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“Plus ça change…”: Innovation and the Spirit of Enterprise in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Christine Dunn Henderson
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Abstract

Tocqueville describes the spirit of enterprise—along with the taste for material well-being—as “the distinctive characteristic” of the American people. This paper explores the American spirit of innovation and enterprise, beginning with the centrality of this spirit for America's commercial greatness. Tocqueville observes that the taste for innovation is a part of American national character, and its roots can be traced to the equality of conditions which characterizes democratic life. But the same equality of conditions which promotes the spirit of innovation also can also threaten it, for equality of conditions paradoxically encourages individuals both to rely upon their own judgment and to defer to the majority's. Although the effects of the spirit of innovation in the commercial realm are positive, its effects on other aspects of American life are more ambiguous.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , Fall 2005 , pp. 753 - 774
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005

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References

I am indebted to Eugene Miller and Dwight Lee for encouraging me to think about this aspect of Tocqueville's thought, and also to Mark E. Yellin for reading a draft and for trying to keep me from error. This essay is dedicated to the memory of my father.

1. de Tocqueville, Alexis, Journey to England and Ireland, edited by Mayer, J.P. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 116. The ellipses are Tocqueville's.Google Scholar

2. de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America. Translated by Mansfield, Harvey C. and Winthrop, Delba (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Subsequent references to Democracy in America will be within the text, as DA, followed by the page number referring to this edition.

3. See Nolla's, EduardoDe la Démocratic en Amérique, tome I (Paris: J. VRIN, 1990), 249 (note h). Unless otherwise noted, translations from French are my own.Google Scholar

4. There is a lively debate on the general themes considered in this chapter, primarily centering on whether the topics investigated are generally democratic or specifically American. See, for example, Lamberti's, Jean-ClaudeTocqueville and the Two Democracies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 13, 21.Google Scholar As part of his “two democracies” argument, Drescher follows Tocqueville's own characterization of the topics as particularly American (see Drescher's, Seymour “Comparison and Synthesis in Democracy in America,” in Reconsidering Tocqueville's Democracy in America, ed. Eisenstadt, Abraham S. [New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1988], p. 79Google Scholar). By contrast, Manent observes that although the chapter purports to describe specifically American things, the depiction of Americans in the discussion of commercial heroism corresponds to the general portrait of the democratic individual (Manent, Pierre, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy [Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996], p. 58).Google Scholar Tocqueville does indeed characterize the topics discussed in I.2.10 as “American without being democratic” (DA 303), yet he also notes how difficult it is “to separate out what is in untangling what is democratic, commercial, English, and Puritan” (Tocqueville quoted in Lamberti, p. 13.)Google Scholar Sean Wilentz quotes this same passage, concluding that Tocqueville “never really did untangle it all” (Wilentz, Sean, “On Tocqueville and Jacksonian America,” Reconsidering Tocqueville's Democracy in America, ed. Eisenstadt, Abraham S. [New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1988], p. 224).Google Scholar

5. See Nolla, , tome 1, 305.Google Scholar

6. Tocqueville claims that American vessels transport 90% of European goods coming to the U.S., as well as 75% of American goods being shipped to Europe. See DA 385.Google Scholar

7. This image—along with the sad pioneer woman of II.III.10—is one of the most memorable and powerful in Democracy in America

8. Nolla, , tome I, 307.Google Scholar

9. Ibid.

10. Manent's reading of this passage emphasizes anxiety as the cause of the merchant's single-minded pursuit of a speedier crossing. He sees this anxiety [inquiétude], which is produced by the universal passion for well-being and by the burden placed on individuals to choose the best means for achieving material prosperity, as characteristic of democratic ages. (Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, p. 56).Google Scholar Manent reads the house building example in the same vein.

11. See DA, I.I.3.

12. Kahan's assertion that “in the aristocratic liberals’ presentation of the commercial spirit mediocrity was often as prominent as money-making” neglects this aspect of Tocqueville's presentation (see Kahan, Alan S., Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992], p. 41Google Scholar). By contrast, Manent emphasizes intentionality in Tocqueville's use of “heroism” to describe commercial activity (Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, p. 57).Google Scholar

13. See Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, XX.1.2.7–8. Tocqueville's debt to Montesquieu is widely acknowledged. On this point, see Lamberti, Jean-Claude, Tocqueville and the Two Democracies, p. 180Google Scholar; also, Kelly, George Armstrong, The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zetterbaum, Marvin, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 57.Google Scholar Lamberti points out, however, that Tocqueville believed democracy rather than commerce tempers moeurs. While also noting the Montesquieuian point of departure to Tocqueville's argument, Kelly emphasizes the connections between war and commerce, observing that Tocqueville “has no confidence that supplementing the one with the other is a critical step toward freedom” (Kelly, , The Humane Comedy, p. 69).Google Scholar

14. See Nolla, , tome I, 306,Google Scholar where this comment was crossed out of Tocqueville's text.

15. Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, p. xvii.Google Scholar On this point, I am also indebted to the students who pressed me on this question during a discussion at the Summer University in Aix-en-Provence.

16. Zetterbaum, , Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy, p. 35.Google Scholar

17. Michael Zuckert observes the same relationship between territory and outlook. Contrasting Tocqueville with Montesquieu's environmental determinism, Zuckert notes, “Tocqueville's point is not that physical nature is irrelevant, but that it exerts its influence via the intermediary variable of social state” (Zuckert, Michael, “On Social State,” in Tocqueville's Defense of Human Liberty, ed. Lawler, Peter Augustine and Alulis, Joseph [New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993], p. 6).Google Scholar

18. See also Tocqueville's treatment of local institutions as the schools of liberty (DA I.I.5).

19. Kaledin, Arthur, “Tocqueville's apocalypse: culture, politics and freedom in Democracy in America,” The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, 26, no. 1 (2005): 63.Google Scholar

20. Manent describes equality of conditions as the defining characteristic of democratic society (Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, 10).Google Scholar Welch observes that Tocqueville often employs equality of conditions as a “virtual synonym” for democracy and that his typical usage of democracy includes “equality of conditions (the absence of ascriptive classes, with rights, occupations, and social functions open to every citizen) and the psychological tendencies that such equality naturally encourages. The most important of these tendencies,” she continues, “are a deep passion for equality and a penchant for independent action” (Welch, Cheryl B., De Tocqueville [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 66.)Google Scholar See also Kaledin's characterization of the lack of obstacles to change as democracy's most salient feature (Kaledin, Arthur, “Tocqueville's apocalypse: culture, politics and freedom in Democracy in America,” 86).Google Scholar

21. Tocqueville, believed this was “without example in the world” (DA 429).Google Scholar

22. See, for example, DA I.II.10 on the importance of moral qualities for commercial success, and also DA I.II.9 on the primacy of moeurs over laws.

23. After the lines just quoted, the working manuscript contains an additional passage, emphasizing the effects of the western expansion on the individual: “Every day they notice their size growing and their strength increasing, and they already perceive themselves in the future leading as absolute masters of the vast continent that they have made fruitful and cleared” (Nolla, , tome 2, 75).Google Scholar

24. DA I.I.3. The translation is mine.

25. An almost identical statement is found at DA 424: “Equality disposes men to want to judge for themselves.” Made in the context of Tocqueville's discussion of Roman Catholicism in the United States, this statement concludes: “but it also gives them a taste for and idea of a single social power that is simple and the same for all.”

26. Manent argues that the democratic man's preference for his own judgment produces vanity rather than the type of genuine independence upon which innovation depends. seeManent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, p. 40.Google Scholar

27. In reading this passage, commentators often emphasize the competition for material success and democratic man's resulting anxiety and unhappiness. See, for example, Zetterbaum, , Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy, pp. 65 and 69Google Scholar; see also Seidentop, , Tocqueville, p. 75.Google Scholar Manent, who describes anxiety as “the key word which explains the enigmas of democratic man,” also stresses that the anxiety of competition is felt more strongly than the material pleasures which might be attained (Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, pp. 59–60).Google Scholar While not denying the anxiety inherent in democratic inquiétude, I would suggest that a more optimistic reading is also possible.

28. See, for example, Smith's, AdamWealth of Nations, Book VGoogle Scholar, chapter 1 and Say's, Jean-BaptisteTreatise on Political Economy, vol. I, chapter 8.Google Scholar

29. This comment is found in a circled passage at this point of Tocqueville's working manuscript. See Nolla, , tome I, 307.Google Scholar

30. Although he places less emphasis on innovation as a component of American commercial greatness, John Adams Wettergreen also associates the spirit of independence, commercial greatness, and the mores which preserve American freedom. His argument also makes the important distinction between individual independence, which preserves freedom, and individualism, an “anti-social and anti-political moral attitude” which can endanger freedom. See Wettergreen, John Adam, “Modern Commerce” in Interpreting Tocqueville's ‘Democracy in America,’; ed. Masugi, Ken (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1991), p. 220.Google Scholar See also DA I.II.9 and II.II.2.

31. Calling freedom of thought the “most indispensable” of the “extra-institutional factors affecting liberty,” Lamberti views this as the most original part of Tocqueville's analysis of majority (Lamberti, , Tocqueville and the Two Democracies, p. 119).Google Scholar See also Manent's extended discussion of the manner in which majority opinion acquires strength as the individual's confidence in his own opinion erodes (Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, pp. 40–41)Google Scholar, and Siedentop on this same process, which he calls “a moral aberration” (Siedentop, Larry, Tocqueville, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], pp. 81–2).Google Scholar

32. Welch sees this tension one of Tocqueville's central themes. “Throughout Democracy in America, he explores the paradox that the democratic patterns of living and thinking that have come to structure American and French societies represent at once a complex process of collective human innovation and a constraint on the capacity to innovate in the future” (Welch, , De Tocqueville, 104).Google Scholar

33. According to Tocqueville, “Omnipotence seems to me to be an evil and dangerous thing in itself. Its exercise appears to me above the strength of man, whoever he may be, and I see only God who can be omnipotent without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. There is therefore no authority on earth so respectable in itself or vested with a right so sacred that I should wish to allow to act without control and to dominate without obstacles. Therefore, when I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether it is exercised in a monarchy or in a republic, I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws” (DA 241).

34. See Nolla, tome 2,22 (note o).

35. Manent describes the fact that equality can both encourage and quell the independent qualities which are keys to preventing this type of majority tyranny as the “paradox of democratic liberty” (Manent, , Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, p. 22).Google Scholar

36. See I.II.8. Although not treated in this chapter, associations offer still another remedy to the omnipotence of the majority. See Welch, , De Tocqueville, pp. 89, 92–3.Google Scholar

37. He writes, “Le grand péril des âges démocratiques, soyez-en sûr, ćest la destruction ou l'affaiblissement excessif des parties du corps social en présence du tout. Tout ce qui relève de nos jours l'idée de l'individu est sain” (italics original). Letter of 3 February 1840, to Henry Reeve, in Tocqueville, , Lettres Choisies: Souvenirs, 1814–1859. ed. Mélonio, Françoise and Guellec, Laurence (Paris: Quarto Gallimard, 2003), p. 457.Google Scholar

38. See Democracy in America, II.II.6. There, Tocqueville asserts that the “constantly renewed agitation” which spills from political to civil life is both the “true” and “the greatest advantage of democratic government.” The ensuing discussion highlights the connection between the public and private spheres, noting that democratic political life “spreads throughout the body social a restless activity, superabundant force, and energy never found elsewhere, which, however little favored by circumstance, can do wonders” (DA 244).

39. See II.II.13.

40. Tocqueville also emphasizes this point in a passage contrasting the gravity of Americans in a tavern with the joyousness of the more carefree Indians gathered outside. See Nolla, tome 2,124 (note b).

41. “Religious peoples,” says Tocqueville, “are therefore naturally strong in precisely the spot where democratic peoples are weak” (DA 419). See also DA 422 on religion's check on excessive materialism and Tocqueville's earlier discussion of the manner in which religion “restricts the action of individual analysis within narrow limits and spares from it several of the most important human opinions” (DA 406). On the relationship between the innovative spirit and religion, one of Tocqueville's most telling statements describes religion battling “the spirit of individual independence that is the most dangerous of all to it” (DA 424).

42. Tocqueville includes sciences, literature, and the arts under the general category of things of the mind which will attract more people in democratic societies than in aristocratic ones (DA II.I.9).

43. See also II.I.l, in which Tocqueville observes that the naturally Cartesian Americans have never read that philosopher's works “because their social state turns them away from speculative studies” (DA 403).

44. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (New York: The Library of America, 2004), p. 529.Google Scholar