When democracy is discussed by
social scientists, there are a variety of different definitions used, ranging
from very broad to extremely specific. Many of these social scientists
establish a set of criteria, such as free and fair elections, protection of
civil liberties, and the possibility of participation in government by all
citizens. However, if you asked someone on the street to tell you what
“democracy” is, you would probably get an answer like “government by the
people.” Although it seems overly simplistic, this definition is crucial to
truly evaluating a society and government. All the elections in the world won’t
matter unless the government’s actions are truly reflective of the public’s
wishes.
Evaluating
democracy with this broad conceptual definition, it is immediately apparent to
most people that the United States as it exists today cannot be called a true
democracy. There have been numerous studies by political scientists analyzing
the correlation between policy preferences of the majority and actual policy
outcomes that have revealed a sharp disconnect between public opinion and
public policy in crucial areas such as taxes, health care, war and peace, and a
multitude of other issues. With this knowledge, the crucial sociological
question is, “How does this happen?” The United States clearly has many
democratic functions such as elections and general protections of civil
liberties, yet the policies that emerge from government do not seem to reflect
the wishes of the people.
At this
point it is important to ask the right question. Instead of asking “why are
people not getting what they want from government?”, it is more useful to ask
“who IS getting what they want?” The answer is, quite simply, the rich and the
very rich. In a broad study of the relationship of public opinion to public
policy, political scientists Benjamin Page of Northwestern University and
Martin Gilens of Princeton University found that ordinary citizens “have little
or no independent influence on policy at all.” But they also found that
“economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant,
independent impact on policy.” The graphs from their study shown below display
this sharp divide in political influence.
The source of this discrepancy in
influence between average citizens and the very wealthy is generally identified
as campaign finance laws, which allow extremely wealthy individuals and
corporations to spend massive amounts of money on behalf of political candidates.
In Categorically Unequal, Massey
briefly discusses campaign financing and political polarization as two of the
potential sources of increasing social stratification. However, although
campaign financing clearly increases the degree to which politicians are
beholden to elite interests, the inequality that is inherent in capitalist
economic systems is at least as important as specific contributions to
candidates.
An economic system premised on the
private ownership of capital and continuously increasing profits will
inevitably produce inequality between the owners of capital and the working
class who must sell their labor to those owners. In order to stay competitive
in a capitalist market, businesses must seek to minimize costs. Because one of
the most significant costs to production is labor, the workers are at the mercy
of wealthy elites who will try to pay them as little as possible while still
keeping productive output high. In addition, monopolies and oligopolies, which
are encouraged by the capitalist market, produce even more inequality between
wealthy elites and everyone else. This is the
source of such extremely unequal distributions of wealth as seen in the United
States.
With such extreme inequality, true
democracy is a somewhat unrealistic dream. In a capitalist society, power
accompanies wealth and, although financing political candidates is one part of
this, it is not the only source. Because the wealthy elites own the major
corporations in society, politicians can never make any threatening moves
towards them without risking the collapse of the entire economy. This is
clearly evident in the existence of “too big to fail banks” and other large
companies. Regardless of whether or not these corporations donate money to
politicians’ campaigns, they have a massive amount of power over their
decisions simply by their size and economic power. The rise of globalization
and the global economy have furthered this process by allowing transnational
corporations to move their labor-intensive operations abroad in order to escape
the regulations that the United States’ government places on them. Because of
this, there is always the implicit threat of offshoring by corporations owned
by wealthy elites and their demands are not taken lightly by the political
class.
In examining the relationship of
capitalism to democracy, it appears clear that the famous public intellectual
Noam Chomsky is correct when he says, “until major institutions of society are
under the popular control of participants and communities, it’s pointless to
talk about democracy.” And it appears that the public agrees. A survey by the
Pew Research Center found that 77% of respondents believe that “a few rich
people and corporations have too much power” in the United States. Political
power is not simply limited to “politics” as it is commonly discussed and the
structures of capitalist economic systems are severe deterrents to the
possibility of a democracy which reflects the wishes of all citizens rather
than those of a small economic elite.
Sources:
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