This essay continues observations made in Reflection, Choice, and Ambition and Vices of the Political System of the Democratic Socialists of America. In them, we compared the DSA national platform against the Lockean ideology embedded in the American founding, as well as the institutional architecture established by the Constitution, and the reasoning of the Framers in The Federalist Papers. The previous essays also established that the DSA’s call to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic” treats the existing Constitution as an obstacle to be removed after the class victory described in the text.
The Progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries occupies a different position in relation to the constitutional order. Much like the DSA proposals, which share some overlap with progressivisim, the progressives sought, and in certain instances, achieved a dramatic expansion of federal power, including a more energetic and reactive executive, the growth of the administrative state, and a series of constitutional amendments that significantly altered the public’s relationship with its government. The Sixteenth Amendment authorized a federal income tax without apportionment among the states, and the Seventeenth Amendment provided for the direct election of senators by the people rather than state legislatures. Progressive initiatives, such as the New Deal and the Great Society, extended federal authority deep into economic and social life. These were not small, incremental overhauls, but represented a sustained effort to adapt American institutions to the emergence of industrial society, and to overcome what the progressives regarded as excessive restraints.
Yet, it is the difference in method that makes the contrast so stark. Progressives, regardless of how radical their ideology or expansive their ambitions, pursued their ends through the amendment process as laid out in Article V of the Constitution. Initiatives were codified through the standard legislative process and judicial review (regardless of what one may think of those interpretations, such as in the case of Wickard v. Filburn). The progressive vision for America was enacted while remaining within the structure and purpose of the Constitution, and that structure continued to function as a set of procedures and restraints that bound the progressive generation, as well as future generations, and could only be altered under rules designed to force deliberation and broad consent. Unlike the progressives, the DSA platform treats the structure, itself, as an “anti-democratic” barrier that must be torn down and replaced altogether. Complete victory, in the platform’s own words, will require “building a new society from the ground up.”
This is not a defense of progressivism in America. Progressive ideology and the ideology of the DSA both share a deep dissatisfaction with the Constitution. They both reject the principle of natural rights as the foundation of political authority. And, they both share a willingness to subordinate institutional norms in pursuance of social transformation. And, importantly, they both treat the Constitution as an obstacle on the road to transformation. Yet, the key difference between the two is that the progressives still made their reforms within the inherited framework, and argued that future generations should pursue reform within the same framework, while the DSA seeks to destroy that frame outright once the working class has consolidated power. The progressive path, even at its most tranformative, still acknowledged a continuous, constitutional order that binds all subsequent generations, whereas the DSA aims to relocate the source of constitutional authority to the success of the class project.
Ideological Similarities
The comparison begins by examining the ideology as articulated by its most influential leaders in order to demonstrate the overlap with the current DSA project. The progressives confronted a genuine transformation in American social and economic life, such as the rise of large-scale industrial corporations, the concentration of capital, and the sprawl of burgeoning urban populations. Progressives believed that the limited and decentralized federal government of the Founding-era was ill-equipped to address the problems of the modern era. They viewed state governments as corrupt—in the pockets of railroad and corporate interests—and unable to regulate interstate commerce effectively. Add to that the belief that property and economic rights favored the economically powerful and left workers without recourse, and you begin to understand the progressive demand for a more energetic national authority.
The progressive response was a programmatic and philosophical rejection of the Founders’ conception of the individual as a pre-political entity and bearer of natural rights, as well as the Constitution as a fixed, mechanical check on power. Within this rejection, there is immense overlap with the DSA. Both movements treat the constitutional order as an obstacle to a more just and powerful collective purpose, both subordinate the rights of the individual to the rights of the community at large, and both are willing to concentrate national authority in order to overcome the built-in restraints of the inherited order.
The Rejection of Natural Rights
Frank Johnson Goodnow, the first president of the American Political Science Association, stated the progressive critique of the Founders’ natural law philosophy without reservation. In The American Conception of Liberty, published in 1916, he dismissed Enlightenment social contract theory and the doctrine of natural rights as baseless:
Such a theory, of course, had no historical justification. There was no record of the making of any such contract as was postulated. It was impossible to assert, as a matter of fact even, that man existed first as an individual and that later he became, as the result of any act of volition on his part, a member of human society. … Man is regarded now throughout Europe, contrary to the view expressed by Rousseau, as primarily a member of society and secondarily as an individual. The rights which he possesses are, it is believed, conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual freedom of action.
Goodnow argued that the natural rights doctrine presupposed a static society. Once evolutionary development (you can see the influence of Social Darwinism on the progressives, not only in Frank Goodnow, but in others, as well) and industrial concentration were accepted as fact, rights could no longer be treated as immutable. Goodnow makes no effort to disguise his radical beliefs. He argues that, under modern, industrial conditions, insistence on individual rights could even go so far as to become a menace to society as a whole. According to Goodnow, the emphasis must shift from inherent rights to civic duty, and man must be viewed primarily as one part of the organism as a whole (society), and only through recognition of those societal duties can he secure the greatest opportunities as an individual.
John Dewey carried the same critique further in Liberalism and Social Action, published in 1935. Early liberalism, he argued, had performed a necessary function in history by liberating individuals from the restrictions of the old, European order. But, according to Dewey, the Enlightenment liberals’ conception of natural rights and individual liberty as the absence of government interference had morphed into a justification of the status quo of the new order. Natural rights, Dewey wrote, “exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology.” Men obey laws because of the consequences due to failure of obeisance, not because the laws are based on natural law or inherent rights. The crisis of liberalism, therefore, arose because early liberals lacked the intellectual resources for the new problem of social organization. The solution, in Dewey’s view, required a reversal of means:
Organized social planning, put into effect for the creation of an order in which industry and finance are socially directed in behalf of institutions that provide the material basis for the cultural liberation and growth of individuals, is now the sole method of social action by which liberalism can realize its professed aims.
Effective liberty, for Dewey, is a function of existing social conditions. Once economic relations become the dominant pattern of human relations, the liberty that Enlightenment ideology proclaimed can only be realized through control of the economy in the interest of society as a whole. Formal or legal liberty is deemed insufficient. What is required, therefore, is the use of power to establish the conditions under which true liberty can be attained.
The DSA platform proceeds from a similar premise. It treats the existing constitutional order as an “anti-democratic structure” that protects private ownership, and thus stands in the way of genuine democracy. The inherent rights of the individual secured by the current order are, in this view, there to protect a privileged class at the expense of everyone else. Both the progressives and the DSA, through this framework, begin by denying that the foundational natural rights philosophy supplies a binding limit on collective power. To both organizations, rights are historical, social, and functional, and are not inherent and pre-political.
Community Over the Individual
Woodrow Wilson, before he became America’s twenty-eighth president, took the critique a step further and merged progressivism to socialism, made explicit in his essay Socialism and Democracy, published in 1887. He wrote:
In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.
In Wilson’s view, democracy is not bound by any limiting factor. Once the community’s right to self-determination is accepted as absolute, the only remaining questions are centered on administrative capacity and political will. Wilson’s formulation constitutes one of the more candid statements of the progressive ideology and end goals, and doesn’t shrink from the implication that the community, rather than the individual, is endowed with unlimited authority.
The DSA ideology rests on a similar foundational claim, only, instead of expressed through the community at large, it is expressed in the language of class antagonism. The working class, having won the battle for democracy, is to draft a new constitution and establish a democratic socialist republic. The absolute right of community (or of the class that claims to speak for it) to determine its own destiny and that of its members is the shared premise. Limits of principle are set aside, and are replaced by questions of power and organization. Both progressivism and the DSA treat the supremacy of the collective over the individual as the starting point of legitimate politics.
Contempt for the Constitution
Wilson’s theories of government led to his most influential contribution, which consisted of a living, organic Constitution. In Constitutional Government in the United States, and in his campaign speeches, collected and distributed as The New Freedom, he rejected the Founders’ conception of checks, balances, and separated powers:
The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. … Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development,” “evolution,” is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.
The Framers, Wilson argued, constructed a system of checks and balances meant to limit every part, which, in turn, allowed no single organ to be a dominant force. But, according to Wilson, “no government can be successfully conducted upon so mechanical a theory.” Wilson insisted that leadership and control must be lodged somewhere, and that the art of statesmanship is the art of bringing the separate parts of government into cooperation, functioning in the same way the liver cooperates with the kidneys and lungs to support the body as a whole. Wilson theorized that the Constitution, though conceived in a ‘Newtonian spirit,’ was elastic enough, despite its structure of limitation, to allow for the changes necessary.
Theodore Roosevelt supplied the pragmatism of progressive theory. In his autobiography, he articulated the stewardship theory that became a hallmark of progressivism and its philosophy of governance:
My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. … I believed that the Constitution should be treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, and not as a straitjacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth.
Herbert Croly completes the progressive argument. In Progressive Democracy, published in 1915, he argued that the changing conditions of the world made pure democracy not only possible, but a natural evolution of the current order:
A negative individualistic social policy implies a weak and irresponsible government. A positive comprehensive social policy implies a strong, efficient and responsible government. … A social policy is concerned in the most intimate and comprehensive way with the lives of the people. In order to be successful, it must rest on the basis of abundant and cordial popular support.
The mechanism of direct government has, consequently, an essential function to perform in the organization of a social democracy. … A strong government with an affirmative policy and effective popular control are supplementary rather than hostile one to another.
He argued that a comprehensive social policy required a strong, efficient, and responsible government that kept in touch with public opinion through direct, popular instruments. This view inverted the Founders’ fears of majority tyranny, and instead placed the true danger in minority obstruction of the popular will.
This hostility toward a mechanical constitution is shared by the DSA. The key difference being, unlike the progressives, who interpreted the existing Constitution more flexibly, the DSA proposes to abolish certain features of the Constitution deemed hostile to their aims. Where progressives treated the Constitution as a living organism that must evolve with the changing times, the DSA treats it as a cancer that must be excised in order for society to flourish. Despite the interpretive differences between the progressives and the DSA, the ideological through-line is continuous. The original system of separated power, checks and balances, and internal friction serves as an impediment to the realization of a collective, or societal, effort. Both movements begin from a shared contempt for the restraints deliberately built into the structure.
Through their writings, these progressive thinkers offer a coherent case. They reject the dualism between the founding-era’s pre-political individual and limited government, treat natural rights as contingent upon history, and reconceive the Constitution as a living organism that must evolve like other living organisms. They further elevate national purpose and administrative capacity, and equate the democratic principle with the socialist principle that society at large takes precedence over the individual. The DSA operates from the same premises. The similarities run deep between the two. What remains is to examine where the two movements diverge. Does this shared radicalism operate within the constitutional framework, or is it to be discarded altogether once majority has been secured?
Working from Within: The Progressives
The historical record of the progressive movement, despite its expansiveness, its radicalism, and contempt for the Constitution, remained an effort to reform the system from within the constraints of the existing constitutional order. The evidence rests in the amendment process, itself, and in the changes that were secured through progressive administrations. Even the most radical progressive theorists treated the Constitution as the foundational framework through which change must be achieved, rather than as a temporary barrier to be discarded once power had been won. The amendment process served as a limitation on the progressive desires, requiring those who seek change to secure the concurrence of extraordinary majorities (known as super-majorities) under a procedure designed to force deliberation and to protect the structure of the republic. Despite the rhetoric of the progressive theorists, that requirement served as the main obstacle for radical change, and the progressives chose to operate within the framework, rather than discard it.
Article V and the Amendment Process
Article V of the Constitution establishes the only legitimate means of constitutional change:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
The process is intentionally difficult. Proposed amendments require a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress (or a convention of states called by two-thirds of state legislatures), and ratification requires three-fourths of state legislatures. Article V is the Constitution’s answer to the question posed by Hamilton in Federalist 1, in that it provides a means of reflection and choice that remains binding after any particular majority has dispersed. Change is possible within the structure of the Constitution itself, but only through procedures that force broad deliberation and preserve the federal nature of the republic. Those procedures act as a restraint, preventing any temporary majority from drastically altering the nature of the republic without broad, popular support.
The progressives, despite hostility to the constitutional order, operated from within the existing framework. They did not claim, unlike the DSA, that a preferred majority or class, having won electoral power, could simply rewrite and impose a new constitution. Instead, they worked inside the very procedures the Constitution prescribed for its own emendation. The willingness to work under the rules that outlast any particular coalition, no matter how its members may feel about those rules, is a recognition that the constitutional order is an inheritance rather than an instrument to protect the powerful, as the DSA suggests.
A Federal Income Tax
The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, provides “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration,” overturning the Supreme Court decision in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. in 1895. The amendment was proposed and ratified through the ordinary process under Article V, requiring two-thirds majorities in both chambers, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the states (no constitutional amendment has been proposed or adopted through a convention of states). The Sixteenth Amendment drastically expanded the capacity of the federal government to levy taxes, which enabled the later growth and funding of the administrative and welfare-state initiatives, such as The New Deal and The Great Society. Despite this profound change, it remained a formal amendment to the existing Constitution rather than a replacement of the Constitution through a new instrument.
The Original Design and Purpose of the Senate
To fully understand the significance of the Seventeenth Amendment, one must first understand the original purpose and function of the Senate. The Senate was intended to be more than second legislative chamber. The Senate was intended to be the institutional embodiment of the federal principal and one of the devices by which the Constitution sought to secure state sovereignty, through the states themselves, regardless of size, having equal representation and influence on the passage of laws. The Senate was also intended to serve as a check against popular passion, as represented in the House.
Prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, senators were chosen by the legislatures of the several states. Each state, regardless of population, received two senators. This arrangement was the product of the Great Compromise at the Constitutional Convention, and aimed to protect the smaller states from being dominated by the larger ones, as well as preserve the federal character of the Union. James Madison explained the rationale in Federalist 62:
The equality of representation in the Senate is another advantage…. The equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty…. Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States.
According to Madison, the Senate served several related functions. First, it represented the states as political entities with limited sovereignty, rather than the populations living within them. Second, because senators were chosen by the legislatures of their respective states, they were accountable to the legislatures, and therefore represented the interests of their respective states at the federal level. Third, the longer terms and staggered elections of the Senate, compared to the House of Representatives, were designed to promote stability, deliberation, and to function as a limiting measure against popular passions. Finally, the equal representation outside of the census created a check against legislation that might favor larger states at the expense of the smaller ones, and the requirement that certain appointments and treaties receive advice and consent of the Senate further embedded the federal principle in the conduct of foreign policy and the staffing of the federal government.
Furthermore, in Federalist 63, Madison emphasized the Senate’s role as a source of “cool and deliberate sense” against the more immediate, and potentially turbulent, judgments of the House. The compound republic, which Madison describes as partly federal and partly national, depended on this arrangement. The House represented the populace, while the Senate represented the states as equal members of the Union. Together, they forced legislation to secure the concurrence of both the popular will and the will of the several states. This particular design was an attempt to institutionalize a recognition that a free society is comprised of more than a simple majority.
The Seventeenth Amendment and Its Effects
The Seventeenth Amendment provides that “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.” It transferred the election of senators from the state legislatures to the people living within those states, fundamentally altering the constituency of the Senate without altering the number of senators per state.
To make the case for the amendment, progressives argued that state legislatures had become corrupted by corporate and special interest groups (particularly, at the time, railroads), and that deadlocks within the state legislative process had left critical senate seats vacant. Progressives also argued that the indirect method of elections had insulated senators from accountability (a fundamental misreading of the original structure. The senators were accountable, just to the states. The people elect their delegates to represent them at the state level, then those delegates select the federal senators). According to the progressive theorists, direct election of senators would purify the process, make senators more responsive to the people of their states, and eliminate a source of corruption. The amendment was adopted through the Article V process, and the rationale was coherent on its own terms. The rationale was that if the people are the ultimate authority, why should the selection of senators be shielded from the people through a process subjected to potential capture by private interests.
Yet, the amendment had consequences that were not fully appreciated at the time. By making senators elected through direct democratic procedure, it weakened the connection between the states and the senators representing the state interests. Senators no longer needed to attend to the interests of the legislatures that had chosen them. The electoral incentives now ran through similar popular constituencies as the House. The only difference was the House was based on congressional districts, whereas senators are statewide. Over the course of time, this change has had the result of the Senate becoming more nationalized as an institution, rather than a guardian of state sovereignty. From the perspective of the original design, the Seventeenth Amendment reduced one of the principal checks against the legislative power and majority faction.
The New Deal and the Great Society
The New Deal and Great Society extended the progressive project into the mid and late twentieth-century. Through statutory and administrative fiat, the federal government assumed vast responsibilities for regulating the economy, social insurances, and public goods. The Supreme Courts eventual acceptance of the expanded interpretation of the Commerce Clause and congressional spending power enabled much of this growth. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s threats to pack the Supreme Court demonstrate both the ambition of the progressive reformers, as well as the resilience of the constitutional structure. Despite the threats, the Court remained as it had been since 1869, though its jurisprudence shifted to favor the progressive agenda. The transformations of the progressives were profound and far-reaching, altering the relationship between the federal government and the states, the economy, and the relationship between the branches of government. Yet, unlike what the DSA proposes, the progressive changes developed and took place within the existing structure and limitations of the Constitution. No new constitution was drafted after progressive victory. The forms of the first three Articles remained mostly intact (with certain aspects expanded). Amendments were proposed, adopted, and ratified through the Article V process. Even the most expansive progressive reforms operated under claims of authority derived from the existing Constitution, however broadly interpreted, and that continuity is the target of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Class Victory and Constitutional Replacement
The DSA national platform states, without any ambiguity, its intentions:
We are workers fighting to transform society: to win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.
The platform acknowledges that some demands may be advanced under the current system, but insists that “complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up.” The existing Constitution is characterized as anti-democratic, and serves to protect private ownership at the expense of the working-class and must, therefore, be replaced. Unlike the progressive movement, the language is not that of reinterpretation, but of wholesale replacement once the working-class has achieved power.
The proposals that follow are consistent with the platform’s diagnosis, and calls for the abolition of the Senate and Electoral College, the replacement of the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary “chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” an expansion of the House of Representatives via a nationalized ranked-choice voting system, and the establishment of “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”
Unlike the progressives, the DSA does not seek to adapt to the existing framework. Instead, the end goal is to dissolve the checks and balances by which ambition is made to counteract ambition. The abolition of the Senate altogether eliminates the representation of the states as sovereign entities. The subordination of the executive and judiciary to Congress collapses the separation of powers into legislative supremacy. Public ownership of the largest corporations places the material basis of economic life under the same political center that would exercise concentrated authority.
Going further, the DSA platform relocates the source of Constitutional authority. Where the Constitution derives its power from the people, the DSA’s constitution would be drafted by the working class after the seizure of power, and would derive its legitimacy from the success of that class project. It is reactionary, rather than deliberative. Subsequent generations, or even dissenters within the new class structure, are left without institutional means of revision once the class project has been realized.
Where progressives, for all their radical reforms, operated within the Constitutional structure, the DSA treats the Constitution as the chief obstacle to be overcome by the working-class in order to realize a working-class democracy. The DSA proposes to remove this perceived obstacle entirely once power is obtained. The difference is not one of degree, but is the difference between working within the existing order and discarding that order once a preferred constituency has been mobilized.