Gilded Age elites circumscribed democracy to protect their economic regime
Evidence
The bottom line for Gilded Age business elites was that the most effective way to protect the original sin of that economic era was, as David Nasaw put it, “to circumscribe democracy.” They did this by lavishly funding their own political candidates as well as through the careful honing and aggressive dissemination of an ideological attack on the very notion of democracy’s right to interfere in the economic realm. Their industries were to be “self-regulating”: free to follow their own evolutionary laws. “Democracy,” they preached, “had its limits, beyond which voters and their elected representatives dared not trespass lest economic calamity befall the nation.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 343
Categorization
- SEED: Article angle: how tech platforms today replicate the ‘democracy has its limits’ doctrine of the Gilded Age — the ideological attack on regulation as economic calamity.
- XREF: connects to: Free-market economists of the era placed democratic will above economic principle. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 100; Rising democratic power forced the gold standard into terminal crisis — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 415; Wealthy elites saw social-welfare state publicity as an antirevolutionary necessity (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Great wealth concentration made the American elite openly antidemocratic
#corroborates(0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 594 - The gold standard shielded monetary policy from democratic politics
#exemplifies(0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 998 - Gilded Age industrialists invoked natural laws to justify opposing state regulation
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 342 - Elites legitimate their power by invoking a consensus they themselves pre-structure
#expands(0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 875 - Liberal constitutional democracy historically reserved political reality to economically privileged minorities.
#corroborates(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2336 - Formal political equality masks deep economic servitude that hollows out democracy
#complicates(0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 406