To repair American democracy, Democrats must not only bring more Americans into the electorate, but also, more American workers into labor unions. EricLevitz writes
This is what democracy looks like. Photo: Irving Haberman/Getty Images Ever since the United States mistook a Twitter-addled con man’s publicity stunt for a presidential campaign — and then elected him to our nation’s highest office — calls for rethinking America’s approach to democracy have been at the forefront of public debate.
Democracy is hard work. And as society’s “elites” — experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule — have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy …[Democracy] requires a lot from those who participate in it. It requires people to respect those with different views from theirs and people who don’t look like them.
Which is a fancy way of saying: To repair American democracy — and fortify it against future threats — Democrats must not only bring more Americans into the electorate, but also, more American workers into labor unions. The revolution’s elite architects had other objectives. But while they typically did not believe that all white men were entitled to political liberty, they agreed that one needed economic power to exercise such freedom. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, “A power over man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”
Thus, even if organized labor did nothing to increase voter participation, or the responsiveness of elected officials to popular demands, it would still serve an indispensable democratic function by fostering the material preconditions for popular self-government. A 2018 study of the electoral impacts of so-called “right to work” laws lend credence to these findings. Such laws undermine organized labor by allowing workers who join a unionized workplace to enjoy the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement without paying dues to the union that negotiated it. This encourages other workers to skirt their dues, which can then drain a union of the funds it needs to survive.
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