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At any moment in history, present trends can lead to a wide variety of futures. Some of those futures are benign, some malignant. What we do in the present determines which kind of future we will get.
Right now, one of the possible futures for the United States of America -- one result of accelerating trends in the present-- is the death of democratic government and its replacement by a hereditary plutocracy.
What is a hereditary plutocracy? It is government by a wealthy class whose money is largely inherited.
Is there evidence that anything like this is happening in our nation? Well, we just saw a blatant example of it in the election for president. We saw the unimpressive son of a plutocratic family steal an election based largely on his family connections. The political apparatus in a state controlled by his brother and aided by a cousin with a crucial role in the media manipulated a supposedly democratic election to win the presidency despite the larger vote for his opponent.
This little exercise in stifling democracy had all the necessary ingredients for the rise of plutocracy-- inherited wealth and status, powerful connections to others in the plutocratic class, access to huge financial backing, all wearing a benign mask.
Was this just an anachronism? Or was it part of a growing trend? People in New Jersey are not in a strong position to dispute the existence of a trend. Their two-term governor is the daughter of a prominent Republican political family with large inherited wealth. In the 1980s the state was governed for almost the entire decade by a governor from a plutocratic Republican family.
All over the nation we see second and third-generation representatives of wealthy political families holding every kind of office from the presidency on down. Not all of them are Republicans. The Democrats have their Kennedys and Daleys and Gores. But the Democratic plutocrats are sometimes traitors to their class and are often criticized for it. Vice President Gore, who searched for a personality all during his campaign, finally found one-- an angry, liberal populist. He was heaped with skeptical calumny by a naive mass media.
Another major contributor to the trend is the growing gap between our wealthiest citizens and the rest of us. Huge fortunes make it possible for our wealthiest people to buy lobbyists, officeholders, media consultants, the companies we work for, and even elections. Jon Corzine, our new U.S. Senator, who never held public office, spent $62 million of his own money to win election. It is hard not to think that he bought his Senate seat. Corzine, strangely enough, campaigned as an out-and-out liberal. The plutocrats probably despise him and he certainly is not a hereditary member of their class. And if Bill Gates and Warren Buffet ran for office they would not be eligible for membership in the class. But their children and grandchildren could be.
Of course, our system of government has defenses against those who would replace democracy with plutocracy. There is the Constitution and our independent court system. But we have seen that system fail in Florida. We all have the right to vote (although Trenton's own contribution to the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, seemed to disagree even with that) but we saw that we can't make them count all of our votes.
We have tried to limit the effect of money in our elections but we have failed. The Supreme Court, which is supposed to defend democracy, thinks that money is synonymous with free speech. It has been pointed out that money is neither speech nor free. In Congress and our legislatures, candidates win their seats by promising to end the reign of money, but once in office they become beneficiaries of the system and join in defense of it.
The kind of criticisms I am making usually incite a charge of "engaging in class warfare," thus associating the critic with Karl Marx, communism, and all that stuff. But those who cry "class warfare" unconsciously confirm the criticism, for they inadvertently admit the existence of a plutocratic class that needs defending. In our history those who have opposed trends toward plutocracy include presidents Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.
The plain fact is that if we cannot keep our elections from being determined by the rich and well-connected, we cannot keep the plutocrats from taking over. If we cannot keep our corporate chieftains and wealthy heirs from amassing an ever-larger share of our nation's wealth, we will not have the strength to maintain a government of, by, and for the people.
What does that mean we should do in the present, when the future will be determined?
- In New Jersey we have an opportunity to gain control of the election process by total, vehement support of the proposed Schluter-Adler amendment to the State Constitution. It would give the people the right to initiate statewide referendums controlling election finance. This brilliant proposal is the most important piece of legislation to come before the legislature in more than 50 years. Any legislator who does not support this amendment should be opposed for reelection by every voter, regardless of the candidate's position on any other issue. Any voter who does not have millions of dollars in wealth and does not support the amendment is a fool.
- We should strive mightily to defeat efforts in Congress to repeal the federal estate and inheritance tax. Do not fall for the baloney about a "death tax." It is a tax on very-much-alive plutocrats. We should support only those tax cuts that shrink the gap between the plutocrats and the rest of us.
- We should support all efforts to increase the minimum wage. Experience shows that these wage increases always give the economy a boost, in addition to curing blatant injustice. No one should work full time and not get a living wage.
These are some of the immediate issues that we face in the effort to stem the drift toward plutocracy. Defeats in any of these areas will turn the drift into a stream and then an unstoppable torrent.
John Kolesar has worked in state government and journalism for many years in New Jersey. A version of this piece appeared in The Times of Trenton.
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