The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American DemocracyA bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the Constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth. Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the Òrepublican form of governmentÓ the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it has almost nothing to say about this threat. But as Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath show in this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Fishkin and Forbath demonstrate that reformers, legislators, and even judges working in this Òdemocracy of opportunityÓ tradition understood that the Constitution imposes a duty on legislatures to thwart oligarchy and promote a broad distribution of wealth and political power. These ideas led Jacksonians to fight special economic privileges for the few, Populists to try to break up monopoly power, and Progressives to fight for the constitutional right to form a union. During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans argued in this tradition that racial equality required breaking up the oligarchy of slave power and distributing wealth and opportunity to former slaves and their descendants. President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers built their politics around this tradition, winning the fight against the Òeconomic royalistsÓ and Òindustrial despots.Ó But today, as we enter a new Gilded Age, this tradition in progressive American economic and political thought lies dormant. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution begins the work of recovering it and exploring its profound implications for our deeply unequal society and badly damaged democracy. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Constitution Making and the Political Economy of SelfRule in the Early Republic | 32 |
2 Clashing Constitutional Political Economies in Antebellum America | 71 |
A Brief Union of Three Precepts | 109 |
4 Constitutional Class Struggle in the Gilded Age | 138 |
5 Progressive Constitutional Ferment in the New Century | 185 |
6 The New Deal Democracy of Opportunity | 251 |
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Amendment American anti-oligarchy antitrust argued arguments bargaining bill Black Brandeis campaign capital century Chapter citizens civil rights claims classical liberal Commerce CONG Congress conservative consti constitutional political economy constitutionalism corporate Deal Dealers democracy of opportunity democracy-of-opportunity tradition democratic dissenting Dixiecrats doctrine economic elected elite employers enact equal ERIC FONER federal FEPC Forbath Free Labor freedom full employment Gilded Age idea industrial inequality Jacksonian Jefferson judicial Justice lawmakers legislation liberal liberty Lincoln litical Lochner era ment middle class movement nomic oligarchy organized Party political-economic Populists President principles Progressive protection quoting racial radical Reconstruction reform regulation republic Republican Roosevelt Senate Sherman Act slave slavery social Southern statutes strikes Supreme Court Thirteenth Amendment tion tional tutional U.S. Senate unions United vision vote wage wage slavery Wagner Act wealth welfare Whig William WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN workers