gracchusdixit

Abraham Lincoln defined democracy more eloquently than anyone before or since when he concluded the Gettysburg Address with the fervent prayer that  “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Today, 150 years after Lincoln uttered his famous words, the democracy he prayed for has all but perished, not only here, in the United States, but throughout the world.

True democracy demands all three of the conditions Lincoln stated.  Those who govern must be “of the people,” because it is impossible to govern democratically from a social or psychological distance.  Government must be directly controlled “by the people,” because to surrender the task of governing to anyone else destroys democracy itself.   Government must act solely “for the people,” otherwise, it cannot call itself democracy at all.

The world we now live in is governed, not of, by and for the people, but of, by, and for self-perpetuating elites—economic, social, and intellectual oligarchies, whose main purpose is to sustain and expand their status and their privileges.  In countries like ours, where the formalities of popular government linger, the elites pay lip service to democracy but ignore its substance.  In other countries, where such traditions never set down roots, they don’t even bother with lip service.  The end, in both cases, is the same: government of the people has been replaced by government of the few.

That is why so many Americans—at both ends of the political spectrum—are frustrated and angry.  Those on the right think that government has been usurped by effete  “socialists.”  Those on the left believe it has been hijacked by right-wing zealots.  The reality is less complicated and far worse.  Government has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel, by the wealthy and the privileged, and they run it in their own self-interest.  More than half of our congressman and all but a handful of our senators are millionaires, most of them many times over.  Whether they are Democrats or Republicans matters little.  They are all members of the same governing elite.

It is easy to forget that, throughout much of history, this has always been the case.  There were, of course, some exceptional moments when the undemocratic few governed for the explicit benefit of the many.  The 2nd century of the Roman Empire was one.   But such exceptions were rarities.  Until the tumultuous French Revolution undertook to change the old order of things, the unapologetic purpose of governments everywhere was not to encourage democracy but to stifle it.

One must ask:  how did  it happen that the slow, sometimes agonizing progress of democracy ground to a halt?

One reason is the growing economic inequality that we have heard so much about.  But the problem isn’t inequality per se. There will always be some measure of inequality in any society, and there is even a respectable argument to be made that there should be.  Talent and hard work deserve to be rewarded.

The real problem is that today’s grotesque levels of economic inequality have for all intents and purposes become permanent and hereditary.   The social mobility that once democratized wealth in our country and elsewhere has largely disappeared.  Wealth no longer acts as an incentive, it throws up impenetrable barriers.  Those who govern us tomorrow will be the children of those who govern us today.  They will have the best health care, they will go to the best schools, they will enter the most prestigious and lucrative professions, because they, and only they, can afford to.  They will succeed and prosper, not because they are more talented but because they are so prosperous.

Money is power, pure and simple.  When power is concentrated in the hands of a few, freedom cannot live, democracy dies.  The wealthy few now have so much power that they no longer need to bribe the government to get their way.  They are the government.