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The question of how best to combine the political form of a republic
with the economic form of a commercial society has fascinated Anglo-American
thinkers since the colonial period. In the seventeenth century,
the godly commonwealths of New England grappled with the consequences
of material success for salvation; further south, the mid-Atlantic
colonies established representative assemblies while also engaging
in the unsavory innovation of bringing chattel slavery to the American
mainland. Throughout this long history, Americans have worked to
construct a constitution-centered political theory capable of embracing
the twin strands of republicanism and commerce that have been so
central to their experience. In
Reconstructing the Commercial Republic, Stephen L. Elkin
takes up this story of commonwealth and commerce. Elkin describes
his project as setting out "a theory of political constitution"
(251). The specific constitution that Elkin has in mind is that
of the "commercial republic," which he defines as "a popular limited
self-government married to an economic system marked by a significant
measure of private ownership" (xi). Since its articulation by
James Madison, Elkin argues, the constitutional basis of the commercial
republic has weakened. With this book, he aims to shore up both
the commercial republic itself and the habits of political thought
that will support it.
As the title of the book suggests,
Elkin's account contains both descriptive and normative components.
Elkin identifies six fundaments of Madison's theory of the commercial
republic, including "institutions designed to prevent factions—particularly
majority factions—from controlling government"; institutions
that encourage "deliberative ways of lawmaking"; and, finally,
"a social basis for the regime," meaning "men of standing and
property whose self-interest overlaps with the public interest,
and who might be induced to take a large view of their interests,
thus increasing the overlap" (21).
Elkin then shifts to a normative
posture to consider the modern American republic. The analysis
gains momentum at this point, as Elkin's critique of the current
political regime dovetails with his analysis of the shortcomings
of Madisonian theory. Taken together, he argues, the two lines
of interpretation suggest that the twenty-first-century republic
is faltering. The chief failing of Madison's vision of the republic,
Elkin asserts, was its lack of "a considered discussion of public-spiritedness"
(65). In his view, this absence of a robust conception of the
public interest afflicts the modern republic by impairing the
people's ability to place limits on government. A substantive
notion of the public interest might, Elkin contends, act as just
the type of limitation that is vital to a successful republic.
Without such limits, the current political regime runs the risk
of descending into the type of factional rule that so worried
Madison.
Elkin follows his call for a strengthened
public interest with a description of the type of constitution
most conducive to that interest. The features of this regime include
an enhanced role for the legislature (and a concomitant decrease
in courts' influence); reliance on institutions as transmitters
of the renewed constitutional politics; and an emphasis on local
politics as Tocquevillian incubators of public-spiritedness. These
are familiar planks of the republican platform. Elkin's account
diverges from the communitarian or social-democratic mold, however,
in the emphasis that it places on class interest. The holders
of large-scale productive assets must be politically accommodated,
while their interests must be broadened to overlap with the interests
of the public at large. The middle class, meanwhile, must serve
as "a kind of pivot" between other classes, thereby becoming the
"ruling stratum" of the fully realized commercial republic (228,
90).
Throughout the book, Elkin presents
a largely harmonious image of commerce and republicanism, with
the commercial "engine . . . helping to realize the
Ôrepublican' part" of the regime (294). But is this picture too
tidy? Scholars such as Drew McCoy and Gordon Wood have emphasized
the tension between classical republican thought and the emerging
commercial worldview of the eighteenth century, and the struggles
of thinkers like Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton
as they worked through the puzzles of forming the federal republic.
This anxiety is largely absent from Elkin's account, however.
Instead, Elkin presents the founding generation as having already
and uncontroversially settled the question of how commerce would
fit into their republic. Where they fell short, he argues, was
in bequeathing their descendants a fully fleshed-out concept of
the public interest. This depiction may overlook the vast diversity
of views on the subject of commerce and republican theory, unduly
flattening the historical background that is so important to Elkin's
normative project.
To be sure, a fresh burst of public
spiritedness would be a welcome antidote to contemporary cynicism
about and detachment from meaningful political life. In many of
its specific proposals in this regard, and in its updating of
the potential meaning of republicanism to include the hard edge
of commerce, Elkin's account is compelling.
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