Complete political equality requires prior economic equality

Evidence

Clearly in this the Utopians were not Utopians, but concrete political scientists and consistent critics. The Utopian character of some of them was due to the fact that they believed that economic equality could be introduced by arbitrary laws, by an act of will, etc. But the idea that complete and perfect political equality cannot exist without economic equality (an idea to be found in other political writers, too, even right-wing ones—i.e. among the critics of democracy, in so far as the latter makes use of the Swiss or Danish model to claim that the system is a reasonable one for all countries) nevertheless remains correct. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 957

Categorization

• XREF: Useful precedent for how right-wing thinkers weaponize formal political equality claims — the Swiss/Danish-model critique anticipates arguments about formal vs substantive equality in citizenship debates. — connects to: Democratic equality cannot exist without a correlate of inequality and exclusion — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 173; Citizens’ political equality is undercut by their economic dependence on employers — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 533; Formal political equality and market exchange produce economic domination when property is unequal — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 582