Editing Democracy in America (section)

==Impact==
''Democracy in America'' was published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the other in 1840. It was immediately popular in both Europe and the United States, while also having a profound impact on the French population. By the twentieth century, it had become a classic work of [[political science]], [[social science]], and [[history]]. It is a commonly assigned reading for [[undergraduate]]s of American universities [[academic major|majoring]] in the political or social sciences, and part of the introductory political theory syllabus at Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton and other institutions.  In the introduction to his translation of the book, Harvard Professor [[Harvey Mansfield|Harvey C. Mansfield]] calls it "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America."<ref>{{cite book|last=Tocqueville|first=Alexis de|title=Democracy in America|year=2000|publisher=The University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=0-226-80532-8}}</ref>

Tocqueville's work is often acclaimed for making a number of astute predictions. He anticipates the potential acrimony over the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition]] of [[slavery]] that would tear apart the United States and lead to the [[American Civil War]], as well as the eventual [[superpower]] rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, which exploded after [[World War II]] and spawned the [[Cold War]].{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

Noting the rise of the industrial sector in the American economy, Tocqueville argued{{citation needed|reason=Correctly? Has an actual "industrial aristocracy" risen from "ownership of labor"?|date=May 2023}}  that an industrial aristocracy would rise from the ownership of labor. He warned that 'friends of democracy must keep an anxious eye peeled in this direction at all times', observing that the route of industry was the gate by which a newfound wealthy class might potentially dominate, although he himself believed that an industrial aristocracy would differ from the formal aristocracy of the past.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

In spending several chapters lamenting the state of the arts in America, he fails to envision the literary renaissance{{citation needed|date=August 2021}} that would shortly arrive in the form of such major writers as [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[Henry David Thoreau]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Herman Melville]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], and [[Walt Whitman]]. Equally, in dismissing the country's interest in science as limited to pedestrian applications for streamlining the production of material goods, he failed to imagine America's burgeoning appetite for pure scientific research and discovery.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

According to Tocqueville, democracy had some unfavorable consequences: the tyranny of the majority over thought, a preoccupation with material goods, and isolated individuals.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}} ''Democracy in America'' was interpreted differently across national contexts. In France and the United States, Tocqueville's work was seen as liberal, whereas both progressives and conservatives in the British Isles interpreted his work as supporting their own positions.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bonin|first=Hugo|date=2021|title=Friend or foe? British receptions of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, 1835–1885|url=https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-021-00182-8|journal=British Politics|language=en|doi=10.1057/s41293-021-00182-8|s2cid=236226826 |issn=1746-9198|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Tocqueville's book can be compared with ''[[Letters on the English]]'' (1733) by [[Voltaire]] in how it flatteringly explains a nation to itself from the perspective of an outsider. Voltaire based his book on his experiences living in Great Britain as his compatriot Tocqueville did a century later in America, and according to the National Constitution Center, "Voltaire's passages on the spirit of commerce, religious diversity, religious freedom, and the English form of government also greatly influenced American thinking".<ref>{{cite news |title=Letters concerning the English Nation (1733) |url=https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/voltaireletters-concerning-the-english-nation-1733 |access-date=July 21, 2024 |publisher=National Constitution Center}}</ref>