John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy

Why the American Founding Father feared the political power of the rich-and how his ideas illuminate today’s debates about inequality and its consequences.

“A most timely, valuable, and enlightening book. It shows conclusively that Adams was one of the sharpest critics of oligarchy among the American founders and, indeed, in the history of political thought. The book will generate much-needed discussion in political thought, American political studies, and contemporary democratic theory.” —John McCormick, University of Chicago

Long before the “one percent” became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply “the few”-the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. In John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville explores Adams’s deep concern with the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite.

Adams believed that wealth is politically powerful not merely because money buys influence, but also because citizens admire and even identify with the rich. Mayville explores Adams’s theory of wealth and power in the context of his broader concern about social and economic disparities-reflections that promise to illuminate contemporary debates about inequality and its political consequences. He also examines Adams’s ideas about how oligarchy might be countered.

A compelling work of intellectual history, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy has important lessons for today’s world.

“A needed examination of Adams's political thought on wealth-based aristocracy.” —Choice

“Remarkably well-written and astonishingly lucid, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy makes an absolutely central point about Adams's thought, persuasively reestablishing him as a genuine democrat in his ultimate sympathies.” —Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School

“The prose used . . . is highly readable and thought provoking, breaking down one of the last, great, misrepresented legends in the public memory of a founding father.” —New York Journal of Books