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Discussion Illusions that U.S. Constitution Can Resolve Today's ProblemsAs people anticipate a post-election crisis with a disputed U.S. presidential election, many are hoping the U.S. Constitution can be relied on to resolve the problems. This includes many military people and elected officials. If Trump loses but refuses to leave, the military could act to remove him saying his actions are unconstitutional and they have a duty to uphold the Constitution. Various legal scholars and experts have already joined the debate. For their part the American people are standing ready against military intervention, which would, besides anything else, more than likely be used against them.
For some time the view has been promoted that if only the Constitution were upheld by the President, and if only Congress would exercise its powers, such as the power to declare war, problems could be resolved. For example, Trump's former Secretary of Defense, Retired General James Mattis, spoke about Trump's order to brutally suppress demonstrators in DC using military police and the National Guard, FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Secret Service and others. He said, "We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. Only by adopting a new path -- which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals -- will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad." Like others among the military and elected officials, Mattis is attempting to position himself on the side of the people while also making sure the call is not for a new path but to stick to the very old path of the Constitution -- itself a compromise between the slave power and the power of wage slavery -- and the founding fathers. Appeals to the Constitution which, from the start, enshrines the inequalities inherent in the existing society and perpetuates them, rather than resolving them, are futile indeed. How else to explain that the Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, 13th, 14th and 15th amendments addressing the system of slave labour and "equality before the law," requires yet more laws like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and repeated federal intervention in the name of "reforming" police departments, and "protecting" the right to vote? All of this points not to the vibrancy of the Constitution but to the fact that it is anachronistic and fails to provide for equality or accountability or even to block the president's impunity in the use of police powers.
While one of the fundamental aims of the Constitution was to avoid tyranny, today the people and their stands for justice, equality and accountability are being more and more criminalized. This has been evident across the country, in city after city after city, as police departments violently attack demonstrators, using chemical weapons including tear gas and are organized as an armed force to control and repress the people, targeted as the enemy. Remarks by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper reinforced this when he publicly called on the National Guard to "dominate the battlespace." Calls accusing opponents of sedition have also become increasingly common. The problem today is presented as one of individuals such as Trump who do not abide by the constitution or as a problem of racist cops or militia and vigilantes. This serves to divert attention from the fact that it is the state machinery -- from the military and numerous federal forces like ICE, to militarized and racist police departments, to the entire penal and prison system -- that operates not to protect and serve the people but to keep the rich in power and the people out. It is a state machinery protected and perpetuated by the Constitution which was designed to protect the rich and their private property, not the rights of the people by virtue of being human and equal members of the polity. The massive and repeated bailouts of the monopolies and finance capitalists by government while the rights of the people are trampled underfoot shows this as well. From the start the Constitution enshrines the enslavement of Africans, genocide against Native peoples, and the exclusion of women and all but white men of property (those founding fathers) from any say in governance. The Measure of a Constitution Is How it Sorts Out Individual, Collective and General InterestsThe Constitution mirrors the social relations of society itself and structures the government to preserve and perpetuate those relations, including the many inequalities evident in society. It serves to keep the people out of power -- when the solution today lies in creating new forms and content which empower the people to govern and decide. It is society, with its ensemble of human relations, that is the basis for the state, not the other way around. The Constitution does not define democracy and the state machinery it puts in place does not define it either. On the contrary, the society and its relations do. Changing those relations of power is integral to winning change that favours the people. In the present historical situation, the conflict between the productive forces and the social relations of production underlies the deepening economic and political crises, instability and disequilibrium. The productive forces, including the modern working class, exceed by far the bonds of the capitalist social relations of production, with private ownership but modern socialized production. As we are witnessing, the private owners of capital impose their claims on society by virtue of holding the right to the monopoly of force of the state machinery. By claiming legitimacy and the authority to control the right to use the monopoly of force and coercion, the owners of capital restrict and limit the claims of the working class and people. But given that the people in their conditions of life are seeing how completely restricted they are in terms of satisfying their needs, this legitimacy and authority are being questioned. That questioning goes far beyond the crimes of Trump and his illegitimacy, to the broader issue of who today is fit to govern?
The measure of a constitution rests in how it sorts out the conflicting interests in society -- individual, collective and general interests of society and humanity as a whole. These interests come from society itself, from the ensemble of human relations between humans and humans and humans and nature. It is a whole ensemble and a constitution plays a role in sorting out and systematizing the relations and the conflicting interests they give rise to. Interests have to do with rights, of individuals and collectives. Harmonizing them has to do with putting them on a par, having an equivalence, so it is not individual over collective or collective over individual, but they are understood in such a manner as to be on a par. Only if they are on par can an equilibrium be found. It is clear that the U.S. Constitution has not and cannot sort out these interests in a manner that harmonizes them. On the contrary, it blocks such a path and enforces the divisions and inequality in society, contributing to institutionalizing them. The people's resistance is setting a new direction for political affairs, one that does not rely on the old outdated Constitution and its legacy which empowers the descendants of the "white men of property," whoever they may be. The people's resistance places itself squarely on the side of the fight for what is New, for a democracy of the people's own making where "we, the people" decide. Modern institutions of government and a modern constitution can be developed as the people advance their struggle to put the decision-making power in their own hands. (Photos: VOR, J. Shah, We Are Dissenters)
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
What
is becoming increasingly apparent is that existing arrangements of
governance based on the Constitution are solving no problem whatsoever
-- whether for individuals, collectives or society in general. A new
direction and new arrangements are needed. Already the demands of the
people's resistance movement show the people are taking
this up as a matter of profound concern. Demands for police out of the
communities, for defunding and disarming police and against their
replacement with private contractors are amongst the many which show
the
concern for new arrangements.
Mattis
is also clearly ignoring the president's oath of office, written in the
Constitution, that gives him these police powers. Executing the Office
of the President is done through the police powers of the president and
is a main reason why the Constitution has not and cannot block these
actions or hold the president accountable for crimes, even
with impeachment proceedings. The oath of Office says: "I do solemnly
swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Discussions
on just what safety and security mean, in our communities, schools,
cities and country seek to provide answers. The fight is not limited to
policing and whether there should be more or less of it but rather is about who should control the
use of force and all decisions impacting peoples lives. What steps can
be taken to achieve such control is being sorted out.
Efforts to divert these debates into reliance on the Constitution serve
to deprive the people of power and ensure that imagining the future
does not mean new arrangements of governance to enshrine a modern
democracy of the people's own making.
