It’s not a new conflict. It predates the founding of the Republic. In fact, it was embedded in the definition of the voting franchise. In the 1700s, voting rights were generally limited to white property holders. The idea was that they had more of a stake in society. A broader franchise would result in legislation that would tax property owners and deliver benefits to those who did not own property. That was seen as theft.
The issue of representation became a major focus during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Southern states, fearing the erosion of their dominance, turned the issue of slavery into a question of representation. The Connecticut Compromise, also known as the Great Compromise of 1787, was a plan for congressional representation that was adopted by the Constitutional Convention. The compromise was proposed by delegates from Connecticut, including Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, and was adopted on July 16, 1787.
As a result of the compromise, the white plantation owners had more representation in the federal government because each of their slaves counted as three-fifths of a citizen. The result was that each one hundred slaves created sixty non-voting ‘citizens’. Property ownership, including that of human beings, again meant a larger say in the policies and prerogatives of the federal government. The idea that property ownership warranted a greater say was preserved.
By the early 1800s, the southern planters were, by far, the wealthiest class in the US. But their hold on the federal government was slipping away. Population growth and the rising economic power of New England were threats. They found a champion in John C Calhoun who had been vice President under Andrew Jackson and then Senator from South Carolina. Calhoun argued that the new constitution did not create a true federal government and that it only amounted to a revision of the Articles of Confederation. The objective was to preserve the prerogatives of the wealthy planters by keeping the federal government from promulgating national standards and freeing the slaves. The result was the Civil War. On the Confederate side, the war was fought mostly by poor white farmers and tradesmen whose benefit for winning the war to protect the planters’ interest was to go back to their marginal existence. This pattern would be repeated during the coming decades. The poor and oppressed rallied to protect the interests of the wealthy.
The interests of the wealthy suffered a significant setback as a result of two world wars and the great depression. FDR’s New Deal advanced the idea of government as the savior of the working and lower classes. A foundation of that series of programs was that the government could, and should, play an active role in the recovery. During the thirties and forties, federal assistance formed the backbone of the recovery effort. And, during that time, income and wealth inequality slowed as the rise of the organized labor movement surged. The middle class emerged, and the American Dream flowered.
The three decades that followed the end of World War II constituted the high-water mark of the middle class. During those decades it was possible to buy a home, raise a family, and put aside money for retirement. Parents sent their kids to schools that not only did not have active shooter drills but were open doors for learning. Science was the new thing, and medicine was extending life expectancies. Energy and food were cheap. Families saved money and built wealth that they would pass on to their children. The democratic party came to be known as the party of the working class.
But, from the very beginning of the New Deal, wealthy interests began conspiring to dismantle it. They organized, built networks, hired lobbyists, and made campaign contributions designed to elect people who would reverse the ‘excess of democracy’ that the New Deal had ushered in. Even though the 60s and 70s were very good decades for the wealthy, they wanted more. By the 80s, the effort to reverse course was in full swing. They found a champion in a B-level actor. Ronald Reagan accelerated the process with, “government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” A message that warmed the hearts of the wealthy.
During the following decades, Republicans and Democrats alike jumped on the train. Tax rates were lowered, regulations eased or eliminated, organizations like those by the Koch brothers and the Wall Street masters of the world expanded in both membership and reach. It was a Democratic President who eviscerated the Glass Steagall act that allowed the world-wide economic meltdown of 2008. It was two Republican presidents who sharply reduced the tax rates and eased regulations on the wealthy and corporations. The 80s and 90s ushered in the age of billionaires. Of wealth so vast that it tested imagination. And that wealth was put to very good use – that is, if you were one of the wealthy.
Systematic attacks on unions came in the form of right to work laws. And workers rushed to give away their leverage in order to save a few dollars of union dues. The result was five decades of stagnant wages and the erosion of the middle class. Money went to counter the civil rights and voting acts. After all, they simply contributed to the excess of democracy and violated the dictum that wealth should count more than mere existence.
By the turn of the century, the level of income and wealth inequality began to rival that during the medieval ages. Rising numbers of families were living paycheck to paycheck. As Generation X came of age, the American Dream was fading. It took two incomes to support a smaller family and meaner future than their parents had enjoyed. For the first time in almost a century, parents recognized that their children would not have it better than they did. Millennials faced an even bleaker future as the cost of living increased, wages stagnated and more and more of wealth ended up in fewer and fewer hands. Trickle down economics meant that they got the crumbs that the wealthy did not find edible.
By 2010 the level of income and wealth inequality had reached record levels. The top ten percent of the population had more money than the lower fifty percent. (Compare that to today when less than one percent – 817 billionaires – control more wealth than the bottom fifty percent of the population.)
One of the negative implications of excessive wealth is that it allows those who possess it to dominate agents of society. And the federal and state governments are prime targets. But there were irritating barriers. Campaign finance laws and regulations were the biggest ones. It took a long and highly organized campaign, but victory came rushing in when the US Supreme Court handed them the golden ticket. In 2010, the Citizens United ruling represented a turning point on campaign finance, allowing wealthy interests to accumulate, and disperse, unlimited campaign contributions.
The decision, by a five to four vote, reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections. In the court’s opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, widely seen as a moderate, wrote that limiting “independent political spending” from corporations and other groups violates the First Amendment right to free speech. In a stroke, the wealthy and corporations became a kind of uber-class of citizen and the dictum of one-man-one-vote became one-dollar-one-vote. Unlike the Connecticut Compromise that gave each slave owner sixty votes for every hundred slaves, Citizens United gave the wealthy a billion votes for every billion dollars. It also created the largest group of second-class citizens in history. Individual citizens were no longer owners but renters in their own country and the landlords were the uber-wealthy and corporations who set the rents with impunity.
The impact of Citizens United was predictable – indeed desired by the wealthy and corporate interests. The floods of money into the political process made campaigning so expensive that candidates were forced to spend most of their time raising money by promising benefits to wealthy and corporate donors. And, once in office, they had to bow to the requests of those donors or lose them to a primary challenger.
Money is faithless to any but itself. And it came to dominate, and eventually gained control of, the entire political process. Not only did the average citizen become irrelevant, but candidates became servants of their donor base – merely field workers. The decision resulted in a new form of slavery. And the democratic party found that it could no longer afford to be the party of the working class.
The aftereffects of Citizens United have had minimal effect on the Republican Party. Always seen as the party of the wealthy and corporate interests, the GOP would continue mostly as before. But the impact on the Democratic Party has been much greater – pushing it to the edge of impotency. As they lost their hold on the working class, they lost their raison d’être. As the working class slowly came to realize their irrelevancy as a political force – that neither party represented their interests, they began to shop around for another home. Not finding one, they settled on politics as a kind of reality TV show that was mor entertainment than civic engagement. And, in 2024 the Republican candidate provided much more entertainment than the Democratic one.
If Citizens United stands, there is no way back for the Democratic party. As long as unlimited money is driving the political process, the working class will find no serious advocates for their interests – only feigned concern for their welfare. The battle that began in the 1700s has been won, at least temporarily, by the descendants of the southern planters. And it seems fanciful to expect that, should they get back in control of the White House and congress, the Democrats will overturn the SCOTUS decision. They are, after all, as addicted to the flood of campaign contributions and PAC money as are the Republicans.
© Earl Smith
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