Democracy in America

Tocqueville argues that democratic countries generally emphasize “the idea of work as a necessary and honest condition of democracy” (525). Even rich Americans share this attitude, and those Americans who do not emigrate to Europe. Democracies also make it socially acceptable to work for money, where aristocracies usually seek to obscure this motive.

The need to work creates a new kind of social leveling in the United States, as “[t]here is no profession in which one does not work for money. The wage common to all gives a family resemblance to all” (526). This means that servants do not see their employment as any less socially significant than that of the American president.

Tocqueville argues that few citizens of democratic societies will be drawn to agriculture because it “suits only the rich who already have a great superfluity, or the poor who ask only to live” (526-27). As they move beyond subsistence, most will be drawn to “commerce and industry” (527). This makes democracies particularly vulnerable to economic downturns in the industrial sector—what Tocqueville calls an “endemic malady” of the system (528-29).

Tocqueville is also concerned about the effects of industrialization on society, arguing that it elevates owners and may turn the worker back into “a brute” (530-31).