I've been contemplating the present sorry state of our American “democracy” and how we got into this mess. I say democracy in quotes because we no longer have a functioning democracy.
Not when Congress is effectively owned by big corporate interests and by wealthy individuals like the Koch brothers and their allies ...
Now when Congress consistently puts the interests of large corporations and the wealthy donor class ahead of those of the middle class …
Not when Congress blocks all attempts to stem the massive upward flow of wealth to the 1% …
Not when Congress obstructs all attempts to redistribute wealth downward to assist a struggling working class and the poor …
Not when Congress, or more specifically, the Senate refuses to even hold a hearing to consider a replacement for recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, no matter who President Obama nominates for the post.
We have the trappings of democracy, a democratic facade, but not the reality.
How did we get here? It's simple really. Since at least the 1970s, we've been violating what I call the Brandeis law of democratic society. Louis D. Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice from 1916 to 1939, put it this way:
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”
Once a democratic society allows the rules of its political economy to be manipulated so as to give rise to an immensely wealthy elite, that society has started down the road to something other than democracy. Why? Because human nature being what it is, there will eventually be members of that elite who decide to buy control of the democratic institutions and rewire them to further enhance their own personal wealth and power.
What follows, unless the actions of the elite are checked by some countervailing power, is something other than democracy. Plutocracy, oligarchy, a totalitarian state, a dictatorship, or worse, but not democracy.
The way to avoid this fate is for everyone in the society to agree to not allow any individual or small elite to become wealthy enough to control or manipulate the governing institutions.
This is the crucial corollary to the Brandeis law:
Everyone, and most especially the upper class, must freely accept a political economy which is expressly designed to benefit all and to prevent the concentration of excessive wealth in the hands of a few.
Structuring the rules of the political economy to achieve the necessary limitation on individual wealth is a crucial exercise which those at the top of the economic ladder must endorse or at least accept. They must encourage, or at least not interfere for personal gain, as legislative bodies, courts, and administrative institutions establish the rules for an equitable political economy, even though this process may constrain the further growth of their wealth. When the wealthiest refuse to agree to limits on individual wealth, it is a sure sign they no longer value or believe in democratic government and a free society.
This is the unfortunate situation in which we find ourselves today in the United States.
During the Gilded Age in the latter part of the 19th century, Americans faced a threat to democracy similar to what is going on today. A progressive movement during the first half of the 20th century was able to pull the country back from the brink and restore the integrity of our democratic institutions. It remains to be seen whether today's growing progressive movement will be as successful.
For those who would like to understand in more detail how we got into the mess we're presently in and what can be done about it, I would highly recommend Robert Reich's outstanding book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few.