Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 496

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Democracy in America," by Alexis de Tocqueville.

The picture of American society is, if I may put it this way, overlaid with a democratic patina beneath which we see from time to time the former colors of the aristocracy showing through.

One day, in Philadelphia, someone was telling me that almost all the crimes in America were caused by the abuse of strong drink which the lowest classes could consume when they liked because they were sold it cheaply. "How is it," I asked, "that you do not place a duty on brandy?" "Our legislators," he replied, "have often considered it but it is a difficult undertaking. There is fear of revolt and besides, the members who voted for such a law would be certain to lose their seats. "So, therefore," I continued, "in your country drunkards ar ein the majority and temperance is unpopular."

The Negro has lost even the ownership of his own body and cannot have any control over his own existence without committing a kind of theft.

In that part of the Union where Negroes are no longer slaves, have they drawn nearer to the whites? Any inhabitant of the United States will have noticed just the opposite.

Racial prejudice seems to be stronger in those states which have abolished slavery than in those where slavery still exists and nowhere is it as intolerant as in those states where slavery has never been known.

When men who dwell in a democratic society are enlightened, they have no difficulty in realizing that nothing restricts or pins them down, nothing forces them to limit themselves to their present state of wealth.

Then it is that they all have the idea of increasing it, and, if they are free, they all try to do so but do not succeed in the same manner. The legislature grants no privileges, it is true, but nature does. Natural inequality being very great, fortunes become unequal from the moment each man uses all his talents to get rich.

The law of descent still stands in the way of wealthy families but does not prevent the existence of wealthy individuals. It constantly levels men to a common point, from which they constantly escape. Their inequality in possessions increases as their knowledge and liberty expand.

As the principle of the division of labor is applied more completely, the worker becomes weaker, more limited and more dependent. The craft makes progress, the craftsman slips backwards. On the other hand, as it becomes clearer that industrial products are all the better and cheaper as production lines are more extensie and capital is greater, very wealthy and enlightened men appear on the scene to exploit industries which, up to that point, had been left in the hands of ignorant or restless craftsmen. They are attracted by the scale of the efforts required and the huge results to be obtained. 

Thus at the very moment that industrial science constantly lowers the standing of workers, it raises that of the bosses.

While the worker, more and more, restricts his intelligence to the study of one single detail, the boss daily surveys an increasing field of operation and his mind expands as the former's narrows. Soon the one will need only physical strength without intelligence; the other needs knowledge and almost genius for success. The one increasingly looks like the administrator of a vast empire, the other, a brute.

So, the employer and the worker share nothing in common on this earth and their differences grow daily. They exist as two links at each end of a long chain. Each holds a place made for him from which he does not move. The one is dependent upon the other.

The dependency the one has upon the other is never-ending, narrow, and unavoidable; the one is born to obey as the other is to give orders.

What is this, if not aristocracy?