Toward a Popular Progressive PoliticsAuthor(s): Theda SkocpolSource: The Good Society, Vol. 7, No. 3 (FALL 1997), pp. 22-23Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20710834 .

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^ SYMPOSIUM ^^^B two-thirds of each house of Congress." A Balanced Budget Amendment would be a nice complement to this, but not a necessity. Of greater use, would be a more stringent version of my proposal that would limit the federal government to 15 percent of any house

hold's income, from all types of taxes. This would prevent our cre

ative politicians from imposing a national sales tax or a value-added

tax to keep Leviathan's stomach full. Leviathan would try to print

money and preserve its corpus by inflation, but that has its natural

limits, as the 1970s demonstrated.

Would Leviathan wither and die? Unlikely, but it would have to

cut off some appendages and set priorities. No more phony plans to

balance the budget in X number of years, with no real cuts in out

lays, as our Congress now "balances" the budget. The central defect of American democracy, in sum, is that

Leviathan's appetite consumes too much of the lifetime and produc

tivity of every American. Its tentacles must be loosened and our

energies released. We must feel that we are, once again, in control of

our lives. The remedy: head off Leviathan at the trough by amending the Sixteenth Amendment.

Ellen Frankel Paul is Deputy Director of the Social Philosophy and

Policy Center and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at

Bowling Green State University.

Endnotes

1. Life expectancy for Americans at birth in 1900 was 47 years; in

1995, it was 75.8 years.

2. That is, claims by states of the right to nullify federal laws.

3. The United States's first income tax was levied during the Civil War and was in effect between 1862 and 1872. An income tax passed

Congress in 1894 but was overturned by a Supreme Court decision the fol

lowing year.

4. These calculations from the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.

think tank, include the family's share of federal and state corporate taxes,

which could be considered a debatable inclusion, under the assumption

that all taxes are ultimately borne by individuals. (The median family, thus,

faced a tax burden of about $22,000 on income of slightly over $53,000.) The U.S. Census Bureau's calculations of "Historical Income Tables:

Experimental Measures" massages the figures in the opposite direction,

and with a whole set of far more dubious assumptions, trying to show that

the median family, after taxes and government transfer payments, hardly

loses anything in the bargain.

Toward a Popular Progressive Politics Theda Skocpol

Public life in America is now so dominated by the clash of nar

rowly organized, privileged groups that we are evolving into a

"democracy" in name only. The problem is not simply the role of

big money in electoral politics, although that is a key symptom. More broadly construed, we now have a system in which centrally

organized interest and advocacy groups clash among themselves in

national centers of power?Washington DC, New York City, and a

few major centers in the West and Southwest?without much incen

tive to communicate with anyone else. Some of these interests are on

the right, and advocate tax cuts and deregulation for businesses and

the rich. Others are supposedly more toward the left, and advocate

narrow measures to promote elite careers in government, universi

ties, and non-profit organizations. Left and right each have moral

causes, too, advocated by staff-dominated single-issue groups.

Apparently, there is a wide range of difference of opinion. But no

one is really speaking up for the security of families of modest

means.

Over the past several decades, so much of the focus of the left has

been on issues of racial and gender equity that we may have lost

track of the major trend in this period?toward separating off the

most privileged Americans, businesspeople and managers and elite

professionals alike?from everyone else, including most of the mid

dle class and working class. The top fifth of the society lives differ

ently and relates politically very differently from everyone else. Not

just the poor, but those in the middle, are losing ground economi

cally. And they are increasingly objects of manipulation by media,

political, and economic elites, who have no incentive to mobilize

broad popular participation or shared communication in public affairs.

What to do about it? As Stanley Greenberg and I argue, along with a dozen others, in our new book The New Majority: Toward a

Popular Progressive Politics (Yale University Press, September

1997), the Democratic Party needs to be revitalized and reformed

from within by popularly oriented progressives willing to champion the needs of working families of ordinary prospects. Building on

unions, religious congregations, and community groups, progres sives need to break out of cause or identity politics and find ways to

link up with broad alliances of working-aged adults, especially par

22 The Good Society

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^ DILEMMAS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

ents striving to raise children in an increasingly unforgiving econ

omy and individualistically libertine culture. Progressives need to

realize that the defense of Social Security and Medicare as shared

security programs is vital. The most prominent policy trend of our

time is the pulling away of elite people from shared, publicly funded

programs; and as soon as programs get defined as "welfare," they can be gutted even further. Progressives should worry less about

avant-guard values, and speak up for the value concerns of ordinary

people?about fighting crime, protecting children from inappropri ate cultural messages, and improving the quality of education. A

politics that combines economic justice with middle-of-the-road

family values is what progressives should espouse. And there must

be a concerted effort to build majoritarian politics, to find new ways to engage millions of citizens, even if the immediate goals of such

involvement seem "square" to sophisticated leftists.

As we argue in The New Majority, the revitalized union move

ment led by the AFL-CIO under John Sweeney is an important part of a new majority popular politics, within and beyond the electoral

arena. But popular, progressive Democrats also need to engage

family-oriented community and religious groups to build a network

of engaged citizens that extends beyond unionized industries and

communities.

The United States faces a fork in the road as the new century dawns. If conservatives (in both major parties) have their way, all of

our tax and social policies will soon be reconfigured to facilitate

elite separation from everyone else. We will have private, market

based opulence for the top fifth, and more and more private and pub lic squalor for everyone else. The popular progressive alternative to

this must be boldly and comprehensively conceived to win majority

support. Progressives must continue to speak up for minorities and

women, of course. At the same time, they should pursue a new

majority politics centered on the shared values and needs of the vast

majority of Americans who work for a living and strive to raise fam

ilies and build communities at the same time.

Theda Skocpol is a Professor of Government and Sociology at

Harvard University and is the author 0/Boomerang: Health Reform

and the Turn Against Government (W.W. Norton paperback version,

1997) and Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of

Social Policy in the United States (Harvard University Press, 1992).

Race and the Limits of American Democracy at Century's End Linda F. Williams

As the worldwide movement for democracy from Eastern Europe to Asia, Africa, and beyond has gathered steam over the last decade, some high-level hand-wringing about the health of democracy in its

most oft-cited paragon, the United States, has been taking place. Some point to the decline in the ethic of civic responsibility and the

winnowing of civic association. Others wax nostalgic about a time

in which local governments were more vibrant and powerful. In

short, both popular and academic discussions are awash with the

rhetoric of "reinvigorating" American democracy.

Ironically, however, fewer and fewer analysts concerned with

"renewing and deepening" American democracy bother even to dis cuss its most steadfast Achilles heel: the enduring crucible of race.

Apparently in most high-brow discussions in the late 1990s, racial

equality is not one of the political and economic requisites for hav

ing a serious democratic experience in the United States. Yet, as rec

ognized at least since de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America,1 the attention one gives to race and its treatment, perhaps more than

any other factor, continues to substantially influence the degree to

which the United States should be considered to be a full democ

racy; just if and when it became one; and how long it will remain one. From the birth of the nation onward, America has seemed most

democratic if one avoids the glare of race and least democratic if

one closely examines it.

Although the civil rights movement was perhaps the most ambi

tious and successful social movement of twentieth-century America,

today its achievements seem ambiguous. Not surprisingly, the gains were uneven. For example, middle-class people of color benefited

more than did poor ones. African Americans gained more jobs in the

public sector than did Latinos. Middle-class Cubans who fled Cuba

after the revolution and the Vietnamese elites who fled Saigon at the

end of the Vietnam War found an America far more hospitable than

that encountered by the Laotian and Cambodian refugees of the

same period, the later "Marielito" immigrants from Cuba, or the

Haitians, all of whom arrived with nothing and discovered an

America paved, not with gold, but with concrete.2 Yet the gains since

the 1960s made a dent in occupational and educational segregation and advanced democratic rights across the board.

Federally sponsored remedies aimed at integrating public schools

and universities and expanding access to economic opportunity and

political representation have been steadily eroding since at least the

1980s. The deeply racialized content of public debates about social

welfare and criminal justice reveals the failure of conventional poli tics to bring blacks and whites together in a truly meaningful sense.

Public figures of all stripes are flattening the historical landscape as

they rail against "reverse discrimination," welfare, and "law and

order." Political leaders cloak themselves in the language of "racial

Volume 7, Number 3 23

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