POL 3910:
HONORS SEMINAR: AMERICAN POLITICS:
THE ELITIST-PLURALIST
DEBATE
Fall 2003
Reading:
James Madison Federalist
#10
This reading captures the elitist-pluralist debate in that it can be read in two quite different ways: the traditional way, which holds that Madison and the Federalists were trying to create a pluralist democracy, where no one could dominate, and a more recent, critical way, which holds that Madison and the Federalists were simply trying to protect the owning class.
Note that Federalist #10 is considered (and used as) the most important explanation of the genius of our federal political system.
Madison's task is to show that the proposed constitution—creating a federal system governing the 13 states making up the Articles of Confederation—deals with what he calls "the problem of faction". Let me point out that there are really two distinct aspects to what Madison sees as a single problem: the separate aspects of "majoritarianism" and "selfishness".
These two problems differ in that we can conceive a situation in which a minority insisting on its rights may damage the collectivity, and an opposite situation in which a majority takes action which, while benefiting the collectivity, nevertheless violates the rights of the minority. But for the purposes of my analysis here, I'll assume the two problems are the same. I'll continue to use religious liberty as an example, because having the state enforce some religious orthodoxy shows both majoritarianism (the religious majority violating the minority's right to religious liberty) and selfishness (the very scant gains of orthodoxy for the majority are achieved at the severe deprivation of the minority—while I, a member of the dominant religion, gain a pale satisfaction at you having the "correct" beliefs, you, a member of the minority religion, lose your entire belief system and culture).
Madison points out that people inevitably differ in their opinions, and that forcing everyone to think the same violates the very liberty that we create government to protect in the first place. Thus faction is inevitable.
So if we can't avoid the causes of faction, how can we avoid its bad effects? Madison answers this by saying, basically, that we can ensure that (i) electoral districts are large enough that public-spirited representatives can be found and elected and (ii) potentially oppressive majority factions are divided—by space and by organizational differentiation. In the case of the new federal constitution, this division is accomplished by several means: having geographically defined districts (vs., say, proportional representation); by the division of powers between the state and federal governments; by the checks and balances among the three branches of government; and by the varied & staggered terms of the various offices. All of this should be familiar to any political science student who has taken the introductory American politics course.
First note that this discussion does not take place in a vacuum; rather, it takes place only one year after Shays's Rebellion (1786), a rebellion by farmers / former soldiers in Massachusetts who were in debt (through no fault of their own, they claimed — with justice, I believe) and wanted the Massachusetts legislature to pass laws easing their debt burdens.
Note second that Madison is making his argument in a newspaper — which sounds innocuous, until we recall that newspapers were purchased and read primarily by the educated and wealthy. Madison is speaking to a specific social class, and it isn't the ordinary farmers and laborers of the time. The language he uses is mostly general and abstract, but today we would say that he was using "code words". The people who read his essay were able to supply their own content. (I point out later the passages in which Madison speaks pretty explicitly about the conflict between the rich and the poor.)
Now turn your attention to the text of the essay. After five paragraphs that describe the problem of faction, Madison claims (with John Locke) that the purpose of government is to protect property — that property is a right. Why is it a right, according to him? — because people have "diverse faculties" (i.e., different skills and talents) and thus "different degrees and kinds of property", so that government must give "protection of these faculties", "from which the rights of property originate".
Huh? If you read this sixth paragraph of the essay, you can see that Madison in fact gives no reason that property is a right. In fact, he is committing the "naturalistic fallacy", deriving a normative statement (that property is a right) from an empirical statement (that people in fact differ in their faculties). But of course Madison didn't really need to give much of an argument here; his audience already believed that they had a right to their property.
[Most of his audience, anyway. Not everyone of the time saw property as a right in the same way that Madison did. Thomas Jefferson, writing the Declaration of Independence a decade earlier, had written that people's inalienable rights included "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", not "life, liberty, and property", the original version.]
In the next paragraph Madison does mention religion as a cause of faction, but he shortly says directly that "the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property", and here and later he alludes directly to the division between creditors and debtors, i.e., between the wealthy and the poor, between those who would tax everyone equally and those who would tax the wealthy more, between those who want tight money, which protects their wealth, and those who want easy money, which would ease their debts. Although Madison does allude to potential differences between "a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest", the fundamental faction is that of property (i.e., wealth) itself, regardless of what exactly is owned.
If property is the basic faction, then Madison's remedies for faction have a distinct class bias. Recall that his two remedies are (i) having electoral districts large enough that public-spirited representatives can be found and elected and (ii) dividing potentially oppressive majority factions by space and by organizational differentiation. It is clear that by "public-spirited representatives" he means the traditional elite, that is, the wealthy, who, regardless of their particular interest, can be counted upon to be "public-spirited" enough to keep the laws from being used to infringe on their right to their own wealth. The second remedy is also class-biased, in that the wealthy are much more able to organize across geographic distances (in that they can afford to leave their businesses, can afford to travel, and can use media like newspapers) and across time (in that they have the ability to maintain a battle for a long time, while the poor can fight only in short bursts).
In short, even though Federalist #10 appears to be an even-handed argument for everyone to think in terms of the overall wealth and to preserve minority rights, the subtext is that the proposed constitution will enable the wealthy to maintain their wealth against attempts of the poor (as in Shays's Rebellion) to throw off the systemic oppression of their poverty.
[1] AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. ... the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. [Meaning the poor, as we shall see.] However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. [For example, in the Massachusetts legislature's bowing to the demands of the rebels led by Daniel Shays.] These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations. ["Unsteadiness" = "unwillingness to preserve our property"; "injustice" = "Reducing the value of our property is unjust."]
[2] By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, ...
[3] There are two methods of curing ...
[4] There are again two methods of removing ...
[5] It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, ...
[6] The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise .... The diversity in the faculties [i.e., abilities, talents] of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties. [All emphases supplied. So: Madison is saying directly that the protection of the different abilities to get property is the primary purpose of government. Marx will later agree, but then go on to say that this is a bad thing, not a good thing.]
[7] The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; .... So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. ... [Emphasis supplied. In other words, the basic source of faction is the division between the rich and the poor.]
[8] No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, ... And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors [i.e., the wealthy] are parties on one side and the debtors [i.e., the poor] on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction [i.e., the poor, who are so much more numerous than the rich] must be expected to prevail. ... The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party [i.e., the numerous poor] to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number [i.e., the rich], is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
[9] It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust ...
[10] The inference to which we are brought is ...
[11] If a faction consists of less than a majority, ...
[12] By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. ... [In other words, we must make the poor unable to organize to oppose the rich.]
[13] From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy , by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party [e.g., the rich] or an obnoxious individual [e.g., a religious dissident] . Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property [i.e., the rights of the rich to hold onto their property]; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. [Here Madison uses the rhetorical device of setting up a straw man as the only possible opponent. In other words, he acts as if the only alternatives are to protect property completely or to have all property shared out equally.]
[14] A republic, by which I mean a government in which ...
[15] The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic ...
[16] The effect of the first difference is ...
[17] In the first place, it is to be remarked that ...
[18] In the next place, as each representative will be chosen ...
[19] It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, ...
[20] The other point of difference is, ...
[21] Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy ...
[22] The influence of factious leaders [e.g., Daniel Shays] may kindle a flame within their particular States [e.g., Massachusetts], but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money [i.e., for inflation, which reduces the value of creditors' holdings], for an abolition of debts [eliminating creditors' holdings entirely], for an equal division of property [which disadvantages the relatively wealthy; of course, this is just the "straw man" argument from before], or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State. [In other words, Madison is proposing quite frankly a "divide and conquer" strategy. Just keep the poor divided, he is saying, and they will have trouble joining to effectively oppose the rich.]
[23] In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy ...
PUBLIUS
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