers?
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ladylaw (Terry Bush) says…
Some would argue that Americans long for aristocracy (and point to the masses' obession with and adulation of political, sports, and entertainment figures). I haven't read this book, but you make me want to. Meanwhile, why did I keep thinking of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" while reading your review?
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El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says…
"we lacked bored heirs who, in the absence of having to build their own fortunes, devoted themselves to intellectual endeavours..."
Indeed, even before the British set up their first colony, Richard Hakluyt wrote to the Queen about the reasons for populating North America. One of them was:
"The fry of the wandering beggars of England, that grow up idly, and hurtful and burdensome to this realm, may there be unladen, better bred up, and may people waste countries to the home and foreign benefit, and to their own more happy state."
In the words of John Winger: we are the wretched refuse.
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Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
"In the words of John Winger: we are the wretched refuse."
Yeah, but not even half so much as Australia. They got the criminals.
Terry: I haven't read Ayn Rand, but I'm familiar with the broad themes of her work -- and yes, I thought of her while reading ADT.
Dotdot: Zeppelin isn't high art?
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thetomdotdot (anonymous) says…
There's some that say not. Don't listen to 'em.
Question is, would Detocq rock? (sounds funnier than would Detocq smoke?)
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Dazie (Aileen Dingus) says…
Ladylaw- I knew there was a reason I like you. :) Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorites, and for the same reasons you mention...
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ladylaw (Terry Bush) says…
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16, just because I'd heard about it/her (you can bet it was not assigned reading at my highschool). I can't say I liked the somber tone or the un-relenting preachiness, but I was captivated with the story and the consistency of the characters. It has been what, almost 40 years now, but I can still recall the theme and plot pretty well. So it is pretty obvious the book impacted me a bit. Don't know if I'll pick it up again. I don't enjoy being depressed nearly as much as I did when I was 16.
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