USA – democracy or an electoral oligarchy?

The liberal political option and the media welcomed the election of Joseph Biden as President of the United States with the hope of restoring “normalcy”, reviving moderation and political decency. Trump is said to have embodied vulgarity, was supported, as Hillary Clinton put it, by “basket of deplorables,” and Biden is arguable going to revive the tolerance and democratic culture of the United States. Biden has become a symbol of democracy, which is supposed to be inscribed in the foundations of the United States. But the key question that arises is: did this democratic system really degenerate under Trump, or are certain elements in the very design of the American political system that are problematic?

First, the idea that the U.S. is a democracy is controversial, as the Founding fathers did not establish a democracy. In doing so, James Madison is the most explicit. Democracy, which was associated with ancient Athenian democracy, was not desirable, because such democracy leads to a great division between people, to a great degree of conflict between different factions, and also to violence. Here, Madison is explicit – the basic problem of democracy is that the poor can gain political power and encroach on property relations, leading to conflict over different interests. The basic problem and origin of the factions is the unequal distribution of property. According to Madison, the goal is to create a political system that will calm these contradictions and which will prevent the redistribution of property. The idea was that the United States should therefore not become a democracy but an enlarged republic, which will be governed primarily by the example of Rome, which is evident from the names of key political institutions in the United States.

Second, the Founding fathers proceeded from the aristocratic assumption that through the system of political representation the most virtuous would come to positions of political power, with intellectual aristocracy also being associated with wealth status. The richest are also supposed to be the most intellectually called to rule. Citizens, at the time exclusively white men, were understood rather as a source of legitimacy of political power and not as people who could also occupy important political positions. The Founding fathers tried to prevent and limit as much as possible the influence of the people, the masses, in order to protect private property. This aristocratic idea and fear of the people is also reflected in the specifics of the election of the President of the United States, who is not directly elected. The people, the citizens elect the electors, who then elect a president from among the candidates. The idea is that if people made a wrong decision, the electors would still choose the “right candidate”. The Founding fathers seem to have followed Aristotle and his ideal of a mixed constitution, and also to have shared his skepticism towards democracy, which Aristotle understood as the rule of the poor.

Thirdly, the change in one of the wording found in the Declaration of Independence is also important for this debate. The Declaration, adopted in 1776, states that all people have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But, in 1789, when the U.S. Constitution was adopted, this formulation was changed and essentially reflected the concerns of Madison and other writers of the Federalist papers regarding the redistribution of private property. Thus, the U.S. Constitution often emphasizes that the task of the state is to protect “life, liberty and private property”, while the question of pursuing happiness is completely absent. In the Declaration of Independence, the idea of protecting private property is put in the background, while in the Constitution, the idea of pursuit of happiness has completely disappeared. The task of the state has become to protect private property.

The constitutional order, the system of checks and balances, and a political system based on the Roman Republic and not on democratic foundations essentially mean ousting the poor from politics and limiting their political power in politics for the protection of property while we have not even mentioned the racist foundations of the American Republic. The idea and motivations of the Founding fathers were to create an oligarchic political system in which the rich would change in power with the aim of creating various mechanisms to prevent changes in property relations. This calls into question the perception that the U.S. is a democracy as well as the commitment of American Founding fathers to “democracy”.

These questions and contradictions of the American political system have not remained unaddressed in the American political thought. Among others, liberal political thinker and theorist John Dewey has directly addressed the problems of inequality, politics, and capitalism in the United States. In the context of the need to change the living conditions of people before the Second World War, John Dewey wrote about the need to change property relations in American society, which was one of the key steps for him to get out of the crisis of democracy  during the attempt to revive the American economy (New Deal). He advocated for socialization of the means of production, and called this new orientation within liberalism “radical liberalism.” Until new technology and new wealth are not used for social purposes in the context of the emergence of society of abundance, Dewey sees no possibility of overcoming the problems and contradictions of American society and the state. Dewey concludes that breaking with the laissez faire liberal mantra is the basis for a socialized economy and is the foundation for a democratic political system.

So is there a democratic normalcy to which Biden is supposed to return the U.S.? If we reflect on the current situation and the relationship between property and politics, it is clear that the issue of property and the inequalities is still at the heart of politics. Without taking into account inequality and class conflict and pushing these issues out of mainstream politics, Trump’s rise cannot be understood, while it is clear that he as a millionaire never represented an alternative, but he knew how to exploit and market this idea very well. The opening of the American Republic to the excluded, to the people, did not shake the foundations of the American political system. There is a structural constraint on radical ideas. What Dewey called “radical liberalism” cannot penetrate into the mainstream American politics. The COVID-19 crisis, however, only made the richest US citizens even richer while inequalities and the inequalities have been deepening. The “basket of deplorables” is growing, the class conflict is intensifying. The ideology of the American dream has always been only an ideology that has made the masses “prisoners of the American dream,” as Mike Davis puts it.

Finding some lost normalcy and democracy in the very political and economic order of the United States is a pointless endeavor. Before World War II, Dewey wrote that the United States was becoming an increasingly “privileged plutocracy.” Does his assessment still apply today? Today, as in Dewey’s time, various moguls and billionaires support both the Republican and Democratic parties. But, there has also been a change. From the time Dewey wrote, the United States has become a mixture of “privileged plutocracy” and an electoral oligarchy – millionaires and billionaires are in power, working in the interests of other millionaires and billionaires. Whether the Democratic or Republican candidate wins the election, victory is always guaranteed, as David Harvey puts it, for the “Party of Wall Street”.

Whether the Democratic or Republican candidate wins the election, victory is always guaranteed, as David Harvey puts it, for the “Party of Wall Street”. Click To Tweet

The text was made for the project “American political thought”, sponsored by the US Embassy in Slovenia.