The Dreams of Poor Men’s Sons:Democracy and Ideologies of Class in the United States.

Observers of democracy have long worried that it has the potential to degenerate into rule by the poor. Yet this has never happened in the United States. Is this because the U.S. has a relatively egalitarian class structure, or are there other reasons to be considered? For some of the ancient Greeks, democracy was a form of class rule, and the concern that poor majorities would threaten property rights has surfaced and resurfaced in democratic political thought ever since, including in the thinking of the American Federalists. In response to this concern, Aristotle suggested that an ideal democracy (or polity) would have a large middle class, and Alexis de Tocqueville believed that American democracy worked in part because there were no extremes of wealth here. However, if we wish to understand why democracy in America has never been a vehicle for rule by the poorer classes, class structure alone does not offer us an adequate explanatory framework. Ironically, the thinker who gives us the best clue as to why democracy does not become a vehicle for rule by the poor is Adam Smith, who understood the powerful grip that the dream of upward mobility can have on “poor men’s sons,” and who was aware of the peculiar admiration for the rich that seems to go with this dream. In short, what Smith recognized is power of ideology, culture, and class consciousness. The dream of upward mobility has had a powerful grip on the American imagination since at least the Jacksonian era, and today, according to one study, nearly 40 percent of all Americans believe that they either are in the top 1 percent of wealth-holders, or that they will be within their lifetimes. Under these circumstances, the concern that democracy will become rule by the poor seems moot—to say the least. But does not, then, a new concern arise? If such a large proportion of Americans identify themselves not just with the wealthy but with the extremely wealthy, how can the political interests of the non-wealthy be adequately represented? The dream of upward mobility would seem to cause citizens to vote not their own class interests, but the interests of a class of which they believe they will be a member some day. This paper traces the history of democratic thought about the implications of class structure for democracy. It then focuses on the rise of liberal populism in the United States in the early 19th century, and examines the continued power of the ideology of upward mobility. It considers explanations for the continued grip of this ideology on the American imagination, and it raises concerns about the future shape of democracy under these circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]