War, social inequality and the crisis of American democracy

In order to understand this, one has to look at the nature of the society in which we live. What is the real source of these diseases—of war, of dictatorship? They must be symptoms of a deep social ill that exists within the United States.

The framers of the Constitution insisted that the United States was a nation of laws, not men. They recognized that there was a danger, a profound danger, that government could overstep its delegated powers and become a tyranny—a danger that could arise not just from the president, but even from the legislature. That was a potential within any system of government and it gave rise to the conception that an alert citizenry and the institutions themselves should have the means of withstanding the actions of individuals. It was, I believe, Madison who said that if men were saints, governments and laws would not be necessary.

What has been the cause of this profound deterioration of the democratic immune system of the United States? We have to look at the nature of our society, and here we see that the most significant feature is the extraordinary level of social polarization, the extraordinary degree of wealth concentration in a very small section of American society.

A study was recently done by two economists from UCLA, Piketty and Saez, entitled “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998.” It is based on federal income taxes, and it shows that in 1929, economic inequality, wealth inequality, and income inequality were at their highest levels.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/dn2-n15.shtml