Democracy in America
The abolitionist movement was not yet fully underway when Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in 1831, ostensibly to study prisons. While he came from an aristocratic French family, he was a less established writer than Martineau, less encumbered by the reputation of his earlier work.
His impression on American culture, though less immediate, proved more enduring. Tocqueville's Democracy in America is widely considered a classic treatise on early nineteenth-century American morals and manners. It also offers a thoughtful, if pessimistic analysis of the political economy of individual and collective conflict.De Tocqueville was an eloquent critic of slavery, and he went far beyond most of his contemporaries in his attention to the history of human exploitation.
If we reason from what passes in the world, we should almost say that the European is to the other races of mankind what man himself is to the lower animals: he makes them subservient to his use, and when he cannot subdue he destroys them.58
While his explanation of the differences between African Americans and Native Americans relied on stereotypes, he correctly predicted that slavery would lead to armed conflict, and that Native American tribes were doomed to extinction.
Individualism was not, he observed, the same thing as selfishness, that ‘‘passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect everything with himself and to prefer himself to everything in the world”.59 He considered the Smithian claim that the social affections would temper self-interest, and wished that it were true. Yes, Americans often pursued self-interest in enlightened ways, recognizing the benefits of treating others in a kind and equitable manner. Yes, it was better to be self-interested in little ways than to engage in impractical hypocrisies. But in the long run, he insisted:
No power on earth can prevent the increasing equality of conditions from inclining the human mind to seek out what is useful or from leading every member of the community to be wrapped up in himself. It must therefore be expected that personal interest will become more than ever the principal if not the sole spring of men's actions.60
At best, education might help combat destabilizing selfishness. But the sexual division of labor would also help. De Tocqueville praised Americans for adopting the principles of political economy and carefully distinguishing the duties of men from those of women. He castigated those Europeans who sought to confound the differences between the sexes. Equality, similarity, mixing of men and women in occupations or in business, would only degrade them both, making men ‘‘weak'' and women ‘‘disorderly''.61 Like Rousseau, he found the very thought of female individualism almost too much to bear.