"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both"
About this Quote
Brandeis doesn’t argue; he corner-pins you with an either-or. The line is built like a judicial opinion stripped to its bluntest syllogism: democracy requires broadly distributed power, and extreme wealth is power in a form that doesn’t bother to run for office. Set them together long enough and one quietly eats the other.
The intent is less moral than structural. Brandeis is warning that institutions you can name - legislatures, courts, elections - become decorative when the real leverage sits in private boardrooms. Concentrated wealth doesn’t need to abolish voting to deform it; it can buy the agenda, staff the expertise, fund the campaigns, shape the news, underwrite the think tanks, hire the lawyers who turn regulation into a maze. Democracy survives as ritual while outcomes tilt predictably toward those who can afford permanence.
The subtext is the Progressive Era’s anxiety made crystalline: the rise of trusts and monopolies wasn’t just an economic problem but a constitutional one. Brandeis, famously skeptical of “the curse of bigness,” treated antitrust and regulation as democracy-protection, not market-tidying. He’s also swatting away a comforting American myth: that fortunes are private accomplishments with no civic consequence. In his frame, inequality isn’t merely unfair; it’s incompatible with self-government because it creates a second, quieter sovereignty.
The line still lands because it refuses the compromise everyone wants to hear: that we can keep the oligarchic spoils and simply patch the system with better manners. Brandeis says the math doesn’t work.
The intent is less moral than structural. Brandeis is warning that institutions you can name - legislatures, courts, elections - become decorative when the real leverage sits in private boardrooms. Concentrated wealth doesn’t need to abolish voting to deform it; it can buy the agenda, staff the expertise, fund the campaigns, shape the news, underwrite the think tanks, hire the lawyers who turn regulation into a maze. Democracy survives as ritual while outcomes tilt predictably toward those who can afford permanence.
The subtext is the Progressive Era’s anxiety made crystalline: the rise of trusts and monopolies wasn’t just an economic problem but a constitutional one. Brandeis, famously skeptical of “the curse of bigness,” treated antitrust and regulation as democracy-protection, not market-tidying. He’s also swatting away a comforting American myth: that fortunes are private accomplishments with no civic consequence. In his frame, inequality isn’t merely unfair; it’s incompatible with self-government because it creates a second, quieter sovereignty.
The line still lands because it refuses the compromise everyone wants to hear: that we can keep the oligarchic spoils and simply patch the system with better manners. Brandeis says the math doesn’t work.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Rejected source: The Social and Economic Views of Mr. Justice Brandeis (Mr. Justice Brandeis, Alfred Lief, Ed..., 1930)IA: socialeconomicvi0000loui
Evidence: iate deductions there is no difference in this respect between state and federal taxes or between income taxes and others but the fact that it is the fe Other candidates (2) Main Street Vs Wall Street (Norman Jones, 2010) compilation96.4% ... We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few , but we can... Civil and political rights (Louis D. Brandeis) compilation37.1% there is grave danger in this country of losing our civil liberties as they have been lost in other countries earl wa... |
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