The United States is widely praised for its high degree of freedom and democracy. The high degree of freedom and democracy is also an important reason for the achievements in technological development and cultural diversity. In this blog, I will discuss the history of democracy in America.
Starting from Plato’s “Utopia” and “Law”, many thinkers have consistently advocated that private property must be abolished to avoid evil and greed. Only when the power of property is eliminated, the “philosopher-king” of the intellectual elite can emerge and rule the society. human society achieves its ideal goals only if virtue becomes the sole base of power. The early modern thinkers, starting from Thomas More, also adopted Plato’s critical attitude towards private property. Both Plato and Moore believe that the balance of property and the balance of power are the same things. If the holding of property is unequal, then those who own the property will inevitably have power. (Tocqueville. 1840) Montesquieu in18th century also agreed with this view, he expresses the opinion that only when the property is evenly distributed can true virtues emerge and lead politics. All of these thinkers advocated that social property equality is a necessary condition for a republic, because in this way can it be ensured that the ruler is the most outstanding.
However, In the early days of the founding of the United States, the founders broke away from this old Western thinking. The fact is that American society is significantly different from the old European world. American society regards earning money as one of the most important morals, as the result, ordinary Americans can enjoy unprecedented self-esteem and freedom in human history. In American society, almost everyone holds the ideal of hard work and surpassing others. Ordinary people never obey the authority of the elite. At the same time, radical individualism and market capitalism have developed to an unprecedented level.
What different from Europe is that the new immigrants to the United States have discovered that there is a vast and uninhabited land that can be reclaimed. All those who arrive in the United States can own their land and manage their own lives independently. A small number of old elites and landlord aristocrats do exist, but they have no chance to resist the capitalist values derived from the ownership of vast land. In such an open society, there are countless opportunities to become prosperous, and everyone starts to build their world. Thus, hard-working and innovative entrepreneurs become the mainstream of society.
This innate condition also gave birth to the unique political and social values of the United States and determined the proposed law passed by the colonies and later states. By the end of the 18th century, the democratic values that advocated making money, hard work, and individualism had dominated the northern United States, eliminating most of the aristocracy and values left over from the old world. However, it is more difficult to eliminate these things in the southern United States, because the slave system produced landlord aristocracy and affiliation similar to the old world, which lasted until the prewar period of the Civil War. (Tocqueville. 1840)
These capitalist values that emerged in the north (and later in the south) transcended the moral values and social mechanisms of the old world. Furthermore, the legislature abolished the inheritance rights of the eldest son and other inheritance restrictions, allowing the ownership of land to be widely distributed. The landlord lost the privilege of allocating all the property to the single eldest son, so the property became more difficult to consolidate. more and more people would work hard for their future.
In such a background of democracy, those who have the best educational background and talents have only two career paths to choose from— They can join a small circle of intellectuals and study solutions to ordinary problems faced by society. These small circles then become American academia. Or, use their talents to engage in profit-making careers in private companies and earn huge wealth for themselves.
That is how democracy evolves in The United States.
Reference:
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2000: 13. ISBN 0-226-80532-8.
Democracy in America “The evolution of man is the hope of the state.” Francis Newton Thorpe December 1893 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1893/12/democracy-in-america/523974/
As you said in your introduction, the freedom that democracy allows has allowed technological advancement as well as other invention to occur at a greater rate than in regimes like dictatorships that limit the experimentation of common people. America is known for valuing capitalism, advancement in society, hard work, and many other things that have ties to developments in industry. Part of the reason why these values are so prevalent in America is because of its democratic political structure. This was especially emphasized in the early years of America’s existence because of how different it was compared to when they were under a monarchy in England. As time has passed, these values have maintained their importance and shaped the development of the American economy among other things.
In the article I cited below by Carl Knutsen, this idea is actually studied and a correlation is found to exist between the level of freedom provided by a regime and the amount of developments that can occur. For example, it is written that one reason for this is that capitalism is more popular in less restrictive systems, which creates competition between companies in the same industry. This pushes them to grow and overcome the rest as opposed to a monopoly where there is not as much of a need for product development. The survival of that one company does not depend as much on the quality of what they produce, just that they kepp producing it (Knutsen).
The economic structure is not the only concept involved in this trend, however. The quantity of civil liberties afforded to citizens is also involved, like freedom of speech or press (Knutsen). In countries like America, people have these rights, which allows them to discuss among themselves how they feel about products and what ideas they may have to improve them. In more restrictive governments, this is not possible. When consumers as well as producers are not allowed to have a dialogue about certain things, it makes it that much more difficult to create improvements because they do not know what to improve upon. Without exchanging ideas like one can in an open environment, not much improvement can be done in any sense, not just in terms of industry. This is capable of hurting people who live in these conditions by preventing them from living in an environment that cannot reach its full potential.
Knutsen, Carl. Democracy, Dictatorship And Technological Change. University Of Oslo, 2009, pp. 1-39, http://www.idra.it/garnetpapers/C06Carl_Henrik_Knutsen.pdf. Accessed 25 Feb 2021.
I like how you start with the origins of democracy and then expand that idea to incorporate the history of the American democracy. I also like how you bring up the ties between democratic ideals and capitalism. I think this raises questions about the degree to which democracy and capitalistic ideals are intertwined and how this relationship impacts Americans as a whole.
As you noted, the modern application of capitalism in American democracy seems to forgo the values on which democracy itself was built. I think that this is due to the decline of economic egalitarianism within American society in the years since its founding, though the initial state of America was never completely economically egalitarian. While not egalitarian by today’s standards, a number of the Founding Fathers believed that the equal opportunity to earn money and purchase property (for white free men) was essential to democracy; John Adams himself is quoted as saying “The balance of power in a society … accompanies the balance of property in land” and that the only way power could be held “on the side of equal liberty and public virtue” was if those viewed as members of society could easily acquire land (Wilentz 67). This idea of economic equality was enforced by John Locke’s labor theory, which states that a man’s rights to property was earned by the labor he puts in; again, this was only applied to white free men, as it was implied that slave labor and domestic labor did not constitute the labor necessary to be entitled to property (Wilentz 68). The idea of an economically egalitarian country as envisioned by the Founding Fathers began to deteriorate as time went on and a smaller percent of the country’s population held a larger percentage of the nation’s wealth.
Still, the attitudes that some of the Founding Fathers towards the merit of labor carried on to modern times. It officially manifested itself as the American Dream. The idea that hard work entitles success has shown itself to be a defining characteristic of America. The reputation of America as a beacon of freedom combined with the values in Locke’s labor theory created a version of America in which anyone with enough passion and hard work would find success. This, for several reasons, is inaccurate, but for this response, I will only talk about the economic inaccuracies. While the wealth disparity among Americans is almost as old as the country itself, many Americans do not recognize this until they encounter it themselves. Older generations of Americans, both naturalized and born citizens, recognize now that the opportunities for economic prosperity via jobs that require no secondary education that were available to them are now no longer viable (Shapiro).
I find it interesting how the ancient Greeks envisioned democracy as a place where public property was equally available to every citizen and how these ideals were accounted for at the start of American democracy. The history of the relationship between democracy and capitalism in America, I feel, has proven the ancient Greeks correct. With the balance of economic opportunity comes the balance of power within a society.
Shapiro, Ari. “American Dream Faces Harsh New Reality.” NPR, NPR, 29 Apr. 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/05/29/153513153/american-dream-faces-harsh-new-reality.
Wilentz, Sean. “America’s Lost Egalitarian Tradition.” Daedalus, vol. 131, no. Winter, 2002. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20027738.pdf.
While I agree that money had a lot to do with how democracy formed i the US, I also feel like precedent plays a role, specifically the traditions made by George Washington. Since George Washington was the first president, The things he did and said, both in and out of office had a large effect on the American people. In addition to firmly establishing the US as a democracy, Washington also established the practice of term limits, promoted a no party system, (something that can be seen today by the two major political parties constantly trying to one-up each other to become “America’s Party”), and the belief that the Constitution should be followed exactly as written [1].
While these values are not shown today in the same way they had been in the past, they certainly are present in American society. While it is debated just how closely the government actually follows the Constitution, the practice of making Amendments is considered to be extremely important. This shows a strong desire for the Constitution to reflect the important values of American society, showing a strong desire to protect the values of equality, freedom, and representation.
The practice of having a term limit for a leader was something that most people had never thought until Washington stepped down from office. It was not truly considered important until FDR served three terms. After Roosevelt’s presidency, an amendment was made to prevent any president from serving more than 2 terms. From there, the idea of term limits became extremely popular. This led to debates, that are still going on today, about creating term limits for members of Congress. Today, the value of term limits has become one of the reasons why American democracy exists in the way it does.
While the US no longer has a no-party political system, the values of the no-party system still exist today. These values are seen with both parties encouraging the value of unity, but constantly trying to one-up each other to become “America’s Party”. These conflicting values have led to many parties disappearing. The constant desire to become the only major political party reflects the idea of a no-party system, which encouraged unity. The value of unity is evident in American democracy, even if the representation of it has changed.
While money has certainly had a role in how democracy in represented in the US, the formation and values of American democracy were largely due to precedent.
Stromberg, J. (2011, September 20). The real birth of american democracy. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/the-real-birth-of-american-democracy-83232825/
America is not, and never was a Democracy. It is a Republic. say the word a few times as it is extremely important, as is the distinction I mention. The word Democracy appears in the Constitution exactly zero times. We merely have a democratic election process, which is not the same as a Democracy. The Founders avoided the word for a very good reason though it seems the reason for that is not remembered by anyone who posted here.