The Great Democracy

by Ganesh Sitaraman

  Great democracy also has a chance to build a new political coalition. Although the foundation and the vanguard of great democracy will likely be progressives, conservatives who are worried about the collapse of our constitutional system should also find common cause. With the specter of nationalist oligarchy on the horizon, conservatives should be willing to recognize that reform is better than revolution and that loosening their attachment to neoliberal economics is likely the only way to preserve constitutional democracy for another generation. Populist conservatives should also find much to like in great democracy. Like progressives, they recognize the widespread corruption of the American political and economic system and seek a way out—a path for change. Great democracy emphasizes our American community and celebrates and exalts patriotism in defense of democracy.

  Great democracy can be the future of politics after neoliberalism, but for it to succeed, we need to understand it at the level of ideas and advance it forward through policy. This means delving deeper into great democracy as a worldview that can replace the neoliberal ideology—and connecting that worldview to a detailed policy program for the future. This is the task to which we now turn.

  6

  UNITED DEMOCRACY

  There is a tension at the heart of liberal democracy. Liberalism is founded on the equality of individuals. It leads ultimately to the belief that all people, all around the world, have equal moral and political worth. Many liberals therefore become cosmopolitans. For a democracy to exist, there must be a demos, a people who are in the democracy. And that, in turn, suggests there are people outside of the democracy. Those who are part of the democratic community should be equal, but we have different duties to people who are outside our democratic community. Throughout history, many of the most fiercely contested political and moral questions have been about the boundary of the democratic community: Should everyone inside the country’s borders—including women, minorities, young people—be considered full members of the political community? When should foreigners be allowed to join the political community? And how deep must the connections among members of the political community be? Of course, philosophers and dreamers might imagine a cosmopolitan democracy, a democracy of all humanity. But such a thing would require world government, and that is highly unlikely in the short or even medium term.1

  For a democratic community to succeed, the people must be relatively united. There must be some degree of solidarity. If people are fractured by wealth or economic interests, if they are divided sharply by ideology, if they are separated by strong, even tribal, identities, it becomes more likely that one group will seek and use power to oppress the other groups. At the extreme, the result could be violence, civil wars, or revolutions. The less divided, the less risk of conflict along such cleavages. The stability of a society is thus partly based on social solidarity.

  The second reason democracies require solidarity is freedom. The central premise of democracy is that the people themselves should determine their own fate. We the people decide our future together. If a group of people does not share a common purpose or common cause, if they are highly fractured in the direction they want to take the future, then it becomes hard for them to exercise their democratic freedom jointly. This is not to say that there will never be disagreements and differences. Hundreds of books and articles by philosophers, constitutional scholars, and political scientists have been written on how to manage societies that are divided in one way or another. Indeed, when any two people come together, there will be differences. But there is a breaking point. For a democracy to be sustainable, it must be relatively united.

  This is why many of the most important political philosophers in history believed that republics had to be small in size. In a small republic, the people would be relatively homogeneous—in their culture, manners, views, and wealth. As a result, citizens and leaders could easily pursue the public good. In an expansive, large republic, there would be greater diversity among people and, with it, differences in opinion, culture, and wealth. The common good would become harder to discover, as people would confuse their own personal, selfish interests with the public interest. “In a small [republic],” the celebrated French philosopher Montesquieu said, “the public good is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen.”2

  James Madison, writing in The Federalist, offered the classic response to the problem of size. He posited that in a large republic, there would be so many interests, so many different groups, that no single group would be able to dominate society. But it is worth remembering that Madison’s political community—the demos he was thinking about—was itself relatively homogeneous. Women and minorities were excluded, and most of the new nation’s citizens were of British descent with a shared language, culture, and religion. Within this political community, there was also relative economic equality. No feudalism, no hereditary aristocracy, and lands to the west meant any white man could be a property owner. As one of Madison’s contemporaries observed, America had “a greater equality, than is to be found among the people of any other country.”3

  Over time, however, American democracy has expanded geographically, economically, and demographically. The country has become more and more diverse in every sense of the word. Madison’s solution has thus come under greater strain, particularly as the country has become more polarized. “Social cleavages today,” writes political scientist Lilliana Mason, “have become significantly linked to our two political parties, with each party taking consistent sides in racial, religious, ideological, and cultural divides.” The fracturing of society is one of the classic threats to the persistence of democracy.4

  To prevent this kind of extreme fracturing, individuals must have a democratic ethic. Democratic citizens have duties to each other that differ from—and are more demanding than—the duties we have to all of humanity. The liberal ethic of individualism and the neoliberal ethic of selfishness can come into tension with democracy’s foundational premise: we are part of a shared project. The ethic of democratic citizenship requires that we think not just about ourselves but about others—about everyone in our community, about the community itself, and about its future. This ethic cannot be completely selfish or individualistic because it requires individuals to sacrifice to preserve and fulfill the promise of democracy.5

  The hard task is building—and sustaining—a united democracy. Democratic virtues and ethics don’t spring from thin air; they have to be nurtured actively. Identity divisions are easy to exploit and hard to transcend, so they have to be bridged deliberately. We cannot just assume that civic culture and community spirit will persist. Part of the problem today is that many institutions that tried to unite our democracy have eroded or been deliberately dismantled. Public schools and the military draft. Bowling leagues and civics classes. The other problem is that history, political tactics, and technological developments conspire to keep us divided. Racial, economic, cultural, and geographic segregation. The proliferation of media and personalization of social media. Public policy and social trends have fostered the political and cultural tribalism that can threaten democracy.

  Building a united democracy stands in an uncomfortable tension with liberalism and neoliberalism, both of which look askance at any effort to shape a shared community identity. Liberals and neoliberals often worry that such efforts lead invariably to totalitarianism. But it is worth remembering that liberalism’s eras of greatest success have been in times when there was in fact a shared culture and a common enemy—times when we recognized the need for a united democracy and understood that there were people outside of it. Cold War liberals, for example, facilitated a national culture that exalted constitutional freedoms in opposition to communism. Civic unity thus nurtured liberalism but was then destroyed by neoliberalism. Today, if we are to become a great democracy, we will need to unite our democratic community.

  Race, Class, and the Politics of Divide and Conquer

  One of the most difficult problems in American
history—and in America’s present—appears at the nexus of race and class. Since at least Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, when a biracial coalition of black slaves and poor whites threatened to overthrow economic elites in early Virginia, American politicians have fanned the flames of racial antagonism to prevent the emergence of a coalition of working-class whites and working-class African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other minorities. If working-class whites believe racial minorities are to blame for their problems, they’ll vote with wealthy whites, who can then preserve an economic system that perpetuates their wealth and power at the expense of working people, white or black. Divide and conquer: as long as working-class whites and minorities are divided, the elites in power conquer.6

  One of the most famous and tragic attempts to break through the divide-and-conquer strategy took place in the early 1890s. Tom Watson was elected to the Georgia state legislature in 1882 and then to Congress, where he championed the interests of farmers and was the driving force behind the postal service bringing free delivery to rural areas. In 1892, the agrarian campaigned on a different platform, one of uniting poor blacks and poor whites against the white planter aristocracy that dominated the South.

  “You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings,” Watson thundered. “You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.” Watson appeared alongside black speakers. He gave speeches to mixed-race audiences. He wanted the Populist Party to “make lynch law odious to the people.” Watson’s political coalition would be transformative: a union of working-class blacks and whites would form a majority that would fundamentally change the rigged economic and political system.

  The white planter aristocracy knew it, and they would not let Watson’s growing power go unchallenged. “They have incited lawless men to a pitch of frenzy which threatens anarchy,” Watson commented. “Threats against my life were frequent and there were scores of men who would have done the deed and thousands who would have sanctioned it.” He wasn’t wrong. Georgia governor William Northen allegedly said that “Watson ought to be killed and that it ought to have been done long ago.” The planter aristocracy didn’t stop there. Black voters were intimidated with violence and force. The election was marred with fraud and bribery, all to prevent Watson from winning—and from transforming politics.7

  In the years after Watson’s spectacular defeat, the planter aristocracy in the South would ratchet up the strategy of divide and conquer to ensure that there would never again be another Tom Watson. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries were the tools, in addition to the weapons of fear and violence. But divide and conquer also came with an ideology. After marching from Selma to Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. described the emergence of segregation and white supremacy in the populist era. “The segregation of the races was really a political stratagem… to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages.” And when poor whites didn’t have money and couldn’t feed their children, the “southern aristocracy” fed them Jim Crow, “a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.” Jim Crow’s divide-and-conquer politics, King said, “eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.” As for Tom Watson, that profile in courage ended in capitulation. More than a decade later, seeking another chance at political office, Watson reinvented himself as a vicious racist. And won.8

  Watson’s defeat happened during the Gilded Age, but as King understood, the use of this tactic never ended. Indeed, four decades after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, in 2005, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman admitted that his party had spent years exploiting racial divisions through dog-whistle politics and that it was “wrong” to have done so. Today, racism is increasingly out in the open, and if we keep divide-and-conquer tactics in mind, the rising visibility of racism over the last generation seems hardly surprising. After decades of broad-based economic growth, things changed in the 1970s. Wages stagnated for the median-income white male. The United States began running trade deficits for the first time since World War II. Then came the neoliberal era. Deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity combined with technology to accelerate economic inequality. After decades of economic stagnation and insecurity, there had to be someone to blame. Right-wing neoliberals surely were not going to blame themselves for their opposition to inclusive social policies or for the neoliberal ideology of upward redistribution to the wealthy. Indeed, they deliberately linked neoliberal policies to racial dog whistles to win elections. As Republican strategist Lee Atwater famously said, “You start out in 1954 by saying ‘N[*], n[*], n[*].’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n[*]’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting abstract. Now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.”9

  Nor were center-left neoliberals going to admit their complicity. They could have blamed the wealthy, corporations, and their political partners for sacrificing the middle and working classes of all races on the altar of profits. But they had joined forces with those very groups to secure electoral victory in the Age of Reagan.

  It is also hardly surprising that some were susceptible to an explanation that placed the blame squarely on minorities themselves. The Democratic Leadership Council’s chairman, Chuck Robb, said that the New Democrats would address the “uncomfortable truths” about black poverty. Their emphasis wouldn’t be public policy or structural racism. “It’s time to shift the primary focus from racism—the traditional enemy without—to self-defeating patterns of behavior—the new enemy within.” Although some of the blame certainly lies with individuals and their choices, Robb’s shift from policy and racism to individual responsibility turned a blind eye to Atwater’s explicit, intentional strategy of using neoliberal policies to harm working-class whites and minorities while mobilizing whites through racial antagonism.10

  Racism went from covert to overt with the rise of President Trump, but this should not be surprising. These patterns were stitched into the neoliberal era’s reinforcing cycle of economic insecurity and scapegoating. What is far more surprising is how mainstream Democrats initially responded. During the 2016 presidential primaries between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, for example, many liberals unwittingly fell backward into something akin to a divide-and-conquer posture themselves.

  In January 2016, prominent commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates, who himself supported Bernie Sanders, criticized Sanders for being unimaginative on racial justice policies—and in particular for opposing reparations. Coates argued that Sanders’s economically populist ideas wouldn’t end structural or systemic racism in the United States: “Raising the minimum wage doesn’t really address the fact that black men without criminal records have about the same shot at low-wage work as white men with them; nor can making college free address the wage gap between black and white graduates.” Coates was obviously right that these policies alone couldn’t end structural racism, and advocates for them were not arguing they would.11 A few weeks later, in a speech at Henderson, Nevada, candidate Hillary Clinton picked up on Coates’s critique, asking the crowd, “If we broke up the banks—and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will—would that end racism?” Again, the answer is, of course, no. But what if we did break up the banks? What if we did raise the minimum wage? What if we did have free college? At a minimum, working people would have a better shot at making ends meet, and their kids could get an education without taking on a huge debt burden. And perhaps the economy wouldn’t be prone to major financial panics, during which working and middle-class families—often African Ameri
can and Latinx—lose their homes and savings, while bankers get taxpayer bailouts and get to continue gambling with other people’s money.12

  Instead, Clinton belittled important economic reforms in a play for minority voters. Perhaps minorities should be willing to accept such a trade if it meant ending racism. But no one could have seriously believed Clinton or any other president could end racism in the United States. This rhetorical tactic has serious consequences: it undermines the case for structural economic reforms, saps popular energy to mobilize for such reforms, and gives the impression that economic and racial reforms are an either-or proposition. The results are predictable: no end to racism and no end to a rigged economic system—a liberal variant on the divide-and-conquer strategy.

  As the “party of the people,” the Democrats might have been expected to lay the blame on the elites that had governed America into the ground. They might have called for uniting all working-class and middle-class people—regardless of their race, gender, identity, or geography. They might have said that minorities aren’t to blame and that both whites and blacks are oppressed by a rigged political and economic system—by structures of economic, racial, and political power. But instead of a union of whites and minorities, instead of the radical Tom Watson, some Democrats doubled down on identity without emphasizing cross-racial economic justice. During the protests after President Trump’s inauguration, one democratic political operative on MSNBC commented, “You are wrong to look at these crowds and think that means everyone wants fifteen dollars an hour.… It’s all about identity on our side now.”13