One central facet to the development of the modern institutional
society under which we live and are dominated today, was the redefining
of the concept of ‘democracy’ that took place in the early 20th century.
This immensely important discussion took place among the educated,
elite intellectual class in the United States at that time, and the
consequences of which were profound for the development of not only
American society and democracy, but for the globalization that followed
after World War II.
The central theme that emerged was that in the age of ‘mass
democracy’, where people came to be known as “the public,” the concept
of ‘democracy’ was redefined to be a system of government and social
organization which was to be managed by an intellectual elite, largely
concerned with “the engineering of consent” of the masses in order to
allow elite-management of society to continue unhindered.
The socio-economic and political situation of the United States had, throughout the 19thcentury, rapidly changed.
Official slavery was ended after the Civil War and the wage-slave
method of labour was introduced on a much wider scale; that is, the
approach at which people are no longer property themselves, but rather
lend their labour at minimal hourly wages, a difference equated with
rental slavery versus owned slavery.
While the system of labour had itself changed, the living conditions
of the labourers did not improve a great deal. With Industrialization
also came increased urbanization, poverty, and thus, social unrest.
The 19th Century in the United States was one of
near-constant labour unrest, social upheaval and a rapidly growing
wealth divide. And it was not simply the lower labouring classes that
were experiencing the harsh rigors of a modern industrial life. One
social critic of the era, writing in 1873, discussed the situation of
the middle class in America:
Very few among them are saving money. Many of them are in debt; and all they can earn for years, is, in many cases, mortgaged to pay such debt… [We see] the unmistakable signs of their incessant anxiety and struggles to get on in life, and to obtain in addition to a mere subsistence, a standing in society… The poverty of the great middle classes consists in the fact that they have only barely enough to cover up their poverty… their poverty is felt, mentally and socially, through their sense of dependence and pride. They must work constantly, and with an angry sense of the limited opportunities for a career at their command.[1]
As immigrants from Europe and Asia flooded America, a growing sense
of racism emerged among the faltering middle class. This situation
created enormous tension and unease among middle and working class
Americans, and indeed, the industrialists who ruled over them.
Yet many in the middle class viewed the lower class, which was
increasingly rebellious, as well as the immigrant labourers – also quite
militant – as a threat to their own standing in society. Instead of
focusing primarily on the need for reorganization at the top of the
social structure, they looked to the masses – the working people – as
the greatest source of instability.
Their approach was in attempting to preserve – or construct – a
system beneficial to their own particular interests. Since the middle
class survived on the backs of the workers, it was not in their interest
as a class to support radical workers movements and revolutionary
philosophies. Thus, while criticizing those at the top, the call came
for ‘reform’, not revolution; for passive pluralism not democratic
populism; for amelioration, not anarchy.
