Book club: The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution

[Belsnickel]

I came across this book thanks to an episode of The Politics Guys where they interviewed the author.

Now, fair disclosure, Sitaraman is a bit of a progressive but he has some substantial bonafides. He also, accurately in my opinion, points out how the premise of the book is a bipartisan one. This is a theme that "populists on the right and progressives on the left" should all get behind. I've had the book for a couple of months, but after knocking off The Liberal Redneck Manifesto and What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia from my summer reading list, I started reading it before bed last night. I got about 10% through, so these are some preliminary thoughts more than anything. This book is also a bit more of my typical reading selection and is well researched (the endnotes are damn near 25% of the book).

So far, Sitaraman has discussed how for the period in history between Athens and the US, all constitutions that were in place, all democracies, were founded on the idea that economic inequality is a given and that class warfare will exist. Because of this, they created mechanisms in the government to account for the inequality. Think about the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the UK, and how the intention there was to insure that both the upper and lower classes would have a place in government. Sometimes it was a separation like that, sometimes it was entry requirements, it took on various forms. The main thing, though, was that the system was set up so that the classes were equally represented (in theory) to prevent violent uprisings. This came about in many of these places because an aristocracy or an oligarchy was already in place and this was an attempt to democratize the government from that.

Sitaraman contends that this was a question that the founders had to grapple with in this country when framing the Constitution. Adams actually was in favor of something similar to an "upper" and "lower" house, like in England. He was shot down, however, because the idea was that there was no aristocracy here, so why create one? The argument is that during this time, the US was pretty economically equal, at least among those that had political access. Because of this, they created a "middle-class" constitution that didn't need to take into account the inevitable class strife. Fast forward to present day, though, and you can see what Sitaraman's overall argument is going to be. The widening socioeconomic gaps in our society have already caused quite a few political scientists to contend we are no longer in a democratic society, but an oligarchy. Sitaraman is saying that this economic inequality puts our constitution at risk because it was not made to account for it.

I'll write more as I read more. Right now he is still talking about Greek historians and philosophers, primarily, and the Roman republic a little bit right now.