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Abstract
Today's students of wealth and politics have understood the power of wealth largely in terms of purchasing power. It has been hypothesized and to some extent demonstrated that wealth buys political influence by bankrolling campaigns, purchasing media space, and funding lobbying efforts. John Adams, by contrast, traced the political influence of wealth not just to its purchasing power but to its grip on the human mind. Though he was no stranger to the purchase of political influence, Adams repeatedly urged his readers to appreciate sentiments like sympathy and admiration for wealth as less tangible but no less potent sources of oligarchic power.
This dissertation draws on the political writings of John Adams to reconstruct an unfamiliar understanding of the political power of wealth. In his letters, essays, and treatises Adams explored in subtle detail what I shall call the "oligarchic mind"-the unique set of psychological dispositions that all but guaranteed the political influence of wealth. Specifically, he traced the influence of wealth to the deep admiration for the rich felt by the public and to the insatiable thirst for that same admiration felt by society's most ambitious. It was the grandeur of wealth, and not merely its purchasing power, that accounted for its immense political influence.
I have divided this dissertation into two parts to reflect the two quite different methods of intellectual history that I have employed. Before turning to a reconstruction of Adams's theory of oligarchy, I set the stage in the first two chapters by disentangling his thought from two lines of late-eighteenth-century constitutional theory. Adams scholars have overlooked the centrality of oligarchy in his thought by reading him as an apologist for elite power. His most significant political writings have been read as efforts to advocate for an English-style "balanced constitution" that would limit democracy to one part of government pitted against aristocratic and monarchical elements. In chapter one I correct this interpretation by situating Adams's Defence of the Constitutions within a transatlantic debate about the desirability of British-style "balanced government." I demonstrate that in the context of this debate Adams was uniquely preoccupied with the danger posed by an overweening aristocratic class.
Chapter two contrasts Adams's thought with that of the most prominent framers of the United States Constitution. Against those who have understood his writings as harmonious with the counter-majoritarian political theory undergirding the United States Constitution, my analysis demonstrates that Adams differed sharply from the Federalist framers, most notably in his estimation of the political power held by socioeconomic elites. Adams argued that even in the modern republican era when formal class distinctions had been abolished, a "natural aristocracy" of birth, beauty, and especially wealth would continue to wield preponderant power.
In the third and fourth chapters I reconstruct Adams's understanding of oligarchic power by situating his thought within a more sweeping intellectual context. In chapter three, I demonstrate through an analysis of his Discourses on Davila that Adams moved beyond a certain republican tradition of conceiving of oligarchic power in material terms. Drawing on the moral psychology of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adams conceived of oligarchy as a product of certain widespread psychological dispositions. In chapter four, I reconstruct Adams's understanding of the problem of oligarchic ambition by contrasting two conceptions of "natural aristocracy" found in a famous exchange of letters with Thomas Jefferson. I demonstrate that although Adams did not reject the possibility that oligarchic ambitions could be redirected towards republican ends, he departed from Jefferson's classical republican idea of a meritocracy of virtue and talents.
In the conclusion I suggest that consideration of the psychological sources of oligarchy reveals a neglected set of normative concerns. If the power of wealth derives, in part, from public admiration of wealth, it would seem important to ask how such power might be curbed or contained. Perhaps those interested in the corrosive effects of money in politics should not limit their focus to the regulation of lobbying and campaign finance, but should widen their scope to consider the regulation of public sentiments. What means do modern democracies have at their disposal to divert public admiration away from wealth? John Adams's writings suggest that one strategy is to create and maintain offices and stations that attract the admiration of the public. When honor and esteem is attached to judgeships, secretariats, and high elected offices, such stations might compete with the grandeur of wealth for the admiration of the public.
