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Drawing on Tocqueville's classic analysis of the American character, Achenbaum highlights tensions in the American ethos--between the social equality, competition, and individualism of a present-oriented America and the maintenance of community, social compacts, and generational obligations. He believes that contemporary trends are creating tensions requiring new adjustments in the nation's social compact.
Such contemporary trends as population aging require new adjustments.
Social compact is a fuzzy phrase in U.S. political discourse. When that sturdy band of Pilgrims pledged their collective futures to one another on the Mayflower, they viewed their pact as a sacred trust. Now, a "compact" carries less theological weight than a "covenant" It has less standing under the law than a "contract." But we still attach significance to social compacts because we presume (or hope) that they promote unity between generations. This connection was already evident in one of the classic texts that defines our American identity.
In 1831 the French government sent Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville to the New World to study the U.S. penal system. The two young aristocrats inspected prisons and toured the northeast extensively for nine months. After reporting back to officials, Tocqueville wrote two volumes of observations based on their experiences. Democracy in America is "one of the great and enduring works of political literature,' declared Henry Steele Commager (1967, p. 195), saying it combines "a great theme with a philosophy profound enough to comprehend it, a temperament judicious enough to interpret it, an intelligence acute enough to master it, (and) a style adequate to its demands"
Democracy in America is a masterpiece because Tocqueville succeeded in elevating what might simply have been another European's travel account into a (perceptive) critique of long-term developments in western history, one full of (pretty accurate) forecasts about future trends. The Frenchman relied on his powers of inductive reasoning as well as his discerning eye in analyzing the strengths and shortcomings of modem democracy. "I confess that in America I saw more than America," he wrote in the introduction to his first volume (1835). "I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress"
The scope of Democracy in America extends far beyond what the author actually witnessed. His critique of governance, comity, and values in Jacksonian America illuminated how democratic upheavals had transformed social relations and class-based politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Tocqueville believed that traditional rules of order, once held in tight control by aristocracies, were in the 1830s giving way to new social compacts renegotiated so as to empower ordinary men and women.
"Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more than the general equality of condition among the people;' Tocqueville asserted in the opening lines of Democracy in America. "It creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce." Understanding America, declared this soon of the Enlightenment, was away of gazing into the future. Tocqueville made clear that "progress" to date had not invariably promoted benevolence. Fascinated by the democratic ethos born of revolution, he nevertheless remembered that Parisian crowds in the 1790s had beheaded his noble grandfather. Tocqueville wondered whether the ind/i/dua/ and restlessness he associated with U.S. democracy would alter the citizenry's capacity to enter into social compacts in order to work together for mutually beneficial ends.
THE SOCIAL COMPACT IN TOCQUEVILLE'S AMERICA
Tocqueville elaborated his ambivalence about the future prospects of social compacts in the second volume of Democracy in America (1840). Whereas patriarchs held sway in aristocracies, generational succession in democracies gave rise to new voices. Such a radical transition, to Tocqueville's surprise, had not fundamentally disrupted ties between young and old, rich and poor, or men and women. The prevalence of relative equality in the United States was a far more critical factor in reworking social relations. "When the condition of society becomes democratic and men adopt as a general principle that it is good and lawful to judge of all things for oneself," he hypothesized, "the inevitable consequence is a sort of familiar intimacy, which renders authority less absolute and which can ill be reconciled with the external forms of respect"
Since tradition did not legitimize authority in the United States, would patriarchal influence dissipate? It was a reasonable inference, yet Tocqueville saw otherwise. Even Americans perpetually on the move kept connected with their kin. Tocqueville observed few sons who addressed their elders as respectfully as would be expected in polite European circles; they nonetheless routinely consulted their fathers for advice. Other evidence corroborates that the aged in antebellum America were valued for their expertise (Achenbaum, 1978). "In a democratic family the family exercises no other power than that which is granted to the affection and experience of age; his orders would perhaps be disobeyed, but his advice is for the most part authoritative .... The Master and constituted ruler have vanished; the father remains" Authority in the United States hinged on the authenticity of everyday exchanges and the efficacy of the advice proferred.
Equality of condition affected other aspects of the social compact, according to Tocqueville: "In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for one another, but they display general compassion for the members of the human race" Unconstrained by ancient codes of etiquette, Americans chose to cooperate with one another when it seemed beneficial. Tocqueville reported that Americans rallied more quickly than Europeans in emergencies and natural disasters. Altruism was not the motivation. Doing good was a shrewd investment, according to the Frenchman: Since everyone was aware of life's contingencies, people helped one another if and when necessary.
Sometimes Tocqueville's assumptions overstepped his evidence. Unlike the English, who retained all "the bloody traces of the Middle Ages in their penal legislation,' Americans, he claimed prematurely, "have almost expunged capital punishment from their codes" Tocqueville also discounted blatant inequalities in the antebellum period. The "frightful misery" of African Americans "exposed to very cruel punishments" disturbed him, but few abolitionists would have shared the aristocrat's opinion that the iniquity resulted basically from chattel status. Slavery's opponents stressed that racism fueled exploitation in the name of unbridled capitalism. Such biases notwithstanding, Tocqueville's central message remains as pertinent today as it did when first published: Americans were humane to others as long as compassion did not preclude their rights as citizens to pursue their ambitions.
Personal interests change, however. All parties sought their comparative advantage in Democracy in America. Some won, some lost. The competitive pace quickened. Tocqueville's diagnosis jibes with that of economic historians. Inequality of wealth and income was greater in the 1830s and 1840s than in any other period of U.S. history except the Reagan presidency (Blumenthal and Edsall, 1988; Pessen, 1974). Individual desires for change resulted in collective insecurities, which in turn fomented dislocations. Societal instability in the Age of Jackson undercut many social compacts. To Tocqueville, this instability explained why neither past nor future mattered much to present-minded Americans: "In the midst of these perpetual fluctuations of his lot, the present looms large upon his mind; it hides the future, which becomes indistinct, and men seek only to think about tomorrow"
As Tocqueville predicted, generation after generation of subsequent commentators expressed grave fears about the future of U.S. democracy. Citizens seemed rootless. With little chance of inheriting great wealth (until recently), young people rarely paid obeisance to the dead hand of the past. Average Americans, having achieved a measure of success surpassing what their own parents earned, expected to enjoy a decent standard of living for the rest of their lives. Few feared living so long as to become utterly dependent on their families for support.
No wonder, then, that Americans preferred short-term commitments. Only a few long-range social investments seemed worth the effort. Paradoxically, Americans were anxious about having enough for bad times ahead, but were unwilling to do much in the present to allay their fears about future dependency.
Tocqueville's remedy to the rampant individualism that he deplored in America anticipated those that later politicians would use to justify social compacts such as the Welfare State:
Governments must apply themselves to restore to men that love of the future with which relation and the state of society no longer inspire them; and, without saying so, they must practically teach the community day by day that wealth, fame, and power are rewards of labor, that great success stands at the utmost range of long desires, and that theirs is nothing lasting but which is obtained by toil (Tocqueville, 1840: II, p. 160).
Fair wages, argued Tocqueville, fostered good relations between labor and management. And he enunciated in the 184os a theme that gained considerable currency a century later: Expanding opportunities make meaningful activities available to all. Americans, in contrast to their European counterparts, did not need programs primarily to aid the unemployed and unemployable. Valuing work was an essential feature of making social compacts.
The state, according to Tocqueville, should supplement rather than supplant family connections. The Frenchman envisioned a new role for the public sector, one that complemented changes in family relations in the midst of the Great Transition from aristocratic regimes to democratic polities. Since government no longer served as the focus of religious pieties or the locus of gentry politics, he reasoned, leaders must develop new forms of social compacts. "Modem" governments had to convince insecure, ordinary citizens that it was in their best interest to prepare for a future they could not control, to capitalize on manifest destinies not yet imagined.
SOME LESSONS FROM THE PAST
Democracy in America remains required reading because its message endures. Tocqueville delighted in the novel conditions he found in the United States, but he appreciated that many features of human behavior transcended time and place. Because they have much in common with Jacksonian Democrats, contemporary readers can identify with his drama.tis personae. Now, as then, nearly everybody wishes to pursue private goals, but few can do so without help from others. Hence we need to forge social compacts, long term and short range, with intimates or strangers.
Because of the complexity of such interactions, the Frenchman in his conceptual framework distinguished carefully aspects of various institutional arrangements and interpersonal relationships. All states had paternalistic features, yet democratic leaders rarely were mistaken for patriarchs. Nor was the family simply a little commonwealth. Domestic relations varied from household to household. Because of the timelessness of its historical lessons, Democracy in America still offers many insights about social compacts to present-day readers.
That said, it must be quickly added that Tocqueville probably would feel compelled to reise this thesis to take account of at least three trends that he did not foresee when he wrote up his travel notes more than 160 years ago.
First, dramatic gains in life expectancy at birth, plus notable ones in middle age, have extended the time over which Americans enter into social compacts. The good news is that having extra years permits people access to greater resources over their lives. For some, this means new retirement options, such as tutoring, that will have future payoffs for rising generations. The downside is evident in the dire public-policy forecasts (which fuel the public's fear that Social Security will go bust in the next century). Uncertainty makes Americans receptive to doomsday scenarios about the demographic revolution under va (Pifer and Bronte, 1986; Riley, Kahn, and Foner, 1994).
Second, changes in marriage and divorce patterns have redirected the ways people of all ages view domestic ties. Lawmakers and social scientists worry about how changes in family relations affect the well-being of children and caregiving for the elderly. Not only are parentoffspring connections affected, but so are filial responsibilities. Gendered differences nowadays take on greater significance than in the past, in part because of widening divergences between male and female life-expectancy trends (Bengtson and Achenbaum, 1993; Cherlin, 1988).
Third, the rise of age-based political groupings affects solidarity within and across generational lines. Who could have imagined that AARP, serving people over so, would become the nation's second largest voluntary association? Others in the gray lobby represent various ethnic, occupational, religious, and regional lines. Age-based interests have also given rise to a new set of tensions. The public policy group the Concord Coalition elaborates a theme that Americans for Generational Equity brilliantly advanced in the 1980s. Capitalizing on the concerns of baby boomers and generation x, such groups stress the size of the federal deficit. In due course, thev claim, wasteful entitlements will eviscerate public programs designed to protect the nation's collective future and threaten their own wellbeing (Morgan, 1998; Torres-Gil, 1992).
Tocqueville surely would acknowledge that such factors add yet another layer of complexity to the portrait of Democracy in America he depicted. But the Frenchman would have been more surprised had life in the United States frozen in time. If "modern society" were "invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners," he observed, then "the mind will swing backwards and fons,ards forever without begetting fresh ideas."
Social compacts, like fresh ideas, were vital links for an America perpetually in motion during the 1830s. As such, compacts had to change to accommodate ever more diverse needs. We too much adjust the way we think to address the promises and paradoxes of population aging. We have much to do if we are to fulfill Tocqueville's vision of a society that respects differences and honors the inherent worth of ever, citizen.
REFERENCES
Achenbaum, VV: A. Iy-8. Old Age in the New Land. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bengtson, V L., and Achenbaum, NV. A. 1993. The Changing Contact Across Ge>i7s. New York: Aldine de Gru',ter.
Blumenthal, S., and Edsall, T. B. 1988. The Reagan Le,ga,. New York: Pantheon Books.
Cherlin, A. J. 1988. The Changing American Famnily and Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute. Coin.1ger, H. S. 1967. The Search for a Usable Past. New York: Knopf.
Morgan, D., ed. 1998. "The Baby Boom at Midlife and Beyond" Generations 22(1).
Pessen, E. 1974. Three Centuries of Social Mobility in America. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath.
Pier, A., and Bronte, L., eds. I986. Our ging Society. New York: Norton.
Riley, M. XV., Kahn, R. L., and Foner, A., eds. 1994. Age and Structural Lag. New York: Wiley Interscience.
Tocqueville, A. 1835, 184o. Democracy in America, 2 vols. P Bradley, ed. (1945). New York: Vintage Books. Torres-Gil, F. 1992. The New Aging. New York: Auburn House.
W. Andrew Achenbaum, Ph.D., is a professor of history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a research scientist in its Institute of Gerontology.
Copyright American Society on Aging Winter 1998/1999