Origins of Modern Greed

By Steve Johnson

Greed is a strong and excessive desire for wealth, possessions, or power, often accompanied by an unwillingness to share or give to others. It is a trait characterized by an insatiable desire for more, often at the expense of ethical considerations or the well-being of others.

Dissecting the meaning of greed in the same manner that a word would be dissected in a legal document reveals that the entire definition is full of terrible human qualities that all point to an individual's choice to value their own life above all life. When we look at history, it’s important to remember that people have been capable of complex thought, compassion, empathy, and love for thousands of years. Early people were not hateful, fearful savages. They were as we are, but with different struggles and different technologies.

The Origin of Modern Greed, a Proletarian Theory

In an attempt to understand the origins of greed, I first looked at which civilizations have spread without pause and conquered the most throughout the previous 500 years of world history. It is easy to ascertain based on historical documents that it was the following nations: England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Next, I looked at what these nations have in common: harsh winters, some of the earliest archaeological evidence of widespread cannibalism, reduced sun exposure due to latitude, and limited landmass and resources as populations grew. I will now attempt to guide you through my thought process that greed is not a basic human trait that exists in us all, but instead developed as a means of survival during the most desperate of times in human history. I propose that the early civilizations of Northern Europe suffered resource scarcity, limited sun exposure, and cannibalism as a way of ensuring individual survival above all else which would later foster a culture of materialism and greed. Jared Diamond has touched on many of these topics in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. We will also look at Cannibalism by Bill Schutt to explore the long-lasting psychological trauma that cannibalism can have on a population. World history and general psychology references are common knowledge and can be verified by a multitude of sources at the reader’s convenience.

Survival of the Warmest

When I was four, my family moved from sunny Florida to beautiful Michigan. The changing of the seasons is something magical, however, winters in Michigan caused me to be very aware that there are different needs for survival depending on geographical location and season. There are unique challenges of a harsh winter that are not present in a place like Florida. Needing wood for heat during the winter and ensuring adequate food supply to last the season are top priorities. The need for winter clothing to stay comfortable in colder climates is a distinctive feature of civilizations accustomed to frigid temperatures.  There is less exposure to the sun, resulting in a loss of vitamin D and serotonin. That alone has a hugely negative impact on the human psyche. Winter is harsh, and it can leave a lasting toll on populations forced to endure such a climate. Everything about lasting through winter involves having more than you need to ensure survival, a fact of life missing from the more temperate climates of Earth, with year-round sun and milder season transitions. You simply need less when the outside world is more forgiving.

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The more you have going into winter, the more likely you are to survive. Over time, the strong or desperate survive and the weak die, resulting in more resources for the survivors. After winter, the more you have remaining, the more you can trade for other goods and services to prepare for the inevitable coming of the following Winter. This simple exchange based on supply and demand is the basis of materialism that develops into capitalism. Greed developed as a means of individual and communal survival in a time of limited resources that ensured the wealthiest and most powerful would survive. Over an extended historical timeframe, the accumulation of sufficient wealth could elevate an individual to the status of a chief, king, or ruler. Fast forward through all of the muddied conflicts of kings and kingdoms in Europe up to 1500 CE, and now we look again at who the primary conquering nations of indigenous people of the world were. England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain claimed much of South America, North America, Africa, and portions of Asia. No other nations have overrun so much of the Earth at one time. Survival of the fittest would be false, but survival of the wealthiest, cruelest, and most immune would be true, which the longest surviving families would be the pinnacle of. It is these lineages that lead the populations and determine where to invade, for the betterment of themselves and their strongest supporters. “It is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.” (Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond p166)

Survival of the Maddest

The latitude that the majority of the conquering nations exist at directly implies a lack of sun exposure throughout the winter. This will result in a vitamin D deficiency, which in turn leads to a weakened immune system, reduced bone strength, mood disorders, and sleep problems. This could translate into much of the Northern European population being tired, crabby, depressed, sore, and malnourished. It is not difficult to imagine that early Northern Europeans may have turned on each other during the course of a harsh winter to survive. The extent to which they may have turned on each other could theoretically be evident in archaeological sites around Europe and even in Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America founded in 1607. Many human remains featured butchery marks that “were identical to the damage found on the bones of non-human animals that had presumably been used as food.” (Schutt, Cannibalism p 159) 

It may seem like quite the jump that I looked into the archaeological evidence of cannibalism in reference to greed. This stems from the knowledge of horrifically true stories of survival such as the Donner Party, the cruise ship Mignonette, and Flight 571. Nothing screams desperation to survive and valuing your own life above all else more than consuming your fellow man. A common theme in all of these scenarios is resource scarcity, harsh conditions, and desperation. Settings not unlike that which early civilizations of Northern Europe may have  been faced with in any given Winter.  This heinous act is often portrayed as very primitive, and usually is only referenced when it pertains to indigenous peoples, not caucasians. However, the vast majority of evidence of cannibalism discovered so far, has taken place in England and “many cultures share the belief that consuming another human is the worst (or close to the worst) behavior that a person can undertake.”(Schutt, Cannibalism p12)  For further reading on the history of cannibalism in Europe, I recommend Sarah Everts’ article here.

Survival of the Fittest Immune

During the time of Western conquest around the world, populations were surging in England, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. There was a lack of “food production, a major determinant of local population size and societal complexity —hence an ultimate factor behind the conquest.”(Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel) Much of Europe had taken to farming, while the populations in undiscovered lands were living in harmony with the earth as hunter/gatherer societies. The impact of Western colonization and imperialism on indigenous peoples worldwide was intense and devastating. Dispossession of land, loss of cultural heritage, introduction of diseases, violence, forced labor, and cultural assimilation were all common and terrible themes. Genocide, slavery, ecological damage were also prevalent. Indigenous people were no match for the diseases that farmers of Europe brought to the world. “The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history—smallpox, flu, tuberculosis*malaria, plague, measles, and cholera—are infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our own epidemic illnesses are paradoxically now almost confined to humans.”( Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel p196-197)

Survival of the Richest

If I could tell the entire world one thing, it would be this: Greed is an antiquated negative trait that arose out of a need for survival. By definition, it is only utilized to ensure the survivability of one’s self over others. We now live in a world of plentiful resources, deep philosophy, amazing technology, and a world population that craves peace, happiness, comfort, and autonomy above all else. Now is not only the time to ensure humanity’s survival, but also to allow humanity to truly thrive. To do so, we must turn away from the tragedies of the past and look to the future. We need to exchange our mirrors for windows, and look outside to our neighbors and offer assistance where needed. Continuing to hold more resources than any one person or family could use in multiple lifetimes is a luminous beacon to the world that you value your own life above all other life on this planet. The upper echelon view themselves as gods amongst men. But, the truth is, we have all survived equally and are here together, now.

Steve Johnson is a retired saltwater fisherman who has exchanged his rod and reel for pen and paper. His stories and articles range from observations of the world to fiction and back again. He enjoys spending time with his wife, kids, and grandkids in their hometown in Maine. Seeing the world through the eyes of children has added life and purpose to his writing.

On the Development of Political Consciousness

By Peter S. Baron

Political consciousness involves understanding how our lives are shaped by social, economic, and political systems, particularly within the framework of capitalism. By developing political consciousness, we can recognize how the capitalist system perpetuates everyday issues like poverty and inequality. Doing so, we can explore ways to work together towards a fairer, more cooperative society.

To develop political consciousness, we must understand that regardless of our class—whether lower, middle, or upper—we are part of the general population. We are not part of the small group who holds real power regarding how society is organized. Since we lack significant power to influence decisions that shape the structure of our society, it's crucial to recognize that our capitalist and hierarchical systems, which impose economic inequality, social stratification, and power imbalances, are not inherent to "human nature." These structures are artificially constructed—man-made—and therefore, they can be reimagined and changed.

Social ills like poverty, war, crime, poor health, long working hours, and job dissatisfaction are intrinsic to the capitalist system, designed to maximize profits and reinforce the power of the wealthy few. Capitalism thrives on inequality, ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor by maintaining poverty. Wars, driven by capitalist competition for resources and markets, not only benefit the elite through military-industrial profits but also open new markets, force rebellious countries into the capitalist world order, and dominate natural resources. Economic disparities lead to crime, which keeps people scared of each other instead of the capitalists producing these conditions and creates a perceived need for police, who are necessary to suppress social movements that threaten capitalism. The for-profit healthcare system locks out the poor, keeping them sick, irritable, and in pain, leading to more social problems in their communities and hurting their chances for upward mobility. Employers push for long hours and monotonous jobs to numb people's minds, conditioning them to accept an unfulfilling existence while draining them of the energy to resist. These issues are not accidental but are systematically perpetuated to maintain elite control and economic dominance, highlighting the need for systemic change.

We have the technology and resources to meet everyone's basic needs and more. However, within the capitalist system, owners of essential resources deliberately keep them scarce to boost their profits and maintain socioeconomic and political control over society. This enforced scarcity compels us to compete for money, which we need to purchase these essential resources. We compete by vying for jobs or by selling goods and services.

Remember, money doesn’t materialize out of thin air; it comes from our pockets, circulating among individuals and businesses, continuously moving from one person to another. Think of it this way: when you pay rent, your hard-earned cash goes straight into the landlord's bank account. The landlord then uses that money to pay for services, transferring the money to other workers and businesses. This cycle repeats in countless ways: your grocery store purchase goes to the store owner, who then pays employees and suppliers. This constant flow of money among us shows how our economic system is interconnected, continuously shifting money from one person to another. Each transaction becomes a competition for businesses and individuals to maximize their earnings at the expense of others. This pits us against each other, making us competitors rather than collaborators, and ultimately making it harder to work together for our common good.

The ruling elite (owners) maintain this system because it keeps us preoccupied with our own survival, ensuring that we don't challenge their power. By keeping us competing for resources, they maintain their control over society. We need to see through this manipulation and understand that cooperation, rather than competition, can help meet everyone's needs. Instead of competing, we can support and create systems where resources are shared fairly, like community food banks or cooperative housing projects.

Currently, we find ourselves competing with each other over slivers of wealth and power—small salary increases, slightly better apartments, marginally better schools for our kids, and slightly more powerful positions at work—while the corporate community and ruling elite hoard vast wealth and control. We undermine and exploit each other while competing for the limited resources distributed by the ruling elite, yet we often don’t even stop to think about it! By perpetuating these systems, we reinforce power structures that serve a select few at our collective expense.

Recognizing and Challenging the Capitalist System

We can live better lives without capitalism. We should question why we must compete. Wouldn't we rather work together to improve our quality of life? We have the power to choose to cooperate. It is a fool’s errand to continue upholding these oppressive structures when we can create a society based on mutual aid and cooperation, where everyone has access to what they need and the freedom to pursue their desires without harming others.

Importantly, such questioning requires a recognition that we, the people, have been conscripted to willingly, and often enthusiastically, do the rulers' bidding of perpetuating systems that serve ruling interests. We do exactly as they wish by competing with each other over shavings of wealth and power. How much longer will we allow ourselves to be driven by the spiritually bankrupt belief that accumulating wealth and power equates to a better quality of life?

At our core, we are all humans—essentially apes who share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees—sharing the same planet (which capitalism is currently ravaging…). None of us are inherently superior to one another, regardless of the social constructs or values we use to measure each other. While intelligence tests, work performance, and other criteria may create the illusion of ranking and comparison, these are merely human-made constructs. They do not reflect the fundamental reality that we are all essentially the same. As humans, there is no true measure of being better at being human; these constructs fail to capture our shared essence and humanity. Ultimately, we are all just apes, and these rankings do not define our worth or existence. How can we look at someone struggling under capitalism and tell them they deserve this suffering? How can we be so cruel as to shame them into believing they are inferior because of mistakes, factors beyond their control, or simply losing in this ruthless, competitive society?

While some argue that individual agency, effort, and personal responsibility, measured through intelligence tests and work performance, drive personal and societal progress by incentivizing innovation, hard work, and excellence, this perspective overlooks a crucial aspect of human nature. Humans are inherently innovative and social beings who thrive on helping each other. We don't need money to drive our creativity. The wheel wasn't invented for profit, and Nikola Tesla pursued his groundbreaking work out of passion, not for financial gain. When we create a society where people can take risks without the fear of homelessness or destitution, we unleash a greater potential for innovation. Moreover, imagine a world where our inventors and entrepreneurs innovate out of pure passion and a genuine desire to help others. It's disheartening to think that self-interest alone should drive innovation, as this often warps the true potential and purpose of their creations. Isn't it far more inspiring to envision a society where the love for one's work and the commitment to collective well-being fuel our greatest advancements? By fostering a culture of mutual support and cooperation, we can inspire more people to contribute their ideas and talents for the collective good, leading to a more prosperous and innovative society for all.

The real culprit here is the capitalist system that warps humanity to such an extent that people commit inhumane acts. This system creates conditions of scarcity, competition, and alienation, driving individuals to extreme behaviors as they struggle to survive and succeed. When we encounter individuals who are “lazy,” “irresponsible,” or “antagonistic,” it's easy to overlook that these behaviors often stem from systemic pressures and the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. Similarly, when we see extreme cases like murderers or Nazis, we must remember that their actions are also the result of systemic traumas and distortions created by the same flawed system.

Mother Teresa’s compassion and service were commendable, but her worth wasn’t greater than anyone else's. I’m positive she would say the same. As Carl Jung reminds us, we must acknowledge our “collective shadow”—the parts of society that we’d rather ignore or vilify. Instead of scapegoating individuals, we need to dismantle the system that perpetuates these cycles of harm.

By understanding that harmful behaviors are symptoms of a deeply flawed system, we can shift our focus from blaming individuals to transforming society. This means fighting for a world where resources are shared, and where everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity and purpose. It’s not about excusing wrongdoings but recognizing that our collective liberation depends on changing the conditions that lead to such acts in the first place. Only then can we truly honor our shared humanity and work together for the common good.

The capitalist system continues because we support it daily, despite its burdens. We  must understand that the capitalist system inherently creates inequality and suffering, which pushes all of us into the position where we may either contribute to the problem or work towards solutions. We have the power to create a society where communities and individuals possess meaningful control over their own lives. We do not have to live according to the dictates of corporate overlords who shape the material conditions we must live within, forcing us to compete for marginally better status in a fundamentally oppressive system. We can build communities that work together, share resources fairly, and make decisions together. By focusing on mutual aid and cooperation instead of competition, we can make sure everyone has what they need.

But this, what we are doing today, is crazy! Look at how we treat each other. Our society is based on all of us competing with each other over money and power to determine how we allocate basic necessities like where we live, what we eat, and the quality of our healthcare. What kind of society plays such a sadistic game where “losing” or refusing to submit to ruthless competition results in a poor quality of life? It’s certainly not a “civilized” society. Yet, we continue to perpetuate these exploitative systems, harming each other for what? The benefit of a small elite who couldn’t care less about our well-being. This is ridiculous. This relentless competition is a brutal and dehumanizing way to organize our lives, and it's time we see it for what it is.

So, what do we do? How do we help each other realize these truths? We should help each other develop our political consciousness. We should understand the flaws of the current order while simultaneously envisioning a cooperative society. By living in ways that emphasize cooperation, without hierarchy, profit, or commodified life, we can experience the benefits of a non-exploitative system firsthand. This lived experience is crucial in fostering a deeper political consciousness.

Thus, the development of political consciousness and the building of a cooperative society go hand in hand. As we disengage from the capitalist system and start creating alternatives, we strengthen our awareness and commitment to a more equitable future. In this sense, helping each other reach political consciousness is not just a step toward revolution—it is the revolution itself.

Awakening

The journey towards political consciousness requires a profound psychological transformation that we undergo together. It's a process where we collectively change how we see the world and our place within it. This transformation involves several key stages, each marked by significant shifts in our awareness, understanding, and emotional responses.

Initially, many of us exist in a state of false consciousness; that is, a state in which we don’t realize our true interests as a collective group and instead accept things as they are. In this stage, we often internalize the dominant capitalist ideology, accepting the status quo as natural and unchangeable, perhaps even good for us. We might attribute our socio-economic conditions to personal success or failings, believing in meritocracy, which asserts the harder and more productive we are as workers, the more we deserve to receive. This way of thinking is kept alive by the promotion of “rags-to-riches” stories, media narratives, and education systems that hide the truth about class oppression and exploitation.

Envision working tirelessly, dedicating yourself fully, yet seeing your socio-economic status remain stagnant or even deteriorate. Imagine doing everything you were told to do growing up, graduating from college, only to enter a workforce that offers survival-rate salaries and benefits. Your employer piles on intense pressure for you to consistently meet targets to avoid demotions or termination. Your work feels mind-numbing, your apartment is a tiny, overpriced box, and you’re scrambling to make ends meet while drowning in a mountain of student loan debt that grows faster than your paycheck. When you complain, your friends and family tell you “That’s life, work harder.” 

The first psychological shift happens when we start to experience cognitive dissonance, a deep sense of unease born from the glaring contradictions between our lived experiences and the dominant ideology. This realization hits hard, maybe making you question everything you've been taught. It's a jarring wake-up call, filled with confusion and frustration, leading to a budding skepticism of the status quo.

In this stage, we often begin to look for things to blame. Demagogues will try to exploit this confusion, urging us to scapegoat minority groups like immigrants, claiming they are driving down wages. But this is where we must stand together and help each other see the truth. The real culprit isn't the migrant who traveled vast distances seeking a better life for their family, only to be exploited even more harshly than we are. The responsibility lies with the exploitative systems and the wealthy elites who perpetuate them, pitting us against each other to maintain their power and control. But let's be clear: these systems would collapse without our participation. We, the people, are the ones shouldering the burden and perpetuating these oppressive structures. It's time we recognize our power and refuse to uphold a system that exploits and divides us.

Spiral Dynamics of Political consciousness

From here, it’s helpful to conceptualize the development of political consciousness through the lens of “Spiral Dynamics,” as articulated by psychologists Don Beck and Christopher Cowan and explained eloquently by Ken Wilber in his book “A Theory of Everything.” Spiral Dynamics offers a framework for understanding human development and societal evolution through a series of stages. The journey towards political consciousness can be viewed as an ascent through various stages of the spiral, each characterized by a distinct way of understanding and addressing social issues.

Within the Spiral Dynamics framework, we can visualize two main tiers of consciousness development. Stages 1-3 make up the first tier, while stages 4 and 5 belong to the second tier. Completing the third stage prepares individuals to make a significant leap into second-tier consciousness.

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At this higher tier, individuals can appreciate the entire range of political consciousness development, recognizing that each stage is crucial for the validity of the overall spiral. Understanding the validity of the spiral means recognizing that every stage, even the lower ones, plays an essential role in the growth and development of human consciousness. We all have to start at the beginning. Each stage provides foundational insights and experiences that are necessary for progressing to more advanced levels of understanding.

In other words, in second-tier consciousness, people understand that earlier stages are not just obstacles to be overcome but integral parts of a holistic system. For instance, while stages 1-3 involve more basic levels of awareness and critique, they are necessary steps that lay the groundwork for more complex and integrated thinking. This perspective allows individuals to see the value in every stage, fostering empathy and reducing animosity towards those at different levels of consciousness, ensuring that no one is left behind and that the transformation process is grounded in a deep understanding of human development. This stands in opposition to those at the lower stages of consciousness (1-3) who often believe their perspective is the only correct one and may react negatively when challenged.

So, what exactly are the stages in the spiral dynamics of political consciousness? (Note: the stages described below are original and presented in broad strokes to provide a general overview for the purpose of this article.)

Stage 1: Viewing Individual Political Personalities as the Cause of Social Issues

At the first stage of political consciousness, individuals may attribute social problems to specific political figures, believing that changing leaders will resolve these issues. This perspective, heavily influenced by media portrayals, focuses on authority and order, viewing strong leadership as essential for stability. For example, liberals may blame Donald Trump or the GOP for various social ills, while conservatives target figures like Joe Biden or blame the liberal “establishment”, seeing them as symbols of corruption.

Individuals at this stage are often attracted to simplistic solutions, such as believing that removing certain leaders will resolve systemic problems (e.g., “If only the democrats could control all three branches”). Although this is the lowest stage on the spiral, it is widely perceived as the only valid perspective because media narratives, driven by corporate interests, emphasize personalities and scandals over substantive policy discussions.

This focus on individuals distracts from the systemic nature of issues such as capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. It perpetuates the illusion that we simply have the wrong leaders, but if we vote for the “good ones” they can bring about meaningful change. However, this perspective misses the point that simply changing leaders, especially when we are forced to choose from options essentially handpicked by the corporate elite, is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. While it might appear to offer temporary relief, it does nothing to address the underlying problem. Additionally, this stage fosters divisive politics, weakening collective action and solidarity among the working class.

Thus, this stage represents a superficial understanding of societal issues, justifying its placement at the bottom of the hierarchy. It upholds the existing political and economic systems by implying they can function justly with the "right" people in charge. Ignoring the fundamental issue of power—the flawed belief that any leader should have the authority to make decisions for us—overlooks the inherent potential for abuse and denies individuals their inherent right to have a meaningful say in decisions that affect their lives.

To progress, individuals must engage in political education to understand systemic power dynamics, build solidarity among diverse groups, and develop a critical approach to media consumption.

Stage 2: Blaming Greedy Billionaires and Individual Corporations for Social Issues

At the second stage of political consciousness, individuals move beyond blaming political figures and start identifying greedy billionaires and individual corporations as the main culprits of social issues. People in this stage may target figures like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg for their immense wealth and exploitative practices. Corporations like Amazon, Facebook, and ExxonMobil are criticized for contributing to income inequality, data privacy violations, and environmental degradation. Solutions at this stage often include calls for higher taxes on the wealthy, stricter antitrust laws, and stronger labor protections to curb corporate excesses.

This sort of thinking is (sometimes) championed by people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While this stage is a step forward from blaming political leaders, it remains incomplete. Focusing on the greed and unethical behavior of billionaires and corporations still personalizes systemic issues, attributing problems to individual actions rather than recognizing these behaviors as inherent to capitalism itself. The pursuit of profit at any cost, driven by competition and the need to maximize shareholder value, is a fundamental feature of capitalism, not a deviation.

The proposed reforms, such as regulatory measures and higher taxes, do not fundamentally challenge the capitalist system. They might temporarily mitigate some of the worst excesses, but they leave the underlying structures of capitalism intact, allowing exploitation to evolve and continue in different, often stealthier, forms.

Notably, these reforms necessitate the existence of a powerful centralized government, which itself can become an instrument of oppression and control. True liberation requires dismantling these systems entirely, rejecting the illusion of top-down solutions, and embracing grassroots, decentralized approaches that empower individuals and communities to create a just and equitable society from the ground up.

Stage 3: Recognizing Capitalism's Inherent Inequalities

At the third stage of political consciousness, individuals move beyond blaming specific people or organizations and recognize capitalism itself as the root cause of social issues. Individuals at this stage, engage in a systemic critique of capitalism, understanding that issues like inequality, exploitation, and environmental degradation are inherent to a system based on year over year profit growth. They understand how capitalism alienates workers by separating them from the products of their labor, stripping away their sense of humanity, and isolating them from each other. They also see how capitalism intersects with other forms of oppression, such as racism and gender inequality, creating a complex web of inequality.

While this stage marks significant progress in political consciousness, it still overlooks a critical element: understanding the deeper psychological and existential factors that drive human behavior. It misses the crucial realization that it is us, the people, who enable the rulers to maintain the capitalist system.

Individuals at this stage often face the difficult challenge of balancing their anger at capitalism with the necessary effort to understand why people act and believe as they do, including those who perpetuate the system like billionaires and corporate leaders, as well as the managerial white-collar workers who comprise most of upper-middle class. This stage may still portray figures like Jeff Bezos as simply evil or greedy without considering the complex motivations and fears that drive such behavior.

The problem lies in failing to recognize the existential fears and psychological mechanisms that influence everyone. This includes understanding how fear of insecurity, mortality, and existential anxiety can shape beliefs and actions. Without this deeper understanding, the critique remains superficial, failing to address why people cling to harmful systems or resist change.

Stage 4: Recognizing Our Own Fear of Insecurity and Uncertainty as Holding Us Back

At this advanced, second-tier stage of political consciousness, individuals transcend systemic critique and develop deep self-awareness, recognizing that our fear of insecurity and uncertainty fundamentally impedes social progress. This stage integrates systemic thinking with holistic understanding, emphasizing the psychological insights of Ernest Becker's book "The Denial of Death" and Om Søren Kierkegaard's concept of the "automatic cultural man."

Capitalism not only exploits materially but also conditions people to internalize feelings of powerlessness and dependency. Becker argues that human behavior is profoundly influenced by our fear of death. To cope with this fear, we create "cultural systems"—the shared beliefs, values, norms, and practices of our society—that give our lives a sense of meaning. These cultural systems offer a symbolic form of immortality by allowing us to feel part of something enduring and larger than ourselves, thus providing psychological protection against our innate fear of mortality. The denial of our mortality thus often results in our irrational adherence to oppressive systems like capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Kierkegaard describes individuals who conform to societal norms to avoid existential anxiety as “automatic cultural men.” These "automatic cultural men" uncritically accept systems such as consumerism, competition, and hierarchical structures, seeking security in conformity rather than challenging the status quo.

Ultimately, this fear of death is a fear of life itself. Many people prefer the manufactured security of societal norms and the capitalist status quo because it helps them avoid facing the harsh reality that nothing in this world can provide true security. Many of us advocating for social change hold onto the belief in gradual reforms and working within the system to bring about change for the same psychological comfort, driven by a fear of uncertainty, insecurity, and vulnerability in a ruthless world.

Yet, we are vulnerable beings on a ruthless planet, subjected to various dangers, including dangers from each other. There’s no escaping this reality. However, acknowledging this truth can be liberating. Accepting our vulnerability allows us to confront life head-on. Instead of each person seeking false comfort in societal norms and the capitalist system, which turn us into the “automatons” Kierkegaard describes, we can embrace our collective strength. Through solidarity, we can support one another and create a more secure and fulfilling existence.

Those in stage 4 understand it is important to recognize that billionaires, too, are "automatic cultural men," bound by a life philosophy that sees cold-blooded success in capitalism and the accumulation of wealth as the ultimate goal. They are held captive by this belief. Recognizing this, individuals at Stage 4 understand that everyone, including billionaires, must break free from these psychological constraints. However, the primary focus remains on the broader populace, particularly the most downtrodden and oppressed, since our liberation does not hinge on the billionaires awakening.

In the spirit of Rousseau's cry that "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains," it is evident that our innate drive for power, which Nietzsche identified as the driving force of all life in his concept of the "will to power," is being grotesquely misdirected. In our current predicament, instead of channeling this “will to power” towards individually and collectively conquering life's challenges and mastering our own existence, we tragically seek to dominate each other.

We are social beings born with the potential to cooperate and help each other confront life’s obstacles directly. Yet, we elect to willingly rush headlong into the chains of capitalist cultural systems that confine us, blinding ourselves to our tremendous collective capacity. These systems, which we so readily accept, serve as deceptive sanctuaries, allowing us to hide from the profound realities of life and death. They seduce us into maintaining power structures that channel our energy for justice into judgmental and oppressive avenues, putting a smile on the face of our rulers.

We must unchain ourselves, reject the comfort of our accepted systems, and collectively confront life with the raw, untamed will to power Nietzsche envisioned. Only then can we realize the freedom Rousseau proclaimed was our birthright, casting off the chains that bind us and standing unflinchingly in the face of life's ultimate truths.

At stage 4, individuals realize these truths, understanding that overcoming the fear of insecurity and uncertainty is crucial for genuine social transformation. Addressing these fears unlocks human potential for empathy, creativity, and collective action. Recognizing that we psychologically and philosophically seek comfort and security to protect us from our fear of death, individuals begin to see that the only way out of the suffocating society we have constructed lies in enabling individual creativity and diversity to flourish freely.

Stage 5: Integrating All Stages with Negative Capability and the Perennial Philosophy

At the highest stage of political consciousness, individuals not only integrate the insights from earlier stages but also embody John Keats' concept of "negative capability" and Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy. This stage, characterized by a holistic, global, and transcendent perspective, represents a profound understanding of interconnectedness and a deep commitment to creating a just and equitable world. Here, individuals transcend ego and personal desires in favor of collective well-being.

In this stage, we move beyond simply recognizing the need for individuals and communities to flourish creatively and autonomously. We understand that such flourishing is only possible through mutual aid. This realization is grounded in the Perennial Philosophy, which posits that all existence is interconnected.

Picture a vibrant community where people actively support each other's growth and well-being. Artists collaborate on public murals, transforming blank walls into colorful expressions of collective creativity. Farmers share their harvests at local markets, ensuring everyone has access to fresh, healthy food. Neighbors form childcare co-ops, allowing parents to pursue their passions while knowing their children are cared for by trusted friends. Volunteers organize educational workshops where knowledge and skills are freely exchanged, empowering everyone to reach their potential.

In this interconnected community, self-interest and the interests of others are seamlessly intertwined. The success of one person directly contributes to the success of all, fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. This tapestry of mutual aid shows that our well-being is inextricably linked to the well-being of others—including all people, other living beings, and the Earth itself. This interconnectedness reveals that our interests are not separate, highlighting that mutual aid is essential for our collective flourishing.

Negative capability is a term coined by the Romantic poet John Keats in a letter written in 1817. It refers to the ability to remain comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt without the need to seek concrete answers or rational explanations. Keats believed that this capability allowed poets and artists to fully embrace the complexity and mystery of life, creating works that captured the depth of human experience. Negative capability is characterized by openness to multiple interpretations and the acceptance that not all questions have definitive answers. It contrasts with the drive for resolution and certainty, emphasizing the value of intuition and imagination in understanding the world.

Embracing negative capability, individuals at this stage navigate the uncertainties of creating this new form of social organization described above without clinging to rigid ideologies. They understand they cannot perfectly plan the future but must start building it by embracing ambiguity with confidence. They embrace the inherent uncertainties and complexities of dismantling existing structures without seeking immediate, definitive solutions. This openness to ambiguity fosters creativity and adaptability, enabling us to envision and implement more fluid and organic forms of social organization. This mindset asserts the means are the ends. It prompts action with the understanding that maintaining a holistic and integrative perspective will lead us to our goals. In fact, those in stage 5 realize that every moment they practice this mindset, they are already achieving their goals.

Ultimately, Stage 5 calls for a profound internal and external transformation. By understanding and addressing the psychological and existential factors driving human behavior, individuals adopt a compassionate, holistic approach to political consciousness.

Creating a just society requires taking a bold leap into the unknown. After all, let’s reflect on why so many idolize America's founding fathers. It’s certainly not because they were paragons of virtue. These men owned hundreds of slaves, were consumed by the pursuit of profit, and stood as the wealthiest individuals in the nation. Despite their deeply flawed characters, they are revered because they dared to take a leap of faith, striving to create a new nation in the face of brutal opposition from the British crown and resistance from their own countrymen. They exhibited undeniable courage.

We must channel their bravery into a new direction. Instead of perpetuating a system designed to protect capital and profit, we must harness our collective courage to create a system that truly facilitates human flourishing. It’s time to transcend the flawed ideals of the past and build a society rooted in equity, compassion, and the well-being of all its members. The true revolution lies not in defending the interests of the few but in uplifting the humanity of everyone.

This movement requires facing our basic vulnerability as animals on a dangerous planet and recognizing that no “cultural system” we manufacture can fully protect us. Fear will never totally leave us; we must learn to live in spite of it. There’s nowhere to run. We must begin embracing the uncertainty that is inherent in life, doing so with poise and confidence. Crucially, we must do so together. Life can be ruthless, but through solidarity, we can provide each other security.

We can overpower our innate fears as a collective. By embracing our vulnerability, we see that the unknown is precisely what makes life so beautiful. Embracing our vulnerability through decentralized mutual aid systems and maintaining a constant skepticism of power enables us to take risks, be adventurous, and pursue our creativity, all with the support of friends and community. Isn’t that what it means to be human?

But right now, we are shrinking in the face of life. We must stand up to life, and we must stand up together! We cannot allow fear to deter us. We must face it and realize that what we truly fear is our own potential—a potential so great it is impossible to imagine the forms it will take. By taking the leap to collectively reorganize society, we will unlock this potential and transform our world. The time to act is now; together, we can help each develop political consciousness and build a future where everyone thrives.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

The Duplicitous U.S. Constitution: How An Autocratic Legal Document Became A Sacred and Incontestable Scroll

[Photo credit: MPI/Getty Image]

By Tim Scott

Republished from Dissident Voice.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

We live in a nation founded within a prevailing story line that characterizes the United States as being an exceptional, enlightened and charitable nation. A nation that is a “beacon of light…in every corner of the globe,” generated by the ethos of the American Dream, based on the values and ideals of liberty, justice, fairness, equality and democracy for all.

We also live in a nation that was established to be an empire, whereby imperialism and settler colonialism are endlessly justified and promulgated by an underlying cultural narrative which ascribes whiteness to morality, and by extension a nation bestowed with a divine right to lay claim—at will—to the lands, resources and bodies of Black, Brown and Indigenous people. A nation where private property rights are akin to natural rights, therefore framing capitalism, no matter how brutal, with benevolent intent and thus inviolable. These structural foundations, which are rooted within the barbarism of chattel slavery and the brutality of gender oppression, constructed an enduring national culture defined by genocide, dispossession, white supremacy, anti-blackness, heteropatriarchy, misogyny, social inequity and wealth inequality. Over three centuries later, despite significant efforts by resistance movements to transform it, this underlying national culture persists; entwined within an era where mass surveillance, mass incarceration, unprecedented wealth inequality and unending militarism are perversely justified as imperatives to preserve freedom, democracy and the mythical “American Dream.”

The contradictions between the nation’s mythologies and actual practices are inherent to—and effectively serve to preserve—the cultural, political and economic foundations of the United States. They are indicative of a nation that was founded by an opulent minority of white men who believed that they alone had a God-given right to freedom and prosperity and thus constructed the structural means to protect their wealth and power from a dispossessed demos and to justify the subjugation and exploitation of entire groups of people. Their design for the new nation was based on what economist Joseph Stiglitz refers to as the “interplay between ideologies and particular interests.” As such, the white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies of the wealthy, slave-owning Christian men who founded the nation were fused with free market ideology, the engine for the emerging interests of industrial capitalism. Within this design and from the outset, the founders intended for government to serve as the executor of these violent and undemocratic ideologies and interests.

As many political, legal, and history scholars have acknowledged, the U.S. Constitution was constructed to be an ideological and legal document intended to secure the interests of the virtuous and enlightened gentry who—like royalty—considered themselves to be ordained with a natural right to rule the nation in perpetuity. The founders’ declarations and ensuing constitution promoted an overriding myth or “origin story” that defined the new nation as a unified whole, engaging in a virtuous republican mission whereby, according to John Adams, “all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the laws.” Democracy was therefore (falsely) equated with the ideology of republicanism, whereby the nation’s citizenry was promised equal rights under the law and the inalienable rights to liberty. It is within this context that individual sovereignty and private property were intended to be protected, according to John Adams, from the “tyranny of the majority” (i.e., the “mob rule” of a direct democracy).

In effect, the founders constructed the intersecting cultural, political and economic instruments that would permanently advance the interests of a wealthy white minority through institutionalized and impervious methods of domination and extermination. Thus, the origin story generated by the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and have “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were never intended to be all inclusive. This also holds true to Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, which states:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Instead, the civil and political rights within the U.S. Constitution were restricted to focus exclusively on individual and property rights—for some. This design sought to undermine the possibility for the establishment of universal and equal participation in all spheres of life (participatory parity), not only between the ruling elite, their agents and those they subjugated, but more importantly amongst and between subjugated groups. Thus, complex interdependencies, chains of democratic equivalences, meaningful deliberative processes and solidarities that could threaten the power of the ruling elite were intentionally defused. The founders’ discourse and origin story myths were intended to serve as empty signifiers, having very different meanings and values with regard to who they apply to and how they were to be operationalized. Thus, the discourse of republicanism was ascribed with the interests of the nation’s white male Christian aristocracy and to a lesser degree to their citizen agents who occupied the white middle-class. However, the narrative of life, liberty and equality was never intended to pertain to everyone else.

During the nation’s infancy, when disorder and uncertainty were widespread, the founders’ myths served to define in totality a positive and fully sutured national identity, establishing a foundation for social practices and ideological representations that were instrumental in the social construction of reality and subjectivity for the nation’s white citizen subjects. This set forth a process whereby socialization and identity formation were based on the ideological shaping of a cultural imaginary, constituted through what political theorist Chantel Mouffe referred to as the logic of equivalence, which is “to create specific forms of unity among different interests by relating them to a common project and by establishing a frontier to define the forces to be opposed, the ‘enemy.’” Initially this “common enemy” was the tyranny of the British monarchy, and subsequently took many forms—the tyranny of majority rule, the threat of the “savage Indian,” the emancipation of slaves, Blackness, Mexicans, recognition rights for women and notions of equity and equality in general. Over time and as the empire expanded, the enemy would include any group—or any idea—that posed a threat to the nation’s prevailing power structures.

Despotic ideologies such as this reject the historical conditions by which social relations are constructed, instead representing them as outside of history, as inevitable and natural, while disguising their underlying belief systems as common sense facts. According to Anne Makus, presenting events and practices as ahistorical truths allows problematic events to be framed as unproblematic and a “natural” consequence of society. By losing their postulational status, beliefs are transformed into narrative truths that are immune to differing accounts of events.

Ultimately, the ideological function of the founders’ origin story myths, cultural imaginaries and their corresponding discourse or “narrative truths” resulted in a what Cultural theorist Raymond Williams describes as a “complex interlocking of political, social and cultural forces” known as hegemony.

A Revolution for “Great and Overgrown Rich Men”

Historian Gary B. Nash documented how, for over a century prior to the American Revolution, an elite class of white male landowners, slaveholders and large-scale merchants dominated the political, economic and cultural landscape of the thirteen British settler colonies. In 1770, Boston’s top 1% of the population owned 44% city’s wealth. In the late 17th century the wealthiest 10% of all colonists owned approximately 47% of all the wealth; and by 1775 the wealthiest 10% owned roughly 65% of all the wealth. During the 18th century approximately 30% of all British colonists were free white men, with about 50% of those men owning land, though most of them did not own enough land to be considered wealthy. Approximately 20% of all colonists were Black slaves, and 50% were poor white indentured servants.

At the outset, the privatization of land in the British settler colonies occurred through the genocidal project that is settler colonialism and later through the transfer or privatization of state (“public”) land. According to historian Meyer Weinberg and economists Engerman & Gallman, seized land was often awarded to individuals and families based on their location to power and influence within seats of government and became the basis for commercial pursuits and further accumulation of private wealth. Increasingly during the 18th century, land acquisition and allocation was sold for profit and speculation.

As documented by historian Howard Zinn, the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, the first and second Continental Congress and Continental Army Officers primarily came from the landed gentry of British settler colonial society. With high unemployment and hunger fueling class upheaval following the French and Indian War (1754-1763), aristocratic colonial leaders faced the prospect of waging war against Britain, while also “maintaining control over” the discontented “crowds at home.” During the delegates elections for a convention to frame a Pennsylvania constitution in 1776, a Committee of Privates (composed of white working class enlisted militiamen), “urged voters to oppose ‘great and overgrown rich men” for “they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society.” According to historians Young, Raphael and Nash, these sentiments led the Committee of Privates to draw up a bill of rights for the convention stating, “an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.”

According to Zinn, the populist discourse of the Declaration of Independence, which declared the right to “popular control over governments, the right of rebellion and revolution, indignation at political tyranny, economic burdens, and military attacks,” proved to unite large enough numbers of white settler colonists to actively rebel against Britain. This propaganda-based document was highly effective in shaping popular opinion by appealing to the yearnings of disenfranchised white settler colonists as a means to unite against a common enemy. Of course, large populations were left out of the populist cause elicited by the Declaration of Independence; namely Black slaves, Native people and in many regards white women. This reality would only become further institutionalized following the War of Independence. It would also turn out that the aristocratic founders were indeed “apt to be framing [class] distinctions in society” as many white working class militiamen had feared.

As Historian Gordon S. Wood explained, in 1776, immediately after issuing the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, a committee of the Second Continental Congress was charged with drafting the first U.S. Constitution known as the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It was signed by Congress in 1777 and ratified by representatives from all thirteen states in 1781. The Articles established the U.S. to be a confederation of sovereign states, with appointed representatives from the thirteen states making up a national government. Under the Articles the national government was composed of a legislature consisting of one house in which states had equal voting power. There was not an executive branch or a general judiciary. This new national government was charged with overseeing domestic relations with Native tribes, international diplomacy and conducting the war with Britain.

According to Charles A. Beard, at the end of the War of Independence in 1783, establishing a cohesive economy and infrastructure overseen by common laws proved to be difficult under the decentralized system of government outlined by the Articles of Confederation. This was especially challenging during a time of economic instability due to immense war debt. Congress lacked the authority to tax and collect debt directly, to stabilize legal tender and regulate commerce since state legislatures were often unresponsive to these demands, operating without legal restrictions or judicial oversight.

For many former colonial noblemen known as Federalists—who made up a majority in most state legislatures and the Continental Congress—the Articles of Confederation were failing to secure the protection and advancement of their personalty or personal property (movable assets). Many southern plantation owners were also Federalists since their wealth was also largely held in personal property (including slaves) and therefore tied to the same economic interests as northern merchants and financiers. According to Beard, this aristocratic class of large-scale farm owners, merchants, shippers, bankers, speculators, and private and public securities holders believed that a more powerful federal government was required to protect their economic interests.

A minority coalition within the Continental Congress whose economic interests were primarily tied to real (landed) property were known as Anti-federalists. This group of white wealthy male freeholders, small business owners and middle-class, tenant and debtor settler farmers equated concentrated federal power with British rule and therefore preferred a weak central government that would not “tread” on individual rights and state sovereignty.

A Constitution for “The Minority of the Opulent”

As Michael Cain and Keith Dougherty documented, the eruption of Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 only strengthened the Federalist cause. This indebted settler farmer rebellion against the state of Massachusetts was fueled by high taxes and farm foreclosures in western Massachusetts, a mounting crisis that was sweeping across the new republic. Noah Brooks chronicled how General Henry Knox, a major public securities holder, wrote to George Washington in response to this “desperate debtor” rebellion of farmers, laborers and Revolutionary War veterans:

The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes – But they see the weakness of government; They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former. Their creed is ‘That the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and for justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth.’ In a word they are determined to annihilate all debts public and private and have agrarian Laws, which are easily effected by means of un-funded paper money which shall be a tender in all cases whatever.

As Beard explained “the southern planter was also as much concerned in maintaining order against slave revolts as the creditor in Massachusetts was concerned in putting down Shays’ ‘desperate debtors.’” This proved to be a precarious time for the new nation’s elite, which was exalting the virtues of freedom, liberty and democracy while simultaneously taking action to establish new and improved systems of domination. Insurrection was indeed a clear and present danger to the post-war aristocracy within this decentralized and tumultuous landscape.

In 1787 the Federalists in Congress called on state legislatures to send delegates to a Convention in Philadelphia for a single and stated purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. Members of Congress quietly went to Philadelphia, with a majority of them intent on constructing a federal government powerful enough to protect their class interests. The first order of business, according to Gerald J. Fresia and Robert W. Hoffert, was for the convention delegates to agree to a secrecy clause concerning their decision-making deliberations. As reported by Beard, the delegates were not only acting to protect their personalty interests from foreign competitors, but as importantly, against the threat the domestic unpropertied masses posed to their wealth and power.

James Madison receives endless accolades for his enlightened roles in the founding of the United States, including the title of “Father of the Constitution.” Like most of the founding fathers, Madison was explicit in his undemocratic aims for the new nation. As documented by Steve Coffman, during the construction of the U.S. Constitution, when deliberating over two of the pillars of a substantive democracy—universal suffrage and the equal distribution of resources— Madison argued, “if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure,” and “agrarian law would soon take place,” one that distributes land to the landless. Therefore, according to Coffman, Madison argued, “our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country” through the protection of property rights. More explicitly, Madison went on to pronounce, “Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests” thus making the charge of government “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

According to the Yale University political theorist Robert A. Dahl and author Daniel Lazare, under the terms of the Articles of Confederation, which was the law of the land during the Philadelphia Convention, the 1787 Constitution was, in fact, an illegal usurping. The Articles were clear in stipulating that there had to be unanimous approval of all thirteen states to approve constitutional change. Yet those who attended the Philadelphia convention unilaterally changed the ratification rule to nine states, which was by no coincidence the number of states that initially ratified the Constitution of 1787. This strategic and unconstitutional move on the part of the Federalists in Congress was an attempt to work around the significant opposition from Anti-federalists. Lazare went on to claim, “the assertion that ‘We the People do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America’ implies a right not only to create new frames of government but to abrogate old ones when they are no longer serving their purposes.”

Dahl and Beard point out that when it came to choosing delegates for the Philadelphia Convention, a large body of aristocrats were selected by state legislatures that were elected according to suffrage laws requiring “high property qualifications” relating to taxpayer status aligned with the amount or worth of one’s real property and/or personalty holdings. According to Beard, when delegates for the Convention were chosen, “representatives of personalty in the legislature were able by the sheer weight of their combined intelligence and economic power to secure delegates from the urban centres or allied with their interests.” Beard went on to explain, “Thus the heated popular discussion usually incident to such momentous political undertakings was largely avoided, an orderly and temperate procedure in the selection of delegates was rendered possible.” In essence, the majority of the new nation’s inhabitants and citizens were intentionally excluded from participating in the construction of the United States Constitution.

According to Coffman, when voting rights for citizens of the new nation were being decided, James Madison expressed his concern that if they were extended “equally to all…the rights of property or the claims of justice may be overruled by a majority without property.” John Jay, a Federalist “founding father” and a member of Congress who went on to become the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, is famous for making the intent of the Constitution even more explicit by boldly stating, “The people who own the country ought to govern it.” During deliberations on voting rights, James Madison expressed his belief that “freeholders of the country would be the safest depositors of republican liberty.” Within this context, Madison went on to caution his peers to consider the imminent rise of the industrial working-class and the threat they would pose to the nation’s “opulent” minority:

In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of, property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation: in which case, the rights of property & the public liberty, will not be secure in their hands.

Madison also expressed his concerns that if given suffrage rights, the ominous industrial masses could be coerced or bribed into doing the bidding of divergent ruling class political ambitions. As Madison put it, the unpropertied, “will become the tools of opulence & ambition.” Clearly one of Madison’s primary concerns was how the expansion of suffrage could undermine his desires to create a republican fiefdom.

Gouverneur Morris was an influential “founding father” and close ally of Madison who is often called the “Penman of the Constitution.” According to legal scholar Jennifer Nedelsky, Morris’s vision of the new nation was similar to his peers in that “public liberty” should not involve “direct participation in government.” Instead, according to Nedelsky, in Morris’s plan “the people… were not, in effect, to govern… they would choose their representatives and have the influence over them that frequent elections brought… [and] ‘in the course of things’ people would elect the great and wealthy as their representatives.”

An enthusiastic student of political economy, Morris was known for tirelessly working to ensure that the interconnected pillars of economic and political power of the new nation would be impermeable. In doing so, Morris envisioned and aggressively advocated for a market economy, one with a federal government that was constituted with the legal framework to ensure its permanency. Nedelsky went on to document how Morris was known for his “unqualified positions” that:

illuminate some of the most important and contested issues in American political thought: the status our Constitution accords… to private property, the relation between the values of republicanism and those of capitalism, and the distribution of economic and political power our system fosters.

While the Constitutional Convention’s secrecy clause conveniently provided cover for its authors’ anti-republican and anti-democratic intentions, Madison’s unapologetic and forthright style reveals how the Constitution was, in its own words, “a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Accordingly, Gordon S. Wood, explained, “the source of their difficulties came from too much local democracy, and that the solution was to limit this local democracy by erecting a more aristocratic structure over it.” The designers did allow for a semi-popular lower house of congress, yet counterbalanced with the advent of the U.S. Senate, which was to be elected by state legislatures with rotating terms of six years. The Senate should then be composed of, as Madison put it, “a portion of enlightened citizens whose limited number and firmness might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils.” According to Parenti, the founders often referenced the virtuous qualifications of “enlightened citizens” and “men of substance,” which served as code for those with the right race, gender, aristocratic breeding, wealth, education, and experience that bestowed one with a God given right to rule.

In all, seventy-four delegates were appointed by states to attend the Constitutional Convention while only fifty-five showed up, with many anti-federalists refusing to attend and a number leaving as it progressed, with others refusing to sign in protest. Rhode Island declined to send a delegate. Anti-federalists accused the Federalists of working to reproduce an order similar to the British Crown. In the end, this small group of opulent white men proceeded to draft the U.S, Constitution, which according to historian Gordon S. Wood, “was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period.”

As documented by Wood, a number of Anti-Federalists agreed to ratify the U.S. Constitution only on condition that a bill of rights was included as a means to put limits on federal power. Federalists in Congress begrudgingly agreed, despite their opposition to the idea. Federalists were concerned that by making certain rights explicit “the people” would expect protections for those rights alone, thus limiting future interpretations of the Constitution. James Madison in particular felt that a declaration of such rights would be “parchment barriers” (superficial protections) and wanted to rely on the sturdier measures already in place. According to professor of political science Michael P Federici, by parchment barriers, Madison meant:

…the relationship between the written and unwritten constitutions. There are paper boundaries and limits, what the Framers called “parchment barriers”, and there are unwritten boundaries and limits that are not so much legal as they are cultural, ethical, and religious. The preservation of a constitutional order depends, to a great extent, on the preservation of the unwritten boundaries and limits.

From Madison’s perspective, the great protectors of the private rights of the opulent against an organized majority included the “extent of territory” spelled out in the Constitution which separated people geographically; along with the “multiplicity of interest” between the classes. To Madison these classes included, “those who are without property…those who are creditors, and those who are debtors… [a] landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest…actuated by different sentiments and views.” According to Madison:

If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure…the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

Always the brilliant political operative, Madison took on the task of drafting a bill of rights with the belief that the disorderly demand for such rights was on the one hand a grave problem, yet also presented an opportunity for a strategic solution. His proposed amendments were jubilantly ratified in 1791, effectively thwarting Anti-Federalist efforts to alter the Constitution while successful garnering loyalty for the Constitution from “the great mass of the people.” According to the U.S. Constitutional scholar Robert A. Goldwin, by engendering a sturdy “national sentiment” in support of the Constitution, Madison:

…took the decisive step toward establishing an independent force in the society, a devotion to the Constitution powerful enough to restrain a malevolent majority. Madison saw that the proposed amendments could make the Constitution universally revered…he saw the Constitution itself, not the amendments, as the sturdy barrier to fend off majority oppression and defend private rights. A bill of rights added to the intact Constitution would bring to it the only thing it presently lacked – the support of the whole people.

Madison not only outwitted the Anti-Federalists, but more ominously, he constructed a highly effective hegemonic instrument whereby the Bill of Rights would be widely considered as a sacred and uncontestable scroll embodying the epic virtues of U.S. democracy.

A Government “Over the People”

According to Goldwin and Kaufman and Blau and Moncada at its core, the U.S. Constitution outlines all the things the federal government cannot do, known as negative rights. Paul Finkelman describes the difference between negative and positive rights as being “freedom from” versus “freedom to.” According to Charles Fried, “a negative right is a right that something not be done to one, that some particular imposition be withheld.”

Simply, the founders encoded negative rights into the U.S. Constitution to ensure that government would protect the property rights bestowed upon “the minority of the opulent” by divine authority. In doing so, according to Cass Sunstein, negative rights bolster the ideology and rule of law of free-market capitalism. In terms of the founders’ Constitution, Sunstein interprets the intent of negative rights in important ways:

Most of the so-called negative rights require governmental assistance, not governmental abstinence. Consider, for example, the right to private property. As Bentham wrote, “Property and law are born and must die together. Before the laws, there was no property: take away the laws, all property ceases.” As we know and live it, private property is both created and protected by law; it requires extensive governmental assistance. The same point holds for the other foundation of a market economy, the close sibling of private property: freedom of contract. For that form of freedom to exist, it is extremely important to have reliable enforcement mechanisms in the form of civil courts.

Cornell professor of law Laura Underkuffler also emphasized in 2003 that the “idea of the Constitution as a charter of negative rights – and of the right to the protection of property as simply one of those rights – is an entrenched feature of American political and legal discourse.” New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Gezim Bajrami confirmed in 2013, “Time and time again, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no affirmative constitutional obligations to the public.”

According to Finkleman, positive rights necessitate “affirmative obligations on the part of government to fulfill the right.” Therefore, positive rights enable a nation-state’s constitution to guarantee a political economy that prioritizes egalitarianism in the social, political, cultural, economic and environmental realms. Positive rights enable government to proactively intervene to ensure universal and equitable access to a living income, housing, holistic education, health care, nutritious food, clean water and a healthy and sustainable environment. Positive rights can empower (not hinder) government to forcefully protect individuals and groups of people from forms of domination and targeted violence. As CeÂcile Fabre emphasizes, a nation-state constituted by positive rights would need to guarantee “that a democratic majority should not be able to repeal these rights and that certain institutions, such as the judiciary, should be given the power to strike down laws passed by the legislature that are in breach of those rights.”

Instead, the founders constructed the U.S. Constitution to forever deter emancipatory strivings and collective interests that are inherent to egalitarian societies.

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The Bill of Rights only reinforced negative rights based prohibitions on Congress concerning intervention in the press, speech, religion, assembly, bearing of arms, etc. By doing so, these purported “civil liberties” fortify the Constitution’s undemocratic foundations and its primary function of harnessing the majoritarian menace to further buttress, both legally and ideologically, the primacy of property rights. As Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals stressed in 1983, “the Constitution is a charter of negative rather than positive liberties… The men who wrote the Bill of Rights were not concerned that Government might do too little for the people but that it might do too much to them.”

According to Daniel Lazare, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights assign responsibility for civil liberties to the Supreme Court, essentially relieving the semi-elected branches of government, chiefly Congress “institutionally irresponsible” and civil liberties “de-politicized.” Lazare went on to explain:

Thus was born the peculiar rhythm of American politics in which politicians or the people at large go on periodic rampages in which they lynch, terrorize, and generally trample democratic rights until they are finally brought up short by the courts. Then everyone involved congratulates themselves that the system has worked, that the abuse has been corrected, that the majority has been reined in— until some new eruption sets the cycle going again.

Furthermore, the rights of speech, press, assembly, etc., are the means by which the commercial and propertied class instills their ideological, political, economic and social agenda via a free-marketplace of ideas; whereby access is determined by one’s wealth, race, gender, religion and influence. Not coincidentally, the Bill of Rights only applies to federal and state government action, not to the actions of private business and its agents. All in all, “the commons” became the property of the opulent.

According to Michael Parenti, the U.S. Constitution created a form of government and a political system that prevented “the people” from finding horizontal cohesion and instead “was designed to dilute their vertical force, blunting its upward thrust upon government by interjecting indirect and staggered forms of representation.” To do so, according to historian Morton White, a system of checks was constructed to safeguard against Madison’s expressed fears of “agrarian attempts” and “symptoms of a leveling spirit” by “the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.”

The Autocratic First Amendment

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is widely heralded as the foundational gem of the Bill of Rights and the unambiguous signifier of “American Freedom and Democracy” It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

However, it can also be regarded as one of the most duplicitous instruments of U.S. hegemony.

In 1799, Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth made it clear that based on English common law, “this country remains the same as it was before the Revolution.” Eight years earlier, with this understanding, the founders applied English common-law when drafting the First Amendment, specifically in terms of the doctrine of “no prior restraint.”

In 1769 William Blackstone, the celebrated “compiler of English law” and major influence on the founding fathers, explained the doctrine of no prior restraint:

The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every free man has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity.

Thus, the First Amendment follows the directive of no prior restraint by prohibiting government from forbidding a “free man” from expressing the “sentiments he pleases before the public.” Yet, if the government determines such “sentiments” to be seditious libel after the fact, prosecution is permissible under the U.S. Constitution. As Howard Zinn put it, to this day the First Amendment under no prior restraint has an important caveat in that:

You can say whatever you want, print whatever you want. The government cannot stop you in advance. But once you speak or write it, if the government decides to make certain statements “illegal,” or to define them as “mischievous” or even just “improper,” you can be put in prison.

This little known yet significant twist on American freedom of expression not only criminalizes dissent after the fact, it also serves the purpose of having a powerful chilling effect in advance. Zinn goes on to explain how, “An ordinary person, unsophisticated in the law, might respond, ‘You say you won’t stop me from speaking my mind–no prior restraint. But if I know it will get me in trouble, and so remain silent, that is prior restraint.”

Yet, in the subsequent two centuries, the U.S. federal government (including the Supreme Court) has also successfully restricted freedom of expression in advance under the rationale of “national security,” most often relating to those who attempt to expose the nation’s nefarious covert and undemocratic activities around the globe. While the First Amendment is explicit in that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech,” just seven years after Congress passed the amendment, Congress turned around and did just that in 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts.

President John Adams and other Federalist leaders expedited the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts under the rational that French and Irish revolutions would spark an egalitarian revolution at home, incited by French and Irish immigrant agitators and foreign spies. Feeding this narrative, a Federalist newspaper of the time claimed Jacobin (egalitarian) French tutors were attempting to corrupt America’s youth, “to make them imbibe, with their very milk, as it were, the poison of atheism and disaffection.” Long-time Massachusetts politician and Federalist Harrison Gray Otis declared in 1797 that he “did not wish to invite hordes of wild Irishmen, nor the turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world, to come here with a view to disturb our tranquility, after having succeeded in the overthrow of their own governments” and landing in the U.S. “to cavil against the Government, and to pant after a more perfect state of society.”

The Alien Acts included “An Act Concerning Aliens” (enacted June 25, 1798, with a two-year expiration date) which authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” The Alien Acts also included “An Act Respecting Alien Enemies” (or Alien Enemies Act), which was enacted on July 6, 1798 (with no expiration date), authorizing the president to detain and deport resident aliens whose home countries were at war with the United States.

Enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801, the Sedition Act applied to U.S. citizens, authorizing the prosecution, imprisonment or large fine of any person who:

…shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people or government.

As Zinn pointed out, “the Sedition Act was a direct violation of the Constitution. But here we get our first clue to the inadequacy of words on [“parchment”] paper in ensuring the rights of citizens.”

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was revised and further codified by Congress with the passing of the Espionage Act of 1917. This reaffirmation of the duplicitous nature of the founders’ Constitution and governing structures was intended to stifle growing resistance against social conditions domestically and the expansion of U.S. imperialism, particularly on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War I. The Espionage Act of 1917 in part read:

Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoever when the United States is at war, shall wilfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.

As a means to more effectively crush growing dissent domestically, in 1918 (after the U.S. entered WWI) the Sedition Act was passed as an amendment to the Espionage Act, further restricting free expression. It read in part:

Whoever, when the United States is at war… shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements… or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct… the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or… shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States… or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully… urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production… or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both.

During World War I, federal prosecutors enacted the Espionage Act in over 2,000 cases. While no convictions resulted from charges of spying or sabotage, 1,055 convictions resulted from prohibitions on free speech under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, largely targeting labor leaders, civil rights activists, Black and leftist journalists and publishers, war critics, pacifists, anti-conscription activists, socialists, communists, anarchists and civil libertarians.

In 1919 the Supreme Court actively safeguarded the Espionage Act against constitutional challenges in Schenck v. United States. This case involved Charles T. Schenck, the secretary of the Socialist Party of America, who was convicted by a lower court under the Espionage Act after engaging in counter military recruitment activities by distributing leaflets that encouraged prospective military draftees to refuse military service. The first side of Schenck’s leaflet argued that the Conscription Act (the draft) violated the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude and was a “monstrous wrong against humanity in the interest of Wall Street’s chosen few.” It urged recipients to “petition for the repeal of the act” because the war was being spun by “cunning politicians and a mercenary capitalist press.” Schenck appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, arguing that his First Amendment rights were violated. The Court ruled against Schenck, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stating:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Thus, the well-known legal rationale against “falsely shouting fire in a theatre” became a metaphor for the limits of free speech in America, namely serving as code against dissent that disrupts U.S. hegemony. Schenck went on to serve six months in a federal prison.

During the same period, the U.S. Supreme Court also upheld the conviction of labor leader and Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was charged under the Espionage Act for making an anti-war speech in 1918. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison. This was not the first time Debs had been imprisoned for his “un-American” activities, yet the Espionage Act served its purpose in making it easier to silence Debs (and other dissidents), hopefully once and for all.

The Supreme Court case of Stokes v. United States (1920) involved the prosecution of reproductive rights and labor activist Rose Pastor Stokes, who was given a ten year prison sentence for simply writing in a local newspaper, “No government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people, while the government is for the profiteers.”

In 1917 Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph, the publishers of the Black political and literary magazine The Messenger, were arrested under the Espionage Act when they wrote:

Our claim is to appeal to reason, to lift our pens above the cringing demagogy of the times… Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has. Party has no weight with us; principle has. Loyalty meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to. Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently, the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.

Some Supreme Court decisions that reinforced the Espionage and Sedition Acts did not target radicals or dissidents. One such case involved the United States v. Nagler in 1918, which led to the conviction of the Assistant Secretary of State for the State of Wisconsin, Louis B. Nagler. Nagler was prosecuted after simply telling a group of YMCA or the Red Cross canvassers for the war effort who showed up at his office door, “I am through contributing to your private grafts. There is too much graft in these subscriptions. No, I do not believe in the work of the YMCA or the Red Cross, for I believe they are nothing but a bunch of grafters.”

In the case of the United States v. The Spirit of ’76, Robert Goldstein, the producer of the patriotic Revolutionary War movie The Spirit of ’76, was charged under the Espionage Act in 1917 for his film’s graphically unfavorable portrayal of Great Britain, which was America’s primary World War I ally. Federal prosecutors charged that Goldstein had deliberately made a pro-German movie to impugn America’s ally, incite disloyalty and obstruct military conscription. Goldstein who was Jewish (Anti-Semitism was rife in the U.S.) and of German descent, claimed that his intent in making the film was to make money and boost the patriotic mood of the country. He was given a ten-year prison sentence and fined $5,000.

The Sedition Act was repealed in 1921 while the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and the Espionage Act of 1917 have endured into the 21st century. According to Emily Peterson, “The Espionage Act is so vague and poorly defined in its terms, that it’s hard to say exactly what it does and does not cover.”

Diluting the Impact of Popular Sentiments

The Constitution dictates that an Electoral College, not the general electorate or a majority of citizen voters, will choose the U.S. president. Within this undemocratic scheme, voters are actually casting a vote for presidential “electors” tied to the major elite political parties of each state, the numbers of which are based on the number of state Congressional seats. These electors are collectively known as the Electoral College. According to Article II of the Constitution, “Each state shall appoint, such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress.” Translation: state legislatures, not citizens within a state, decide which presidential candidate will receive the state’s electoral votes. These appointed electors, who make up the anonymous Electoral College, are in essence political establishment insiders, who are subject to lobbying efforts, and in many states can roguely decide who they vote for, or if they will even vote at all. According to FairVote, for a presidential candidate to win an election within this system, one must receive over half of the Electoral College votes (in the 21st century, that would be 270 electoral votes out of the 538 national electors). The result is that presidential elections are largely symbolic exercises intended to keep the masses tied to the established order, where the democratic principle of one-person one-vote is prohibited.

As Dahl and Lazare point out, the U.S. Supreme Court was established to exist outside of any form of democratic deliberation and public scrutiny. Instead, imperious and impervious Supreme Court justices are appointed for life by a president and confirmed by a semi-aristocratic Senate (to this day), of which was chosen by state legislatures until 1913. The more popularly elected (yet also largely wealthy) House of Representatives were excluded from these deliberations. This leaves the Supreme Court—the least democratic branch of government—responsible for deciding if and how the rights of the masses are recognized and dispersed, while “elected” representatives stand idle. Accordingly Lazare notes, “rallying behind the Supreme Court” means “rallying behind the Constitution in toto” and “ignoring the constitutional system’s many unsavory aspects.”

The founders’ crafty and abstruse power-sharing arrangement made it difficult to determine where true authority lay, be it in Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court or the citizenry at the municipal, state or federal level. As Lazare put it, instead of having a form of government that would serve as “an instrument that ‘We the People’ would create and shape to further our own rule” the Constitution solidified a system of government intended to “create and shape the people in order to further its own rule.” Instead of being a government “of the people” it would be a government “over the people.” Parenti goes on to explain that in keeping with their desire to disenfranchise the majority, the founders included these “auxiliary precautions” that were “designed to fragment power without democratizing it.” Parenti goes on to explain:

In separating the executive, legislative, and judiciary functions and then providing a system of checks and balances among the various branches, including staggered elections, executive veto, Senate confirmation of appointments and ratification of treaties, and a bicameral legislature, they hoped to dilute the impact of popular sentiments. They also contrived an elaborate and difficult process for amending the Constitution.

Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution plays a crucial role in the founders’ undemocratic design by requiring a process whereby a proposed Constitutional amendment has to first pass a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, or through a convention called by Congress based on a request from two-thirds of the states. If a proposed amendment successfully traverses its way through either pathway, it then has to be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures. As University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner describes it, “Any proposal to amend the Constitution is idle because it’s effectively impossible… an amendment requires a supermajority twice—the pig must pass through two pythons.” Two hundred years later, after 11,539 proposed amendments, only 27 have been ratified. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments which expanded status rights to former slaves, passed only because the defeated and occupied South was strong-armed into ratifying them, yet as examined later, were not compelled to enforce them. Between 1870 and today only 12 amendments have been enacted, with the last one taking 203 years to be ratified. Posner goes to point out how this labyrinth has led to a reliance on begging the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution in new ways by hiring “lawyers to formulate their proposals as already reflected in the Constitution rather than argue that the Constitution got the position wrong and so should be changed.” According to Gordon Wood, the very concept of democracy was hijacked and appropriated by the U.S. Constitution in that:

By the end of the debate over the Constitution, it was possible for the Federalists to describe the new national government, even with its indirectly elected president and Senate, as “a perfectly democratical form of government.” The houses of representatives lost their exclusive connection with the people. Representation was now identified simply with election; thus, all elected officials, and, for some, even those not elected, such as judges, were considered somehow “representative” of the people. Democracy rapidly became a generic label for all American government.

In addition to the undemocratic federal government, all 50 states would, in time, establish state constitutions modeled after the federal constitution (to varying degrees), with legislative and executive branches that are semi-popularly elected to develop and administer policies and laws; with state Supreme Courts that preside over legal appeals. State constitutions also establish mechanisms for local governance at the county, municipal or township level where voters popularly elect some variation of town or city managers and/or councils to make and administer local policies and ordinances. It is at the municipal level that the more direct forms of democracy were possible, at least for white men. The town meeting model, where all eligible voters meet to make local governance decisions and elect officials to implement their decisions, was a common form of local governance during the 18th and 19th centuries. State and municipal governments also have a sordid history concerning suffrage rights, often disenfranchising groups of people based on race, ethnicity, religion, class and gender.

The original Constitution left complete discretion to individual states in determining voter qualifications, rules on absentee voting, polling hours and election funding. In most states there is a lot of leeway given to counties in crafting their own ballots, designing and implementing their own voter education programs, deciding how they will handle overseas ballots, the ability to hire and train poll workers, choosing polling locations and in how to maintain their voter registration lists.

Over time (between 1870 to 1972), with the enactment of the 14th, 15th, 19th 23rd, 24th and 26th Constitutional Amendments, various forms of legal discrimination were explicitly prohibited when establishing qualifications for suffrage. It is still legally permissible for states to deny the “right to vote” for other reasons and many have effectively done so as a means to continue to disenfranchise groups of people based on race, ethnicity and class. The 17th Amendment, which enabled U.S. Senators to be directly elected, did not result from popular democratic strivings. Instead, it resulted from pundit and legislator frustrations over corruption, instability, conflict and deadlock due to the indirect process hampering legislative efficiency. In her book Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for American Voters, Victoria Bassetti sums up suffrage rights this way:

The original document establishing our government acknowledges and weaves slavery deeply into our society. Women cannot vote. Two of the three major federal officers, President and Senator, are not voted on by the people. And there is not a right to vote in the Constitution. The word ‘vote’ appears in the Constitution as originally drafted only in relation to how representatives, senators, and presidential electors perform their duties. Representatives vote. But the people’s vote is not mentioned.

The Bill of Rights did not change this fact. Over two hundred years later the Supreme Court appointed George Bush to be president, and in the process reaffirmed this point in their decision by stating, “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.” The double rub here is that the court was referring to a citizen’s rights to vote for Electoral College electors, not the right to vote directly for a presidential candidate.

While allowing citizens to feel as though they have a voice in the political system, the form of “democracy” outlined in the Constitution is clearly designed to impede the citizenry from determining both domestic and foreign policy. Ultimately, the founders crafted a system that allowed select groups of people to have the right to citizenship, privileging a smaller proportion of them to indirectly choose the best “men of substance,” filtered through narrowly prescribed partisan commitments as a means to preserve the wealth and power of the post-revolutionary ruling class. Within this constitutional framework, hegemonic cultural scripts tied to institutional authority perpetuate systemic inequities. In a constitutional republic without positive constitutional rights that mandate parity of political participation and economic redistribution, whilst remedying existing cultural prohibitions on recognition and representation rights; social equity and economic equality will persistently be denied, undermined and contested.

“Unfit to associate with the white race”

One can choose to believe the various cultural myths about how the freedom loving founders despised slavery, but did not work to end it based on a variety of factors, including: timing, not wanting to disrupt a widely accepted and profitable institution, and the need to accommodate the southern plantation system. No matter the rationale, the truth is that it was not in the founders’ political and economic interests to do so, nor is there evidence that they had the moral capacity to end one of the most horrific enterprises in human history. What is clear is that the U.S. Constitution was written to protect slavery while empowering slaveholders in numerous ways. This was demonstrated by General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney’s boastings in front of the South Carolina House of Representatives following the Constitutional Convention about how slavery was secured within the Constitution:

We have a security that the general government can never emancipate them [slaves], for no such authority is granted and it is admitted, on all hands, that the general government has no powers but what are expressly granted by the Constitution, and that all rights not expressed were reserved by the several states.

As documented by Barbara Fields, the Constitution’s three-fifths clause, states were allowed to count three-fifths of their slaves in apportioning representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College. This effectively increased the political power of southern states and thus granted greater protections for the institution of slavery. This disproportionate political power through the Electoral College led to Thomas Jefferson’s 1800 presidential win. The Constitution also had a provision (fugitive slave clause) that aided slaveholders in recovering fugitive slaves, particularly those who sought sanctuary in “free” states and territories. It protected slave-owners rights to human property and made the act of aiding a fugitive slave a constitutional offense. The Second Amendment is also considered to have been, in part, a means to protect slave-owners from slave insurrections.

Another Constitutional provision focused on the highly lucrative enterprise that was the Atlantic slave trade. It read in part, “[t]he migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808.” It also allowed for “a tax or duty” to be “imposed on such importation…” for as long as the trade remained legal. This did not mean that slavery was to be abolished in 1808, but only that the import of new slaves would be discontinued.

As with settler colonialism, America’s domestic slave trade is the story of the founding of the United States. As many scholars have documented, including Du Bois, McInnis and Finkelman, the slave trade was a major economic engine, which fueled the prosperity of the new nation, with profits from enslaved people flowing to many locations in the North and South. Traders and slave owners throughout the South profited by selling human property while others profited from the forced labor it provided in the cotton and sugar fields. So did intermediary suppliers along with carriers in the steamboat, railroad and shipping industries. Naturally, northern capitalists profited as investors in banks in the exchange of money for people as did the companies that provided insurance for the owners’ investments in enslaved labor. So did foreign investors in Southern securities, some of which were issued on mortgaged slaves. The hub of the nation’s cotton textile industry was based in New England, where “enlightened” gentry enriched themselves from the misery of southern slave labor.

Following its Constitutional mandate, the Act of 1807 was the legislation that officially ended U.S. participation in the international slave trade, but not the domestic slave trade. It levied heavy fines and possible imprisonment on those who attempted to import slaves to the United States. This piece of legislation was underfunded and often not enforced, and when it was enforced, it was another source of revenue with its stiff fines and valuable legal merchandise. These realities enabled a smaller yet profitable human smuggling industry to exist in the U.S. until the middle of the 19th century. When illegal smugglers were caught, their human merchandise was seized and sold to U.S. slave owners (Du Bois, Fehrenbacher and Finkelman). The Constitution would continuously be used until the Civil War to defend the institution of slavery from federal intervention and actions taken by an increasingly militant abolition movement.

In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled on the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, based on Scott’s lawsuit to gain his and his family’s freedom in the slave state of Missouri after they had previously lived in a free state and territory. In delivering the majority decision against Scott, Chief Justice Roger Taney held that under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, Black people “could never be citizens of the United States.” Taney explained that when the Constitution was ratified, Blacks were “regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights that the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit.”

The standing of free Black Americans under the Constitution remained vague for decades to come. The Bill of Rights did not defend free Black Americans from municipal and state laws intent on depriving them of (parchment barrier) Constitutional rights. This cultural and legal reality set the stage for Jim Crow laws in the South and its manifestations nationwide into the 21st century.

In an 1852 Fourth of July speech, the formidable Fredrick Douglas called out the true nature of the institution of slavery in the United States:

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Conclusion

While the Bill of Rights and a few subsequent amendments have provided some democratizing effects, they have strictly been limited to affirmative remedies for injustices (instead of transformative remedies associated with dismantling). These tend to be reformist in nature and as Nancy Fraser frames such measures, are “aimed at correcting inequitable outcomes of social arrangements without disturbing the underlying framework that generates them.” Affirmative “remedies” are thus akin to negative rights and often come from state and private powers making limited and ultimately temporary accommodations to justice-seeking collective struggles, frequently through the utilization of disruptive tactics and strategies. In contrast, the inherently violent cultural, political and economic structures that are protected by the U.S. Constitution prohibit transformative remedies intended (analogous to positive rights) to eliminate the root causes of social inequity and economic inequality. According to historian Howard Zinn the American Revolution and its resulting Constitution, “was a work of genius” in that it “created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.”

At its core, the U.S. Constitution was designed to safeguard a settler colonial society overseen by the supreme laws of capitalism, Christianity, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. By doing so, it entrenched deep structural disparities in participation that subvert collective strivings for social, economic and political justice. This denial of the basic means and opportunities for all inhabitants of a society to directly contest and deliberate as equals violates the very nature of public reason, the principle by which liberal democracies define themselves (as the U.S. defines itself). Moreover, for a society to be authentically democratic—as an essential determinant of justice—parity of participation is required to serve as the idiom of public contestation and deliberation whereby status equality and the equitable distribution of wealth can be attained. This would require a constitutional framework derived from the principles and practices of participatory parity, where positive rights as well as equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are indisputable.

With the advent of the U.S. Constitution and its consolidation of cultural, political, and economic power; slave owners and “captains of industry” alike were made to feel more secure knowing that a state or territorial governor could rely on a swift federal response when domestic disturbances was beyond the control of local police and state militia (Beard).

With the arrival of the 19th century, mercantilism and the smaller agrarian economy of the settler colonies of the U.S. were quickly being toppled, largely influenced by the 1776 publication of Scottish economist Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s magnum opus became the recipe for free-market capitalism, and is said to have been enthusiastically embraced by the founders of the new republic, and became the ideological and structural framework for the U.S. political economy. In Wealth of Nations Smith affirmed, over a decade prior to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, that a, “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

Decades after the drafting of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams proudly declaring, “from 15 to 20 legislatures of our own, in action for 30 years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization of property are to be apprehended from them.” Indeed, the U.S. Constitution was serving its purpose in guaranteeing that inequality would remain the supreme law of the land—at an increasing rate—far into the future. In the decades ahead, as industrial capitalism flourished and the settler colonial empire expanded, so would U.S. nationalism, constructing a base and superstructure Jefferson and his peers could have only dreamed of; one that would perfectly buttress the despotic structures they deeply embedded within their beloved Constitution.

Claudia Gay and "First Ones" in an Empire of Lies and Annihilation

[Pictured: Harvard University. Credit: BLOOMBERG]

By Kwaku Aurelien

The January 2nd announcement of Claudine Gay’s resignation from the position of President at Harvard University has caused quite a stir in American society, especially in the context of our current historical moment and the immense pressure under which Gay made her decision. Black Americans of prominence such as Jemele Hill took to social media in the short aftermath of the news coming out to defend Gay’s credentials against those who would label her an “Affirmative Action hire,” someone who made it to their position on the basis of their race rather than on merit. There are also tweets such as the one by Marc Lamont Hill below, reading, “The next president of Harvard University MUST be a Black woman.”

In response, I have a few questions for Professor Hill. For one, after all the publicized scrutiny Claudine Gay was subject to, why should a Black woman, or any Black person for that matter, want to be President of Harvard University? Is it because of the name brand value of Harvard University? How much should that matter to Black people given the hell we just saw one of our own go through in what is supposed to be a position of power? But more importantly, what does a Black woman being President of Harvard University do for Black people, or for the Black student population at Harvard, one member of which wrote in this astounding piece for the Harvard Political Review how they’ve been questioned on how they got into the university, and on how they’ve called for Harvard to stop its commemoration of slave owners and profiteers.

Malcolm X is famous for saying, “The White man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.” My question to Marc Lamont Hill is, will a Black woman being the President of Harvard guarantee real justice for its Black students by making it more inclusive and benevolent towards them, or will that Black woman be nothing more than a symbol? 

The below clip is from a 1992 lecture delivered at Florida International University by Kwame Ture. If you don’t know him by that name, you may know him by his original name, Stokely Carmichael. In the clip, Ture — a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black Panther Party, a founder of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) during the Civil Rights Movement, and a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) upon moving to Africa — points out a gross contradiction within the Black community which persists to this day. Black people, who historically protest and battle against injustice as a mass, advance in American society strictly as individuals. Ture is adamant that if Black people struggle as a mass, the way to measure the progress of Black people in America is to evaluate whether or not the Black masses have advanced.

Advancement is measured qualitatively, not quantitatively; it is measured by the quality of life enjoyed by the Black masses, not by how many Black people do X or do Y. If the masses have not advanced, there is no progress at all. As Ture sees it, the advancement of Black individuals to prestigious jobs and positions has caused wool to be pulled over the eyes of those individuals. They become big-headed, and come to believe that by virtue of them being in their prestigious position, they are advancing the entirety of Black America.

At first listen, you might hear Ture say that there has been no progress for Black people since the 60s and think it’s a gross exaggeration of where we are and how far we’ve come. But what if I told you that, in 2008, PBS released a four-hour series called Unnatural Causes and an accompanying Health Equity Quiz, which showed that Black males in Harlem, New York had a lower life expectancy than males in Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world? Or what if I told you that the median wealth of Black Americans may fall to zero by 2053 assuming current trends continue?

Taking those, among other, things into consideration, was Ture really that far off? Even if he was, the individualist way of thinking he criticizes falls apart under close inspection, and it is a way of thinking we must collectively abandon in this new year. If Claudine Gay’s experience has taught us anything it is that, in 2024, Black people still have no institutional power in America. Gay took office as Harvard’s first Black President on July 1, 2023, and by the second day of 2024, she resigned amidst the internal and external scrutiny levied her way. No Black organization in this country has power comparable to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which put its own tweet endorsing Gay’s departure from Harvard. With no institutional control, there is no way for Black people in positions of power to effectively own those positions. The position is not a right, but a privilege that can be yanked away at a whim. A good example I can provide is the wave of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives which came about as a direct consequence of the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. Those initiatives are largely getting rolled back, corporations’ alibi for their withdrawal being that they have come under economic and political pressure from the right wing. I say none of what I say as an indictment of Claudine Gay, but rather as a call to action for my Black readers to demand better alternatives for themselves. Or alternatively, to put our heads together so that we may create better alternatives for ourselves.

There are Black faces in high faces worth condemning; however, therein lies the meaning of the title of this article: “Claudine Gay and ‘First Ones’ in an Empire of Lies & Annihilation.” Amidst a genocide in Gaza armed and funded by the United States government, within that government are the First Black Woman Vice President; the First Black Secretary of Defense, a Raytheon board member supposed to have been recused from the company for four years; and the First Black White House Press Secretary.

Palestinians, who have demonstrated solidarity with Black Americans against police violence on numerous occasions amidst their ethnic cleansing, had to listen to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a Black woman and President Biden’s Ambassador to the United Nations, say that Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions has no place at the UN, and more recently to veto a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza with an unconditional release of all hostages on behalf of the United Empire. They have had to watch Karine Jean-Pierre attack Benjamin Netanyahu and AIPAC when it was convenient only to now be the one of the most visible spokespeople for an administration whose belligerence against them is finally making Americans pay attention to their plight.

It behooves us to care about the Palestinians’ plight, because the violence visited on them comes back to do us harm here at home. Black activists in Atlanta against the construction of “Cop City” have for years highlighted the relationship between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program. GILEE is a policing exchange allowing for training between various sects of Georgia police and the IDF. One of the grosser tactics the IDF has exchanged with Georgia police under GILEE is firearm “racking.” To inspire fear, Israeli officers will draw the slide on their gun all the way back and then quickly release to send off a misfired round. This is what is being taught to Georgia officers, and you don’t have to be woke to know that Georgia’s Black residents are the ones who are going to be harassed the most with this behavior. Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, is a Black man, who identified as a progressive in the 2021 mayoral election, but who now pushes Cop City forward despite the sheer opposition to it from Weelaunee Forest communities, which are predominantly Black and/or low-income.

I tend to agree with the tweet below. The summer of 2020, which should have been an inflection point in this country’s history, became an opportunity upon which many Black people, middle class Black people especially, capitalized. “Black excellence,” which should have been a meaningful phrase illustrating the very best qualities of the Black community, became reason for Black individuals to perform acts they would nominally criticize White people for doing. These types will say that Black death has become commodified, and in the same vein become profiteers themselves.

“Black excellence” has become an effective tool in alienating Black individuals from the larger Black community. Take Claudine Gay; her role as university president effectively alienated her from the Black student population, members of which felt as though their right to free speech was unprotected and that they were easy targets of doxxing for their pro-Palestine advocacy. “Black excellence” has also made it exceedingly difficult for bourgeois Black folk to empathize with the plight of the Black poor and working class because they have developed opposing class interests and are unable or unwilling to put themselves in the shoes of those who don’t have what they have, and who bear the biggest burden of racism. I say this as a member of the Black middle class, mind you.

Too many of us have been or are all too eager to become Buffalo Soldiers for Empire, and we need to be called on it. Because if we intend on demonstrating true solidarity with Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti and elsewhere, as so many are now claiming to do in their Instagram stories, it starts with us scrutinizing the role of Black faces in high places in perpetuating American imperial crimes.

We must acknowledge that our freedom fighters – which include names like Kwame Ture, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur – never wanted this for us. These individuals opposed imperialism not only on the grounds that our struggle is interconnected with those the world over, but also on the grounds that making war is morally reprehensible. They understood that humanity is indivisible, and that one segment of humanity being discriminated against automatically diminished the rest. They fought to elevate us, so that we could elevate humanity. Proof of which, in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), Martin Luther King stated, “The wealthy nations of the world must promptly initiate a massive, sustained Marshall Plan for Asia, Africa and South America. If they would allocate just 2 percent of their gross national product annually for a period of ten or twenty years for the development of the underdeveloped nations, mankind would go a long way toward conquering the ancient enemy, poverty.” This would represent a constructive use of the United States’ vast resources, and it is indicative of the type of work we should be fighting for in the modern day. It is up to us now to follow the path our ancestors laid out for us, but we can only do it by honoring what they truly stood for, rather than just paying lip service to it.

We have to have the courage to speak truth to power, without regard for the consequences we think it may have in our social and professional lives. After what just happened to Dr. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, what excuse do any of us have to be afraid?

Kwaku Aurelien is a student at UConn School of Law and an intern for Friends of the Congo (@congofriends on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook), a Washington D.C. based advocacy organization for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Stranglehold of Capital and Why We Must Break Free

[Photo Credit: Doug Mills / AP]

By Nathaniel Ibrahim

The village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, like much of the United States, has an affordable housing shortage. To address this, the Village Council considered rezoning 53 acres for higher-density homes. This was controversial among Yellow Springs residents including comedy superstar Dave Chapelle, who threatened to pull his investments from the town:

”If you push this thing through, what I’m investing in is no longer applicable… I am not bluffing. I will take it all off the table.” 

It was never guaranteed that the Village Council would pass the rezoning without Chapelle’s interference, or that the plan would even make housing more affordable. But it was hardly a fair fight. Losing millions in investment dollars would transform the economic landscape of Yellow Springs. Municipal representatives could never consider the housing project on its own merits.

Strongarm tactics by capital happen on the national stage too. Shortly after Barack Obama won the presidency on a platform of “hope and change,” Emerson Electric CEO David Farr said his company would only expand in the United States if government got “out of the way.” 

Barclays CEO Robert Diamond claimed corporations wouldn’t “have the confidence to hire in the United States… until we… believe… the government, the private sector, and financial institutions are working together and connected again.” 

Bausch + Lomb CEO Brent Saunders warned that, because of Obama, multinationals are “more tentative on whether… to…invest.” 

The Wall Street Journal synthesized these sentiments, lamenting that Obama wasn’t doing enough to encourage “U.S. businesses to unleash the $2 trillion in capital they are holding.” 

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner summarized it well the following year:

“Job creators in America basically are on strike.” 

It isn’t novel to point out the political influence of the wealthy. Even former president Jimmy Carter called the United States an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.” Research shows that better-funded candidates generally win. There are basic fundraising thresholds candidates must meet to have a chance of winning. This allows the wealthy to influence who runs and wins. Even when donations don’t outright guarantee electoral success, candidates still value them and allow donors to influence policy. 

Just as ultra-wealthy benefactors control elections, a handful of companies dominate our media. “Big Tech” dictates culture by moderating the flow of information and “marketplace of ideas” that informs our political process. Corporate giants make it more difficult for voters to make informed decisions and allow relatively few people to curate and regulate public discourse. 

These problems are serious, and make our political system less democratic. They reinforce the privileged interests of the white and wealthy while disenfranchising the non-white and poor. This inequity is rooted in the undemocratic nature of our economic system, which grants certain groups not mere influence or political advantage but the ability to wield pure, unchecked power.

Who Controls Capital?

In the United States, the three richest white men hold as much wealth as the bottom 50% combined. Capital, which refers not to personal property but investment assets, is also unequally distributed. The top 1% of Americans own a majority of the country’s stocks and private businesses. The poorer you are, the more of your resources you must spend on your needs, and the more fully you rely on other people’s capital to have a job. 

Within individual companies, if an investor controls over half the voting shares, they fully control the company, rendering other investors’ capital powerless. Capital is where the real power lies, and it is controlled by a miniscule group. 

How Does Capital Work?

This tiny class of capitalists will only invest capital under certain conditions. Generally, profits are the fundamental precondition for investment, but it’s ultimately down to the investor. They can choose to do nothing with their capital or invest it in some other market, thereby exercising tremendous leverage on the rest of society.

To maintain access to goods and gainful employment, electorates are under pressure to placate capital. This immediate pressure often conflicts with voters’ long-term interests, or any political priorities beyond meeting their basic needs. Thus, politicians under capitalism must serve their constituents’ short-term demands by serving owners and investors. Otherwise, their constituents will suffer, blame them, and vote them out. 

Capitalists directly affect government activity too. First and foremost, tax revenues are almost entirely dependent on investment. Jobs are needed to generate income taxes, while businesses must sell goods and services in order to generate sales taxes. Investment is required to maintain property values and thus property taxes. When governments cannot fund their activities through taxation and turn to borrowing, they become dependent on banks and other potential creditors.

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Often, private capital directly pays law enforcement to do its dirty work. Major corporations funnel millions of dollars into police activities through police foundations. Companies including DTE, Meijer, The Home Depot, and AT&T all have representatives on the board of the Detroit Public Safety Foundation. Across the country, the largest companies in finance, tech, fossil fuels, and other industries funded the police and were represented in the institutions that raise private funds for them. 

The Power of Capital in Action

When a group of capitalists forego investing together — a capital strike — they can quickly cripple the economy. When they have common interests, and frequently voice their concerns through the business press, little direct coordination is required to set off a chain reaction of capital flight.

“Capital strike” and “capital flight” are not commonly used terms, and they almost never come up in election discourse. Capital flight is recognized as an economic phenomenon, one that can often come about as a reaction to political developments, but its political implications are rarely discussed. Some economists characterize capital flight as a “symptom of macroeconomic mismanagement” to be solved with “sensible, credible” policies.

This straightforward narrative is actually quite common when it comes to businesses’ reactions to policies. The policies are never “not what businesses prefer.” They are simply “bad policies,” which “lead to bad outcomes.” Capitalists are treated like they bear no responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The class character of capital strikes is completely mystified and ignored. While it’s possible for certain policies to be bad for both the rich and the poor, that is not always the case. 

There are numerous examples of large-scale capital strikes forcing national governments to abandon progressive, widely-supported policies. The aforementioned strike against the Obama administration strike is one such example. Other capital strikes happened under Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

Capital strikes are not limited to the United States. In the 1970s, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and members of the Social Democratic Party sought to transcend social democracy via the Meidner Plan, which would have taxed corporate profits to achieve workers’ ownership of major corporations. Fearing a capital strike, the Social Democrats diluted the plan. The plan’s namesake, economist Rudolf Meidner, described the implemented version as “a pathetic rat.” 

In France, after decades of uninterrupted conservative rule, Socialist Party leader Francois Mitterand was elected president in 1981. He was allied with the French Communist Party, called for a “rupture” with capitalism, and embarked on a radical program of nationalization, wage hikes, and union empowerment. Displeased investors pulled their capital, punishing the French economy. Mitterand abandoned his radicalism, purged Communist ministers from his government, and pursued more conservative policies. 

A similar thing happened in Chile. In 1970, Salvador Allende — Latin America’s first democratically elected Marxist head of state — became president. Over the next three years, wealthy Chileans and international businesses reacted with capital strikes, capital flight, and hoarding to destabilize the government and protect their own power. Allende responded with concessions to the Right but was eventually overthrown in a US-backed military coup that was justified as a response to economic instability. 

In Venezuela, the election of Hugo Chávez in 1999 was followed by dramatic increases in quality of life. Chávez lifted nearly one fifth of the population from poverty. Even opponents like the Washington DC-based Organization of American States recognized this achievement and “the eradication of illiteracy… and the increase in access by the most vulnerable sectors to basic services such as health care.”

The massive wealth held by Venezuela’s elite was being slowly redistributed, and the oil revenues that the country had relied on for decades were being directed toward the poor. As this happened, Venezuelan and international businesses began pulling their capital out of the country or holding back certain economic activities. The current Venezuelan economic crisis is, of course, complex, with an overreliance on oil, imperialist sanctions, and political instability of various origins all playing a role. However, capital flight preceded and contributed to these issues, starting at a time when the lives of Venezuelans were improving at the expense of capitalist profits and power.

Of course, national capital strikes are the exception — a “nuclear option” of capitalist control. 

Every day, capitalists and their managers make decisions regarding where to allocate resources within their businesses, or who to do business with. Whether by reflexively chasing profits or strategically leveraging their wealth, they shift wealth toward those who serve their interests.

Voters may begin to “learn their lesson,” and vote in ways that investors will reward them for, even if they end up voting for policies they do not ultimately prefer. Voters may blame some inherent flaw in leftist policies, saying things like “socialism is great in theory, but doesn’t work in practice.” And while left-wing governments have in many cases brought improvements for their people, capital strikes negatively affect their track record.

Others may recognize the power of capital over the economy, but believe it to be justified or necessary, and consciously vote in a way that reinforces this power. When left-wing governments make concessions to capital, their supporters may see it as a betrayal of the policies they ran on, and become politically inactive or shift their allegiance to another party, as happened in Sweden and France. Whether they blame the failure on economic realities, unreliable politicians, or the business owners themselves, voters will respond rationally to actions by capital, and vote in ways that avoid offending investors in the first place.

Legalized Bribery

The coercive power of capital strikes is extremely important in explaining why the rich and large corporations often get their way. But they have numerous other tools at their disposal for directing the political process:

• Rent out a lavish compound to a sitting president (or let him stay for free) 

• Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at businesses owned by politicians

• Loan politicians’ companies hundreds of millions of dollars

• Pay politicians millions of dollarsf or speeches

• Hire lawmakers and top officials as lobbyists or consultants

• Give politicians seats on corporate boards

• Give them a high-paying job at a think tank

• Sign massive book deals with Supreme Court Justices, or give them free trips

• Take a powerful judge on multiple luxurious vacations,

• Buy their mother’s home and let her live in it rent-free, pay their family member’s expensive boarding school fees, pay for their wedding reception, give them VIP access to sporting events, fund the dedication of a library wing in their honor, and fund a hagiographicmovie about them (This is all the same person)

• Own stocks while being a politician, and reap all the benefits if your political actions favor your stocks or investors at large

What Can We Do About it?

To recap, capitalism results in a tiny minority of the population controlling the means of production and distribution. This control is leveraged to reward or punish voters and governments based on how accommodating their policies are toward capital. These capitalists coordinate not just through institutions and relationships, but need not coordinate at all when their interests align. If a government threatens their profits, they will remove their capital from the government’s jurisdiction, even if the people believe they should sacrifice their profits for the benefit of society. The bounds of what is politically possible are set by the corporate sector.

Those who control wealth use it in more targeted ways to shore up this power. They systematically direct their wealth to individual politicians, or the political class as a whole, to buy their loyalty and give the politicians a stake in the power of capital.

Private businesses control the media that we consume, and the wealthy bend political campaigns, think tanks, charities, and universities to their will with donations. These institutions allow the wealthy to mask and justify their economic power, and articulate their demands to a target audience. They also give them the tools to act even when their economic power is effectively curbed.  

Considered fully, the power of capital appears unassailable, and if we work within the mainstream definition of politics, it is. Our ability to exercise political power is often reduced to participating in elections. However, electoral politics are, in many ways, a manifestation of power wielded by people outside of it, and any movement that devotes all its energy to the electoral sphere will ultimately fail when they are outmaneuvered in the economic sphere. However, understanding the ways that this capitalist power works is the first step to breaking it. 

In order to fight back against this system, ordinary people need to expand their definition of politics and operate in the same fields that the wealthy do. Recognizing that democracy is still something worth achieving is vital. Winning political power will be a bottom-up struggle. Radical labor unions will be a necessary tool for workers to challenge capital in an effective way and wield material leverage toward their political goals.

The specifics of overcoming capitalist power are far from clear. The people of this planet will have to organize themselves and develop plans for effective resistance through international collaboration and dialogue. What’s clear, however, is that no form of capitalism will allow us to experience genuine democracy. Whoever controls economic production and distribution controls everyone dependent on that production and distribution. Self-determination and democracy therefore require economic democracy.

Nathaniel Ibrahim is an organizer and elected leader in the Young Democratic Socialists of America at the University of Michigan.

What the Titan Submersible Says About Capitalist Culture

By Saheim Patrick

It is ironic that the name of the doomed sub that captivated the minds of Americans this past week, contains the suffix: -gate, a morpheme that has become de facto synonymous with conspiracy theories. The irony stems from the fact that conspiracy theories, or at least the ones that attach -gate to their title, are a direct product of the type of distracting, unified discourse characteristic of our current, US society that has allowed the topic of the OceanGate submersible to thrive.

The story, largely irrelevant for reasons which will be divulged, goes like this: five men aboard a twenty-two foot carbon-fiber and titanium craft, named the Titan, planning to tour the ruins of the famed Titanic shipwreck. At an hour and forty-five minutes into their expedition, contact was lost with their surface ship: the Polar Prince. In the days following, the story and question of whether they were alive or not, left the public reeling, and the media magnates sensationalizing. It is important, for the sake of critiquing the discourse surrounding it, to note that the men aboard paid 250,000 USD each for this trip. This particular detail has stoked a fire in the discussions of the event, namely on Twitter, and has promoted a false dichotomy, a false binary, in talking about the sub. The sides that you can take are presented as: finding the likely deaths of these men a tragic event, or ridiculing and showing apathy towards their deaths. It is not uncommon for a simplification of this sort to happen in modern discourse.

The dominant medium of communication in the US is social media. It is easy to believe it to be the Internet as a whole, but the difference between a technology and a medium must be noted (not only for this clarification, but for our understanding of modern discourse as a whole). Neil Postman’s 1985 treatise on dominant mediums of communication throughout history and television as a medium, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, tackles specifically this difference.

We might say that a technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind. Like the brain, a technology is a physical apparatus. Like the mind, a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put. A technology becomes a medium as it employs a particular symbolic code, as it finds its place in a particular social setting, as it insinuates itself into economic and political contexts. A technology, in other words, is merely a machine. A medium is the social and intellectual environment a machine creates.

In other words, a technology is a machine, and a medium is the use of that machine. It then becomes clear that while the Internet is a dominant technology today, the dominant medium, its dominant use, is social media. And with this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear as to why discourse today is the way it is.

There is a constant, pervasive threat of irrelevance anytime one posts on social media, and I am sure that anyone who has spent more than a few days on any given platform can attest to the rapid speed at which one buzzing topic moves to the next. As a result, arguments, ideas, and discussions are spewed out quick and without any nuance. Actual engagement with the ideas being talked out cannot be risked. In the time it takes you to study, read a book, or to genuinely think about the subject you are so fervent about, there is a new point of mass interest, and you are left speaking into a void which no longer cares to hear what you have to say.

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It is then not surprising to me that discourse on Twitter has taken such an extreme split; such a sharp turning away from the simple and foundational idea that multiple things can be true about a given thing at once. It is possible to believe that the deaths of the billionaires aboard the Titan are sad. Objectively, I think if any one of us were in that situation, ignoring of course the circumstances that got them in the situation in the first place, we would be primally and utterly terrified. That is a chilling thought. However, it is also possible to believe, at the same time, that the reaction this has caused in us is utterly terrifying. What is there to happen when people believe that they have to passionately defend billionaires’ sanctity of life? What does this mean for revolution in America?

I will put it this way: we are slaves on a plantation. Our plantation’s master has gone away on a boating trip with neighboring plantation masters. On this trip, an accident happens which leads to our master, and his master friends, dying. If you asked me, a slave, to put myself in the master’s shoes, and to divorce myself from the fact that I as a slave do not even have the resources to take a boating trip, I would surely say that would be a scary moment for me and I may feel your idea of empathy. However, my master has died, his plantation still exists, a new master will come soon to rule that plantation, and I am still a slave. Therefore, that idea of empathy that you have has its limits on me. As well, if there were a group of slaves on the plantation so intensely tore up about master’s death and scolding other slaves for not being as tore up, it would lead me to fear that when the time to fight for our liberation comes, these fellow slaves will not be able to be counted on. It brings into question whether someone is truly for the people; for if you are not staunchly for the people, you are against them.

The even more frightening factor here is that people so loudly championing empathy for the billionaires are not even aware that they are serving capitalist interests. They cannot tell that — by the way that the meticulous, scientific system of capitalism works — anytime you defend billionaires, you are defending capitalism. It is no coincidence that this story was pushed as hard as it was. Within three days of the submersible going missing, a documentary on it has already been filmed, produced, edited, and sent to air. Ask yourself, and I mean seriously ask yourself: why do we not hear the stories of the people who are ruthlessly exploited by billionaires as much as we do this? In that answer is also the answer as to why you will not hear the same people championing empathy for these billionaires, also championing empathy for their victims, whom are countless and suffering daily.

Aside from the political thought that this story may inspire, it is a synecdoche of a larger culture of irrelevant news and information that has been in place for centuries in US. What so many people fail to recognize about this story, and its parts, is that it simply does not matter.

What bearing does this have on your day-to-day life? I am not asking this to say that any story or information that is not directly related to you cannot have value, but I am saying that a lot of the information sensationalized by US media has no actual value, and for a reason.

It is the job of the capitalist system to keep the people subordinated and unconscious. If the system succeeds in doing this, people will blindly practice, uphold, and promote the interests and values of capitalism. For if the masses of people took even the most simple view of capitalism, it would become abundantly clear how unjust it is. A handful of people control and own not only the means of production, but the production, while those who work on these means of production and produce have no stake in where they work and often can’t even access what they produce. It is clear from even this base-level understanding of capitalism that it is a system built on exploitation. By extension, to keep people subordinated, unconscious, and unaware of this, they must remain uninformed; or, better yet, consumed with useless information. As Kwame Ture once put it, “the capitalist system makes the people think they’re thinking, when in fact they are not thinking.” Therefore, when the people waste our time discussing a situation which has no true effect on our lives, convinced that value can be traded for entertainment — and then, at that, discuss without a tinge of nuance, critical thinking, or rhetoric — the capitalist rejoices! This is because all while doing this, the people truly believe we are contributing to an important cultural discourse. Sure, the culture is having discourse, but what is it doing for the culture?

This irrelevant news disguised in a cloak of being relevant is not new. As Henry David Thoreau incisively remarked in 1849:

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate .... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

My point is this: if you can tell me five facts about the Titan submersible, or any other nationally syndicated story, but not five about the community directly around you, you are not an informed person, you are a distracted one. And this battle of focusing and reshifting toward real issues and real change is one we must be constantly waging, because capitalism is constantly waging against that.

On Income and Wealth Inequality in Capitalism's Neoliberal Stage

By Prabhat Patnaik

The fact that income and wealth inequalities have increased quite dramatically under the neo-liberal regime is beyond dispute. The empirical work by Piketty’s team bears out the increase in income inequality. They use income tax data to infer about the share of the top 1 per cent of the population of a country in its national income. One may raise objections to this method of estimation, but the conclusions are so overwhelming that one can scarcely quarrel with them. In India’s case for instance Piketty and Chancel find that the top 1 per cent which accounted for just 6 per cent of national income in 1982 increased its share to over 22 per cent in 2013 and a similar figure in 2014, the latest year for which they have estimates. In fact the share in 2013 was the highest it has ever been since income tax was introduced in India in 1922.

Piketty’s theoretical explanation for such increases in income inequality however is totally untenable, as it is based on the presumption that a capitalist economy always operates at full employment, which is not only empirically false but also logically flawed, for in such a case the system would lack any disciplining device without which production cannot occur under it. One does not have to go far however to find a proper theoretical explanation for the increase in income inequality: the removal of all constraints on technological-cum-structural change under a neo-liberal economy increases the rate of growth of labour productivity to a level where, notwithstanding whatever increase occurs in GDP growth, the rate of growth of employment falls compared to earlier and also falls below the natural rate of growth of the work-force, so that the relative size of the labour reserves in the work-force increases; this keeps the real wage rate tied to a subsistence level even as the rise in labour productivity growth increases the share of surplus in total output, and hence the level of income inequality. Piketty’s findings about an increase in personal income inequality are rooted in this increase in class income inequality that neo-liberalism entails (see also Economic Notes in People’s Democracy December 8).

Likewise there has been a dramatic increase in wealth inequality under neo-liberalism at least in the countries of the global south. Between 2000 and 2021, according to Credit Suisse data, wealth inequality increased even in the United States; but this increase was less pronounced than the increase in countries like India and Brazil. True, wealth inequality estimates are always somewhat dicey, since they are influenced by stock market fluctuations. In a period of stock market boom not only does the estimate of total wealth gets artificially inflated even when there has been no change in the physical stock of assets; but, since the rich are much more active in the stock market, their share in wealth also goes up, showing an increase in wealth inequality which gets reversed in a period of stock market collapse. Even so however when India shows an increase in the share of the top 1 per cent in total wealth from around 32 per cent in 2000 to 40.6 per cent in 2021, and when Brazil shows an increase from around 43 per cent in 2000 to 49.3 per cent in 2021, this increase cannot be explained by any evanescent accrual of capital gains to the top 1 per cent of the population. There are clearly more fundamental factors at work.

One such fundamental factor is the rise in income inequality itself that is rooted in the rise in the share of economic surplus in output. If we leave aside the accrual of transitory capital gains, any rise in wealth occurs through savings. This may at first sight appear odd: it may be thought that the rise in wealth would occur only through investment in physical assets; but saving may occur, and hence a rise in wealth, even when there is no investment in a country during a particular period, if it lends these savings abroad, that is, increase its wealth in the form of claims on another country. When the share of the rich in national income rises, since the rich save a higher proportion of the income accruing to them than the poor, their share in the total savings of the country rises even faster. This means that the share of the rich at the margin in the increase in a country’s wealth rises compared to what it had originally been, which means that their share in a country’s total wealth increases. A rise in income inequality in other words ipso facto entails a rise in wealth inequality.

A second factor works in the same direction, and that is what Marx had called “centralisation of capital”. Because of technological-cum-structural change, business shifts over time from small capital to big capital. This happens because new processes and products become available over time which require a growing minimum size of capital for their introduction and which therefore can only be introduced by big capital and not small capital, leading over time to a shift of business from the latter to the former. This shift has exactly the same effect as the rise in the share of economic surplus in total output discussed above: with the shift of business there is also a shift in the distribution of profits from small to big capital (that is, if small capital at all remains in business and is not totally eliminated in which case its entire profits are captured by big capital); since the proportion of savings out of profits is higher for big capital than for small capital, this raises the share of savings in output and also the share of the top 1 per cent within total savings and hence at the margin in total wealth. Wealth concentration therefore is simply implicit in the process of centralisation of capital.

So far we have been talking of changes in wealth concentration at the margin through changes in the distribution of savings. It may be asked: what if investment falls short of savings at the base level of capacity utilisation so that there is a realisation problem? But if there is a realisation problem, i.e., if there is insufficient demand when output is produced at the base level of capacity utilisation, then the realised savings will be lower than the savings that would have been generated from output at the base level of capacity utilisation; but its distribution across classes, i.e., between petty producers and the big capitalists, or between small capitalistsand big capitalists, will remain the same as if all of it was being realised. The tendency towards wealth concentration therefore would remain unaffected by whether or not there is a realisation problem.

A third factor works towards making wealth distribution more unequal, in addition to the two we have mentioned till now. And that is what Marx had called primitive accumulation of capital, which covers not only cases where land is acquired from peasants gratis or at throwaway prices by big capital, but also cases where any land acquired at the then prevailing market price increases in value when industrial units are set up on them or townships are built upon them. This case of an increase in the price of land may at first sight be thought of as being identical with capital gains made on the stock market; but there is a basic difference: while stock market booms may collapse reversing the capital gains, land prices have generally only an upward movement. The acquisition of land even in such cases therefore has to be seen as primitive accumulation, since the peasants are paid a price way below the now-prevailing market price of land (that enters into the calculation of wealth).

The numerous ways that public resources are transferred gratis into the pockets of big capitalists are these days an important source of primitive accumulation of capital. This is done in the name of providing incentives for promoting growth, which is supposed to benefit everyone. But quite apart from such open ways of effecting increasing wealth inequality, big capital also engages in various forms of skulduggery for this purpose. There are instances of communal riots being engineered so as to evict people from their land that is then acquired at a throwaway price by big capital not necessarily directly but at some remove.

All these ways of deliberately effecting an increase in wealth inequality get a fillip in the period of neo-liberalism. All objections to them are brushed aside by the neo-liberal apotheosis of private expropriation as benefitting everyone, while simultaneously vilifying public enterprise.

Prabhat Patnaik is an Indian political economist and political commentator. His books include Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997), The Value of Money (2009), and Re-envisioning Socialism (2011).

Of, By, and For the Elite: The Class Character of the U.S. Constitution

By Crystal Kim

Republished from Liberation School.

Contrary to the mythology we learn in school, the founding fathers feared and hated the concept of democracy—which they derisively referred to as “tyranny of the majority.” The constitution that they wrote reflects this, and seeks to restrict and prohibit involvement of the masses of people in key areas of decision making. The following article, originally written in 2008, reviews the true history of the constitution and its role in the political life of the country.

The ruling class of today—the political and social successors to the “founding fathers”—continues to have a fundamental disdain for popular participation in government. The right wing of the elite is engaged in an all-out offensive against basic democratic rights and democracy itself. This offensive relies heavily on the Supreme Court and the legal doctrine of constitutional “originalism”. Originalism means that the only rights and policies that are protected are ones that are explicitly laid out in the constitution, conforming with the “original” intentions of the founders. As the article explores, this was a thoroughly anti-democratic set up that sought to guarantee the power and wealth of the elite.

Introduction

In history and civics classrooms all over the United States, students are taught from an early age to revere the “Founding Fathers” for drafting a document that is the bulwark of democracy and freedom—the U.S. Constitution. We are taught that the Constitution is a work of genius that established a representative government, safeguarded by the system of “checks and balances,” and guarantees fundamental rights such as the freedom of speech, religion and assembly. According to this mythology, the Constitution embodies and promotes the spirit and power of the people.

Why, then, if the country’s founding document is so perfect, has the immense suffering of the majority of its people—as a result of exploitation and oppression—been a central feature of the U.S.? How could almost half of the population be designated poor or low income? Why would the U.S. have the world’s largest and most extensive prison system? If the Constitution, the supreme law of this country, was written to protect and promote the interests of the people, why didn’t it include any guarantees to the most basic necessities of life?

This contradiction between reality and rhetoric can be understood by examining the conditions under which the U.S. Constitution was drafted, including the class background of the drafters. Although it is touted today as a document enshrining “democratic values,” it was widely hated by the lower classes that had participated in the 1776-1783 Revolutionary War. Popular opposition was so great, in fact, that the drafting of the Constitution had to be done in secret in a closed-door conference.

The purpose of the Constitution was to reorganize the form of government so as to enhance the centralized power of the state. It allowed for national taxation that provided the funds for a national standing army. Local militias were considered inadequate to battle the various Native American nations whose lands were coveted by land speculators. A national army was explicitly created to suppress slave rebellions, insurgent small farmers and the newly emerging landless working class that was employed for wages.

The goal of the Constitution and the form of government was to defend the minority class of affluent property owners against the anticipated “tyranny of the majority.” As James Madison, a principal author of the Constitution, wrote: “But the most common and durable source of factions [dissenting groups] has been the various and unequal distribution of property” [1].

The newly centralized state set forth in the Constitution was also designed to regulate interstate trade. This was necessary since cutthroat competition between different regions and states was degenerating into trade wars, boycotts and outright military conflict.

The U.S. Congress was created as a forum where commercial and political conflicts between merchants, manufacturers and big farmers could be debated and resolved without resort to economic and military war.

Conditions leading to the U.S. Revolution

To understand the class interests reflected in the Constitution, it is necessary to examine the social and economic conditions of the time. In the decades leading up to the U.S. revolutionary period, colonial society was marked by extreme oppression and class disparities.

The economies of the colonies were originally organized in the interests of the British merchant capitalists who profited by trade with the colonies. These interests were guaranteed by the British monarchy headed by King George III. In the southern colonies like Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas, a settler class of slave-owning big planters grew rich providing the cotton that fed Britain’s massive textile manufacturing industry.

In the northern colonies, merchant economies in the port cities and associated small manufacturing industries formed the basis for the division between rich and poor. In the countryside, huge landowners who owed their holdings to privilege in Europe squeezed the limited opportunities of small farmers.

In 1700, for example, 75 percent of land in colonial New York state belonged to fewer than 12 individuals. In Virginia, seven individuals owned over 1.7 million acres [2]. By 1767, the richest 10 percent of Boston taxpayers held about 66 percent of Boston’s taxable wealth, while the poorest 30 percent of taxpayers had no property at all [3]. Similar conditions could be found throughout the colonies. Clearly, there was an established ruling class within the colonies, although this grouping was ultimately subordinate to the British crown.

On the other hand, the majority of society—Black slaves, Native Americans, indentured servants and poor farmers—experienced super-exploitation and oppression. Women of all classes had, like their peers in Europe, no formal political rights.

With these growing class antagonisms, the 18th century was characterized by mass discontent, which led to frequent demonstrations and even uprisings by those on the bottom rung of colonial society.

Between 1676 and 1760, there were at least 18 uprisings aimed at overthrowing a colonial government. There were six slave rebellions as well as 40 riots like the numerous tenant uprisings in New Jersey and New York directed against landlords [4]. Many of these uprisings were directed at the local elite and not the British Empire.

This local elite in colonial society found itself squeezed between the wrath of the lower working classes, on one side, and the British Empire, on the other.

Following the 1763 British victory in the Seven Years’ War in Europe, which included the so-called French and Indian War in North America, the French position as a colonial power competing with Britain was seriously downgraded as a result of their defeat. The French did send troops and military aid to support the colonists in their war for independence from Britain a decade later.

Following the defeat of the French in 1763, George III attempted to stabilize relations with Native Americans, who had fought primarily alongside the defeated French, by issuing the Proclamation of 1763. This decree declared Indian lands beyond the Appalachians out of bounds for colonial settlers, thereby limiting vast amounts of wealth the settlers could steal from the indigenous people. Chauvinist expansionism thus became fuel for anti-British sentiment in the colonies.

Making matters worse for the colonists, the British Empire began demanding more resources from the colonies to pay for the war. In 1765, the British Parliament passed the fourth Stamp Act, basically increasing taxes on the colonists. The Stamp Act of 1765 incited anger across all class strata, including British merchants, and was ultimately repealed in 1766.

The struggle around the Stamp Act demonstrated a shift in power relations between the colonists and the British Empire. While the local American elites were in less and less need of Britain’s assistance, the British Empire was in ever growing need of the wealth and resources of the colonies.

In summary, there were at least four factors that would motivate the American “new rich” to seek independence from the British crown. First, the anger of the poor and oppressed against the rich could be deflected from the local elite and channeled into hatred of the British crown—developing a new sense of patriotism. Second, the wealth produced and extracted in the colonies would remain in the pockets of the local ruling class rather than being transferred to the British Empire. Third, the local ruling class would greatly increase its wealth through the confiscation of property of those loyal to Britain. And lastly, independence would nullify the Proclamation of 1763, opening up vast amounts of Native land.

Two points qualified the drive to independence, which ultimately manifested itself in the sizable “Loyalist” or pro-British population during the revolution. First, despite the conflict between the colonists and the British government over wealth, colonists and colonizers were united against the Native American population, whom both tried to massacre and loot. The revolutionary struggle was not against exploitation, but to determine who would do the exploiting.

Secondly, in spite of the disputes over who got how much of the wealth generated by the colonies, this wealth primarily depended on the integration of the economy with British merchant capitalism. While the revolutionists wanted political distance from the empire, they could not afford a complete break.

The leaders of the U.S. Revolution

Revolutionary sentiment among the lowest classes of colonial society was largely spontaneous and unorganized. Leadership of the anti-British rebellion, groups like the Sons of Liberty, originated from the middle and upper classes. Some poor workers and farmers did join their ranks, allowing their leadership to garner popular support.

These leaders were conscious of the fact that only one class would be really liberated through independence from Britain: the local ruling class. However, in order to carry this out, they would have to create a façade of liberating the masses.

This is why the 1776 Declaration of Independence—the document used to inspire colonists to fight against Britain—includes language that was so much more radical than that of the 1787 U.S. Constitution. In fact, Thomas Jefferson had originally drafted a paragraph in the Declaration of Independence condemning George III for transporting slaves from Africa to the colonies and “suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce” [5]. Jefferson himself personally owned hundreds of slaves until the day he died, but he understood the appeal such a statement would have.

Instead, the final draft of the Declaration accused the British monarchy of inciting slave rebellions and supporting Indian land claims against the settlers. “He [the king] has incited domestic insurrection amongst us,” the final version read, “and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages.”

Sixty-nine percent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence held colonial office under England. When the document was read in Boston, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up for a draft to fight the British. The rich avoided the draft by paying for substitutes, while the poor had no choice but to fight.

Slavery existed in all 13 British colonies, but it was the anchor for the economic system in the mid-Atlantic and southern states.

Thousands of slaves fought on both sides of the War of Independence. The British governor of Virginia had issued a proclamation promising freedom to any slave who could make it to the British lines—as long as their owner was not loyal to the British Crown. Tens of thousands of enslaved Africans did just that. Thousands managed to leave with the British when they were defeated, but tens of thousands more were returned to enslavement after the colonies won their “freedom” in 1783.

Following the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which established the independence of the colonies, vast amounts of wealth and land were confiscated from Loyalists. Some of this land was parceled out to small farmers to draw support for the new government.

While most Loyalists left the United States, some were protected. For instance, Lord Fairfax of Virginia, who owned over 5 million acres of land across 21 counties, was protected because he was a friend of George Washington—at that time, among the richest men in America [6].

The drafting of the Constitution

In May 1787, 55 men—now known as the “Founding Fathers”—gathered in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention to draft the new country’s legal principles and establish the new government. Alexander Hamilton—a delegate of New York, George Washington’s closest advisor and the first secretary of the treasury—summed up their task: “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people… Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government” [7]. Indeed, the task of the 55 men was to draft a document that would guarantee the power and privileges of the new ruling class while making just enough concessions to deflect dissent from other classes in society.

Who were the Founding Fathers? It goes without saying that all the delegates were white, property-owning men. Citing the work of Charles Beard, Howard Zinn wrote, “A majority of them were lawyers by profession, most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing or shipping, half of them had money loaned out at interest, and 40 of the 55 held government bonds” [8].

The vast majority of the population was not represented at the Constitutional Convention: There were no women, African Americans, Native Americans or poor whites. The U.S. Constitution was written by property-owning white men to give political power, including voting rights, exclusively to property-owning white men, who made up about 10 percent of the population.

Alexander Hamilton advocated for monarchical-style government with a president and senate chosen for life. The Constitutional Convention opted, rather, for a “popularly” elected House of Representatives, a Senate chosen by state legislators, a president elected by electors chosen by state legislators, and Supreme Court justices appointed by the president.

Democracy was intended as a cover. In the 10th article of the “Federalist Papers”—85 newspaper articles written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay advocating ratification of the U.S. Constitution—Madison wrote that the establishment of the government set forth by the Constitution would control “domestic faction and insurrection” deriving from “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal distribution of property, or for any other improper or wicked project.” During the convention, Alexander Hamilton delivered a speech advocating a strong centralized state power to “check the imprudence of democracy.”

It is quite telling that the Constitution took the famous phrase of the Declaration of Independence “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and changed it to “life, liberty and property.” The debates of the Constitutional Convention were largely over competing economic interests of the wealthy, not a debate between haves and have-nots.

The new Constitution legalized slavery. Article 4, Section 2 required that escaped slaves be delivered back to their masters. Slaves would count as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of deciding representation in Congress. The “three-fifths compromise” was between southern slave-holding delegates who wanted to count slaves in the population to increase their representation, while delegates from the northern states wanted to limit their influence and so not count slaves as people at all.

Furthermore, some of the most important constitutional rights, such as the right to free speech, the right to bear arms and the right to assembly were not intended to be included in the Constitution at all. The Bill of Rights was amended to the Constitution four years after the Constitutional Convention had adjourned so that the document could get enough support for ratification.

As a counter to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution gave Congress the power to limit these rights to varying degrees. For example, seven years after the Constitution was amended to provide the right to free speech, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to say or write anything “false, scandalous or malicious” against the government, Congress or president with the intent to defame or build popular hatred of these entities.

Today, many people look to the Constitution—and especially to the Bill of Rights—as the only guarantor of basic political rights. And while the Constitution has never protected striking workers from being beaten over the heads by police clubs while exercising their right to assemble outside plant gates, or protected revolutionaries’ right to freedom of speech as they are jailed or gunned down, the legal gains for those without property do need to be defended.

But defending those rights has to be done with the knowledge that the founding document of the United States has allowed the scourge of unemployment, poverty and exploitation to carry on unabated because it was a document meant to enshrine class oppression. A constitution for a socialist United States would begin with the rights of working and oppressed people.

During the period leading to the second U.S. Revolution, commonly known as the Civil War, militant opponents of slavery traveled the country to expose the criminal institution that was a bedrock of U.S. society. On July 4, 1854, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution before thousands of supporters of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. He called it a “covenant with death and an agreement with hell,” referring to its enshrining of slavery.

The crowd shouted back, “Amen” [9].

Although slavery has been abolished, the property that is central to the Constitution—private property, the right to exploit the majority for the benefit of the tiny minority—remains. In that sense, Garrison’s words still ring true.

References

[1] James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 10. Availablehere.
[2] Michael Parenti,Democracy for the Few, 9th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, 1974/2011), 5.
[3] Howard Zinn,A People’s History of the United States(New York: Longman, 1980), 65.
[4] Ibid., 59.
[5] Ibid., 72.
[6] Ibid., 84.
[7] Cited in Howard Zinn,Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology(New York: Harper Collins, 1990), 152.
[8] Zinn,A People’s History of the United States, 89.
[9] Zinn,Declarations of Independence, 231.

Blood in the Bank: Hidden Profits of American Slavery and the Call for Reparations

By Youhanna Haddad

During the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders declined to support reparations. He instead proposed instituting programs to help “distressed communities” in general, believing this indirect approach to compensation to be superior. “There are better ways to [repay blacks] than just writing… a check,” Sanders insisted.

But the patchwork of social-democratic reforms that comprised the Senator’s presidential platform are wholly insufficient to this task. To see why, we must scientifically analyze the role chattel slavery played in the construction of the United States. Doing this leads us to an obvious and inescapable conclusion. As Karl Marx himself observed, “Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.”

Origins of Bondage

In what is now the United States, chattel slavery developed primarily to produce agricultural commodities. Europeans constructed race to justify the creation of a class in permanent bondage, forced to work the vast estates they’d amassed through genocide of the indigenous population. Millions of slaves kidnapped and transported to the New World harvested cash crops like cotton, coffee, sugarcane, and tobacco. They did so, of course, under unimaginably toilsome and oppressive conditions. Sugarcane production, for example, entailed such dangerous conditions that deaths among slaves outnumbered births. Slaves were forced to produce sugar until their health crumbled, necessitating constant importation of additional slaves to keep plantations profitable. 

The need for labor pervaded the colonial economy. Even large portions of white immigrants came to address this demand through the system of indentured servitude. Nearly half of European immigrants arriving in the colonies came in this manner. Upon arrival, they began a stint of hard and often degrading labor for paltry wages. However, within several years of starting their contracts, these servants would become free citizens. They were then entitled to “freedom dues” from their masters, which typically included land or money. Despite the unsavory terms of the contract, servitude was largely an opportunity for Europeans seeking access to land and wealth unavailable in their homelands. Their contracts allowed them to become settlers without needing capital as a prerequisite.

Despite the exploitative character of indentured servitude, it is utterly incomparable to chattel slavery. Only the former included an element of voluntariness, and the chance to improve one’s economic situation. Indentured servants typically chose to sign their rights away. Of course, this was often done under coercive conditions. Nevertheless, indentured servants had opportunities that slaves were never granted. And the option to leave for the New World is one servants would have only chosen if they believed their life would improve in the colonies. Marxist historian Christopher Hill alludes to this in his 1967 book Reformation to Industrial Revolution:

“For many of the early settlers servitude was a temporary phase through which one worked one’s way from freedom to land-ownership.”

Indeed, many emancipated servants would go on to join the ranks of the rich and powerful. In 1629, for example, nearly 17% of members in “Virginia’s House of Burgesses [were] former indentured servant[s].” This mobility led Marx to remark that classes in early America “continually change[d] and interchange[d] their elements in constant flux.”

The ability to ascend economically, however, was enjoyed almost exclusively by whites. Conversely, Africans in the New World faced maximal exploitation, generation after generation. Aside from limited exceptions, until 1865, they could not escape enslavement and subsequently died in shackles. Europeans benefiting from this racial caste system were well aware of its titanic productive capacity. As British merchant Malachy Postlethwayt noted in 1745…

“Is it not notorious to the whole World, that the Business of Planting in our British colonies, as well as in the French, is carried on by the Labour of Negroes, imported thither from Africa? Are we not indebted to those valuable People, the Africans for our Sugars, Tobaccoes, Rice, Rum, and all other Plantation Produce?”

Calculating the Theft

Scholars have spilled a lot of ink trying to estimate the dollar value of labor stolen from black slaves. Considering the breadth of industries involved, and the interconnected nature of markets, such a figure is exceedingly difficult to calculate. However, by summing the hours of labor performed by American slaves, policy scholar Thomas Craemer produced an estimate. He concluded that “the present value of U.S. slave labor… ranges from $5.9 to $14.2 trillion.” in 2009 dollars. Adjusted for 13 years of inflation, the range is $8.2 to $19.6 trillion in today’s money. The upper limit of Craemer’s estimate is therefore roughly equivalent to America’s entire gross domestic product!

If we utilize Craemer’s upper limit and think that black Americans today should be compensated for the value of their ancestors’ labor, they’re each owed a whopping $467,000. Even the lower limit still comes in at around $195,000. And this by no means covers all of the profits derived from the institution of slavery.

Banks, for example, lent vast sums of money to productive plantations and profited off the interest. The shipping industry got rich from building and selling slave ships. Insurance corporations grew wealthy from insuring the shipments of slaves and the products of slave labor. Furthermore, the explosion of the textile industry was facilitated by the abundant supply of cotton picked by slaves. Great Britain was considered the titan of textiles in the early industrial period with over half of British cotton imports produced from American slave labor.

We must recognize the variety of ways in which capitalist development benefited from chattel slavery. Ignoring them suppresses proper academic investigation of questions pertinent to racial justice. The colonial project as we know it would’ve been impossible without the forced labor of millions of African slaves. And that has strategic implications for how society should try to rectify the historical and ongoing oppression of black people.

Ramifications of Ignorance

Particularly since the deaths of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., the American political establishment has tried to co-opt the black liberation struggle. Every February, school children are taught that black leaders look down from heaven with approval at a nation that never went beyond piecemeal reforms to address gross historical injustices. This mischaracterization of the black liberation struggle and its leaders is only possible due to misunderstanding the function of slavery. From Bernie Sanders to Mitch McConnell, American politicians do not wish to see the reappropriation of stolen wealth to black people. To do so would acknowledge the incredible economic benefit slavery provided to the nation and, more importantly, force the beneficiaries to pay compensation.

In essence, the effort to downplay the role of slavery in American development is a matter of legitimacy to the United States regime. Obscuring the role of slavery in American development allows liberals to falsely assert that “liberal-democratic values” are the root of American exceptionalism. This erroneously whitewashes history with the self-congratulatory implication that European ideologies, rather than African labor and Native land, built the world’s most successful empire. In order to eradicate capitalist pseudo-history from the realm of fact, we need to tirelessly examine how exploitation is the real engine of growth in capitalist development.

While reparations alone would not end global capitalism, it is always necessary and beneficial to explore the economic contributions of every exploited group. The unrecognized domestic labor of women, the wage slavery in factories of the Global South, the historical theft of trillions of dollars in assets from the Global South — this is the hidden life force of capitalist states. Without recognizing these contributions, it is impossible to materially analyze history to the benefit of the masses.

In our mission to end capitalism, the vast majority of our allies are the highly exploited masses of Africa and Asia. Their exploitation is still financed through the reinvested wealth created by African slaves. Connecting these struggles is an essential prerequisite to building the durable, international, class solidarity of the colored masses needed to end capitalism once and for all.

There Is No Substantive Economic Recovery In Sight: Capitalism and Its State Are Running Out of Tricks

Pictured: A Maricopa County constable escorts a family out of their apartment after serving an eviction order for non-payment on Sept. 30 in Phoenix. [John Moore / Getty Images]

By Shawgi Tell

One of the fundamental economic laws under capitalism is for wealth to become more concentrated in fewer hands over time, which in turn leads to more political power in fewer hands, which means that the majority have even less political and economic power over time. Monopoly in economics means monopoly in politics. It is the opposite of an inclusive, democratic, modern, healthy society. This retrogressive feature intrinsic to capitalism has been over-documented in thousands of reports and articles from hundreds of sources across the political and ideological spectrum over the last few decades. It is well-known, for example, that a handful of people own most of the wealth in the U.S. and most members of Congress are millionaires. This leaves out more than 95% of people. Not surprisingly, “policy makers” have consistently failed to reverse these antisocial trends inherent to an obsolete system.

At the same time, with no sense of irony and with no fidelity to science, news headlines from around the world continue to scream that the economy in many countries and regions is doing great and that more economic recovery and growth depend almost entirely, if not entirely, on vaccinating everyone (multiple times). In other words, once everyone is vaccinated, we will see really good economic times, everything will be amazing, and we won’t have too much to worry about. Extremely irrational and irresponsible statements and claims of all kinds continue to be made in the most dogmatic and frenzied way by the mainstream press at home and abroad in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the deep economic crisis continually unfolding nationally and internationally. Dozens of countries are experiencing profound economic problems.

While billions of vaccination shots have already been administered worldwide, and millions more are administered every day (with and without people’s consent), humanity continues to confront many major intractable economic problems caused by the internal dynamics of an outdated economic system.

A snapshot:

1.      More rapid and intense inflation everywhere

2.      Major supply chain disruptions and distortions everywhere

3.      Shortages of many products

4.      “Shortages” of workers in many sectors worldwide

5.      Shortened and inconsistent hours of operation at thousands of businesses

6.      Falling value of the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies

7.      Growing stagflation

8.      Millions of businesses permanently disappeared

9.      More income and wealth inequality

10.  High dismal levels of unemployment, under-employment, and worker burnout

11.  Growing health insurance costs

12.  Unending fear, anxiety, and hysteria around endless covid strains

13.  More scattered panic buying

14.  The stock market climbing while the real economy declines (highly inflated asset valuations in the stock market)

15.  Spectacular economic failures like Lehman Brothers (in the U.S. 13 years ago) and Evergrande (in China in 2021)

16.  All kinds of debt increasing at all levels

17.  Central banks around the world printing trillions in fiat currencies non-stop and still lots of bad economic news

18.  And a whole host of other harsh economic realities often invisible to the eye and rarely reported on that tell a much more tragic story of an economy that cannot provide for the needs of the people

The list goes on and on. More nauseating data appears every day. Economic hardship, which takes on many tangible and intangible forms, is wreaking havoc on the majority at home and abroad. There is no real and substantive economic improvement. It is hard to see a bright, stable, prosperous, peaceful future for millions under such conditions, which is why many, if not most, people do not have a good feeling about what lies ahead and have little faith in the rich, their politicians, and “representative democracy.” It is no surprise that President Joe Biden’s approval rating is low and keeps falling.

What will the rich and their political and media representatives say and do when most people are vaccinated, everyone else has natural immunity, and the economy is still failing? What will the rich do when economic failure cannot be blamed on bacteria or viruses? To be sure, the legitimacy crisis will further deepen and outmoded liberal institutions of governance will become even more obsolete and more incapable of sorting out today’s serious problems. “Representative democracy” will become more discredited and more illusions about the “social contract” will be shattered. In this context, talk of “New Deals” for this and “New Deals” for that won’t solve anything in a meaningful way either because these “New Deals” are nothing more than an expansion of state-organized corruption to pay the rich, mainly through “public-private-partnerships.” This is already being spun in a way that will fool the gullible. Many are actively ignoring how such high-sounding “reforms” are actually pay-the-rich schemes that increase inequality and exacerbate a whole host of other problems.

It is not in the interest of the rich to see different covid strains and scares disappear because these strains and scares provide a convenient cover and scapegoat for economic problems rooted in the profound contradictions of an outmoded economic system over-ripe for a new direction, aim, and control. It is easier to claim that the economy is intractably lousy because of covid and covid-related restrictions than to admit that the economy is continually failing due to the intrinsic built-in nature, operation, and logic of capital itself.

There is no way forward while economic and political power remain dominated by the rich. The only way out of the economic crisis is by vesting power in workers, the people who actually produce the wealth that society depends on. The rich and their outmoded system are a drag on everyone and are not needed in any way; they are a major obstacle to the progress of society; they add no value to anything and are unable and unwilling to lead the society out of its deepening all-sided crisis.

There is an alternative to current obsolete arrangements and only the people themselves, armed with a new independent outlook, politics, and thinking can usher it in. Economic problems, health problems, and 50 other lingering problems are not going to be solved so long as the polity remains marginalized and disempowered by the rich and their capital-centered arrangements and institutions. New and fresh thinking and consciousness are needed at this time. A new and more powerful human-centered outlook is needed to guide humanity forward.

Human consciousness and resiliency are being severely tested at this time, and the results have been harsh and tragic in many ways for so many. We are experiencing a major test of the ability of the human species to bring into being what is missing, that is, to overcome the neoliberal destruction of time, space, and the fabric of society so as to unleash the power of human productive forces to usher in a much more advanced society where time-space relations accelerate in favor of the entire polity. There is an alternative to the anachronistic status quo.

Shawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, privatization and political economy. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu.