Problem - The Adams Institute For the Preservation of the Democratic-Republican Model of Government

The Problem

All Men would be Tyrants if they could.

No simple Form of Government, can possibly secure Men against the Violences of Power. Simple Monarchy will soon mould itself into Despotism, Aristocracy will soon commence an Oligarchy, and Democracy, will soon degenerate into an Anarchy, such an Anarchy that every Man will do what is right in his own Eyes, and no Mans life or Property or Reputation or Liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral Virtues, and Intellectual Abilities, all the Powers of Wealth, Beauty, Wit, and Science, to the wanton Pleasures, the capricious Will, and the execrable Cruelty of one or a very few.

This last Paragraph has been the Creed of my whole Life and is now March 27 1807 as much approved as it was when it was written by John Adams.

From An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power: All Men would be Tyrants if they could (1763), with the Author’s Comment in 1807, by John Adams.

The problem is, in the simplest terms, that…

The Constitution is a brake that can’t stop the wheel.

Many know that America’s Founders drew from the lessons of history when creating our republic. Few know why these lessons remain relevant. In view of America’s rising authoritarianism and intensifying political faction, this must change.

These lessons teach that the decline of America’s middle class makes the long-term survival of legitimate popular government historically and theoretically improbable. The Founders emulated the Romans in establishing our republic. Without a significant and appropriate political intervention to save our middle class, their posterity will again emulate the Romans in destroying it.

Our mission is to describe why and how we should intervene in order to preserve democratic-republican model of government and the Constitution which was ordained to establish it.

THE CONSTITUTION CANNOT SUPPRESS POLITICAL REVOLUTION.

The strongest and deepest links connecting America to the lessons of Classical Antiquity run through John Adams, attached to Polybius’s account of the Roman constitution. Adams himself described Polybius’s teachings as “the Creed of my whole Life”[1] and acclaimed him the mainspring of American constitutional theory, stating:

I wish to assemble together the opinions and reasonings of philosophers, politicians, and historians, who have taken the most extensive views of men and societies, whole characters are deservedly revered, and whose writings were in the contemplation of those who framed the American constitutions. It will not be contested, that all these characters are united in Polybius.^[2]

Polybius’s analysis of Rome’s constitution distills more than six centuries of political experience and theory, encompassing hundreds of democracies, into two simple ideas that influenced the draftsmen of American constitutions and still resonate today.[3]

The first is Anacyclosis, or the WHEEL: the idea that every unchecked regime is corrupted, and every corrupted regime is replaced, a process which ultimately resolves into a cycle for wealthy states whose destiny is not controlled by another.[4] Polybius gives the natural, probable, but not inevitable order as chiefdom, kingship, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and mob-rule, finally back to chiefdom.[5] Later research confirms that the Greek city-states generally evolved consistent with this sequence[6] with Rome’s burgeoning empire scaling it from the level of city-state to nation-state in the republic’s final century.

The second is the tripartite mixed constitution, or the BRAKE: the idea that because no unlimited power remains uncorrupted, the optimal constitution checks and balances the best characteristics of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.[7] Sparta’s balance of kings, Gerousia, and the people; Rome’s balance of consuls, Senate, and popular assemblies; and Britain’s balance of Crown, Lords, and Commons are the most famous examples of this tripartite brake.[8] Enlightenment writers developed this idea into the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers today comprising the nucleus of the United States Constitution and forty of the fifty state constitutions.[9]

THE DIFFUSION AND RE-CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH ADVANCES THE SEQUENCE OF REVOLUTION.

The Constitution was designed to prevent the undue concentration of power based on these ancient Greek ideas. But as America’s advance through late-stage Anacyclosis shows, the brake doesn’t actually stop the wheel any more than it turns it. The brake was only ever a brake, and never a motor.

John Adams identified the MOTOR which rotates the wheel. It is the diffusion and re-concentration of wealth which dictates the diffusion and re-concentration of political power, thereby advancing the cycle of political evolution.[10] As Adams noted:

Harrington has Shewn, that Power always follows Property. This I believe to be as infallible a Maxim, in Politicks, as, that Action and Re-action are equal, is in Mechanicks.^[11]

The history of the world confirms this maxim. Civilization has only experienced two great waves of democracy existing less than one-tenth of recorded history since it began Mesopotamia and Egypt. The first wave commenced in the Mediterranean Basin in the 6th century BC, yielding over 300 democracies. The second wave broke along the North Atlantic in the 18th century AD, spawning over 100 democracies since the American Revolution.

But the history of the world also confirms that democracy does not arise from the fantasy that consent is given, but rather from the possibility that it be withheld; democracy exists where the common people can withhold an indispensable fiscal or military contribution to the regime.[12] The only commoners able to sustain a challenge against the elite status quo occupy the zones between subsistence and affluence, by definition the middle class. It is accordingly no surprise that both great democratic waves were preceded by the appearance of an INDEPENDENT MIDDLE CLASS.[13]

AMERICA WAS BORN A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC BECAUSE IT WAS BORN MIDDLE CLASS.

On the eve of Independence, America was the most egalitarian place on Earth.^[14] George Washington remarked on this fact.^[15] Alexis de Tocqueville confirmed it still prevailed 60 years later.^[16] Thomas Jefferson,^[17] James Madison,^[18] and John Adams^[19] all advocated measures to promote wealth de-concentration. Adams clearly proclaimed the fundamental object of republican government at the onset of the American Revolution:

Property monopolized, or in the Possession of a Few is a Curse to Mankind. We should preserve not an Absolute Equality – this is unnecessary, but preserve all from extreme Poverty, and all others from extravagant Riches.^[20]

How far America has strayed from its Founders’ advice. Yet how incomplete their work remains. For the Constitution will forever be impotent to restrain the undue concentration of power so long as it cannot restrain the undue concentration of wealth, as the former flows from the latter.

MIDDLE CLASS DECLINE THREATENS THE CONTINUATION OF LEGITIMATE POPULAR GOVERNMENT.

Since the Revolutionary War, America’s median-top household net worth ratio has increased from less than 1,000:1 to 1,500,000:1.[21] Since the Civil War, America’s Black-White median household net worth ratio has barely converged, increasing from about 0:1 to not even 0.1:1.[22] And since World War II, more than $30 trillion has been diverted from working Americans to owners without regard to the color of their skin.[23] This figure exceeds the entire wealth of Japan and, were it returned to the middle class, is just about the amount necessary to restore its rightful share of at least 50% of America’s wealth.[24]

As the middle class declines, upward mobility dwindles, racial disparities persist, pessimism intensifies, political faction escalates, elections lose credibility, the people turn against capitalism, socialism gains appeal, violence looms, and mob rule and demagogues and authoritarianism come to destroy popular government, just as happened in the Roman republic.[25]

When his homeland encountered a similar deterioration of the middle class and the middling virtues, brought on by the decline of the smallhold farmers, a Roman patriot named Tiberius Gracchus stepped forward to save the middle class.[26] John Adams called the law of Gracchus “a genuine republican Measure“[27] because it sought to restore the middle class backbone of every republic. But Gracchus’s murder initiated a bloody tournament of demagogues that blazed a violent path to Caesar, ending mankind’s experiment on popular government for nearly two thousand years.[28]

This tournament is beginning to play out in America, for the same reasons, and threatening the same outcome. If the Founding Fathers returned, they would urge us to halt this ongoing invasion into the middling share of national prosperity and defend the republican model of government.

1. See An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power: All Men would be Tyrants if they could (1763) with the author’s comment in 1807, where John Adams summarized the lessons of Polybius and Anacyclosis in his youth, and described them “the Creed of my whole Life” in his retirement. ↵

2. See, e.g., Volume I of John Adams’s Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, covering the subject matter of Rome, Carthage, Sparta, Athens, Achaia, Crete, Corinth, Argos, Thebes, Crotone, Sybaris, Locris, Polybius, Plato, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Tacitus, Antalcidas, and Homer, published just prior to the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention while Adams was serving as America’s first ambassador to the Mother Country. For confirmation of its influence upon the delegates, see a letter from Benjamin Rush to John Brown Cutting, 18 May 1787, stating “The principles & facts contained in this excellent publication have already had an influence in our Country, & from thier arriving at the time of the setting of our fæderal convention, it is expected they will be very useful in establishing such a fæderal Goverment as Mr Adams has proved to be most safe—most free, and most durable in all countries.” and a letter from Benjamin Rush to Richard Price, 2 June 1787, stating: “Mr. Adams’s book has diffused such excellent principles among us, that there is little doubt of our adopting a vigorous and compounded federal legislature. Our illustrious minister in this gift to his country has done us more service than if he had obtained alliances for us with all the nations of Europe.” ↵

3. By the ancient Greek accounts dating at least as far back as the legendary Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus (9th century BC), whose image is depicted in the United States Capitol building and on the United States Supreme Court building. For political theory, see, e.g., Pindar 2nd Pythian Ode, 85(early classification of regimes), Herodotus, Histories, III.80-82 (elaborating the primary archetypes of kingship, aristocracy, and democracy) Plato, Republic, Book VIII), Plato, Statesman, 291-303, Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, V III.x.1-3, Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1241b, Aristotle, Politics, 1279a-1280a(inter alia), and Polybius, Histories, VI.3 (all elaborating and refining the matrix of constitutional forms). ↵

4. See, e.g., Plato, Laws, IIIand Republic, VIII(collectively furnishing the first specific order of regimes). Polybius’s description of Anacyclosis only references Plato by name, but modern scholars (e.g. F. W. Walbank, G. W. Trompf) speculate that Polybius was influenced by and synthesized Aristotle (e.g. Nichomachean Ethics, VIII.8, on the degeneration of regimes and Politics, 1286b on the evolution of regimes) and various other writers including Panaetius, Dicaercus, Isocrates, Protagoras, and Hecataeus. The idea that Anacyclosis runs its full course in wealthy and independent states is implied by Polybius, Histories, VI.57 and Sallust, Conspiracy of Catiline, 10. Machiavelli makes this point explicitly in Discourses on Livy, I.II. ↵

5. Polybius, Histories, VI.4, stating: “So then we enumerate six forms of government,—the three commonly spoken of which I have just mentioned, and three more allied forms, I mean despotism, oligarchy and mob-rule. The first of these arises without artificial aid and in the natural order of events. Next to this, and produced from it by the aid of art and adjustment, comes kingship; which degenerating into the evil form allied to it, by which I mean tyranny, both are once more destroyed and aristocracy produced. Again the latter being in the course of nature perverted to oligarchy, and the people passionately avenging the unjust acts of their rulers, democracy comes into existence; which again by its violence and contempt of law becomes sheer mob-rule.” ↵

6. D. A. Teegarden, Death to Tyrants!: Ancient Greek Democracy and the Struggle against Tyranny, Princeton University Press 2013. Figure A1. (Regime type occurrences over time.) shows the most frequent regime types from circa 700BC to 300BC. Some form of monarchy was the most frequent regime from the H1 7th century until H1 5th century; oligarchy thereafter until H2 4th century, then democracy. ↵

7. See, e.g. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 8.97.2(describing Athens as having a mixed constitution combining the elements of more than one primary regime type) Plato, Laws, 681d(describing the tripartite mixed constitution) Plato, Laws, 712d, (describing Sparta as having a tripartite mixed constitution, attributed to Lycurgus), Plato, Menexus, 238b-d (describing Athens as having a mixed constitution), Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, VII.55 (on establishing the tripartite mixed constitution in Rome to arrest Anacyclosis), Polybius, Histories, VI.10-18, (describing Rome as having a tripartite mixed constitution during the Second Punic War), and Servius the Grammarian, Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil, 4.682 (describing Carthage as having a tripartite mixed constitution). ↵

8. For the tripartite mixed constitution in the English Constitution, see Charles I, His Majesties Answer to the Nineteen Propositions of Both Houses of Parliament, 1642 (“In this Kingdom the Laws are jointly made by a King, by a House of Peers, and by a House of Commons chosen by the People, all having free Votes and particular Priviledges.”) ↵

9. For Enlightenment writers, see Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI, Chapter VIand John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Book II, Chapters XII-XIII(on the separation of powers) James Madison, Federalist Nos. 47 , 48 , and 51 (on the separation of powers and checks and balances in the United States Constitution). For the tripartite structure of the United States Constitution, see Articles I (legislative branch), Article II (executive branch), and Article III (judicial branch). For the separation of powers in the State constitutions, see the National Conference of State Legislatures resource. ↵

10. On the relationship between property and power, see Adams’s Defence of the Constitutions (stating: “The word res, every one knows, signified in the Roman language wealth, riches, property; the word publicus, quasi populicus, and per syncope pôplicus, signified public, common, belonging to the people; res publica, therefore, was publica res, the wealth, riches, or property of the people. Res populi, and the original meaning of the word republic could be no other than a government in which the property of the people predominated and governed; and it had more relation to property than liberty.)” See also Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution(stating “we observe that the power of the people has increased in an exact proportion to their acquisitions of property”). ↵

11. See a letter from John Adams to James Sullivan, 26 May 1776. Adams here alludes to James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana, Part I(“If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people, for example three parts in four … his empire is absolute monarchy. … If the few or a nobility, or a nobility with the clergy be landlords, or overbalance the people to the like proportion… the empire is mix’d monarchy, … And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them, that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition of force) is a commonwealth.”) ↵

12. See, e.g., Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.37.1(that democratic participation in Athens is conditioned upon contribution rather than status) and Psuedo-Xenophon, Old Oligarch, Constitution of the Athenians, 1.2(correlating the distribution of power to economic and military contribution). See also, e.g., Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Nos. 73 and 79 (that “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will“) and Frederick Douglass, West India Emancipation speech at Canandaigua, New York, 3 August 1857 (that “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”) See also, e.g., P. Woodruff, First Democracy, Oxford University Press 2005 (correlating ancient Greek regime types by socioeconomic rank) and P. Spufford, Origins of the English Parliament, 1967 (that the need to obtain consent from the commoners to taxation increased the prerogatives of parliament relative to the monarchy). ↵

13. See, e.g., Euripides, Suppliants, 235-245(praising the middle class as a stabilizing influence); Plato, Laws, 679B-C(that middling station is conducive to upright character); Aristotle, Politics 1295b (praising the middling virtues), For a rare medieval analysis on the middle class, see Nicole Oresme, Livre de Politiques. ↵

14. See, e.g., P. Lindert & J. Williamson, American Incomes 1774-1860, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2012, stating: “New England and the Middle Colonies appear to have been more egalitarian than anywhere else in the measureable world.” ↵

15. See a letter from George Washington to Richard Henderson, 19 June 1788, stating: “America, under an efficient government, will be the most favorable Country of any in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of a moderate capital, to inhabit. It is also believed that it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people because of the equal distribution of property the great plenty of unocupied lands, and the facility of procuring the means of subsistance.” ↵

16. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book One, Introduction, 1835, stating: “Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.” ↵

17. See a letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 28 October 1785stating: “I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.” ↵

18. See James Madison, for the National Gazette,23 January 1792 stating: “In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism.” ↵

19. See a letter from John Adams to James Sullivan, 26 May 1776, stating: “The Ballance of Power in a Society, accompanies the Ballance of Property in Land. The only possible Way then of preserving the Ballance of Power on the side of equal Liberty and public Virtue, is to make the Acquisition of Land easy to every Member of Society: to make a Division of the Land into Small Quantities, So that the Multitude may be possessed of landed Estates. If the Multitude is possessed of the Ballance of real Estate, the Multitude will have the Ballance of Power, and in that Case the Multitude will take Care of the Liberty, Virtue, and Interest of the Multitude in all Acts of Government.” ↵

20. John Adams, Fragmentary Notes from A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law, 1765. See also Noah Webster, Miscellaneous Remarks on Divizions of Property in the United States, 1790, stating: “The basis of a democratic and a republican form of government, iz, a fundamental law, favoring … a general distribution of property.” ↵

21. For 1776 median-top ratio figures, compare Jones-Lindert-Williamson median wealth tables(enabling a conservative estimate of £50 for the 1774 national median household net worth) to W. Edgar’s 1773 top household wealth estimates(£33,000). For current median-top ratio figures, compare 2021 Census Bureau data to rich lists. Compare also 1774 colonial Gini wealth coefficient (0.70, a figure which includes slave wealth) to the 2023 United States Gini wealth coefficient as computed in the 2023 UBS Global Wealth Databook (0.83). These data indicate that America was more economically egalitarian at Independence than it is today, notwithstanding the existence of slavery. ↵

22. For Black-White household median wealth gap ($187,000 vs $14,000) see 2019 Census Bureau data. See E. Derenoncourt, C. Kim, M. Kuhn, and M. Schularick, The racial wealth gap, 1860-2020, 2021, concluding that if aggregate trends since 1870 continue, Black households will only achieve 50% net worth convergence by the year 2100. ↵

23. This $30 trillion estimate is calculated as the cumulative aggregate total of each year’s labor share to capital share delta relative to the 1947 labor share of gross domestic product (GDP) run-rate using (the first in the series) Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The BLS data likely grossly overstates the “ordinary” labor share because the value of non-statutory stock options, disproportionately awarded to upper-level corporate management (comprising the vast majority of stock option grants), are included within the “labor share” by virtue of their tax status as a non-capital asset. Remedial amount of $30 trillion is calculated using Federal Reserve dataas the amount that would be required to allocate 50% of national wealth within the middle three quintiles. If the “middle class” were instead defined as the middle tercile, the remedial figure would increase to approximately $50 trillion, a sum which exceeds the aggregate net worth of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany combined. ↵

24. That the middling share should always exceed 50%, see Aristotle, Politics, 1295b, stating: “It is clear therefore also that the political community administered by the middle class is the best, and that it is possible for those states to be well governed that are of the kind in which the middle class is numerous, and preferably stronger than both the other two classes, or at all events than one of them, for by throwing in its weight it sways the balance and prevents the opposite extremes from coming into existence.” ↵

25. See, e.g., Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 37.3(on the decline of Roman morals during the late Roman republic) Sallust, Conspiracy of Catiline, 38(on demagoguery in the late Roman republic) and 53 (on the corrupting influence of wealth during the same period); Sallust, Jugurthine War, 4 (on late-republican demagoguery, corruption, falsity, and pursuit of status) Lucan, Pharsalia, 1.158 (on the corrupting influence of wealth preceding Caesar) and Tacitus, Annals, 3.27 (on the degradation of the late-republican Roman constitution) A. W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome, Oxford 1968, stating: “Roman writers after the collapse of the Republic were … united in believing that the operative factor throughout was a moral failure arising from the increase of wealth: this had led the governing class to seek riches and power without scruple, while at the same time economic inequality had made the lower classes desperate and ready for any crime against the state.” See also V. Duruy, Histoire des Romains, II, 46-47 (as quoted by A. Stephenson, Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic), stating: “After having pillaged the world as praetors or consuls during time of war, the nobles again pillaged their subjects as governors in time of peace.” ↵

26. On the legislation of Tiberius Gracchus (Lex Sempronia Agraria) see Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Tiberius Gracchus, 8.1 et seqand Appian, The Civil Wars, 1.1. On the termination of Gracchan efforts to revive a middle class, see Appian, The Civil Wars, 4.27(on the Lex Thoria, abandoning the Gracchan project of de-concentrating capital assets to restore the independent middling farmers in favor of a short-lived scheme of cash payments briefly paid by great rentier landowners). See also F. F. Abbott, A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions, 85 (Tiberius Gracchus), stating: “The republic had been at the outset, and for several centuries afterward, a commonwealth of free landowners. This great middle class was now swept out of existence, and with it went the foundation on which the state rested. The object of the movement connected with the name of Tiberius Gracchus was to build this class up again.” ↵

27. See a letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 25 August 1776, praising Gracchus’s Lex Sempronia Agraria as “a genuine republican Measure” and Thomas Jefferson’s initial drafts of the 1776 Virginia constitutionadopting a Gracchan-like provision designed to ensure that adult male citizens held 50 acres of land. ↵

28. This chain of demagogues includes Gaius Gracchus, Drusus, Philippus, Saturninus, Marius, Cinna, Sulla, Lepidus, Catiline, Rullus, Flavius, Pompey, Crassus, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Lepidus, and finally Augustus. ↵

Property monopolized, or in the Possession of a Few is a Curse to Mankind. We should preserve not an Absolute Equality – this is unnecessary, but preserve all from extreme Poverty, and all others from extravagant Riches.

John Adams, 1765