http://i5.nyu.edu/~ms126/deTocqueville.htm
Capitalism and the pursuit of individual wealth are seen as hallmarks of contemporary American culture. Indeed, de Tocqueville remarks upon this in Democracy in America. However, ideas about profit, corporations, capitalism, and the individual have all shifted radically in the past 200 years. Drawing on the sources you have read, the film Roger and Me, and class lectures, discuss changing ideas about individuality and corporations in American culture and how contemporary ideas are both different and similar to those that de Tocqueville witnessed in the 1830s.
..nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people … it creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce… It has there been able to spread in perfect freedom and peaceably to determine the character of the laws by influencing the manners of the country. (de Tocqueville, 1988:Introduction) When Tocqueville visited … it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work… There is striking evidence, however, that the vibrancy of American civil society has notably declined over the past several decades (Putnam 1995:65-66) … The most whimsical yet discomfiting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so. Between 1980 and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent. (Putnam, 1995:70)	
On the surface, Robert Putnam’s example of ‘bowling alone’ has little to do with the ‘vibrancy of civil society.’ However, he goes on to point out that nearly a third more Americans bowled in 1993 than voted in the 1994 congressional elections. Bowling is more popular than voting. Surveys by the Roper Organization and the U.S. Labor Department as well as the General Social Survey demonstrate a marked decline in traditional civic associations such as unions, the PTA and the Lions and Elks over the past two and one half decades. (Putnam 1995:66-70) The contradiction between this civic disengagement and Tocqueville’s observations of 160 years ago helps to highlight the myths and generalizations about individual freedom, profit, and capitalism put forth both by scholars and by Americans themselves. In the discussion that follows, I hope to shed light on some of these assumptions and meanings.
When de Tocqueville traveled to the United States in 1831, it took 37 days to cross the ocean. There were no satellite communications, no television, telephone or even telegraph. Consensus on political issues was reached after time consuming discussion carried on with difficulty over great distances. African Americans were enslaved. North America was largely unpopulated. To be sure, radical changes were already taking place. In Virginia, Nat Turner led his slave revolt that August. President Jackson was championing the common man, and native Americans were forcibly migrated from eastern states into western territories. 
Turner, Tocqueville and the Myth and Reality of Frontier
De Tocqueville saw democracy, revolution, social equality and self-reliance as central to the American character and the peaceable nature of the American democracy. Settlers arrived with fresh start dreams of owning land, improving oneself by the fruits of one’s labor and escaping religious intolerance. They fought a revolution against a distant colonial government. Abundant land in the west provided a real opportunity for them to escape and start over again, free of government interference. Frederick Jackson Turner’s well-known thesis about the role of the frontier as a ‘safety-valve’ in American society may not have been completely accurate, however. While the Homestead Act provided 160 acres of land to those that could scrape together the ten dollars, Carl Degler points out that "starting a farm in the West in the nineteenth century [cost] in excess of a year and a half’s income of the average urban worker if he was fortunate enough to work all year." (Degler 1959:129). Much Homestead land was resold at a profit by speculators, actually fostering the consolidation of farming into an industry, while huge tracts were granted to the railroads. Nevertheless, by the acceptance of Turner’s ideas, the perception that the west was a way out became crucial to the sense of optimism, that belief in the future and a second chance that is so deeply embedded in the American character. But if this myth has a basis in fact, there were no such opportunities for native Americans. Forced to migrate from their original eastern homes, they were then labeled as ‘savages,’ whose tradition of communal landholding impeded the settlers’ own westward migration. The secret agenda of manifest destiny was the genocide of Indian nations, a fact hidden by the giddiness of the Turner thesis (Trachtenberg, 1982:28). By 1900, only 20,000 natives were left, from the 2 million that had lived here before. It took the Civil War to settle the issue of whether or not slavery would exist in the western territories. A discussion of 19th century frontier Americans’ aspirations is possible only when also considering that freedom to get ahead meant the freedom of white Europeans to get ahead, over the suffering of others. 
Jacksonian Democracy and Laissez-Faire
Americans, ever distrustful of authority, made the issue of weak central government into a major conflict at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The so-called ‘conservatives’ won out and created a much stronger central government than had existed under the Articles of Confederation. ‘Radicals’ were opposed to all authority that threatened local control. The names given to these tendencies may be different today, but we can readily identify, in general terms, the current Republicans with the radicals, and the Democrats with the conservatives. During the age of Andrew Jackson, there was much talk of the common man and laissez-faire government. Jacksonian notions of freedom enabled revolutionary changes in transportation and industrial production. The Supreme Court’s 1837 Charles River Bridge Company decision established the rights of businesses to freely incorporate. Until this time, charters for incorporation were considered a special privilege, a notion opposed to the Jacksonian ideal. (Degler 1959:149-150). Now railroads and industrial enterprises had an environment conducive to unrestricted capital formation and growth. Social and reform movements concerned with the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and free public education had their origins in this era. In 1844, it was written into the New Jersey constitution that no state funds would be diverted to private educational institutions. Today we see that the voucher and charter school movement entirely contradicts this notion. However, both circumstances are born out of the idea of freedom; in the first case, free education for all in order to create a new homogeneous society, and in the latter, the freedom to choose which school your child will attend. 
Machines vs. Men
While Jacksonian liberalism set the stage for social and economic changes, it was the accelerated growth of capitalism during the Civil War that transformed the relationship of labor to industry. The new machines, geometrically increasing labor productivity and fetishized at World Expositions in 1876 and 1893 as "the very engines of a democratic future" (Tracthtenberg, 1982:38), turned traditional ideas about progress and social mobility upside down. Entrepreneurial, skilled and semi-skilled classes of craftsmen with their hopes for advancement were suddenly transformed into a permanent class of industrial workers fighting for wages and decent working conditions. This seemed to them to be a betrayal of labor that negated self-determination, and gave "outsiders" control of the conditions of making a living in one’s own town. (Doukas, 1997:379). In their constitution, the Knights of Labor called for eight hour days, graduated income taxes, government ownership of utilities, other progressive and socialist measures. (Trachtenberg, 1982:99). The idea that workers in American society had a fair chance for a better lot in life was shaken when the distribution of wealth tilted in favor of the capitalists. Requiring minority control and investor financing to raise the capital necessary for heavy industry and distribution to distant markets, capitalism was vulnerable to market fluctuations, investor panics as in 1877 and 1893, and ultimately depression and civil strife. Railroad trusts, the multi-national corporations of their day, carefully and deliberately exploited the dependencies of local businesses on rail transport. They fixed prices, and swallowed up competitors. The culmination of early labor unrest was the United Mine Workers’ Great Coal Strike of 1902, during which President Roosevelt considered nationalization of the mines. Instead, the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission was established at the urging of Roosevelt’s Secretary of War (who happened to be an associate of banker J.P. Morgan), to arbitrate the long strike as a way of co-opting the miners’ demands. The Report to the President (cited in Doukas, 1997:387) overwhelmingly supported the trusts in declaring them natural outgrowths of capitalism. However, the railroads, mining companies and their apologists portrayed this arbitration as ‘capitulation’ to union demands, the beginning of unfair union influence.
Despite the numerous labor struggles in the years following, American workers have only reluctantly identified themselves as working class. A Fortune magazine poll cited by Professor Degler found that 47 percent of the sample identified themselves as middle class and only 15 percent said they were "lower or working class," a familiar result to American pollsters (in Degler, 1959:269). Identifying with those on the social scale above you, because there is a chance that you will rise to the higher status, remains a prominent idea in American society, and may be one reason there has been no socialist revolution in the United States. 
Alexis in Wonderland
Certainly the resistance, demands or dissatisfaction toward our capitalist system of beliefs is well contained by our media and advertising. Tocqueville could not have imagined the degree of capitalist hegemony, or the widening gap between rich and poor in the world today. He believed that the democratic process would eventually resolve these problems. Reagan-era tax cuts created budget deficits that were paid for by the dismantling of social programs, further increasing the disparity of wealth between rich and poor. It is still a widely held belief today among Americans that capitalism distributes wealth fairly, and that there is a degree of freedom of economic choice. Corporations are certainly free to choose to seek cheap labor abroad, where they employ subcontractors to produce sneakers for pennies a pair, which are then sold for a huge profit in the U.S. Freedom of choice, in this process, is reduced to the type of sneakers we choose to purchase from the choices given in television and print advertising. 
Notions of class are rarely presented realistically in the movies or on television. Soap operas and movies present images of rich people with problems ‘just like everyone else’s’ whom we should not envy. The Shirley Temple depression-era movies are held up as a good example of this sort: rich people aren’t so bad, they are just grumpy old people that nobody loves, and will be happy if you give them a little song and dance! (Parenti, 1999:93). Class remains essentially unchallenged in contemporary American culture.
Recently, Americans have shown by Republican votes at the polls that they have a distaste for government control of business, but not of government subsidy of business through tax cuts, or of the influence by businesses on politicians through aggressive campaign financing. Profit by any means necessary appears to be the business mantra of our time. By the measure of previous ideas about common good in American culture, this is a radical notion, taking Jacksonian laissez-faire to an extreme. In Michael Moore’s film "Roger and Me," GM Chairman Roger Smith speaks of "individual dignity" at Christmas time, unaware of the ironic Dickensian backdrop Moore provides, footage of Deputy Fred evicting yet another Flint family from their home because they lost their job at a GM plant. The plant moved to seek cheaper labor abroad. Clearly GM did not believe it is their responsibility as a corporation to provide anything to workers but an hourly paycheck. This labor climate is taken for granted by younger American workers, who begin speculating in the stock market at a very young age, having no memory of the unions’ glory days, and no faith in Social Security or pension funds.
Robert Putnam defends his thesis of social disengagement in the Bowling Alone article by pointing out that newer organizations such as NOW, the AARP and others, while unquestionably important, do not typically play the same role as traditional civic associations. People usually have not met, and their involvement is at the level of check-writing. (Putnam, 1995:69-70). Self help organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous also differ in that they merely provide a place for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others:
"The social contract binding members together asserts only the weakest of obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone's opinion. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied. We can imagine that [these small groups] really substitute for families, neighborhoods, and broader community attachments that may demand lifelong commitments, when, in fact, they do not. (Wuthnow 1994:45 in Putnam, 1995:77)	
Academic critics of Putnam’s article felt that bowling was an outmoded measure of social participation, and that we need statistics about more "modern" activities, such as community service learning in colleges. In an email forum in March of 1996, Professor Gary Hesser of Augsburg College takes Putnam’s point of view to heart: 
…community service, especially some of what I assign my students to do in course embedded service, as well as internships, can be very individualistically oriented. Putnam and others are reminding us that we need to address the collaborative, community building aspect often associated with citizenship and community organizing. If service becomes the end in itself, instead of community building and a deepening sense of mutuality and "common fate", then we should re-examine our assumptions and practices. (<http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/service-learning/96/mar96/0010.html>).	
Community building is necessary at a time when people do not place value on discourse in consideration of public affairs. The average child reads 20 minutes a day, but watches television 3-5 hours. Americans are in danger of making all of their political decisions by watching television. I believe it was Ross Perot who came up with the idea of having Americans provide instant feedback on any issue by using their addressable cable boxes. This was a simplistic notion that overlooks the threat of a tyranny of the majority and the danger of doing instant analyses of complex problems without having enough information or time to reflect. The types of primary voluntary associations that Tocqueville saw as important are in a state of flux. Americans are forming new kinds of associations. Protests at the World Trade Organization meeting last December in Seattle, during which Teamsters and Greens found commonality of interest in their opposition to WTO policies, may signal a coming realignment of social forces into new, politically significant civic engagements. History is not over, a point of view that was widely and superficially discussed when the Eastern European block left the Soviet Empire, and then the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. 
Marable Manning, Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University suggests that socialism in America lost its way when it divorced itself from the democratic process. 
…To challenge those great divisions one needs specific formations that draw upon the collective memories and resistance movements of those who have been oppressed. But the key in understanding their power is also in understanding their limited vision. Because there is no Black strategy for health care that can be addressed solely by working within the Black community; there’s no strategy in New York City for providing decent public transportation for Latinos and Latinos alone; there’s no strategy that will clean up the environment for Pacific Island Americans alone. So we have to be aware of the power and importance of organizing not just around identity, but the materiality of daily life, which still in many respects is racialized for people of color. You build from that, but you have a grander social vision that transcends it and recognizes the strengths and limitations that are drawn from the particularity of identity. (Marable, 1998)	
Perhaps a more equitable society can be built through struggles of those groups who have been disenfranchised. Alexis de Tocqueville would not be disappointed.
References Cited
C-SPAN 1998 Conversation on Democracy Folger Shakespeare Library <http://www.c-spanstore.com/c-spanstore/100750.html>, Washington, D, ID: 100750 February 17, 1998 - 2:07 Watch the two-hour special in RealVideo <http://www.c-span.org/ram/tokespec.ram> John Splaine, Professor, University of Maryland, Education, Manning Marable, Chairman, Columbia University, Black Studies, Randy Tate, Executive Director, Christian Coalition, Roberta Cooper Ramo, President (Fmr.), American Bar Association, Morgan Knull, Student , Myia Alston, Student, George Washington University, Vivian Perdomo, Student, University of Maryland 	
de Tocqueville, Alexis 1988 Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence New York: HarperTrade. Read Democracy in America <http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html> online!	
Toom, Andrew 1998 A Russian Teacher in America in Distant Mirrors: America as a Foreign Culture, eds. Philip R. DeVita and James D. Armstrong. Belmont: Wadsworth. Chapter 15, pp. 108-124	
Degler, Carl 1959 Out of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America New York:Harper & Row	
Doukas, Dimitria 1997 Corporate Capitalism on Trial: The Hearings of the Anthracite Coal Commission, 1902-1903. Identities 3(3):367-398.	
Edgerton, Russ 1995 Interview with Robert Putnam in American Association for Higher Education Bulletin (September 1995) Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University	
Foster, Lawrence 1995 Sexuality and Relationships in Shaker, Oneida, and Mormon Communitites. Communities. 87:52-56	
Marable, Manning 1998 A Humane Society is Possible through Struggle An Interview with Manning By South End Press in Zmagazine <http://www.lbbs.org/zmag/articles/marableint.htm> 	
Moore, Michael 1989 Film Roger and Me	
Parenti, Michael 1999 Affluent class and corporate brass in the make believe media. In Mass politics: the politics of popular culture. Daniel M. Shea (ed.) pp 92-103. New York: St. Martins/WORTH.	
Putnam, Robert 1993 Making Democracy Work Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press	
Putnam, Robert 1995 Bowling Alone <http://jhupress.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v006/putnam.html> in Journal of Democracy <http://www.ned.org/jod/jod.htm> 6:1 January 1995, 65-78	
Sacks, Karen 1994 How did Jews become white folks? in Race. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (eds) New Brunswick:Rutgers University Press	
Trachtenberg, Alan 1982 The incorporation of America: culture and society in the gilded age. New York: Hill and Wang.	
Wuthnow, Robert 1994 Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community. New York: The Free Press