Liberal democracies around the world are in a crisis. They’re in this crisis because they are not genuine democracies. And if they don’t become more genuinely democratic, they could suffer the fate warned about in Plato’s Republic and discussed in Waking Nightmare, my previous post. In an uncanny replay of the rise of European fascism and Nazism after World War One, liberal democracies such as the United States could succumb to authoritarian populist tyranny. That gives extra urgency to the trials of Donald Trump.

Genuine Democracy

Genuine democracy is more than a form of government, although it includes what I call political democracy. Genuine democracy is a vision for society as a whole. It is what John Dewey in The Public and Its Problems (1927) calls a “social idea.” To use familiar words from the French Revolution, now inscribed in France’s constitution, it is a vision of liberté, égalité, and fraternité for all members of society. Translated into contemporary concerns, a genuine democracy would be a society where everyone is free to flourish, participates in the decisions that affect them, and can give and receive public recognition of their worth, a society where everyone enjoys freedom (“liberty”), participation (“equality”), and recognition (“fraternity”).

A genuinely democratic society would indeed have a democratic form of government. It would be a political democracy where everyone affected by laws and regulations would have a say, whether directly or through elected representatives, in how these are enacted, administered, and adjudicated. American political democracy increasingly fails in this regard. Indeed, according to The Washington Post, many Americans think “the political system is broken and … fails to represent them.” “American Democracy Is Cracking” details this failure.

Even if democratic governance is set up properly and runs well, however, it is not enough. On the one hand, citizens need to be motivated by and committed to the democratic norms of freedom, participation, and recognition. For this, a society needs schools, media, and religious communities that inculcate a democratic culture. On the other hand, the economic organization of society should neither undermine such a culture nor subvert democratic governance. Rather, it should foster our commitment to democratic norms and support the democratic rule of law.

Democratic Deficits

By these standards, the United States is far from being a genuine democracy. Instead, our system of government, which is only formally democratic, suffers from three sorts of democratic deficits: internal, cultural, and economic. I regard these deficits as systemic problems: they pertain to the structure and operation of the political system as a whole and how this system relates to both culture and the economy. That’s why “What If We’re the Bad Guys Here?”—a recent commentary by David Brooks that asks whether “elite” anti-Trumpers are responsible for Donald Trump’s appeal to distrustful populists—strikes me as naïve. Even if the so-called elites were on their best respectful behavior, this would not address the systemic problems populism unconsciously responds to.

In the first place, the American political system has an internal democratic deficit. Liberal democracies have always tried to balance the competing demands of liberty (understood as individual rights) and equality (understood as rights to political participation). This challenge pales, however, compared to structural disadvantages and disenfranchisement built into the system as such. The political system has become one where wealth and power largely dictate whose voices get heard: many citizens and communities are either severely underrepresented or ignored altogether. Entrenched two-party politics, an outdated electoral college, and poorly regulated campaign financing are symptoms of this deficit.

To “fix” the political democratic deficit will require citizens and leaders who really care about freedom, participation, and recognition. It won’t be enough for people simply to stand up for their individual and political rights. They must also want others to have the same opportunities to flourish, to have their voices heard, and to be respected, not only in the political arena but also in daily life. As I have argued in my book Art in Public, we need a civil society that goes beyond tolerance and charity and does not disintegrate into hatred and resentment, one where inclusion and mutual respect set the tone. Our current culture wars make such an inclusive culture hard to imagine, even as they undermine the schools, civic organizations, and religious communities that could nurture such democratic dispositions. American society suffers from a cultural democratic deficit. And this reinforces the deficit in our political system.

Capitalism and Democracy

The third democratic deficit lies in the economy. Despite the outdated slogans of “free markets” and “free enterprise,” liberal democratic governments since the Second World War have played a direct role in the capitalist economy. On the one hand, they’ve undertaken countless measures to stimulate and maintain economic growth—the Federal Reserve’s current adjustments to interest rates are just one example. On the other hand, they have developed programs and policies of social welfare to offset economic inequalities and other social costs of capitalism—Social Security, Medicare, and environmental regulations, for example. The rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s and 1980s and the rapid emergence of digital capitalism have challenged all of these arrangements.

But a deeper problem places the future of liberal democracies in question, namely, the capitalist economy’s democratic deficit. By this I mean the fact, as I put it in Social Philosophy after Adorno, that capitalism is an “inherently exploitative system”: it must “continually generate excess returns for those who occupy positions of economic power, whether they be individual investors, transnational corporations, or the most prosperous countries in the world economy” (p. 126). In other words, capitalism is undemocratic. It is intrinsically unconcerned about the norms of freedom, participation, and recognition. Instead, in its current digital phase, capitalism funnels exorbitant wealth and power to Big Tech firms (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta/Facebook, and Microsoft), circumvents government regulation and taxation, and fragments civil society.

American Populism

American populism is a reactionary response to the gap between our country’s rhetoric of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and the mutually reinforcing democratic deficits in our polity, culture, and economy. Populists recognize that democracy is a mess. But they don’t see that it is a precious mess, one worth transforming. A would-be tyrant will not address the legitimate concerns populists raise. Instead, we need to envision and pursue a genuinely democratic society.