As Americans head to the polls in 2024, they are less satisfied with democracy than at any time in 40 years. More than half say democracy is not working well, and the same percentage think each of the major parties is doing a bad job of upholding it.
But these are just symptoms. To safeguard the health of American democracy, people need to work on longer-term issues. For example, they must fight to make sure that every person has equal rights in practice and principle. This means making progress on combatting discrimination based on race, religion, and sexual orientation, and ensuring that those with wealth and connections don’t get special advantages. It means taking a hard look at legacy admissions to elite schools and inheritance taxes that perpetuate an American aristocracy.
It must be remembered that the evolution of democracy in America, like the evolution of any civil system, is a series of political adjustments. It is not, as some have imagined, a revolution of ideas—the theory of the state being the other side of the apple of civil discord. It is a struggle to bring industry into the field of politics, and to compel men who have amassed wealth to share it in public affairs.
This is the second stage of the development of the republic; and, to a degree, it has been successful. In the past, the social question had a more or less passive influence on the national life; but now it has become active and decisive. It is not enough for men to have political liberty; they want wealth with which to enjoy it. And to satisfy this desire, democratic institutions must be constructed with a view to the accumulation of property and the protection of private interests.
The result of this struggle is a great change in the definition of the state. In the old days, it was conceived as a contract between men for political copartnership; now it is construed towards communism, and the public business of the state becomes an industrial affair.
The development of this idea is recorded in the bills of rights of the States, and in the amendments to our national Constitution. Though they are recorded in political form, these statements are merely a summary of industrial facts; and the changes that have been wrought by them are evidence of a national adjustment towards the close of the nineteenth century. This is a record of the evolution of democracy, and it seems to escape common attention. It is, therefore, a subject worthy of study.