American individualism, corrupted by greed, has fulfilled Brandeis’s warning of oligarchy

The core philosophical differences between American individualism and European collectivism directly support the argument for a metamorphosis in the United States toward social democracy, as exemplified by the notion that “we’re all in this together.”

Democrats for Change argues that the foundational American ideal of individual liberty, conceived in revolutionary opposition to centralized power, has been systematically corrupted by the very powerful and enduring economic forces it unleashed.

The result is not the preservation of freedom but its inversion: an entrenched oligarchy that undermines democratic governance with outsized influence over a political establishment that has virtually legalized bribery.

Through a comparative analysis of the American and French revolutionary traditions, this paper demonstrates how America’s radical individualist ethos diverged from Europe’s more collectivist, fraternity-based model.

Drawing upon the prophetic warnings of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, it posits that extreme economic inequality and genuine democracy are mutually exclusive.

Empirical evidence reveals that the U.S., facing acute democratic erosion, now requires a fundamental metamorphosis toward a European-style social-democratic model.

This transformation is not a rejection of American principles, but as their essential fulfillment—a move from a negative liberty that protects the individual from the state to a positive liberty that utilizes a democratically accountable state to protect the individual from private oligarchic power and ensure the conditions for true, shared freedom.

The United States was founded on a revolutionary paradox.

It championed “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” as inalienable rights, yet its political architecture was designed primarily to secure negative liberties—freedom from governmental tyranny. This anti-statist, decentralized, and constitutional framework was a direct response to British overreach.

However, as the nation matured, a new, more insidious form of power emerged not from the state, but from the private accumulation of capital. The American system, brilliant at checking governmental power, proved alarmingly susceptible to the concentration of economic power.

Into this breach stepped Louis D. Brandeis, the “people’s lawyer” and Supreme Court Justice, who once said, “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.” 

Brandeis identified a fundamental conflict that the Founders, in their 18th-century context, could scarcely imagine: the inherent tension between vast private wealth and popular sovereignty.

His famous dictum, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both,” serves as the central thesis of this analysis.

For Brandeis, concentrated wealth was not merely an economic issue but a civic and political poison—a “curse of bigness” that destroyed competition, stifled individual opportunity, and, most critically, corrupted the democratic process by granting a wealthy elite disproportionate political influence.

There can be no dispute that Brandeis’s warning has come to pass.

“Oligarchy is a term that most [Americans] associate with other countries,” said Dr. Luke Winslow, the author of Oligarchy in America: Power, Justice, and the Rule of the Few, and a professor at Baylor University. “But in my book, I explore how oligarchy—the blending together of economic and political power—illuminates some of the most confusing and paradoxical features of American liberal democracy today, including the durable potency of Donald Trump.”

The United States now exhibits the symptoms Brandeis diagnosed: a “K-shaped” economy where asset owners prosper while wage-earners stagnate, a political system where policy responsiveness aligns almost exclusively with the preferences of the affluent, and a democracy showing clear signs of erosion, driven in significant part by profound economic inequality.

Herbert Spencer coined “survival of the fittest” to apply evolutionary principles to human society, arguing for Social Darwinism to rationalize inequality, exploitation, imperialism, and eugenics.

This approach misinterprets biological competition as a moral imperative for the “unfit” to fail, and neglects the truth that adaptation is the key to life, which suggests that we the people of the United States must adopt some changes in our outlook.

To address this existential crisis, America must undergo a profound metamorphosis.

It must integrate the collectivist, fraternal principle—the simple ethos that “we are all in this together”—into its governance.

This means evolving from a purely rights-based, negative-liberty republic into a social-democratic nation-state that actively uses its democratically derived power to integrate and protect society, curb oligarchic power, and guarantee the substantive economic and social conditions necessary for liberty to be meaningfully enjoyed by all.

The United States stands at a constitutional crossroads.

The path of individualism has led to an oligarchic capture of democracy, marked by unbridled greed, validating Brandeis’s darkest prophecies.

The preservation of the American republic now demands a second founding—a metamorphosis that integrates the fraternal, collectivist insight that individual freedom is ultimately secured by, and dependent upon, the health of the collective body politic.

The American and European political traditions split at their revolutionary roots due to opposing views of society.

The American Revolution was a conservative defense of individual rights against state power. Deeply skeptical of concentrated authority, its founders designed a government of checks and balances to limit the state and protect personal liberty.

The French Revolution was a radical project to use state power to remake society. Inspired by the “general will,” it saw the state as the active instrument of the people’s collective will to achieve equality and fraternity.

One built a system to restrain power; the other launched a state to wield it for the collective good.

Unfortunately, Brandeis was right: the system that was built to restrain power failed to accomplish that goal because unbridled greed has transformed American individualism into an oligarchy.