Abstract
The ability of very wealthy individuals (or, as I will call them, the ‘super-rich’) to turn their economic power into political power has been—and remains—an important cause of political inequality. In response, this paper advocates an original solution. Rather than solving the problem through implementing a comprehensive conception of political equality, or through enforcing complex rules about financial disclosure etc., I argue that we should impose a choice on the super-rich. The super-rich must choose between (i) forfeiting the things that make them super-rich, i.e., pay a 100 % tax on their wealth above a certain level, or, (ii) they must forfeit some of their political rights. These rights include entitlements to fund political parties; to stand for office; and to work or volunteer for political parties. The right to vote, though, is not limited. I defend my proposal against non-consequentialist and consequentialist objections. I also argue that it avoids two problems that many attempts to reduce political inequality face; these are the political egalitarian’s dilemma and the problem of political equality’s relative moral importance.
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Notes
The Court ruled that ‘corporations and unions have a constitutional right to spend as much as they wish on television election commercials specifically supporting or targeting particular candidates’(Dworkin 2010, p. 1).
For example, in the mid-2000s there were allegations that the then Labour Government was giving peerages to political donors. Peers sit in the UK’s upper house and vote on legislation. See Wilson (2008). Equally, in 2012, the (by then) coalition (Conservative and Liberal-Democrat) government was implicated in a story in which a Conservative Party co-treasurer claimed that a large political donation would give donors personal access to the prime minister (David Cameron) and an input into policy-making. See Insight (2012).
On the connection between legitimacy and justice see Rawls (1996, Lecture IV).
Although for an argument against this see Brennan (2011).
There may be something troubling if this ability is affected by socio-economic background, e.g. it may correlate with parental socio-economic status. Still, the problem here is not the fact that one person marshals better arguments than another but what causes or correlates with this fact. Thanks to anonymous reviewers for requiring me to clarify this claim.
I return to corporations when I reply to objections.
Winters (2011). Winters distinguishes between warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil oligarchies. A civil oligarchy most closely resembles what I mean by the super-rich.
For example, he states that ‘[o]ligarchy refers to the politics of defending wealth’ (Winters 2011, p. 211).
Roughly, a person’s preferences are adaptive where they are altered to fit their circumstances only because the circumstances cannot be changed. The happy slave is the most obvious example. Adaptive preferences are problematic. If some citizens’ preferences are adaptive—perhaps they are a group of uneducated women in a religious patriarchal society—then the fact that they do not demand political change does not imply any meaningful acceptance of their society’s laws.
I am not claiming that Brennan’s conception is wrong; it is perfectly adequate for his purposes. It is unfit only for mine. Brennan does not claim that his is the correct view of political rights.
The tax laws analogy is apt. The super-rich have the resources to employ advisers to minimize their tax liability. We can also expect them to employ similar resources to reduce the effective power of any complex law that aims to reduce their political influence. See Winters (2011, pp. 244–249).
The degree to which the revealed preferences of the super-rich have any normative force does depend on the circumstances of the choice being fair. I look at this issue when I reply to objections.
For a reply to the leveling down objection see Temkin (2000).
For a similar argument in relation to the young whose voice can be drowned-out by politically more active elderly citizens see Van Parijs (1998, esp. pp. 319–321) where he discusses ‘guardians’. The law could require that a guardian is consulted on certain issues or a guardian could be empowered to take a government to court.
An argument approximately of this type has been offered by Estlund (2002). He offers an incentive-based case for inequality of political input, where input is measured in terms of money. His proposal aims to improve the epistemic value of democracy. There is no reason to dispute Estlund’s general proposal. The question is whether we should understand the influence of the super-rich in its terms.
This tendency is implied in Dworkin’s comment that ‘managers [of corporations] are legally required to spend corporate funds only to promote their corporation’s own financial interests’ (Dworkin 2010, p. 4).
Defining corporations as individuals seems to be what the US Supreme Court did in its 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission judgement.
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Acknowledgments
For comments I would like to thank Corey Brettschneider, Trevor Latimer, Patti Lenard, John McCormick, Tim Mulgan and two anonymous Res Publica referees. I would also like to thank audiences at the 2011 ‘Democracy and Rights’ workshops at the University of Stirling and at the University of Ottawa. I would also like to thank the Financial Times for (surprisingly) publishing a letter (27/8 August, 2011) outlining an earlier version of this proposal. Finally, I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for funding this research.
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Machin, D.J. Political Inequality and the ‘Super-Rich’: Their Money or (some of) Their Political Rights. Res Publica 19, 121–139 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9200-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9200-8