Why Does Democracy Require Redistributive Policies?

A Stable Democracy Must Provide an Acceptable Level of Living to Its People

We are in danger of losing our democracy because the distribution of income in our country has become too skewed toward the very rich. How can that be? What does the income distribution have to do with preserving democracy? 

Forces within market capitalism produce conditions that make democracy unstable. Market capitalism and representative democracy grew up together, and most modern societies combine them in various ways. However, the combination of liberal democracy and market capitalism is fragile. It requires that the combined economic and political system deliver an acceptable level of living to most of the people. A system that fails to provide an acceptable level of living produces anger, frustration and status-anxiety among millions of working people. They come to see that the system they live in is rigged against them. They lose faith in the democratic polity, and they become subject to the appeals of demagogues like Donald Trump who promise (falsely) to "restore" their level of living or at least their dignity. 

We have seen this process working in our own country as working-class incomes corrected for inflation have fallen in recent decades. Millions of manufacturing jobs have been eliminated and entire communities have been devasted. People are angry and resentful, and they are right to be angry and resentful. The system is indeed rigged against them.

The anger and resentment can easily be channeled in antidemocratic directions through appeals to the racism, xenophobia and sexism that exist in every society. Today's Republican Party is built on that combination. The party claims to represent the working class, although it offers no real solutions to that class's problems. The party has also generated support by deliberately fomenting the "culture wars.". Today's Republicans claim that our system is not really democratic because it has been taken over by shadowy "elites" who manipulate our elections to produce the results that they want. 

For people who believe this claim, it makes sense to deny the validity of the elections and ultimately to use violence as we saw on January 6, 2021. So far, our democratic institutions have held up under these attacks, but the fragility of those institutions has become clearer and clearer. The marriage of representative democracy with market capitalism cannot survive unless the system provides an acceptable level of living to the majority of the people.

What is an Acceptable Level of Living?

What are the elements of an acceptable level of living in a stable democracy? In The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, Martin Wolf suggests that they include:

• Prosperity
• Opportunity
• Security
• Dignity

Prosperity is a level of national wealth that can provide reasonable incomes to all of its citizens, but national wealth is not enough. There must also be opportunity for everyone who wants and is able to work to obtain a job that provides a reasonable income. Opportunity also means that system must provide real and widespread opportunities for people to move up and increase their incomes. In addition, the system must provide security against economic disasters. People lose their jobs because of events over which they have no control. People fall ill and require medical care. An acceptable level of living in a rich country must include protection against disasters like these. Finally, an acceptable level of living must provide all citizens with a feeling of dignity, a feeling of pride that they can fulfill their responsibilities and look their neighbors and their children in the face.

Our capitalist system provides prosperity but falls very short on the other dimensions of an acceptable life. Opportunity in the United States is very unequally distributed. There are plenty of opportunities for people with post-secondary educational degrees, but the situation for people with less education is bleak. Well-to-do families can easily provide post-secondary education for their children, while children from working-class families must shoulder enormous debts in order to take advantage of such opportunities. 

Security is also very unequally distributed. A worker who loses his/her job will likely get two-weeks’ notice, very limited unemployment benefits and even more limited opportunities for retraining. People who lose their jobs in the United States also lose their health insurance, and if they cannot provide it for themselves, they are vulnerable to financial disasters caused by illness. That is why health care costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. 

Finally, deindustrialization and other changes in our economy have robbed millions of people of their dignity. Millions of men can no longer provide for their families, and millions of single women with children are even worse off. The loss of dignity has led to epidemics of drug addiction and suicide.  The loss of dignity may be the most dangerous failure of all. People deeply resent the loss of dignity, and when they do, they often turn to identities that seem to restore their it. They may for example, feel dignity because they are white or because they are Christians. Leaders like Mr. Trump emerge to ride the wave of identity politics.

Status Anxiety and the Instability of Our Democracy

Our economy’s failure to provide opportunity, security and dignity underlies the anxiety over loss of status that has been widely cited as a basis for white working-class resentment in our country. Many people know that their social status has been hard won and that it is not secure. Millions of people are a hairsbreadth from financial ruin. An unexpected illness or the loss of a job can ruin them financially, and with the loss of their money goes the loss of the social status that the money provided.

The Republicans have used racism, sexism and cultural tensions to mask the status anxiety's real cause, which is our system's failure to provide the working class with an acceptable level of living. The party has persuaded people that their problems are caused by the "elites" favoring non-whites and foreigners over "real Americans" and not by forces that are inherent in our capitalist system. Thus, the party has been able to persuade millions of people to vote for Republican candidates, but the candidates do not improve the lives of the people who voted for them. So, the anxiety increases, the tendency to resort of violence increases, and our democracy becomes more and more unstable.

How Can Redistributive Policies Help?

Redistributive policies can help by limiting the effects of concentration of income and wealth. Economic forces within capitalism drive an ever greater concentration of income and wealth. Consequently, opportunity, security and dignity become more and more tenuous for the bulk of the population. Redistributive policies can limit and even prevent this decline in the level of living of the people by providing income in kind. Redistributive policies use tax revenues to provide opportunity, security and dignity to the majority of the population. Affordable housing puts more money into the pockets of working people; a decent, national healthcare system reduces economic insecurity for everyone; a system of higher education that does not require people to shoulder enormous debts increases opportunity for the children of the working class; a real, national pension system restores dignity to all of us.

When people see that our system is not rigged against them, they are less likely to try to overthrow it. They may not abandon the racism or xenophobia in their hearts, but they no longer need to use racism or xenophobia to explain a suffering that they no longer feel. The forces that would overthrow our democracy are dissipated. If we are to preserve our democracy, we must understand that its fragility is inherent in the alliance with market capitalism. We cannot preserve our democracy by convicting Donald Trump of crimes, although we should certainly do that. We must recognize that his appeal is due to real injustices in our system, and if we wish to preserve our democracy, we must correct those injustices through redistributive policies.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In previous posts in this series, I have said that the Democratic Party has lost its focus on policies to redistribute income from the small, upper class to the rest of us. We must regain that focus if we want to preserve our democracy and rebuild our majority, but what that would mean in practice? 

We Must Remember What a Party of the Left is Supposed to Do

We must begin by remembering that at its core, a party of the left exists to redistribute income from a small, wealthy minority to the rest of us. Economic forces within capitalism drive wealth to be concentrated more and more in the hands of a wealthy few, and our role is to counter those economic forces with political ones. Our purpose is to fight to ensure that our society becomes a society of economic justice. We do not need to abandon the causes that we are passionate about now, but we do need to divert  some of that passion to advocating strongly for redistributive policies that will make life better for people of all races and genders. Such policies will attract many white working-class voters while at the same time allowing us to be anti-racist and feminist in an effective way.

Redistributive Policies that Benefit Everyone Are Effectively Anti-Racist and Feminist

 In How to be an Anti-Racist, Ibram Kendi defines an antiracist policy as “any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.” Policies designed to redistribute income to the working class will reduce the income gap between black and white people because black people are overrepresented in the working class. Such policies will also reduce the income gap between men and women for the same reason. Thus, redistributive policies will be both feminist and anti-racist.

Moreover, redistributive policies will combat the widespread notion that in order for women or racial minorities to gain, white men must give something up. Redistributive policies will redistribute income from the very rich to the rest of us – not from white men to women or racial minorities. Thus, redistributive policy proposals can provide a basis for building an interracial coalition powerful enough to pass them through Congress or through state legislatures.

Do We Have to Talk About Racism First?

It has been persuasively argued that we cannot deal with economic inequality without first talking about race, but I think that is backwards. We must start with policies that can bring people together across racial lines to fight for social justice.  We cannot as a political party eliminate the racism or the sexism in people’s hearts, but we can reduce the economic effects of racism and sexism. We cannot create a perfect society, but we can build a society in which racism and sexism produce less suffering, and that is a worthwhile political goal.

Can We Get Over Our Contempt for Working-Class White Men?

We will have to get over our unfortunate tendency to view working-class white men as a uniform mass of racists. We should see them as a large class with a wide range of opinions. Some are persuadable, and some are not. We will never get all of them to vote as Democrats, but we do not need to do that. We only need to increase our share of the white working-class vote, but we won’t be able to do that if we treat white working-class men with contempt.

What Policies Should We Support?

We do not need to invent new redistributive ideas. Democratic leaders like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a number of useful proposals, and we should follow their lead. We can begin by learning about their ideas, and here are some places to start:

Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on American Families | Elizabeth Warren

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress (ocasiocortez.com)

In addition, here are a couple of useful posts in this blog:

Fox Cities Progressive: Reducing Racial Inequity in the United States By Making Everyone’s Life Better  

Fox Cities Progressive: Working Class Women: a Natural Progressive Constituency

Here is an example from my own state of Wisconsin:

Gov. Evers: Announces plan to bolster child care statewide for working families - WisPolitics

Stress Values and the Moral Basis of Action

Working for redistributive policies will not be enough. We must also make the moral case for them because people vote their values as much as their interests. Too often, we assume that the moral case for our policies is so obvious that we don't need to make it. The Republicans, on the other work hard to make the moral case for their policies, and by so doing, they have built their party’s strength. We must do the same thing. To see how to do it, look at this piece by Elizabeth Warren or at this blog post. We have to say these kinds of things over and over and over again until they become part of what people accept as obvious truth. In letters to the editor, in our public statements, and in conversations with voters, we should focus on values and on their links to policies.

We should not spend time attacking our opponents’ values, because when we do so, we elevate them in the consciousness of our audience. We should stick to emphasizing on our own values. Advocates for abortion rights have done so consistently and effectively. They never spend time debating the question of whether abortion is murder. They hammer over and over again on the right of a woman to control her own body and to make her own decisions in this area. They say that it is wrong for such decisions to be made by old men who have no stake in the issue. That is how we should approach the values related to redistributive policies. We should talk about why we are right - not why our opponents are wrong.

Let's get busy and build a better world!

What is the Party of the Patrimonial Middle Class Passionate About?

This is the fourth post in my series on the problems and future of the Democratic Party.[1] The last post in this series said that the Democratic Party is based in the patrimonial middle class. How does the make-up of the party affect its political character?

Our Party’s Concerns Are Those of Its Base

The Democratic Party inevitably reflects the concerns of the people who make up its base. We members of the patrimonial middle class mostly do not think in terms of class, and so, we do not see class oppression. We do see racial and gender-based inequity, and we see them mainly in the light of our own experiences, and the experiences of people we know. We are most passionate about the problems that we know about from these sources. We are also passionate about issues that arise from disgusting public events like the murder of George Floyd.

We Are Passionate About Abortion Rights but Not About a National Health Care System

We can see the effects of our experience by comparing our weak support for a national health care system with our extremely strong support for abortion rights. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision galvanized the Democratic electorate. Millions of Democrats who had been politically inactive became activists. Democrats won political offices in what had been Republican districts, and recently in Ohio, a referendum that would have made it more difficult to change Ohio’s restrictive abortion law was defeated. In contrast, when Bernie Sanders proposed “Medicare for All,” the reception among Democrats was lukewarm at best. Similarly, when Pres. Obama proposed the Affordable Care Act, he was able to pass it through Congress, but there was no broad outpouring of support for it in spite of the fact that illness is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in our country, and the cost of health care keeps millions of women, blacks and whites in poverty.

Why is the support for abortion rights so fervent, while the support for a national health care system is lukewarm at best? Could it be because we know that we, our daughters or our sisters may well need abortions? Could it be because we see that restrictions on abortion affect us directly?  A national health care system would have no such direct effect. Most of us already have health insurance. We do not need a national program.

We Are Passionate About Women’s Rights but Not About the Plight of Working-Class Women

Democrats have also supported the women’s movement mainly from a middle-class point of view. We talk about the “glass ceiling,” and articles are published about the number of women who are CEOs of major companies. We encourage our daughters to study STEM fields in college. We abhor sexual harassment because our base includes millions of business and professional women who have experienced directly the things that are described in a recent article about pervasive sexual harassment in a national real estate association. We are passionate about these issues.

On the other hand, we are not nearly as passionate about affordable housing, although the cost of housing keeps millions of women in poverty. In fact, many of our members are strong supporters of the zoning laws that are among the largest obstacles to affordable housing. We are not passionate about affordable childcare, either, although the cost of childcare, like the cost of housing, keeps millions of women in poverty. In short, we are passionate about the obstacles that women face because they are women, but we are not nearly as passionate about the ones they face because they are working class. We do not focus on redistribution of income.

We Are Passionate About Racial Equity but Not About the Plight of Working-Class Black People

Our approach to issues of racial equity is similar. We care deeply about the number of black people who are admitted to elite universities and about the number of black people who are heads of major companies. We are horrified by the repeated killing of black people by the police. We work for “inclusion,” and we raise our consciousness on racial issues by reading books like White Fragility or How to be an Antiracist.

On the other hand, we do not work hard for major increases in tax funding for public universities, although black people on average carry much more educational debt than white people. We do not support – or even know much about – Darrity and Hamilton’s proposal for “baby bonds” to reduce the wealth differential between rich and poor people, although black people would be major beneficiaries of such a program. Black people would also be major beneficiaries of affordable housing, but as mentioned above, we do not support that strongly either. In short, we are passionate about the problems that black people face because they are black but not about the problems that they face because they are working class. We do not focus on redistribution of income.

Our Party Has Good Ideas, But We Do Not Promote Them

Our party does not lack for redistributive ideas. Democratic leaders like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders have made a number of redistributive proposals, but they have not generated the kind of grass-roots enthusiasm that would be needed to turn them into major planks in the Democratic platform. In my local party's office, I do not hear redistributive policies being discussed. I do not read about such issues on Facebook. I do not see opinion pieces discussing them in the New York Times or the Washington Post. In short, there is no national effort to explain how such proposals would benefit working people of all races; there is no national effort to show how such proposals are rooted in basic, American values; and there is no national effort to build the kind of coalition that would make the passage of such proposals possible.

We Have Allowed the Republicans to Claim to Represent the Working Class

Our failure to unite around redistributive policies that could benefit everyone has left the white working class without a home in the Democratic Party, and the Republicans have not hesitated to use racism, xenophobia and hatred of cultural elites to build a fake populist movement to attract votes to their candidates. The movement is fake because it offers no real solutions, but it does channel working class anger in a way that helps to elect Republican candidates. 

We Can Do Better

We do not have to sit passively and allow the Republicans to claim the white working-class vote. If we offered real solutions to working-class suffering, we would be able to draw many working-class people to our party. Some would continue to prefer racism and xenophobia but many others would see which side of their bread was really buttered. We can win if we remember what a party of the left is really supposed to do.

The last article in this serious will suggest some things that we might do going forward to build a coalition with a real chance to enact redistributive policies.

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[1] The earlier posts in the series may be found at Fox Cities Progressive: The Party of the Patrimonial Middle Class, Fox Cities Progressive: How We Stopped Thinking About Class in Politics and FoxCities Progressive: What is the Patrimonial Middle Class?

What is the Patrimonial Middle Class?

 This third post[1] on the problems and future of the Democratic Party digs more deeply into the character of the class that the Democratic Party represents. We claim to represent the interests of people who have been excluded unjustly from the benefits of American prosperity, but because of our inability or reluctance to see class oppression, we have become the party of what Thomas Picketty calls “the patrimonial middle class.” What is that class?

The Patrimonial Middle Class

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Picketty shows that in the years since World War II, a new class has emerged. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the top 10% of the population owned almost everything that could be owned, and the rest of the people owned almost nothing. Today, the top 10% still owns a wildly disproportionate share of the wealth, and the bottom 50% still owns almost nothing. However, the 40% that lies between the top 10% and the bottom 50% now owns a substantial amount of the country’s wealth. Individually, many in this group do not own much, but they own something, and collectively, they own a great deal. Picketty calls this new class “patrimonial” because its members are able to pass their wealth on to their children. The patrimonial middle class is predominantly white, but it includes many Asians and a sizable and growing number of black and Hispanic people.

What does the wealth of the patrimonial middle class consist of? First, it includes family homes. Members of the patrimonial middle class in the United States typically own their homes. When the parents die, the children may either sell the houses or choose to live in them. Members of the patrimonial middle class may also own small businesses like restaurants, farms, professional practices or construction contracting businesses. The children of the owners of the businesses may take them over or sell them. Members of the patrimonial middle class often own investment portfolios as well through such vehicles as 401k or IRA accounts, and they too can be passed to children.

Characteristics of Members of the Patrimonial Middle Class

Members of the patrimonial middle class share certain characteristics. First, they are usually educated; they have degrees from universities. They speak grammatically “correct” English, and such speech has always been a class marker, even in the United States. Working-class people do not sound like members of the patrimonial middle class, and the difference is obvious to everyone. In J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, there is a poignant moment where the author describes the “hillbillies’” reaction to Obama. To them, Vance says, Obama sounded like the law professor that he was, and they knew that such a person could never understand or empathize with them. In contrast, most Democrats were inspired by Obama. He sounded like them, and they knew immediately that he was one of them.

The fact that members of the patrimonial middle class are educated points to their second, important characteristic: Most of them have technical or professional qualifications that allow them to live financially comfortable lives. They own houses; they have retirement accounts; and they are able to pay for all or part of their children’s university educations.  The members of the patrimonial middle class do not worry every day about how they will feed their children or pay their rent. They do not live in slums, and they are rarely evicted by landlords. They have health insurance and do not fear the financial consequences of getting sick.

So, while they may resent social injustice and while they may work for a more equitable society, they do not feel viscerally that they are themselves oppressed by our country’s ruling class. This sets them apart from people like J. D. Vance’s hillbillies or those in Matthew Desmond’s Evicted. Those people know in their hearts that the system is rigged against them.  They know too that the people who make up the base of our party are part of that system.

The Base of the Democratic Party

The base of the Democratic Party comes mainly from the patrimonial middle class. If you volunteer to work for your local county party, you will encounter in the party’s office teachers, nurses, engineers, lawyers, computer programmers, accountants, journalists and small business owners. Many of the people you meet will be retired.   Many of them will be women. These volunteers are the people who do the work of turning out the voters on election day. These are the people who walk from door-to-door to canvass for local candidates. They write posts like this one or letters to the editors of their local papers. They are the base of the party.

The next post in this series will discuss some of the political consequences of the make-up of the Democratic Party.

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[1] The previous posts may be found at   Fox Cities Progressive: The Party of the Patrimonial Middle Class and Fox Cities Progressive: How We Stopped Thinking About Class in Politics