The Aristoi

The Aristoi

Second in Series

During the 2012 presidential campaign, the term the “99 percent” was bandied about. The “99 percent” refers to the income and wealth inequalities perceived in the United States, that is, that the bulk of wealth in our nation is concentrated in only 1% of the population, and that the fate of the many is decided by the few. The term may date to the twenty-first century, but the concept is centuries old. 

Joseph Ellis, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding Brothers, refers to “eternal political verities.” One is that there has been and there always will be opposing parties. Another, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, is “that everyone takes his side in favor of the many, or the few, according to his constitution, and the circumstances in which he is placed.” In other words, we are always looking out for “Number One.” 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the best of friends and the worst of political enemies. As delegates to the Continental Congress, they had forged a friendship on the anvil of Independence. As presidential rivals and opposing political ideologues, they had slung accusations across party lines. After many years in retirement, the two were reunited in a correspondence in which they both renewed their friendship and attempted to, in Adams’s words, “explain ourselves to each other.” These letters were not only addressed to one another but to posterity. 

Adams and Jefferson addressed many political questions, including the use and origin of power. Adams had written three books arguing that political power was inevitably concentrated in the hands of a few prominent people and families. This system dated back from the feudal barons of Europe and Asia and the landed gentry of Elizabethan England to the plantation owners of the American south. Adams regretfully acknowledged that history proved that the “many always deferred to the few,” as was “established by God Almighty in the Constitution of Human Nature.” In other words, the one percent ruled in the past, the present, and the future, and the 99 percent will always be in their thrall.

Adams wrote that “as long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families…as a SNOW ball grows as it rolls.” Thereby, we have an inherited or wealth-based aristocracy which makes the decisions which rule the lives of the less-affluent. Adams defined the “Five Pillars” of this aristocracy as “Beauty, Wealth, Birth, Genius, and Virtues” with any of the first three overwhelming the other two at any time.

Jefferson contested Adams characterization of aristocracy. He believed that the artificial aristocracy that was “founded on wealth and birth” could be supplanted by a “natural aristocracy among men” based on “virtue and talent.” Wasn’t the American republic the result of the triumph of virtue and talent over wealth? Weren’t the founders fathers -- men who offered “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” for a political ideal -- the very emblem of an aristocracy based on virtue and talent? He conceded that the nations of Europe with their history of an inherited aristocracy limited the economic opportunities of the populous, but argued that in the United States labor and education could raise any one up to a position of prominence.

In separate correspondence, Adams noted the irony of this philosophical argument with Jefferson. Adams was the son of a New England farmer and shoemaker, while Jefferson owned about 200 slaves and 10,000 acres of land – much of it inherited from his father-in-law. Both were elected to the presidency on the basis of their revolutionary credentials – not on their accumulation of wealth and power.  

Jefferson and Adams stood in the one percent of talent and virtue. The nation was birthed and endured because of the character of its founders. If they had craved only wealth and power, the republic would have foundered. Can our nation stand on the character of our current one percent? Will the 99 percent always lose to the will of the aristocracy? Will the virtuous and talented ever supplant the wealthy? 

The answers depend on the character and labors of the 99 percent. The “founding brothers” defined the republic, but it is the American people, the 99 percent, who maintain the freedoms outlined in the Declaration of Independence. If we want “equality and justice for all” we must work for and be worthy of it.

(All quotations from Joseph Ellis’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Founding Brothers.)