On American Democracy And Its Inner Contradictions

As the earliest constitutional democratic state in the modern world history, the United States inaugurated a leading card with indigenously and rationally designing its democratic system in history. The evolution of American democratic system is the outcome when American economy, politics and culture develop to a certain stage. Two early modes of American democracy, i.e., Virginia Mode and New England Mode, had a far-reaching historical influence on the establishment of the present democratic system.Systematically, the pluralist democracy dominates American current system of democracy, which is mainly embodied in the political system of "separation of powers" and political participation of interest groups and both the decentralized system of government and interest groups have a dual impact on the development of American democratic politics. From theoretically, Madison and Jefferson’s political philosophy laid the theoretical foundation of the American democratic system. During the20th century, Robert Dahl further developed the theory of pluralist democracy of America, and analyzed and criticized the defects of pluralist democracy. The essence of the internal contradictions of American democratic system is that the presupposition of the democratic system is based on economic equality, but the United States who embattles democracy is a capitalist country producing the gap between rich and poor every minute. With the development of capitalism, although the American democratic system is experiencing the constant development and improvement, it exposes some problems and contradictions which will be abated in some degree. However, the existence of the capitalist mode of production decides the insuperability of the inherent contradictions of American democracy, which is also the limitation of history and class of American democracy.In the process of building socialist political civilization with Chinese characteristics, guided by the Marxist viewpoints and the principles, we cannot blindly copy the political models of American democracy while keep absorbing the positive and reasonable factors scientifically, strengthening the cultivation of Chinese citizen’s abilities of political participation and consultation, and further improving Chinese mechanism of checks and balances and the socialist democracy.