"All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities"
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Cooper is doing a novelist's trick here: he turns "good government" into a character defined less by grand ambitions than by restraint. The key move is his suspicion of power's tendency to dress up inevitability as policy. Government will have "unavoidable consequences" simply by existing - taxes collected, laws enforced, winners and losers produced. Cooper's intent is to draw a bright line between that baseline damage and the extra harm created when the state starts engineering advantage: "unnecessary and artificial aid" is his phrase for the rigging that makes the strong stronger, then pretends it was just the natural order.
The subtext is sharper than the genteel cadence suggests. He's warning that inequality isn't merely an economic outcome; it's a political technology. When he says governments "fortify and accumulate social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities", he's describing a feedback loop: wealth buys influence, influence protects wealth, and the cycle is sold as stability. Cooper's craft lies in the pairing of "social" and "political" inequalities, a reminder that class isn't only lived in wages and property but in voice, access, and the credibility to be heard.
Context matters: writing in an early American republic still arguing about banks, land, patronage, and who counts as a citizen, Cooper is pushing back against the complacent idea that a democracy automatically stays democratic. His prescription isn't utopian reform; it's an ethic of non-collusion. A decent state, in Cooper's view, doesn't eliminate inequality by decree - it just refuses to make it official.
The subtext is sharper than the genteel cadence suggests. He's warning that inequality isn't merely an economic outcome; it's a political technology. When he says governments "fortify and accumulate social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities", he's describing a feedback loop: wealth buys influence, influence protects wealth, and the cycle is sold as stability. Cooper's craft lies in the pairing of "social" and "political" inequalities, a reminder that class isn't only lived in wages and property but in voice, access, and the credibility to be heard.
Context matters: writing in an early American republic still arguing about banks, land, patronage, and who counts as a citizen, Cooper is pushing back against the complacent idea that a democracy automatically stays democratic. His prescription isn't utopian reform; it's an ethic of non-collusion. A decent state, in Cooper's view, doesn't eliminate inequality by decree - it just refuses to make it official.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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