Americans have long struggled with maintaining a balance between elite democracy and popular democracy. For instance, some of the very first political controversies in the country raged over whether states would be represented equally or according to population, a debate that resulted in our bicameral legislature. At the core of all American politics, from the Constitution to modern day struggles, lies this issue. Power between the groups seems to be cyclical, with one group always at an advantage. Existence of tyranny within the system can create surprisingly extreme instances of power shifts, where one group is so supremely in power that the entire system appears caricatured. The elite had almost complete power during the antebellum era, where robber barons and corrupt politicians created a political scene in which the people had a very small say, and a miniscule minority was controlling the entire government. Conversely, during the 1960s, students rose up to create a New Left, a movement that brought power back to the people through participatory politics from a hitherto unheard from generation of Americans. American politics has always seen a struggle between elite democracy and popular democracy, but at certain points in history the combination of the power shifts between the elite and the people and the existence of tyranny or bolstered individualism creates unique polarizations, such as the elitism of the antebellum robber baron era and the grassroots power of the 1960s student movement.
In the years after the Civil War, America underwent a complete economic makeover. “Tocqueville had, with his customary prescience, predicted the emergence of a harsh new industrial aristocracy. However, even with his formidable powers, he could not have anticipated the magnitude of the change” (Young 128). “At the start of the war, manufacturing capital was about $1 billion; at the turn of the twentieth century it was ten times greater” (Young 127). America was completely transformed from a nation of farmers to a competitive world of corporations, as money began to concentrate in the hands of the select few. Although most of the Horatio Alger rags to riches stories are exaggerations, there was certainly the capacity for men to make inordinate portions of money very quickly, and some of these opportunities were rather morally reprehensible. J.P. Morgan, for instance, began to capitalize on the opportunities during the Civil War, when he “bought five thousand rifles for $3.50 each from an army arsenal, and sold them to a general in the field for $22 each. The rifles were defective and would shoot off the thumbs of the soldiers using them” (Zinn 255). The political scene was no less depraved: “Thomas Edison promised New Jersey politicians $1,000 each in return for favorable legislation. Daniel Drew and Jay Gould spent $1 million to bribe the New York legislature to legalize their issue of $8 million in ‘watered stock’ (stock not representing real value)” (Zinn 254).
Boss William Tweed acquired a truly incredible grasp around state and city politics in New York, committing the most flagrant displays of corruption without losing the trust of his constituency:
“Tweed turned the government of both into a vast and succulent barbecue. Safes valued at $3,450 were charged against the city at $482,500; a courthouse that should have cost $3,000,000 swallowed up $11,000,000 and still was not completed. In 1870 the Tweed men certified bills for nearly $16,000,000, of which more than $14,000,000 represented sheer plunder” (Goldman 12).
What was truly amazing, however, was that “the people…were among the Boss’s staunches supporters…Thousands of impoverished New Yorkers responded with regular votes for their jovial Boss, sometimes even with an adulation of him as a kind of Robin Hood” (Goldman 13). Indeed, politics of the day reflected now only a tyranny of the minority, with the select few ruling without the interests of the minority at heart in any regard, but a tyranny of the majority as well, with the minority blindly voting against their own wellbeing. Tweed’s corrupt practices only grew dirtier. “In 1867 the Tweed practice was to add a fraudulent thirty-five per cent to contracts; in 1870 the addition was more likely to be eighty-five per cent…The contempt for honesty reached the point where, in an election that worried Tweed, the machine dutifully delivered a majority eight per cent greater than the total number of registered voters” (Goldman 14).
Businessmen of the era were able to work the system to their advantage with ease as well. Tom Scott, the unacknowledged father of the corporation, began as a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he attempted to repeal a state-mandated tonnage tax. When the legislature convened, Scott was still far short of majority support in either house, and at that point he began making deals, mainly consisting of promises to build railroad lines to provide service to particular communities in return for the support of the local delegation.” When allegations of bribery arose, “Scott’s allies in the state senate made it possible for him to personally select five of the seven members of the investigating committee. He also succeeded in ducking every effort of the committee to subpoena him to testify,” at one point receiving help from President Lincoln (Nace 59-60). It is not hard, however, to envision how a political system so corrupt could have evolved, with citizens doing little to resist. “At the local level, decisions on where to site railroad tracks frequently triggered intense political conflict” because of the economic boost an area could get from the presence of one, resulting in “members of the factions [ceasing] all social intercourse and [refusing] to attend church services together” (Nace 59).
The Supreme Court, too, was at the mercy of the ruling elite. “How could it be independent, with its members chosen by the President and ratified by the Senate? How could it be neutral between rich and poor when its members were often former wealthy lawyers, and almost always came from the upper class?” (Zinn 260). In U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co., the court rendered the Sherman Anti-trust Act completely harmless, by ruling sugar refining as a monopoly of manufacturing, not commerce, and suggesting that the Act could be used to quell “interstate strikes…because they were in restraint of trade” (Zinn 260). The Fourteenth Amendment was originally developed as, rather than protection for blacks and expanded civil liberties, protection for corporations, and although this use was eventually overturned in Munn vs. Illinois, “the American Bar Association…began a national campaign of education to reverse the Court decision,” and succeeded by 1886 (Zinn 261). With the assistance of the courts, the elites had an even easier job maintaining control.
About a century later, the tension between limited and expansive democracy raged on. The 1960s was a tumultuous time. While the nation dealt with a Presidential assassination, the British Invasion, and a civil rights war, students, too, were mobilizing. Never in American history had more movements for change been concentrated in so short a span of years” (Zinn 539). At its height, men and women stood up courageously for the American dream. They won dignity and rights for minorities, women, poor people, and the elderly that Americans across the political spectrum now take for granted” (Morone 445). The nation gained a sense of individualism that had long been missing: “With the loss of faith in big powers — business, government, religion — there arose a stronger belief in self, whether individual or collective. The experts in all fields were now looked at skeptically: the belief grew that people could figure out for themselves what to eat, how to live their lives, how to be healthy” (Zinn 538). This individualism was reflected largely in many aspects of the 1960s, and indicates a shift of power from the elite to the people. The assortment of grassroots reforms that were going on in the era was only possible because of this. As time passed, individual acts multiplied and for this they were stronger. In response to the war, army soldiers and nurses were acting out, refusing orders to show their opposition to the war. Some received long prison sentences, and others were court-martialed. There was the feeling that one person could make a difference, and a million individuals that feel powerful are powerful. Young people signed up for the Peace Corps (more Harvard graduates had applied for the Peace Corps than for corporate jobs), volunteered for VISTA (the domestic equivalent), risked their skulls for civil rights, and organized their own social movement” (Morone 433).
“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit” (Hayden OL). So begins the famous Students for a Democratic Society manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. Written by Tom Hayden in 1962, the statement let the world know that SDS was ready, and they had a mission. “They challenged a society that depersonalized, standardized, and controlled; SDS would celebrate the people’s ‘unrealized potential for self-cultivation.’ Everyone would ‘participate in decision making’ over their own lives” (Morone 433). At the heart of the Port Huron Statement was a powerful American urge for direct democracy and participatory politics. This urge, aside from motivating the members of Students for a Democratic Society, summed up the 1960s in terms of political activism. Efforts at participatory democracy ran into every crevice of politics — poverty agencies, school boards, and student organizations” (Morone 433). There was a sense that every little bit helped, that protests and sit-ins and other direct actions were not in vain, and they were not.
Another group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or the SNCC, dedicated itself to “nonviolent but militant action for equal rights” (Zinn 453). “‘We affirm the religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose,’ proclaimed SNCC’s original statement of purpose. ‘Nonviolence as it grows from Judaic-Christian tradition seeks a social order of justice permeated by love” (Morone 433). SNCC was known for their sit-ins at segregated establishments, then later for their Freedom Rides, where they rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States. They were relentless in their mission:
“The racially mixed SNCC Freedom Riders were arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, spent a night in jail, were taken to the Tennessee border by police, made their way back to Birmingham, took a bus to Montgomery, and there were attacked by whites with fists and clubs, in a bloody scene. They resumed their trip to Jackson, Mississippi” (Zinn 453).
The SNCC used participatory politics in order to secure the expansion of civil rights for all Americans.
What if you knew her / And found her dead on the ground / How can you run when you know?” Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ask this question in their song “Ohio,” where they mourn the 1970 Kent State massacre. “On May 4th, when students gathered to demonstrate against the war, National Guardsmen fired into the crowd. Four students were killed. One was paralyzed for life. Students at four hundred colleges and universities went on strike in protest. It was the first general strike in the history of the United States” (Zinn 491). The shootings represented the culmination of the student movement, and the 1960s as a whole, and in many ways foreshadowed the control the government would have over its subjects in the mid-70s. College students across the nation mourned the tragedy at Kent State.
The tension between popular democracy and elite democracy has strained within United States politics since the birth of the nation. It permeates the government, in its Constitution, in its history, and certainly in its future. During the years following the end of the Civil War, there was a massive influx in political corruption, as politicians did what they had to in order to get elected. Political machines like Boss Tweed’s at Tammany Hall were extreme instances of elite democracy at play, as Tweed controlled not only the whole city, but the state as well. Tom Scott reinvented the corporation using a variety of seedy and immoral political tactics. The political and business leaders of the Gilded Age exemplified the heart of elite democracy, and even had the support of the population. Fast forward one hundred years and the same tensions are straining, as the student movement of the 1960s showed. That point in history, however, was dominated by popular democracy and participatory politics. Students engaged in direct democracy, uniting in groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in order to protest, sit-in, Freedom Ride, or otherwise express their political ideologies and beliefs. The tension between elite and popular democracy shows no sign of disappearing in today’s society, with a clear lean towards elite democracy. George W. Bush has significant power as a wartime president and a cooperative legislation, and programs such as his alleged illegal wiretapping remind one of the corrupt politics of the Gilded Age. By understanding the concept of the appearance of unique polarizations in the power struggle between elite and popular democracy, we can be more cognizant of our present situation and therefore wiser in creating policy.
Works Cited
Morone, James A. Hellfire Nation. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.
Nace, Ted. Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of the Democracy.
Tom, Hayden. The Port Huron Statement. Students for a Democratic Society. Port Huron, 1962.
Young, James P. Reconsidering American Liberalism. Boulder: Westview P, 1996.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. Harper Perrenial, 2003.
