Chapter
1 “Unfinished Democracy”
According to the British sociologist T. H. Marshall,
democratization has proceeded in three stages with the granting of civil,
political, and finally social rights. In Europe the struggle for civil rights
emerged out of a feudal heritage where serfdom locked workers to the land. The
transition from servile to free labor introduced the notion of citizenship as
the right to pursue the occupation of one's choice freely, without compulsion,
subject only to requirements for training. By the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the principle of individual economic "freedom' was accepted as
axiomatic.
Throughout the nineteenth century in
most European nations, only monarchs, bureaucrats, and aristocrats could vote.
Limited political rights were granted to some men on the basis of property
ownership and education. These constitutional monarchies were gradually
replaced by representative governments and popular sovereignty. Political
democratization in the form of universal suffrage advanced through the
dismantling of restrictions on voting based on property ownership or literacy.
By 1920 adult males had full voting rights in seventeen nations, while nine had
given women the vote. Political rights not only meant the right to vote but
also the right to a voice in a collective process of decision-making.
The third phase of democratization began in the late
nineteenth century with the construction of national welfare states. Programs
of social protection granted social rights: "the right to a modicum of
economic welfare and security, the right to share to the full in the social
heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards
prevailing in the
society. Much
of the industrialized world has instituted three kinds of social rights. Some
protect the poor against the exigencies of the capitalist marketplace. They
include programs to compensate workers against losses for injuries on the job,
against unemployment, and against old age. Others, geared to an economy based
on mass production, not only provide income security for the working class but
also stable product markets for mass-produced goods. Examples include old-age insurance, family allowances, and
national health insurance. Finally, social rights stabilize the labor supply,
especially among female workers in the expanding service sector. These include job training and employment-referral
systems, day-care provisions, paid parental leave, and full-employment
policies.
The combination of civil, political, and social rights is
the foundation of democracy. While other nations added these rights gradually
over centuries, the United States pursued an idiosyncratic path. That path
began when the first principles of civil rights--the belief in equality and the
right to liberty--were enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of
Independence. Americans, Thomas Jefferson wrote, had inherent and inalienable
rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. From the first
moments of the birth of the fledgling state, however, practice compromised
principles. In theory, the concept of inalienable rights meant free labor
markets and the absence of servile, or unfree, labor. In practice, lovers of
freedom tolerated its total suppression among slaves, who had no claim on
rights and whose masters owned both their labor and their progeny.
Political democracy was an extension of civil liberty, and
most Americans enjoyed it early. Even as colonists under British rule, when the
franchise was based on property ownership, between 50 and 80 percent of white
males qualified to vote. At the end of the revolutionary period, many states
extended male suffrage by moving from property qualifications to tax
qualifications for voting. By 1840 most adult white males could vote, and voter
turnout ranged
from 68 to 98 percent. Government also became more directly representative of
the people who participated through mass political parties, rotation of
political leaders, local community rule, and the choosing of presidential
candidates by party conventions instead of wealthy elites. But democracy
remained incomplete. Women couldn't vote until 1920, and, of course,
slaves were denied even the most rudimentary privileges of citizenship.
Though precocious in extending civil
and political rights to white males, America lagged behind Europe in developing
social rights through a national welfare state. Until 1935 the United States
had no national social programs. Instead, it had only scattered, meagerly
funded, state-level programs of workers' compensation, old-age pensions, and
mothers' pensions that left decisions about eligibility to the discretion of
local welfare authorities. Not until
the Depression challenged the foundations of this 'rugged individualism' did
the concept of social rights emerge as a shared ideal. When that finally
happened, the presence of a "nation” within a nation, that is, of the
South as a politically and economically distinct entity, imposed limits on what
could be done. Instead of a "universal" welfare state that could
create solidarity among workers, the New Deal welfare state instituted a regime
that reinforced racial inequality.