Rich people are not in favor in America today. It does not take long listening to the popular discussion of politics these days to hear strident and fervent assertions that the rich pose an existential threat to democracy. As a sitting senator of the United States repeatedly explains, “A handful of billionaires now control our economic and political systems.” He’s not alone. More than half of Americans agree.
John McGinnis does not, however. He thinks we need the rich. In McGinnis’s view, the rich are important not just for economic growth but as protectors of democracy itself. “The wealthy, far from being democracy’s contradiction, are its indispensable collaborators. They enrich not just the coffers of the nation but the fabric of its political life.”
Though this argument may initially be surprising, it is rooted in a core Madisonian insight:
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. … If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Madison, Federalist #51
James Madison’s explanation of why power within the government must be divided is a bedrock principle of the American system. John McGinnis’ Why Democracy Needs the Rich is an extension of that argument to society as a whole. Without the rich, McGinnis explains, power would be far too centralized in the hands which will wield it to achieve undesirable ends.
The Monoculture
McGinnis’s argument can also be seen as an elaboration of Michael Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Novak argues that the Founding Fathers deliberately crafted a society in which societal power was split between three broad groups: government officials with political power, business owners with economic power, and intellectual and religious leaders with cultural power. Not only is the power of government officials checked by the division of power within government, but it is also restrained by the existence of powerful groups outside of government.
McGinnis, in a similar spirit, begins his argument by noting one of the fundamental confusions about democracies. There is a large difference between making decisions by popular vote and electing representatives to make decisions. While everyone has a vote in a representative democracy, not everyone has equal influence on the decisions that are made. It is “fundamentally unrealistic” to pretend that it is possible for everyone to have equal leverage on the decision makers. So, the question for a representative democracy is not whether some people will have more influence than others. The question is who will have disproportionate influence.
One segment of society has a natural advantage in shaping public opinion, thereby exerting influence on the decisions of government officials. It is quite literally the full-time job of people in what Novak called the “moral-cultural order” to persuade people. It seems trivially obvious to note that journalists, academics, entertainers, and other members of the chattering class wield enormous influence. In a well-functioning society, you would expect there to be a wide-ranging and active debate within the moral-cultural realm. Universities, for example, are supposed to be places where there is constantly a robust debate in the marketplace of ideas. Journalists with an array of prior beliefs will keep each other honest in the pursuit of truth.
Such is not the state of affairs in twenty-first-century America. The monoculture of the chattering classes has been endlessly documented. “Taken together, media, academia, and entertainment pull American politics leftward. Each sector operates through its unique channels, yet their impact is magnified by the synergistic relationships within a class that are employed to provide information in various forms.”
At first glance, the idea of a monoculture in journalism seems belied by the growing ecosystem of conservative media outlets. McGinnis is unpersuaded that such outlets provide much of a counterweight. Citing Pew Research data, he notes that nightly news viewership is 8 times larger on the three major networks than on Fox News, and there are additionally many left-leaning cable news outlets. Moreover, “talk-radio shows and podcasts where conservatives hold more sway enliven the public square, but they are second movers. … They often wait for important news media to publish and then riff in real time. In the economy of attention, facts are in this sense upstream of opinion.”
America needs the rich for the same reason it needs democracy; the American experiment hinges on the separation of power.
Uniformity of thought in the moral-cultural order can be dangerous because it exposes one of the inherent problems with democracy. As both Aristotle and the Founding Fathers knew well, democracy is perpetually at risk of devolving into a populist mob. Often a populist groundswell ends up supporting a paternalistic oligarchy. If the paternalists can persuade the mob to be on their side by promising an endless array of government payments funded by the minority, democracy can easily turn into tyranny. This was the whole idea behind the “long march through the institutions.” When it became obvious in the late 1960s that violent revolution was not going to work, radical leftists switched their strategy to infiltrating the organs of influence, hoping to achieve their ends by capturing the centers of cultural power.
Such a subversion of democratic norms is easier if the organs of government can be persuaded to side with the chattering classes. Getting all elected officials to agree on the same thing is impossible; elected officials are by nature ambitious, and carving out differences from each other is important to winning elections. But much of the government’s power lies outside elected officials. Government bureaucracy wields enormous sway; the easiest way to create a populist, paternalistic state is through the power of mid-level bureaucrats making decisions on how ill-defined laws should be implemented. As McGinnis notes, in modern America, the bureaucracy is also a monoculture.
Surveying the American landscape, it’s clear that the national discussion is heavily shaped by a set of people with uniform beliefs about what should be done. Journalism skews heavily leftward, and the conservative outlets seem to be forming their own separate bubble rather than engaging with the whole population. When you turn to the academy, the source of “expert opinion,” there are small conservative-leaning institutions, but none with the size and influence of the major left-leaning universities. In entertainment, finding stars with unorthodox beliefs is like reading Where’s Waldo?
Enter the Rich
Is it even possible in a world where one set of beliefs so dominates the organs of moral-cultural power to create a robust political debate? McGinnis argues that this is exactly why modern America needs the rich.
Politically, the rich are not a monoculture. Most generated their wealth in the economic realm, creating products that others, many others, wanted to buy. Unlike, say, the academy, the business world generally does not demand that one have the right belief system before supplying the public with backhoes or bubble tea. In politics, the wealthiest tilt slightly to the left, but only slightly. There are a great many extremely wealthy individuals on both sides of every political issue.
The wealthy of the business world can provide ideological balance in a democracy because they are not beholden to ideological conformists to maintain their wealth or position in society. They can afford to stand athwart history, funding causes in which they believe. Without financial support from people with means, many ideas would be deprived of the oxygen they need to become part of the national conversation.
McGinnis provides many examples of social causes that succeeded in part because wealthy people provided financial resources. Environmental causes were funded by the fortunes amassed by Rockefeller, Ford, and Packard. Educational reform benefited from the generosity of Walton (Wal-Mart), DeVos, Zuckerberg, and Gates. Some of the wealthiest Americans helped the anti-slavery movement. The women’s movement and the civil rights movement were also facilitated by the rich. “The argument for the utility of the rich to democracy,” McGinnis concludes, “is not that the rich alone are responsible for democracy’s success. Instead, they play an important role in promoting and accelerating political movements that began in unfavorable circumstances.”
Given the rather obvious fact that the rich have funded political and cultural causes across the ideological spectrum, why would anyone argue that their influence is primarily, let alone universally, harmful to society? Think back to Novak’s description of the division of power in American society. Suppose one ideological group acquired control over the moral-cultural order. In that world, the only thing impeding their total control over society would be people with power in either the political or economic realm. The political realm, in this scenario, has largely been captured through control of the bureaucracy. So, why the very loud opposition to the rich? They are the only remaining competitors to be overcome. It is straight power politics.
Is American Democracy a Good Thing?
McGinnis’ argument is not as universal as the title of his book suggests. If you value many of the same political goals as McGinnis, then the rich are necessary in twenty-first-century America to counterbalance the monolithic forces in the moral-cultural realm. If there were a great diversity of thought in the moral-cultural realm, it would seem that the rich would no longer be needed to balance out the debate. Leaders in the economic realm would still be necessary to generate the economic growth we all have come to expect, and those business leaders would become wealthy, but their role in balancing out political discourse would be far less relevant.
This line of thought becomes relevant when it comes to McGinnis’ discussion of what he terms the “New Right.” A growing number of people calling themselves “conservatives” sound every bit as hostile to the rich as the most liberal member of the academy. McGinnis argues that they should temper their criticism of the rich because if they want to achieve influence, they are going to need the funds that only the rich can provide. But the problem is deeper than that. If a liberal ideological monoculture were replaced with a conservative ideological monoculture, democracy would still require the rich, but this time it would be the liberal rich who would be needed to ensure a vibrant discussion. The rich don’t cease to be necessary if the Woke Mob is replaced by the MAGA Mob. A vibrant democracy requires people from across the ideological spectrum in all three of the realms of power.
McGinnis’ book exposes the biggest fault line in modern American politics. Do we really want a democracy in which power is divided? Stripped to its essence, the argument that the rich have too much political power is an argument that political power should instead be wielded by the influential people in the moral-cultural order who hold “correct” views on the issues of the day. If George Soros funds my favorite ideas, there is no problem, but if Elon Musk funds ideas different from mine, it is an existential threat, not to democracy, but to achieving what I want to achieve. The New Right is falling into exactly the same pattern.
The important question for Americans to ask themselves right now is not whether they need the rich, but whether they want people with influence to display a range of opinions, broadly reflecting those of the general population. Would you prefer a society where those who oppose your beliefs have no influence or power? That is not the recipe for democracy. It is the recipe for tyranny, with the only question being whether I am in the group favored or oppressed by the tyrants. America needs the rich for the same reason it needs democracy; the American experiment hinges on the separation of power.