Yes, the Democratic Party Has a Real Ideology: Equality

It's become common, among intelligent, political-science-literate types, to say that the Democratic and Republican Parties are organized in qualitatively different ways. The Republican Party is highly ideological, the thinking goes: it's defined by a monolithic commitment to conservative principles. The Democrats, on the other hand, are commonly described as a coalition, maybe even a loose one, of different interest groups. Paul Krugman's latest blog post is largely in this same tradition, with one major variation; it repeats the "coalition of interest groups" description of the Democrats verbatim, but Krugman describes the Republicans as "an engine designed to harness white resentment on behalf of higher incomes for the donor class"--and, as he notes, "the base never cared about the ideology." It's not very hard to diagnose this particular fault-line in the party right now, since Trump basically represents a rebellion on behalf of the white-resentment-y voters against the donor class-favoring party elites.

But I've always thought that this description of the two parties is wrong. Certainly I think it's wrong as to the Democrats, and it might even be totally backwards. Certainly the common wisdom accurately captures the way the parties seem to behave in practice. But if you look deeper, I'm not sure it's so true. The Democrats do have an ideology. You could call it liberalism if you wanted, but egalitarianism is probably a better name. Liberal egalitarianism is better still, if not so pithy. I like that formulation, though, because I'm using the word "liberal" in its technical or political-theory sense, meaning generally a commitment to expansive individual freedom. I also demote liberalism, in this sense, to the position of modifier, with egalitarianism remaining the noun.

And I like that, because I do think that egalitarianism is the central organizing concept of the Democratic Party.
When I'm feeling fanciful I think that egalitarianism is the central fault-line of all politics throughout history; it's certainly one of the big ones. And what I mean by egalitarianism here is the idea that there are, and have been since time immemorial, large-scale inequalities in wealth and power between different elements of society, that by and large the disproportionate power enjoyed by those with more rather than less has been unjust and undeserved, and that these inequalities ought to be lessened.* I could even leave out the word "wealth," and I think it would be salutary to do so, because wealth is after all a form of power, and I think I want to identify that aspect of wealth as the part that primarily offends the kind of egalitarianism I'm describing. "Political egalitarianism" might be a good term, as opposed to purely economic, because the concern is chiefly with the distribution of power in society rather than the distribution of material prosperity (though, of course, the two are highly linked).

If you have a society where this idea starts to gain political currency, it's not too difficult to see that this is going to organize your politics going forward. Basically, those who have traditionally been powerless and oppressed will band together into one party, and those who have traditionally been powerful and oppressors will band together into the other. Since this idea first occurred to me, I've seen the two American parties as basically these two parties, the egalitarian Democrats and the anti-egalitarian Republicans. And honestly, I don't go wrong very often viewing them that way. It explains an awful lot. (Of course, during the mid-20th century the picture was not nearly so clear at the partisan level, because of the Great Inversion during which the two parties gradually exchanged stances on race, the single most important issue of egalitarianism in American history. See here for a historical summary of the Great Inversion.)

On this model, both parties are clearly ideological, but they are also clearly, both, a coalition of interest groups. The Democrats are a coalition of those who stand to gain under egalitarianism, and the Republicans are a coalition of those who stand to lose. In practice this means that the Democrats are a "rainbow coalition" of various different minority groups: racial, religious, sexual, etc. But you also see this play out somewhat in the more powerful interest groups that align with the Democrats. I'm thinking here of, say, the entertainment industry, and particularly Hollywood. They're here more for the liberalism than the egalitarianism, but the two are closely related. The movie industry may be an economic behemoth, but it's vulnerable to persecution along speech-suppressing lines, and the Democrats' philosophy of liberal egalitarianism is their friend when that happens. As far as the connection between liberalism, of this sort, and egalitarianism: illiberal laws generally involve giving someone, typically the dominant social majority, incredible power over someone else, e.g. as to what they're allowed to say. Even if it doesn't track the familiar identity-based lines of modern egalitarian politics, that's the kind of power differential, the kind of inequality, with which egalitarianism is concerned.

As for the Republicans, they're largely made up of the rich, the racist, and the religious. Well, that last one needs considerable qualification. Plenty of religious people believe in egalitarianism (indeed, most world religions are strongly egalitarian in their views), and plenty of religious groups suffer from the sorts of persecution and oppression which egalitarianism attacks. But those who believe that the dominant religious group should be allowed, either to expressly persecute or marginalize dissenting groups (including atheists), or at least to impose their religion's concept of morality on others through the law, are a core member of the anti-egalitarian coalition. The racist need no explanation, and while of course plenty of rich people do not orient their politics around protecting their own wealth, plenty more do. So these three groups form the main elements of the conservative party ("conservative" serving as a decent shorthand for anti-egalitarian).

They're joined by foreign policy conservatives, particularly people who tend toward the imperialist corner of the foreign-policy triangle.* It can be a little tricky to see why this is so, if you only focus on domestic politics. But a global egalitarianism will of course notice that America is very, very powerful, and will therefore stand in opposition to those who favor aggressive use of that power to promote American interests at the expense of the global interest, or the interests of the global disempowered. The final major element of the coalition is the libertarians, perhaps the only true ideologues of the group. Libertarians are not necessarily themselves powerful, or threatened by egalitarianism. They simply hold to a belief system which is itself philosophically opposed to egalitarianism, at least when enforced by the state, and are therefore natural allies of the various holders of unjust power.* (This sketch of the Republican Party's various interest groups lines up with what, I'm almost certain, was once a piece on FiveThirtyEight, back in the relatively old days, but I can't for the life of me find that piece anymore.)

So, both parties are a coalition of interest groups, united around a common ideology: liberal egalitarianism versus conservatism. These coalitions then develop party platforms and doctrines, and it is definitely true that the Republicans have, of late, adopted far more absolutist doctrines than the Democrats have concerning the proper nature of public policy. Perhaps that's inherent in the nature of the two fundamental beliefs: egalitarians are interested in using any tool to hand (save, perhaps, those deemed off-limits by liberal principles) to reduce inequalities and promote equality, while conservatives are mostly interested in denying the legitimacy of those tools. Being powerful themselves, they have less need to use the government for their own benefit. But at a deeper level, I think, the two parties are mostly symmetrical.

And indeed, there's some reason to think that, at this deepest, most fundamental level, the Democratic coalition is significantly more ideological, and more ideologically united, than the Republican one. It's not clear, after all, that any one element of the Republican conservative coalition cares all that much about seeing the power and privileges of the other elements maintained. No, they care about maintaining their own power, and have banded together with others similarly motivated for the common defense of privilege--but it's an entirely self-interested alliance (excepting the libertarians, at least). The same could be true on the Democratic side, that each group cares only about its own liberation, not about the principle of equality more broadly, but I doubt this is so, not to the same degree at least.True, you have examples like the widespread racism of the labor movement earlier in the twentieth century, and the gradual corruption of Israeli Jews from a bunch of refugees from world-historic oppression into their present role as oppressors in their own right.

But I think, on the whole, that solidarity is more powerful among the oppressed than among oppressors. And this, in turn, is why it's the Republican Party splitting apart, not the Democrats (despite what has been, among the voters if not the candidates, an uncommonly bitter and nasty primary). The Christian and racial conservatives who have been providing the votes all this time really don't care about the plight of the wealthy donor class. They will, therefore, turn on their masters if given the chance, and their masters will turn on them. There isn't really anything similar on the Democratic side, because every part of the coalition tends to believe that justice supports not only their own cause but that of the entire rest of the coalition. Plus, you don't have one element of the coalition exploiting the others. We disagree--bitterly, apparently!--about whether to pursue a radical egalitarianism or a moderate one, and about whether class inequality causes racial inequality or whether it's the other way around, but we all tend to agree that every different form of inequality is bad and should be fought.

It's not a bad ideology, and, I think, it unites us more powerfully than ever the various conservative groups were united.






*One could imagine a society, or perhaps a world, in which the forces of egalitarianism had been so successful that there no longer were major social inequalities in the various forms of power, and in such a world egalitarianism would of course become a politically conservative idea, the idea that these inequalities ought not be allowed to reassert themselves, nor new ones develop.
*I conceive of foreign policy, American foreign policy at least, as a triangle between three different poles: imperialism, isolationism, and internationalism. Isolationists are simple; they favor minimal engagement with foreign affairs across the board. Interventionists, however, must be divided between imperialists, who favor involvement in foreign affairs for primarily selfish reasons of conquest or enrichment, and internationalists, who favor involvement dedicated to the common good and, preferably, organized through various international institutions.
*Perhaps environmentalists play a similar role in the Democratic coalition: they are not themselves necessarily underprivileged, but for various reasons they find egalitarian principles appealing. Perhaps this is because they conceive of themselves as advocating for the natural world, which has zero political power of its own in human affairs; perhaps it is because their enemies, the despoilers of nature, tend to be very powerful. Either way, they get along well with the coalition of the disempowered even if they aren't strictly speaking members of it. (There are also of course some rich white men who join this coalition out of no conceivable self-interest but rather because they happen to believe in egalitarianism, for moral reasons or what-have-you.)