250th Anniversary of U.S. Declaration of Independence
Who Is "We the People" – That Is the Question
A feature of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence is that everything is confusing. There is a lot of talk about the arrangements which were brought into being in the 17th century, declaimed in the Declaration of Independence, 1776 and subsequently enshrined in the Constitution, 1787. The interpretations of what they mean are many, but their significance is covered up behind many veils.
Also noteworthy is that this is a time when those arrangements have in fact been undone; they no longer function. This is especially true of the system of representation enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787 to give the Declaration of Independence governing forms. The result is that strange paradoxes emerge which have no solutions. How to tackle this is a matter of concern worthy of discussion aimed at providing modern definitions of democracy and equality which open a path to progress.
The Declaration of Independence, proclaims: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."
The Declaration concludes: "... We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States, in General Congress, Assembled appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States... that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
As for the U.S. Constitution, the Preamble lays out the fundamental purposes of government in the U.S.: to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.
The phrase "We the People" means that, in theory it is either the multitude of people that have contracted with government and a covenant exists which authors a representative -- which does not make sense because a constitution constitutes, it does not contract -- or, "We the people" is the personification of the state which can be represented by its president and the executive power. This too is problematic because it leaves out the demos, the people -- in other words democracy itself -- which connotes a condition of civil war.
What is being represented by the name "We the people" is an avatar. In Indian philosophy an avatar refers to a graphical or physical representation of a person, idea, or deity. The image is one of a power coming down from the gods, which takes a form.
Today, the conditions which exist are mostly said to be caused by capitalism or global warming or greed or ignorance and the like. Empirical evidence is given to illustrate or prove whatever cause is given. In this form of argument, in a situation in which the majority of people do not have private property, agency is given to private property, to a tiny minority. Why? How? The demos are left out again.
People are said to have voluntarily signed themselves into slavery as if what is a person is based on the representations provided in the 17th century by the British political theorist Thomas Hobbes, widely considered to be a founding father of modern political philosophy. This representation, incorporated into the thinking of the U.S. "founding fathers" when they wrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence and then the U.S. Constitution, cannot sort out any problems -- neither those the rulers nor the peoples are facing today. Their theory of representation cannot address the social relations and whole ensemble of human relations that are indispensable and which exist independent of any individual's will.
Like the name democracy, the name "We the People" is given as the personification for what is called a sovereign representative. Said to enshrine the principle of sovereignty, the author of said sovereignty is the person of state. Why this is the case and why it should be the case today is seldom addressed.
Representative democracy is said to deal with the multitude, with an entire population of people that belong to a given state, as the Constitution puts it, "We the people of the United States." The multitude, the majority, have membership in this state, while the state has authority to hold that multitude together thereby forsaking civil war. One rationale given for this structure is that a single person of state is needed because, without the state, the multitude itself will fall apart. Another rationale is that people would not want to work on their own; they are fundamentally lazy, so they must be coerced by a state to do so. The starting point for this argument is that people are not productive on their own, whether as individuals or collectives. The justification given is that on their own, people would cheat and lie and steal and be corrupted. To control this multitude, a state is needed with the power to control use of force, coercion and corruption.
The conception that comes with this representation is that the person of state is an actual person -- with a difference. One difference is that this person has the monopoly right to demand an obligation from the multitude because this is what the Covenant they entered into established. The reason given is this is the only way to control violence. This one person of state can demand an obligation based on possessing power, including inflicting death, punishment, the power to wage war and obligate others to do so. To take all these actions, which are listed in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution (1788), this person of state has a monopoly on the use of force/violence.
The deal is that the state will provide for security against violence. Yet the U.S. state is the most violent there is. The theory based on Covenant Thesis, as given rise to by Hobbes, which others contributed to in subsequent periods, cannot address this reality. It cannot solve the problem of the extreme use of violence for obliteration nor the lack of mechanisms to hold the state or its representatives accountable.
The principle in the U.S. Constitution for this power of the state is attributed to "We the People" but, in fact, refers to the signers of the Constitution, the men of property at the time, those with power, who defined rights as privileges. The Preamble reads:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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."
There are three different parts to consider.
The first is the issue of authority. It is inspired by old notions in which a monarchy exercises supreme power and principles are given to constitute the state. Within this, the basic concept of the Constitution is that there needs to be an authority above party, above the factions and their private individual interests. There must be something neutral, above their contention.
Today it is necessary to address the concept of authority enshrined in the Constitution because it no longer holds water. Those writing about the President as the personification of a monarch do not address this basic concept of the Constitution, even more needed given that the president has the power to launch nuclear weapons.
The second part of the Constitution takes into account the proposition that the authority is either represented by a single individual or small number of individuals, which gives rise to the need to control the bureaucracy, which today is massive. Due to the factions among the oligarchs which contend for power, it is necessary to mediate between the executive (whether referring to a monarchy or republic) and the bureaucracy. That is supposed to be accomplished through the mediation of representatives. In the case of the U.S. this is the role of the Congress.
The third part deals with the notion of universal interests and the position that the military is not to take sides among the factions; it should represent the interests of the whole. According to the theory, the arrangements allow the rulers to control the violence of factions. The first sentence James Madison writes in Federalist Papers #10, The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection, is: "Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction."
A fundamental problem with all of this is that it tells us nothing about the system of rule no matter whether the supreme power is concentrated in the hands of a single ruler or a small, unaccountable group. In either case, neither the system of rule nor the nature of power and how it is wielded are revealed.
The opposite of democracy is given as autocracy -- a system where absolute power is concentrated in the hands of a single ruler or a small, unaccountable group. Whether talking about war, or democracy, civilian or military rule, cold war or hot war -- they are all given as a representation of something that exists, as if it exists in incomplete form, as if what the human species stands for is imperfect but striving for perfection.
The representation given is the naming of objects or phenomenon as something that has agency, as if it is a human person. A significant problem is that arguments given today tend to separate humans and nature. Some say that humans have become a natural force. For instance, humans can artificially create temperatures equal to that of the sun many times over. The two -- humans and nature -- are seen as two external entities, two separate external phenomena. The problem then becomes that we must mediate to bring humans together, harmonize them, rank them, bring them under our control.
This separation of humans and nature has been the case since the late 1500s, when the capitalist mode of production emerged and replaced feudal relations. However, especially by the 17th and 18th centuries, labour and nature could no longer be separated when talking about the activity of humans. The working class took its place at the centre of all developments. Only in thought could a separation exist.
The two are not separate. Both are necessary for the development of human productive powers. The rulers attempt to deal with this problem that they are not separate by reducing human beings to a species which exists only as a productive force, a force considered not only external to what one is working on, like nature, but dispensable. The only harmonization which can take place is then said to be performed through the mediation of politics called a representative democracy.
This gives us an image that democracy is a personification of human political powers that have evolved, which gives rise to a conception that we are dealing with both evolution and revolution. Even though the democracy is given outside of history, its development is seen as evolving, through history, and then it is said that history is periodically broken up by revolutions.
Should we say that evolution gives rise to revolution, that they are related to one another? This leads to the problem that the conception does not help to explain what is going on in the world today, whether in the United States or in terms of its relations with countries it currently seeks to control and dominate. It is also claimed by those promoting the concept, that this evolution of political systems has now ended, with liberal democracy being the end of human development when it comes to governing systems. This raises the obvious question: with the clear failure of existing liberal democratic systems what then is to come next?
(Based on Conversations held by the Ideological Studies Centre, 2008-2026)
This article was published in
Volume 56 Number 6 - July 6, 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/TS56061.HTM
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