america did not complete the enlightenment

In 1776, the Enlightenment project that had taken hold in Europe came to full fruition on the North American continent when the American Colonies declared their official independence from Great Britain. While the US is hardly the world’s first democracy, it was the first Enlightenment nation, a nation founded on the principles of the Enlightenment. The ramifications would flow back over to Europe and serve as the catalyst for the French Revolution, the Summer of 1848, and eventually the liberalization of Europe.

WWI and WWII were, in many ways, the final collapse of the old feudal and imperial system. While they had been on their way out for centuries, these two conflicts reshaped the political landscape to reflect the cultural change that had occurred. Power no longer rest in the hands of the king, divinely given to them by God, but instead in the hands of the people, given to them by the ballot box.

The Enlightenment served as a response to Feudalism, attempting to show that one’s status in life didn’t speak to one’s value in life. That all people are ultimately equal. While this wasn’t the intentional movement of the Enlightenment project, it was a natural response of the thinking at the time. The apex of the Feudal period is likely in the 11th century, which is when Feudalism seemed at its most powerful and unlikely to change. From the 11th century to the 15th century, Europe underwent a myriad of changes. Western European powers would enter the 11th century as a backwater in terms of world power and emerge from the 15th century as the global contenders. The reason for this was due to the social changes happening in Europe during those centuries.

Without going into detail, the Black Plague serves as a major turning point in Feudal history but, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t the end of Feudalism. In Feudalism peasants were obliged to their lord and tied to the land. They were given their vocation and under the authority of the lord. The lord (a baron, count, duke, etc) would maintain the land for the king. So long as money came in, the king didn’t really concern himself with how the land was being run, so long as he made money off the land and there weren’t any problems. The nobility served as inherited managers. With the Black Plague, the labor supply (human lives) dried up, giving more power to the peasants. That created cracks in the system from which it couldn’t recover.

Yet, Feudalism persisted despite the Black Plague. However, with the rise of technologies and eventually the Renaissance, new economic classes were being created from the various trades and merchants, and new ideas were entering the system. For centuries this new economic freedom mixed with ancient Greek ideas about the politis, or that everyone has a duty to the State. This gave birth to the Enlightenment, which sought to do away with an arbitrary ruling class and instead adopt democratic principles.

We don’t think of 1776 as radical because we live in its aftermath, but at its time it was a truly radical notion. The Constitution that came later is equally as radical, as it attempts to establish a secular democracy free of any nobility. Over the centuries, Americans worked to perfect this project. We ended slavery, gave women the right to vote, worked to end Jim Crow, worked to increase rights, and so on. The entirety of the American project has been expanding the Enlightenment project. But it was doomed to fail because we never applied Enlightenment principles to one of the most important aspects of any civilization; the economy.

We kept the Feudal structure in the form of corporations, or better, we let corporations morph and turn into a new type of feudalism. It wouldn’t be proper to say it’s a remnant of feudalism because it’s not – there’s a gap between the complete collapse of feudalism and the modern corporation. But, in principle, it remains the same. For a modern large, multinational corporation, a CEO is mostly concerned with profits. So long as the various divisions make a profit and don’t cause any harm to the reputation of the company, they don’t care about the how. Like feudal peasants, modern workers have little to no say over the direction of the company even though the company has complete and total say over the direction of their lives.

We failed to address the inequality of the business structure and, because of this, the American project was always going to fail. When you have inequality and oppression within a democracy you begin to alienate and beat down the oppressed class. Eventually, either the system of oppression and tyranny will win out or democracy will win out, but the two can’t co-exist in perpetuity.

In the average American’s life, they spend the majority of their day at a job where they have little to no say on the direction of the company. Despite the fact that they earn a profit and are by definition a stakeholder in the company, they don’t get a vote. Their daily lives are dictated by people who they’ve never met, people who are so wealthy, so powerful, that they can call up Representatives and Senators while the average American is lucky to get a form letter as a response to any inquiry. To the average American, struggling to get by while they watch the wealthy and powerful live lives of luxury, the system appears broken. And that’s because the system is broken.

America failed where other nations can still succeed. Democratizing the economy, bringing the Enlightenment to the economy, is the only surefire way to protect the liberal order. If workers have a democratic say in the direction of their company – either through union representation, ESOPs, or direct ownership – then it makes them more engaged with their nation in general. It sets up a democratic precedent in the economy and, most importantly, allows workers to limit their own exploitation. But the Enlightenment project must extend to the economy, or else it will always fail.

We created a system of privatized dictatorships, independently-owned fiefdoms who grew so big that they were able to overtake the State. Our failure to extend the Enlightenment project to the economy created malaise and resentment, leading to turbulence and people choosing anything over the establishment. And, like in all times of great change, there’s going to be turbulence before we know what comes next. But for the US, we likely missed the opportunity to complete the Enlightenment and will have to wait decades to centuries before ever having the opportunity again. It is not too late for other nations, however.