This is the second post in the series “Sliding from Democracy,” in which I’m examining some of the anti-democratic events of the past forty-five years that have paved the way for the chaos of the Trump presidency. The first post acknowledged that we have never been a perfect democracy and that some of our undemocratic behavior prior to the 1970s actually foreshadowed our current political crisis.
In this second post I want to set the stage for our turn away from democracy by examining the unusual period from the Great Depression to the mid-1970s. I say “unusual” because average Americans benefited much more from government and had a greater impact on governance than at any other time in our history. It was a time of prosperity for the many and great confidence in our democracy. Most historians, in fact, believed democracy itself would protect any long-term, stable democracy like ours from backsliding; under normal circumstances, they believed, they could not retrogress.
Unfortunately, that period of confidence left us poorly prepared to recognize the magnitude of the danger of subsequent events.
Historically, and in most countries during most time periods, the wealthy and powerful have either ruled or had enormous power with in government. As we saw in the last post, even the American Constitution was deliberately written to give the elite outsized power. Only 6% of the population could vote. “Democracy” only applied to wealthy landowners. It wouldn’t be until the early 20th century that women could vote and the 1960s that people of color had, in actual fact, the right to vote.
Prior to 1930, even with universal suffrage, the wealthy had most of the political power in the United States. With the world-wide Great Depression and then the destruction that came of World War II, however, this changed dramatically; many of the politically powerful lost much of their wealth and, consequently, some of that power. This set the stage for the increase in equality that was coming.
During the prosperous years following WWII and up until the 1970s, the income of the average worker rose in tandem with the growth of the economy, which meant that average workers saw regular increases in their standard of living throughout the post-war period. Retirement and health benefits became the norm. Income taxes were sharply progressive (ie, the higher the income the higher the rate of taxation), further redistributing wealth. CEOs made about 20 times as much as their average worker (compared to well over 200 times as much today).
The average workers and the economic elite shared the rises in productivity.
Understandably, trust in government remained steadily high. The US had won the war and was helping Europe and (to a lesser extent) Japan to rebuild their economies, giving us a sense of magnanimity and power. Unions were powerful and protected the rights of many workers; government social insurance programs (Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, Medicaid, and many others), were either well-established or on the drawing boards. In the early years of the Lyndon Johnson administration, public trust in government was almost 80%. Most important, the standard of living for most people was increasing; you could count on your children doing better than you.
Democracy seemed unshakeable.
Even terrible injustices, such as the Vietnam War, seemed to many of us to be unique exceptions and didn’t destroy our confidence in democracy itself. To take my own example, I was so opposed to that war that I refused induction into the military, an action that could have led to imprisonment. I was very aware of the evil of the war. Nevertheless, even I did not question the system of democracy itself. We who were against the war just needed to convince the voters. I remember thinking: This is not who we are. Even through President Nixon’s betrayal in Watergate, I remained confident our democracy would ultimately get through it. I was not prepared for what came next and was very slow to recognize the danger slouching toward America.
I was not alone.
In the next post, I will explore the stunning explosion in corporate political power that changed American democracy for the foreseeable future.
