Since the beginning of the Second Gulf War, I have researched this subject and found that I am not the only one, either today or in the past, that has harbored concerns about the efficacy of our democracy. On March 11, 1887, President Rutherford B. Hayes made the following entry in his diary, “. . . It is a government of corporations, by corporations and for corporations. . . .”[i] The Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease, in 1890, referred to, “a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Steet”.[ii] The Eisenhower warning about the military-industrial complex is also nothing new. “The whole life of kings,” Rousseau says, “is devoted solely to two objects: to extend their rule beyond their frontiers and to make it more absolute within them.” As for their ministers “on whom they shuffle off their duty” whenever possible, they “are in perpetual need of war, as a means of making themselves indispensable to their master, of throwing him into difficulties from which he cannot escape without their aid, of ruining the State, if things come to the worst as the price of keeping their own office.”[iii] More recently, Falk has said, “. . . Wars recur, and the militarily competitive, anarchical international system continues, year after year, to prostitute national priorities and exact horrendous economic, political, and environmental costs, resulting in the unnecessary poverty and death of untold millions of people. ...war prevention and international system change are inseparable tasks.”[iv] According to Zinn, “The Democrats and Republicans do not dispute the continued corporate control of the economy. . . . Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba.”[v] How realities such as these could have been concealed from generations of Americans is ably explained, at least in part, by James W. Loewen in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me.[vi]
It seems that instead of the myth that I was taught as a boy, the reality of our democracy (and most others) is: it is controlled by a wealthy clique including corporate interests, and its primary objective is to increase its own power and wealth. Roger Rothenberger refers to such democracies as Plutocracies, which is, at least approximately, correct.[vii] This was true in colonial times when George III and his court were in control, it was true of the Founding Fathers who were wealthy aristocrats and it has continued to be true throughout our history. “It is pretended that, as in the Preamble to the Constitution, it is ‘we the people’ who wrote that document, rather than fifty-five privileged white males whose class interest required a strong central government. That use of government for class purposes, to serve the needs of the wealthy and powerful, has continued throughout American history, down to the present day.”[viii]Evidence of the success of the Plutocracy is shown by
Regev and Wilson of the Federal Reserve Bank of
San Francisco, which shows that the gap between the 95th and 50th
percentiles in income has been on a steadily increasing trend during the
past 45 years while the gap between the 50th and the 20th percentiles has
remained constant.
[i] . Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Diary and Letters of President Rutherford B. Hayes, March 11, 1887, http://www.ohiohistory/onlinedoc/hayes/Volume01/Chapter45/March11.txt.
[ii] . Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2007) 33.
[iii] . Kenneth N. Waltz, Man the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) 181.
[iv]. Richard A. Falk, Robert C. Johansen, Samuel S. Kim, ed. The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993) 39.
[v] . Zinn, A Power, 33
[vi] . James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995).
[vii]. Roger Rothenberger, Beyond Plutocracy, http://www.beyondplutocracy.com.
[viii] . Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003) 684.