Political philosophers since Aristotle have continually told us that economic inequality destroys democracy because the rich will find a way to use their wealth to buy political influence. The wealthier they are, the more influence they can typically buy; and the more unequal the society, the harder it gets to keep the wealthy from seizing the reins of state. Of course, it is possible to limit opportunities for the wealthy to buy influence, but the lack of these limits is striking in the most unequal societies. Like water finding the lowest point, somehow the wealthy find a way to exert their influence. And several decades of neoliberal economic policies, coupled with an increasingly intense global competition for labor, and the computerization of middle income jobs, have deepened inequality in states across the world. But equality is more than just a means of keeping the wealthy from gaining too much power.
At the heart of democracy is a legal equality that protects citizens against the predations of the privileged. When we are all equal before the law, the law ceases to be a whip with which the powerful keep the rest in line. Rather, it becomes a shield with which we protect ourselves from their predations. The predations might come in the form of wealthy capitalists exploiting poor laborers, but they might also come in the form of a landed aristocracy exploiting peasants, or else the friends and family of a dictator taking advantage of everyone else. When the foundations of legal equality are eroded, all sorts of exploitation becomes possible, and the law itself is all too often the tool with which it is carried out. For laws shape the way we live together, and if given the chance, ruling elites will use them to protect their privileges at the expense of our quality of life. And these perversions of justice are facilitated by economic inequality, for as in politics, the wealthy can usually find a way to pay for unequal legal justice. But there is more to legal equality than just legal protections.
Legal equality is rooted in the idea that we are all moral equals. That is, we are all deserving of equal moral consideration, because we are all possessed of the same capacities to think and feel, imagine and create. In short, we are equals because we are the same kind of beings, who are capable of the same types of experiences; and since we are the same kind of beings, we deserve a kind of equal respect. Of course, it is impossible to respect everyone the same, as there will always be some to whom we owe special commitments, and there will always be many who evoke our greater sympathy. But thinking of ourselves as moral equals deepens our sympathy for one another and provides a foundation for political community.
The idea that we are moral equals suggests that we deserve an equal voice in the institutions that shape our lives. In this way, moral equality is foundational to political equality, and with it the equal right to vote and participate in choosing representatives. Modern political communities may be too big for everyone to participate in decision making, even at a local level. But even a political community composed of over a billion people can choose its representatives. Political equality is also foundational to the notion that we deserve certain basic rights: freedom of speech, association, religion, and expression, to name a few. In this way, political equality, and the legal and moral equality at its heart, protects human diversity. In short, we can be who we are, and become who we want, because whatever we might be will be respected—and certain protections will follow us to the grave, whatever path we might take in life. In this sense, equality is the basis of pluralism, for it protects minorities and non-conformists.
But all of this is undermined by economic inequality, because it signals our moral inequality and undermines our legal and political equality. Of course, poverty is harmful to the people who must suffer it, and it harms the esteem of those who sit at the bottom of the social scale. So, diminishing the poverty associated with inequality is good for its beneficiaries, as is diminishing the distance between the poorest and wealthiest members of a society. But diminishing inequality is also essential to protecting the basic rights and freedoms that make democracy possible. It is for this reason that, if you believe in democracy, you must work for economic equality—at least at this stage in history, where the distance between the wealthiest and the poorest insults the dignity of us all. In this way, every good democrat is a progressive, and every progressive is essential to the fight for democracy.
~ Theo Horesh, author of The Fascism This Time: And the Global Future of Democracy
Absolutely. There is no real democracy without some degree of wealth equality.