No. 7
July 7, 2026
250th Anniversary of U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
Lifting the Veil on Oligarchic Conceptions
of Sovereignty
• Transition, Human Relations and False
Argument that
Concepts with Histories Cannot Have Definitions
Lifting the Veil on Oligarchic Conceptions of Sovereignty
Ideological Studies
Centre
May-June 2026
Part 1
• Seven Significant Veils Blocking Modern Democracy
Transition, Human Relations and False
Argument that Concepts with Histories
Cannot Have Definitions
When we discuss the concept of definitions, a definition has a relationship with meaning that is different from the dictionary meaning. The dictionary definition of democracy merely substitutes the word for other words, i.e. democracy is rule of the majority -- which begs the question who is the majority and what is its rule? Defining what democracy is does not pose itself as an existential dilemma: to be or not to be a democracy. It is not an aspiration but something that can be identified based on the ensemble of relations between humans and between humans and nature. These relations and what they reveal can be identified. Because of this reality, one can provide democracy with a modern definition which is meaningful.
Democracy is the name that also gives rise to the question of the relation between people and rule. What sort of connection is that?
The Heritage Foundation, for example, with their Freedom House founded in 1941 to "support and defend" democracy, compiles a list of which countries are democracies based on how many billionaires the country has. Despite all the criteria they list, there is no basis for what they are claiming about democracy. This is their purpose -- to promote false concepts of what constitutes democracy.
There really is a need for modern definitions. End of History arguments confuse the human relations. This is so whether talking about going toward socialism or going back to feudalism. Both indicate there is transition. If we do not have a way of talking about the human relations involved in this transition, we are reduced to only dealing with concepts of belonging. An example of how this is achieved is provided by the Heritage Foundation when it talks about democracy. Democracy is given as a category and a list is given of what belongs to this category. The list is made up of different features followed by whatever people who accept the list or reject the list have to say. Then come the different party and other factions telling us what is true and what is false, and so on. There are also people with privileged positions whose explanations exist outside of the official lists. They tend to get down to the nitty gritty by showing where words came from. These words are in addition to the list, outside of it. X word or concept can be traced from some ancient point down to today. It is said you cannot know what democracy means now, because it has a history, and its meaning lies in a comprehension of that history. Everything else can change but not this word. It arrives with us, with a list, like the one provided by the Heritage Foundation's Freedom House.
The rulers say that if concepts have histories, they cannot have definitions because the context is always different and there can be no consensus everyone agrees with. This was Nietzsche's reaction to the Paris Commune which he opposed ("On the Genealogy of Morals," 1887). This false concept has been widely popularized and taught. Post-modernism gives this argument a special place when it posits that there is no reason to have modern definitions because you cannot have definitions for concepts like democracy that have a history. In this way, concerted thought pressure is put on everyone to say that definitions can only be given if there is no history. Yet anything of importance to people, whatever their perspective, always has history.
For historians, one of the foremost arguments developing over the last decades is the argument for neo-republicanism. Lots of documents have been gathered and comparisons made between republicanism and liberalism. But then this same argument is given that concepts like democracy and republicanism have history and cannot be defined. This falsehood is widespread in the Anglo-American university system. It came up very strongly in the U.S. when the definition of what republicanism was against and what it was for was being debated by the "Founding Fathers." This included the concept that republicanism provides for the possibility of the people coming to power, something founding fathers wanted to prevent.
Another argument given after the collapse of the USSR, which is still pervasive, is that republicanism was against domination. This argument served to cover up the actual contradictions that exist. The opposite of domination is non-domination but the notion given is that domination is anti-freedom and non-domination is freedom. On this basis, in relation to U.S. democracy, opposing fascism can be given as opposing domination by Hitler while non-domination is freedom as promoted by U.S. democracy. This is how the argument goes, making it easy to impose the claim that what is needed is defending U.S.-style democracy by opposing what is called external domination.
We can also look at the U.S. civil war as an example. President Lincoln faced this problem when he did not want to say a civil war was taking place. He wanted to treat it as a criminal act by the southern confederacy, but not a civil war. Though the war started in 1860, Lincoln did not call it a civil war until 1863. This was in part because civil war has resonance in the history of republics, as occurred with the Roman Republic. In terms of a conception, the Roman Republic is always connected with war and particularly civil war and Lincoln wanted to avoid this.
It is also the case that some historians are finally noticing the fact that there were many wars going on in this period. U.S. aggression at the time of the civil war can be traced back to wars against Indigenous Peoples (1840-1860) and that against Mexico (1846-48) with the same generals leading those wars that then led the Confederacy.
Lack of Modern Definitions Gets in the Way of Accurate Historiography
Lincoln could not see it as a war of aggression against a sovereign republic. The Republican Party (founded 1854), which he was part of, was supposed to be based on republican principles, while the Democrats (founded 1828), were based on liberal democratic principles. For Lincoln, it is difficult to see it as civil war which involves liberal notions as opposed to republican concepts.
Lincoln finally issues the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, regarding enslaved people only in the slave states of the Confederacy, not all enslaved people. But he does so on the basis not of freeing enslaved people, but of confiscating the property of the enemy. He uses international laws of war or the law of nations, which were republican concepts to frame it. The republican conception was a person can only be free in a free state and slave states were not free states, so people enslaved were property. This is also consistent with the earlier Supreme Court Dred Scott decision in 1857, which ruled that enslaved people had no rights as they were property, not human beings.
As Marx said, the civil war was the first time in world history that there was a rebellion in the name of slavery rather than against slavery. Lincoln could not confront this. His was a dilemma of rights of property and rights of persons and it was and is property that has the greatest rights. Lincoln had to confront that this was a question of whether the U.S. was sovereign and independent. The Confederacy said they were in the right; except they did not hold to the Constitution's "all men are created equal." But the concepts of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution are based on that.
The Emancipation Proclamation says a slave is constituted under the law of nations, which means not under domestic law. The law of nations also provides a basis for going to war.
The problem today is we are still completely embedded in a juridical outlook that extends back to Roman law and British Common Law, which have this definition of free person and slave persons. A free person lives in a free state, meaning the state determines whether one is free or enslaved. A slave person is a conquered person, stemming from wars of aggression against the societies of Africa. People came from many nations. They were part of a conquest under the law of nations so have no standing as a person or a people. The Dred Scott case affirmed this, saying the reason people of African descent could not present themselves in a court of law, had no standing, was because they were conquered.
This conception of conquered slaves with no rights, rather than a people with rights, including the right to self-determination, is used by the U.S. and Israel today. Israel was created by the UN in the name of opposing genocide, and then also laws about genocide were given. Terms, like genocide, are mixed up with the type of rule and laws that exist. The U.S. and Israel consider the Palestinians conquered, and not a people, and try to turn debate to whether the law concerning genocide, with its content of intent, has been met. It is the conditions and human relations which determine whether a people with rights exists and whether genocide exists, not the state and laws.
Representation Means Turning the Popular Will into the Legal Will
Let us return to the problem of an existential dilemma and what that involves. At the University of Chicago there is a text on free speech titled Free Speech and National Security. It talks about the dilemma of balancing liberty and what Hobbes called authority. How far can freedom go in war time? Liberty vs. security are given as propositions. The proposition for liberty and proposition for security conflict with each other, which the dictionary says is a dilemma.[1]
Lincoln, in his Gettysburg address (November 1863) coming after the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1863), clearly says the war is a civil war. He gives two propositions that are in conflict: a nation conceived in liberty (involving independence and self-determination) and dedicated to all men created equal. He talks about membership, "all created equal." Then there is a second proposition, the unfinished work of having government of, by and for the people. This was a republican concept since the 1830s. Liberal democracy does not stand for this. But these two propositions are a dilemma being expressed today.
There is a basic flaw in the argument given about representation and the basis for there being sovereignty. There is a conflict between republicanism and liberal democracy, which has proven incapable of stopping this backlash called extreme right-wing growing fascism which also goes by other names. For the Constitution, equal does not mean equal now, it is aspirational as in "let me sell you a bill of goods about a 'more perfect union.'"
There is a fundamental contradiction between creation, which is natural, and what humans produce through work. One's interests come from what is natural, from self-interest. And there is the work one does, which sets the limits, defines whatever it is one does.
There is a basic attempt to cover up the fundamental contradictions that exist, using liberal concepts of U.S.-style democracy. Mitchel Franklin, who does serious work analyzing the conflict between republican and liberal conceptions, talks about and refers to a number of types of constitutions in the U.S. The first constitution is the one put forward before the Bill of Rights, which was widely rejected by the people who were striving to advance the democratic revolution. The second is that Constitution which contains the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments) and the third is that with amendments 13-15, coming after the victory over slavery. Franklin says that Roosevelt tried and failed to bring in a fourth constitution. Franklin also talks about the 10th amendment, which refers to rights retained by the people (as opposed to King Trump): "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This reflects the influence of Roman law as opposed to British Common Law.
In giving modern definitions, the terms used must be in relation to the proposition being made. For example, if we are speaking about equality, there is equal membership in and equality of transition, going from and to, which has a lot to do with representation. Representation is given as a solution for direct democracy, where civil war is a foregone conclusion, as shown by history. When speaking about equality there are definite relations in which quantity is involved. This is not the same as showing the compromise between democracy and oligarchy, taking what is given about the republican nature of what the constitution is supposed to be. William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist, opposed the constitution as a constitution of slavery, and was against that compromise. People are supposed to give up their desire to get rid of the oligarchy, the aristocracy. The notion is: "if we can take your taxes and make a public army, as long as we decide when it is used, then you the people must give up the desire to get rid of oligarchy" -- which today is the financial oligarchy. The dilemma involves contradictory propositions, including the dilemma of creation and work of, by and for the people.
We would say representation is not against direct democracy, but rather that there is a flaw in the commonly held concept of representation. Meaningful representation must turn a popular will of the collectivity into a legal will that is for the people. The measure is whether of, by, and for the people -- the popular will -- gets translated into the legal will. What must be represented is the popular will.
Note
1. "Free Speech and National Security," Geoffrey R. Stone, 84 Indiana Law Journal 939 (2009)
(Based on Conversations held by the Ideological Studies Centre, 2008-2026)
Lifting the Veil on Oligarchic Conceptions of Sovereignty
Part 1
Seven Significant Veils Blocking
Modern Democracy
Today, TML is beginning the series of Conversations held by the Ideological Studies Centre in May-June 2026. Integral to the work of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) on modern definitions, this four part series is published under the title Lifting the Veil on Oligarchic Conceptions of Sovereignty. Seven significant veils are identified as an integral part of bourgeois historiography depriving the peoples of the outlook needed to establish a modern democracy in which the "we" in "we the people" is the people, not the financial oligarchy and its factions vying to wield power in favour of their own narrow interests. The aim of these discussions is to corroborate the need for our own historiography, based on our own vantage points which recognize the peoples as the makers of history. It is the peoples through their resistance, their own striving to humanize the social and natural environment, who not only affirm themselves as peoples, but also establish rights by virtue of being human.
In the last few weeks there have been reports on many matters of concern. These include rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court increasing executive powers while further attacking voting rights and more specifically targeting Black people in an effort to block them from political participation; Secretary of War Hegseth's outburst demanding the military and government embrace the warrior ethos, as opposed to a liberal democratic ethos; continued attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and increased threats against Cuba. All are part of the counter-revolution specific to this time and space.
Another part of this specific counter-revolution characterized, among other things, by the inability of the bourgeoisie to sort out their conflicts, is the striving of opportunist forces among the rulers who are coming forward to say that all these conflicts can be sorted out if all the norms from the past are discarded -- the constitution, institutions of the past, everything. They demand a radical rupture, going back before any conception of rights, norms, arrangements based on this or that principle. They propose stripping the human being of all humanity, the human person of being human. Except of course they cannot do this.
Within the movements opposing counter-revolution there remains a strong push, in part because of familiarity, that we can get rid of this cancerous counter-revolution by going back to what we had before -- the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, etc. This is especially the case now within the context of the promotion of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 1776.
W.E.B. Dubois spoke to this point when he said if you only get to that high point of Reconstruction -- at which point the democratic revolution remained incomplete -- and keep repeating that this high point is the aim of the historical movement, the result is endless tragedy. This is the result so long as the limits are set by what Du Bois referred to as the "American mind." This "American mind" is comprised of all the thinking and mindset of the rulers up to this point; the thinking and mindset which influence all of society.
It is difficult to grasp the importance of the fight to eliminate all forms of enslavement at a time new forms of enslavement are proliferating. In this counter-revolution which is taking place Trump is attempting to eliminate everything which prevailed in the past using, for example, mass detention and detention camps, which could readily be converted into slave-labour camps for any worker the executive power claims is a traitor, or terrorist or whatever label is used according to the caprice of the moment. The number and size of these concentration camps is growing far beyond what the executive declares it requires for detention of immigrants and refugees.
Given the influence of the "American mind," ways of cognizing existing human relations and their ensemble do not spontaneously arise. It is difficult to grasp the significance of developments. We are speaking here not just about what is blowing up daily in our faces, telling us to constantly react to the immediate attacks, debate about the rise of fascism, and so on. We are raising the very important question: what is the whole historical movement revealing? Dealing with that requires seeing not just what has happened up until now but dealing with what the whole story reveals. Marx put it very well when he said: "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." That is what is entailed when speaking of the whole history.
To know the implications of what is taking place today requires knowing the implications of what exists in the actual historical situation. One also needs the implications for what is going to happen in the near future, for one's strategy for the historical period. What carries one into the immediate future is what is meant by the implications.
Dubois put forward looking at national and international implications as criteria for looking into history. He was not speaking to whether that "American mind" was democratic or autocratic or any such divisions, but to the need to look at implications. Where has this "American mind" taken us? Because the question of political power is at stake, we must know the path to acquiring that power and the blocks standing in the way of political empowerment of the people, of full people's democracy. What will create conditions to transition to a world without wars of mass destruction, exploitation, racism, inequality?
Du Bois had specific insights. One of them was around the colour line, which everyone gets wrong. People say he is not talking about social relations, even though he is. When in the Forethought to The Souls of Black Folk, he states, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line," he is speaking to line, social lines and the colour line, their relationship. In raising the colour line, he also talked about Black people in the U.S. being born with a veil and he gave a list of six other peoples involving other veils to consider.
"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world -- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." (The Souls of Black Folk, Forethought, p.2).
The lifting of veils is connected to looking at and identifying the aspects of human power. Those waging the current counter-revolution assert that they can strip away all the things that make humans human -- their needs, aims, collective consciousness and memory -- that they can crush the human spirit until there is nothing left. This is the content of the argument given by Trump when he talks about obliteration. Or when he says the U.S. government is only about military power, that the federal government cannot take care of human welfare including childcare. It must fund war and military might. He links this claim to embracing the warrior ethos, repeated and promoted by Secretary of War Hegseth. Trump also says that people should take a risk and accept whatever he says and anyone who does not is a traitor.
These are empty phrases and the problem comes when you try to oppose them with other empty phrases that do not solve the problems at hand. Counter-revolution is not simply Trump and Epstein and similar issues. Counter-revolution is about obliteration, including obliteration of the current constitutional arrangements of the state. It is going beyond restructuring to obliteration.
Different qualities often get mixed up. One example is the term "consent of the governed" which confuses who is referred to when speaking about the governed and those who govern. In the U.S. Declaration of Independence, "consent of the governed" comes with a list of "self-evident truths." There is a list of properties that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights, etc. It ends with a conception of consent of the governed: "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. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness."
The Declaration was given at a particular time and place under historical circumstances. There was a declaration of independence which introduced a concept, not just in terms of words but in terms of the form of independence of a sovereign nation, called separate and equal among powers. Consent of the governed in the Declaration of Independence is given in relation to liberty, a nation "conceived in liberty." The type of liberty talked about is independence, an autonomous independent sovereign body: "We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, 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 they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and 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."
Counter-revolution Targets Sovereignty of the People and of the State
In terms of the truths that "we hold self-evident," who is the we the Declaration of Independence speaks of? Who is the we who hold these self-evident truths? It is those who are the governing, not the governed. According to the conception which is integral to the Constitution, the basis given for independence and equality is what fulfills the requirement to have the "consent of the governed."
We can also look at this as given in the preamble of the United Nations Charter: "We the peoples of the United Nations." The "we the peoples of the United Nations" refers not to the peoples of the world, many of them -- the majority -- not recognized as peoples by the UN, but rather to the nation-states that existed at the time of its founding and which have since joined the UN. The conception held by the major powers, led by U.S., is that the focus is on the nation-state styled in the European fashion. "We the peoples" is a name, a reference to the nation-states that are members.
The counter-revolution by U.S. rulers is trying to destroy the achievements coming out of WWII and the victory of the world anti-fascist war, including the UN Charter, its principles, its conventions and various bodies, like those for refugees.
There is growing contention around both the sovereignty of states and of the peoples. This counter-revolution is targeting both -- whatever sovereignty the peoples, or a given people like the Palestinians, have achieved and the sovereignty of the state, including the U.S. state. Restructuring of the state is part of targeting this sovereignty of the state, dismantling it, obliterating it, including sovereignty of the various authorities within a given country, like state and provincial authorities, military and policing agencies, etc.
A key issue to elaborate on in our polemics is whether sovereignty is of the state, or the sovereignty is of the people. Looking at the democratic republic promised in the U.S. Constitution, it is necessary to ask whether it is a republic of the people, by the people and for the people which is what the ensemble of human relations with the working class as its heart and soul requires. Or is it a state created in the image of the capitalists and today captured by oligarchs, with the end of history-as-such and liberalism imposed as the completion of the "ideological evolution" of human society? The latter supposes that human developments, including ideological and political development, can simply be halted.
The 250th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence widely promoted in the U.S. features Trump saying he is the continuation of that declaration, and he alone represents the state. It is an indication that whether the issue is the sovereignty of the people or of the state, the counter-revolution is directed against both. It is bent on the obliteration of both.
In the face of this destruction, it is suggested that the only possibility is to get rid of the Trump phenomenon and recover the sovereignty of the state -- rather than establish the sovereignty of the people who make up society. This serves to dismiss the source of change, which lies in the resistance and struggles of the peoples and their demands for political empowerment. It dismisses the resistance and struggles that develop the thought material of a people and help create the character of a people as a whole. Part of the attack on sovereignty of the people is to eliminate the collective memory which exists as a people.
In the shape and geometry of power, it is necessary to examine the basis of that power. Is it in the state which imposes on society all its intellectual and moral conceptions of liberty, sovereignty, equality, etc.? Or does the basis of the state lie in the people of society? Which is in the superior position, the people or the state?
The argument saying the basis is in the state gives the solution that it needs to be recovered, whether the state is one of liberal democracy or socialism of the European type, or another. For those who support this argument, the main consideration is recovery of the old state. The form is not the issue.
Giving arguments and reasons for doing so is to veil the actual basis which is in society and the ensemble of human relations and not the state. There is a whole history for such arguments, based on the Covenant Thesis put forward by Thomas Hobbes. The historical veiling or covering up of this issue was fulfilled by Hobbes and others in the mid-1600s. It was at a time of civil wars, when Britain's King Charles I was beheaded and the conception of absolute monarchy and that kings ruled by Divine Right as a plausible argument for holding power was being eliminated.
Hobbes came up with his Covenant Thesis and conceptions of representation based on a covenant of each with each and then with all creating the person of state. The multitude covenants to give authority to this person of state and his representative, be that a president, prime minister, or those delegated by him. These notions of covenant, person of state, supreme power, representation and representative democracy still wield a lot of influence today, making a review of the beginning of this veil and Covenant Thesis mandatory.
History Is the Actual Historical Movement of Peoples
The significance of a veil is recognizing that history is not a sequence of revolutions and counter-revolutions, world wars, scientific developments and the like, the one leading to the other, giving rise to another, etc. The veil hides the fact that history is the actual historical movement of peoples.
History cannot be given as a logical sequence of ideas, an "evolution" of ideology. Imposing such a logical sequence turns the dialectic of history into something that is eclectic. Sometimes it is given as contemporary, sometimes it is an inversion back to the past, but whatever is given is not the historical movement of peoples, with its living dialectic.
Hobbes said there are two kinds of persons: natural and artificial persons. Natural persons and populations of such people make up a multitude who enter into definite social relations. Each natural person has equal powers and rights with every other person, including the right to kill, take, dominate others -- whatever each can do. When there are conditions of civil war with no recognized legitimate authority, or with competing claims to authority, Hobbes called this a condition of nature. Hobbes claimed such conditions would mean endless civil war and the death of society.
He puts forward the covenant of each person with each, and that in doing so each person gives up a little bit of their conscience and liberty. Then all covenant to create the artificial person of state. In doing so they give up their right to judge on major questions that impact not just individuals but everyone. The major questions concern matters of war and peace, crime and punishment and, today, issues of the environment and impoverishment. This judgement gets posited with a single person, that artificial single person of the state. Instead of a multiple of wills at war with one another, there is a single will that can make decisions for the whole of society.
The person of state creates a sovereign representative, president, prime minister, and so forth. Over time this becomes known as the governing machinery, including legislatures. Use of the terms government and governing machinery, especially in the U.S., is to get away from the concept of the state, to confuse the state and its machinery, such as the police and military, which remain constant, and governments, which change, whether through elections, coups or another means of selection. The state also has membership, a polity, a population.
There is a big cover up that representation can only be a person -- a person of state. This goes back to Cicero and Caesar and the Roman empire, summed up then and by Hobbes by saying that each person bears three persons. A self, an adversary (of yourself or someone else), and a judge. Power of judgement, he says, is given to the person of state. Hobbes says the multitude of people, those that existed before the state, could not achieve a single will as they would have competing wills and interests. A single will exercising judgement is needed. This conception of covenant was worked out through actual polemics, battles, civil wars. It was not done as abstract reasoning. This is also given, then and now, as the basis of consent. Individuals consent to give this judgement to the person of state, whether monarch or a president and legislatures.
Giving this consent is to share something with someone else. It is to yield something to someone else when you could have used it to oppose that someone else. Hobbes would say that giving your consent involves choice; it is what you choose. Hobbes was clear on this. As an example, if you are being held up at gunpoint and commanded to give up your money or your life, that is choice. Many then consent to willingly give up their money. We can say that today even that logic does not hold because the counter-revolution imposes that there is nothing you can give up except your life.
These old notions of covenant and consent are getting the ruling powers into all sorts of binds within their own ruling class and with other ruling powers. This further opens the possibility of the people coming to power. Blocking such a possibility is the main aim of the counter-revolution.
The rulers' notion of consent held that its opposite was conquest. You either have a recognized and legitimate authority, with some concept of legality and representation with consent of the governed as recognized by that authority or you have conquest. If you live in a condition where you are subjugated by a power, you either exist as a slave or in conditions of war -- all against all is the image given by Hobbes. The subjugation also became known as the King's peace. You agree to subjugation and give consent to continue life under the subjugator and this constitutes peace. Governing by this consent involves a division between governed and governing. The opposite is to be governed under conquest. Both go back to Roman law and are used today, with Trump leading current efforts to govern by conquest and eliminate even the bourgeois conceptions of consent.
Seven Significant Veils to Be Lifted
Seven significant veils can be identified covering counter-revolution and blocking the modern democracy required today. A key task the movement for people's empowerment faces is to lift these seven veils, which also block development of the outlook required. There are no doubt other veils one could identify, but these are seven of the more significant ones.
Two proponents of these veils are Lloyd Austin, and Philip Bobbitt. Austin was the U.S. Secretary of Defense under Biden. He was promoted as being a popular General, responsible for Central Command and commanding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed him closely, as did Britain's Tony Blair, former U.S. Senator John McCain and others. Austin had an op-ed in the New York Times in April 2026, that links some of the different points we are discussing.[1]
Philip Bobbitt served under different administrations, including that of former presidents Carter, George H.W. Bush and Clinton. He is considered an expert on war and governance and known as a legal scholar and political theorist. Henry Kissinger called him "the outstanding political philosopher of our time," and the British knighted him. He is currently teaching at Colombia University and he taught at Harvard. He wrote a book titled Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century (2008).
Bobbitt said the world was divided between governments of consent, as given in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and governments by terror. He said there is a need for new constitutions and a new state, which he called a market state which protects opportunities. The book was written at the time the U.S. launched its global war of terrorism, but he says it still applies. He also wrote The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (2002). Both Austin and Bobbitt put forward that now we know what modern war looks like.
In our work on modern definitions, we emphasize that the way these people fight about what is and is not democracy and what political divisions do or do not exist does not hold historical water. There are veils to contend with and one of our important tasks is to see how people are deprived of power and see what the historical movement of the peoples and the ensemble of human relations are revealing.
Briefly, the seven veils we are identifying are:
1) The veil that does not see history taking place as actual history, ordered in time and space. Instead, it gives End of History-as-such arguments which is the ordering of a sequence of events and the "evolution" of ideologies. History is given as mental acts in the heads of individuals with everyone having their own version. Peoples are robbed of their actual history and of the historical movements of the peoples worldwide.
2) The veil that sees categories as mental acts, coming out of a person's head and real relations are the incarnation of these private thoughts. This concept may accept that humans produce goods in definite relations, but it does not accept that what humans also produce is a democratic ethos, creating a democratic personality. This personality is produced through resistance and conscious collective activity. It is not an abstract idea. The basis of inversion that exists, as a condition of the ensemble of human relations, is veiled. Think of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. The veil hides that the standard for judging who ruled in society, the Emperor, was created by the tailors, the workers who made invisible clothes.
3) The relation between sustaining life and creating new needs is veiled. This involves veiling the continual movement of human productive powers and the history of the destruction of relations that enslave humans. The social democrats go with arguments to cut defence spending and counter the military-industrial complex so there can be more for human needs. Such demands should be made, but the production of actual life and the creation of new human needs cannot be left out.
4) The conception of balancing continuity with change is a veil. Social relations form a whole. The original conception of sovereignty of power put forward by Hobbes was that it had to be whole and integral. The multitude must be in the body, as illustrated in the representation of Leviathan on the cover of Hobbes' book by the same name. Nowadays people talk more about the need for balance. It is said that today one can meet the requirements of change while keeping the Constitution. Or that one can balance equality with differences, or security with rights. The ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on redistricting claims to be balancing change with continuity.[2]
5) The veil that relates to the idea that the type of world we live in presents us with wanting to keep the good and eliminate the evil, thereby suggesting that unless we eliminate the evil, extinction is a foregone conclusion. This reduces the matter facing us to an existential problem in which "to be or not to be" is the problem and there are no other questions. There is no conception of the necessity for change and when more becomes different, when a new quality emerges.
6) The veil of confusing simplification with complexity. People today argue there is a new situation and we need new theories or ideas to deal with the complexity. The statements are meaningless and often used to dismiss the validity of Marxism-Leninism. They ignore that Marx brings out in the Communist Manifesto that the distinct feature of bourgeois society is its simplification of all the types of class conflicts. The whole of society splits increasingly into two hostile camps, bourgeoisie and proletariat and that the working class is the grave-digger of the bourgeoisie. Lifting this veil involves recognizing that we are dealing with an issue of the whole, the whole of society, splitting into two related and linked parts. Think of the mobius strip as a way of illustrating this. It is not two separate parts. The twist and inversion link them. The class relations from the past are simplified, and today more direct, not more complex.
7) The veil that phony pluralism can provide a means to maintain human survival, that the problem is one of contradictions among the beliefs espoused, often identified as liberalism, European socialism and realism (see as one example, Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace). Beliefs belong to a person; they are not an "ism" they live by. Think of the ancient myth of the Goddess Inanna and her descent into the underworld from a world that is inflamed. She had to strip off seven layers, garments, representing power. Phony pluralism is a veil for hiding who holds power and how the peoples can acquire political power.
Note
1. Article by Lloyd Austin: "Iran Has Shown Us What Modern War Looks Like," New York Times Op-ed, April 7, 2026. Text is below:
Throughout my 41 years in the United States Army and my four years as the secretary of defense, I routinely held after-action reviews. Our military never stops learning and never stops asking: What worked, what didn't, and how do we get better? That ensures America's military remains the best and deadliest fighting force in the world.
The U.S. military must also learn from the war with Iran, which is already one of the most consequential conflicts in decades. Although the strategic outcome is still far from certain, our service members are performing with exceptional professionalism and skill. We can already start drawing some key lessons.
The Iran war is strikingly different from America's other recent wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Iran war looks far more like the Russia-Ukraine war, with its proliferation of inexpensive, one-way attack drones, rapid advancements in surveillance and targeting, huge use of munitions and the expansion of the battlefield well beyond traditional military targets.
During my time as the secretary of defense, our military and civilian leaders studied the lessons from Ukraine carefully -- and began to prepare for this new kind of war. We bought thousands of expendable autonomous systems that U.S. forces are now employing, invested in counter-drone technology and artificial intelligence and expanded joint defense production with allies. We supplied air-defense systems to Ukraine and stress-tested the capabilities that are now defending our Gulf Arab partners' airspace from Iranian missiles and drones. And we pushed hard to expand and accelerate our munitions production, something the Trump administration has rightly worked to continue.
These were deliberate investments to prepare for the kind of fight we are now in. In a few short weeks, the Iran war has already made clear that the United States needs to do much more.
First, we urgently need a more affordable, more comprehensive approach to countering the drone threat. Iran and its proxies have launched thousands of drones since this conflict began, targeting U.S. assets and bases and catching our Arab partners in the Gulf off guard. Despite the Pentagon's best efforts, the cost exchange remains way out of whack: The advanced interceptors we use to fend off these drones cost vastly more than the weapons they defeat, and take far longer to produce, too.
Accelerating the development of less expensive interceptors is part of the solution, but it won't be enough. We need a truly layered defense, one that begins with disrupting drone supply chains and factories and then uses electronic warfare to stymie drones from afar, deploys interceptor drones and other solutions to defeat drones at a lower cost and reserves pricey advanced missiles for the threats that truly demand them. We must also change how we design, supply and position our forces, including dispersing them more widely and fortifying our bases and infrastructure -- both at home and abroad.
We should learn from the Ukrainians, who have been fighting Shahed drones made in Iran for three years. Tehran's support for Russia's war has allowed it to test its own uncrewed weapons, which have proved effective at evading and overwhelming conventional air defenses. Ukraine has already deployed some 200 air-defense personnel to the Gulf to share hard-won tactics and technology, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine pointedly showed up recently in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. We should encourage more of this kind of battlefield cooperation among allies and partners.
We also need wider and deeper stockpiles of munitions and the industrial capacity to rapidly replenish them under pressure. The Ukraine war showed that missiles and interceptors can be burned through faster than anticipated. The Iran war has confirmed that. Boosting production takes more resources, but also deeper partnership with allies: co-producing weapons, sharing production lines and aligning procurement so that the free world's collective arsenal can be sustained in a prolonged fight. No one country, not even America, can carry that burden alone. Finally, the Iran war has quickly demonstrated that the economic dimension of modern conflict cannot be treated as secondary. Iran does not need to defeat our outstanding military to impose enormous costs; it only needs to make the Strait of Hormuz too dangerous for tankers to transit. My team saw a version of this challenge when Houthi attacks disrupted Red Sea shipping for months, forcing ships to be rerouted around Africa at great cost. The Strait of Hormuz shows that problem at a far greater scale.
We must think seriously about how to deepen our strategic resilience and keep the global economy functioning when an adversary's strategy hinges on disrupting it. That question is even more urgent when one considers the possibility of a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific, where China's capacity to impose economic pain far exceeds Iran's. One key part of the answer is to ensure that the burden is shared through a broad allied coalition, as it was in past U.S.-led campaigns to defeat ISIS and help Ukraine defend itself against the imperial aggression of President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The Iran war is a real-time case study in the changing character of modern warfare. It shows that the lessons of Ukraine were not an anomaly. Making the institutional changes to learn these lessons will be hard -- but as the Iran war has already demonstrated, doing so is not optional.
The original article can be viewed here.
2. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court found that drawing lines to achieve partisan advantages in an election is permissible, but intentionally creating districts primarily to afford minority voters greater opportunity is unconstitutional. In other words, States cannot use race as the dominant factor when drawing legislative district lines.
(Conversations May 8, 2026)
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