Analysis Of Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy In America

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In Alexis de Tocqueville’s great political treatise, Democracy in America, he analyzes the state of democracy within the United States of the 19th Century — noting its successes and flaws. Among these, Tocqueville discusses the potential for a decline into a despotic rule the likes of which the world had never seen before — a democratic, soft despotism. He also discusses, however, the existence of free associations between the citizens of a democracy, and suggests that such associations act as a counterpoint to the looming specter of despotism. This paper will discuss the dangers of soft despotism in relation to “regular” despotism, the origins it has in the implementation of a democratic system, and the manner in which free association counteracts …show more content…
Tocqueville is forced to present a thought experiment within his treatise, as the form of tyranny he fears for democracy had never been experienced to his point in history. He muses, “I want to imagine under what new traits despotism could occur in the world: I see an innumerable mass of similar and equal men who go round and round without respite in order to procure for themselves small and vulgar pleasures, with which they fill their souls” (306). Tocqueville identifies a potential problem with the egoism of the citizen in a democracy, fearing that the average citizen has the capacity to become isolated from all of his peers, as seen here: “Each of them, withdrawn to the side, has virtually nothing to do with the fate of all the others: his children and his particular friends form for him all of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is next to them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if a family still remains to him, one can at least say that he no longer has a fatherland” (306). The isolationist sentiment Tocqueville fears goes so far as to drive the citizenry away from any sort of patriotic fervor. This, in turn, leads them to a complete separation from the political process and begins the downfall of the system into the sort of dystopian despotism that arises from general public disinterest. This then creates a state vaguely reminiscent of a Huxleyan society, full of widespread complacency and apathy. In this society, the government is not despotic in its refusal of basic rights to its citizens, but the opposite: its despotism arises from enslaving its people into a system that is designed to please via panem et circenses. Tocqueville describes his vision of such a state
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