The forgotten power of pluralism

Businessmen of success of this period were called ‘Robber Barons’ because they were experts at creating monopolies

Mark Twain in Pakistan is best known for his forwarded and re-forwarded quotes on social media but he was much more than that. He is considered the greatest American writers of all time. Not just that but a great humorist, essayist and a lecturer. Mark Twain coined a phrase ‘Gilded Age’ in his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: The Tale of Today. Gilded age is a period considered in American history from 1877 to 1900. Put simply, gilded age meant that the period was glittering on the surface but was corrupt underneath.

The businessmen of success of this period were called ‘Robber Barons’ because they were the experts at creating monopolies as they would prevent any potential competitor from entering the market. John D Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie created wealth’s that by today’s standards can be measured in billions of dollars. Yet, they were part of an era of monopoly and an era of merger of greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. Unlike Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, the American billionaires of the current progressive era have earned success in a pluralistic society and an era of competition, the success of the robber barons of the gilded age is attributed to the corrupt governments and the corrupt business practices that created social inequality in the US where many Americans continued to live poor lives in a monopolistic political system.

So, when I sit down to write and quote Cornelius Vanderbilt, I am not going to write about the wealth he accumulated or the status he achieved, or of being recognised as the greatest American industrialists of the 19^th Century. I will just quote his famous remark, “What do I care about the law? Haven’t I got the power?” Gilded age changed to progressive age in America because the American elite could understand that it is unwise to concentrate power in the hands of an individual or narrow groups. They understood that the best expression of power was when it was shared.

One great lesson that that one can learn from the American transition from the gilded age to the progressive era is that this transition could only take place because of two resounding societal transformational factors — creation of rule of law and pluralistic society. In Pakistan the political debate starts and ends at the creation of rule of law but pluralism and creation of pluralistic society is a factor that is hardly ever given any weightage.

History is a cruel judge. Hundred years from now, people will still be writing and some of them might quote some of the very powerful men of business that comprise the political elite in this country. They will quote them not because of the wealth and power that they accumulated in this era but their contributions to the stability or instability or the monopolisation of the political system. On monopoly, President Woodrow Wilson in his 1913 book, The New Freedom, wrote that, “if monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government. I don’t expect to see monopoly restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.” Americans understood the message and treated monopolisation as a disease and the medicine they used to cure it was pluralisation.

What is pluralism? It is the medicine that cures the disease of concentration of power in an individual or narrow groups. The factory that produces this medicine is out on the streets. Pluralistic society can only emerge when the people in the streets are empowered more than elites in parliament. Pluralism in a society starts when people can send representatives to parliaments who can secure a seat on the table of their interests. Only such people’s representation can eat into the political, economic, business and industrial monopolies created by the anti-reform robber barons of our times. The pluralistic society will be created through a gradual change in political system — not the change that we anticipate to see in our lifetimes. History tells us that if any political system will change, through reform and not through revolution, then this will happen in decades and not in years; and the reforms at times will be smaller in some decade, and in some decades larger steps might be taken towards reform. Pakistan must pray that we take the path of the gradual rather than the absolute overthrow of the political system. I would not even be writing this if the alarm bells in our political system were not already ringing. When there is an absolute overthrow of the political system then it takes many years to bring in an alternative system as everything has to be built from the scratch.

A pluralistic society strives to create, maintain and then sustain the balance of power in the political system. When FD Roosevelt was elected as American President in 1932 amidst the Great Depression, he believed he had an electoral mandate to change the system and didn’t want the Supreme Court judges to cut down his initiated reforms. He gave the logic that the “judges were overworked” and the “load was too much for them” under a judicial environment in which these judges were striking down his legislations. He introduced a Judiciary Reorganization Bill under which the judges would face compulsory retirement at the age of 70 and he would be allowed to appoint six new judges. In the pluralistic America, the House of Representatives and the Senate refused to deal with Roosevelt’s proposed bill and the President was prevented from controlling the Supreme Court.

Another example to explain non-pluralism is of Carlos Saul Menem who became the Argentinian President in the 90s. He also used the Roosevelt’s excuse of the judges being overworked and proposed to expand the Supreme Court from four to nine judges. The law was passed and he got his majority in the court. Controlling the court, he got what he wanted; his next step was to re-write the constitution without any judicial interference to prevent him doing so and thus removed the limit of presidential tenures to run for office again.

The representatives of the people in parliaments and Senates ensure that the balance of political system is maintained by ensuring that they defend the pluralist concept of separation of powers between the institutions. Sending poor representatives to parliament means having a future following the pathway of an Argentinian political system instead of American. This also means not understanding the power of pluralism and how we can contribute towards it. The big hope is that all of us remember this when we caste our votes..

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st, 2023.

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