Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule).
The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries. In the eighteenth century, European nations, governed by kings, princes, and other wealthy hereditary elites, usually provided a contrast to the more unruly, less hidebound new nation, where some Americans even had the vote.
Even so, the overwhelming majority of Americans didn't have the vote, which was largely confined to property-owning or tax-paying white males-- about 6 percent of the U.S. population in 1789. Women (comprising about 50 percent of the population) were, with very few exceptions, denied voting rights. And slaves (about 18 percent of the population) lacked both voting rights and citizenship.
Wealthy Americans maintained firm control of the U.S. and state governments. The Founding Fathers were rich white men-- in many cases, owners of massive plantations dependent upon slave labor. And the first President of the United States, George Washington, was one of the wealthiest Americans of his time. Women and slaves had no governing role at all.
Another reason for the association of the United States with democracy is that, over the course of its history, the country has gradually grown more democratic-- although only by overcoming determined opposition from its traditional economic elites.
During most of the nineteenth century, the struggle for democracy was difficult, indeed. Although white male suffrage expanded, campaigns for women's rights and, especially, for the abolition of slavery met fierce resistance. The wealthy planter class of the South resorted to a bloody Civil War rather than accept limits on slavery-- an overplaying of its hand that, ironically, led to slavery's abolition and voting rights for the former slaves. And thanks to the postwar enfranchisement of millions of African Americans, Reconstruction governments injected elements of political, economic, and social equality into Southern politics. Horrified, the old planter elite launched a counter-revolution-- a terror campaign spearheaded by the Ku Klux Klan that deprived African Americans of voting rights and public office, while riveting white supremacy into every aspect of Southern life.
In the North, the rising industrial magnates of the late nineteenth century, deploying the enormous wealth of their giant corporations, fastened their grip on governance during what became known as the Gilded Age. Enjoying lives of unprecedented opulence and power, corporate titans easily bought the allegiance of politicians or acquired public office themselves. Indeed, the U.S. Senate became known as a "millionaire's club." Meanwhile, masses of impoverished immigrants, drawn to jobs in the new factories, crowded into big city slums. Although "Panics" (economic depressions) periodically swept through the nation, producing massive unemployment and hunger, neither the federal nor state governments enacted relief measures. Instead, most politicians-- ignoring widespread poverty, the suppression of Black voting rights, and a growing women's suffrage campaign-- concentrated on serving the new corporate titans by passing pro-corporate legislation.
With the governments of North and South subservient to the economic elites of the late nineteenth century, radical movements emerged outside the two-party system. Angry farmers organized the Populist Party to take back the nation from the plutocrats, and for a time enjoyed substantial electoral success. Bitter strikes and workers' struggles convulsed the nation. Perhaps the best known of them, the nationwide Pullman Strike of 1894, was broken only when the federal government stepped in to destroy the American Railway Union and arrest its leaders.
The pent-up popular outrage at plutocracy finally broke through in the early twentieth century. Capturing portions of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the Progressive movement succeeded in limiting some of the more flagrant abuses of rule by the wealthy. Its reforms included the direct election of Senators, a constitutional amendment authorizing a progressive income tax, workers' rights measures, and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's right to vote.
Although World War I and the return of conservative Republican rule in the 1920s undermined the struggle for democracy, it revived dramatically after the onset of the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal. Drawing upon an overwhelming majority in Congress, the Democrats passed legislation sharply raising taxes on the wealthy, establishing the right of workers to union representation, inaugurating massive relief projects, and establishing Social Security, minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws, and other measures designed to serve "forgotten" Americans. Despite bitter opposition from the Southern elite, even the civil rights issue made an appearance, in the form of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order establishing a Fair Employment Practice Committee.
These popular egalitarian initiatives were supplemented in the 1960s by major voting rights and other civil rights legislation, immigration reform legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and measures to reduce poverty, advance educational opportunity, and create public broadcasting.
Today, of course, we are witnessing a new counter-revolution, led by billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, to reduce public access to the vote, intimidate their opponents, and, more broadly, return the U.S. government to its earlier role as a guardian of political, economic, and social privilege. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in their current barnstorming tour, refer to this program as "Oligarchy" (rule by the few). And they are correct. But, more specifically, it is plutocracy (rule by the wealthy), designed to serve the interests of the wealthy.
Although the United States has never been a thoroughgoing democracy, there are many indications that, over the centuries, it has made significant progress toward that goal. And the question today is: Will we scrap that progress and return to the Gilded Age-- or worse?
This is an historic moment-- one that provides an opportunity for Americans to defend what Abraham Lincoln lauded as "a government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people." It would be a shame if Americans abandoned that democratic vision.
Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
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