Commerce, Democracy, and Fortune: Smith and Tocqueville on Equality and Chance

Abstract

Considering the role of chance in life cuts to the question of how much control and responsibility we have, individually and collectively. Today, we have an ambivalent view of fortune, simultaneously overemphasizing and underemphasizing its influence in our lives; we are sensitive about its presence even as we seek to minimize it. Such ambivalence and sensitivity follow from our passion for equality, which is the underlying principle of both commerce and democracy. I draw on Smith and Tocqueville—exemplary analysts of the rise of commerce and democracy, respectively—to demonstrate the relationship between equality and chance. I argue that as we come to see one another as equals, both socially and psychologically, we are more attentive to differences in fortune, both good and bad, and thus to fortune’s effects at large. The egalitarian nature of commercial and democratic society therefore broadens imaginative identification with others, while likewise opening individuals to the fact of contingency and chance, which encourages reflection that one’s situation could be otherwise. Consequently, there is a risk that individuals come to feel overwhelmed by a sense that fortune governs their lives, which may lead them to withdraw their support for the regime of commerce and democracy.