This week in the US we celebrate Independence Day, the Fourth of July. You can tell it's a really important holiday because we celebrate it on the day we're supposed to and not the most convenient nearby Monday. It should be important because it commemorates an incredible event.
July 4, 1776 was the day the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. That act officially set in motion the first great world-transforming revolution and laid out ideas that other countries and peoples would later take as their own.
As legislatures do, Congress chose a committee to do the work of drafting the Declaration of Independence. It was made up of an attorney, two merchants, a printer and a planter.
That seems natural to us, but it must have seemed quite strange to folks in Europe at the time. Everyone on that committee worked for a living. There were no aristocrats, no Lords, anywhere to be seen. And there couldn't be. In America we didn't have an aristocracy and so we had to invent one.
Without thinking much about it we leaned toward success in business as a way to achieve wealth and status. That was different from Europe. There, if you were "in trade" you could achieve wealth but status would elude you. You were pretty much destined to stay on whatever rung of the social ladder your birth had left you.
But here in America you could make something of yourself if you were successful in business. The early English colonies were business corporations. While Spain was sending armies and priests to claim land in the New World for the crown and the church, England was sending all kinds of folks to pluck the fruits of the New World and send those precious fruits home to England.
It wasn't that Spain didn't intend to exploit the riches of the new lands being colonized. The difference was in the way it was done. The Spanish intended to get the work done under the close supervision of the military and the Church.
England's North American colonies were given the right to make a profit. Each colony had two objectives. A colony was expected to develop trade and exploit the natural resources, of which there were plenty.
Unlike Europe, in America just about everybody got involved in business. Trade wasn't restricted to a class or social group. And farming, the primary productive activity of the time, was a business as well.
If you wanted to start a business you could. If you wanted to farm you could because, unlike Europe, land was plentiful. And if you started a business or a farm and you did well why then you might achieve power and prestige and position.
In short, you could become an aristocrat by being successful. This was strikingly different from Europe and it was an incredibly subversive idea.
The widespread business activity undermined theories about class and a class structured society. If anyone could rise to a position of social and political power, why pay attention and homage to aristocrats whose only success had been an excellent choice of parents?
The political and social ideals of the American Revolution, independence and equality, came naturally to people who were self-reliant and self-supporting and capable of changing their social position and status within their own lifetime. And the courage to act on those ideals came naturally to men who had been successful in achieving other goals.
This was powerful and dangerous stuff. It was the idea of replacing an aristocracy with a meritocracy. It was the idea that everyone had a shot at success and status, no matter who their parents were. It was...revolutionary.
America didn't have a monopoly on these ideas. Writers from many parts of the world had set them out. Adam Smith's An Inquiry Into the Wealth of Nations was published the same year as the Declaration of Independence.
What America had was the situation and the will to put hands and feet on ideas of independence and equality. What America had was the energy to turn those ideas from theory into political reality. What America had was people willing to take the risks for a very great gain, surely a business principle if there ever was one.
In the years since 1776 our business culture, or "business civilization" as some writers call it, has helped us create a country with riches that ancient kings could only dream about. It has helped us provide opportunities that have drawn people from all over the globe whose hard work and rich culture have made life better for all of us.
That has been good, but there have been some negatives, too. We tend to see a "businesslike" or market solution as appropriate even where it doesn't work well. The American healthcare system could be an example.
None of that could be seen from 1776, though. What the delegates to the Continental Congress were sure of was that signing the Declaration would put them at risk along with their families and all they had worked for. They decided it was a risk worth taking.
The Declaration of Independence was signed on August 2, 1776. Fifty-six men affixed their signatures to the bottom of the document with John Hancock's swaggering signature at the top of the list. Twenty-eight were lawyers or judges. There were fourteen merchants and ten farmers, a surveyor, a printer and a couple of educators.
They were all aristocrats of merit, men of affairs. They signed their names and set about the exciting and dangerous business of creating this nation.
