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July 4 and the Battle of Democracy An Occasion to Question What Is Meant by "Government Of, By and For the People"
This July 4 marks the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the U.S. Declaration of Independence, signalling the official separation of the 13 original colonies from Great Britain amid the Revolutionary War. This great revolution proclaimed in deeds that British colonialism could be overthrown. It inspired many anti-colonial fighters and revolutionaries around the world. The Revolutionary War was not, however, a social revolution but on the contrary transferred the levers of power from one set of property owners to another, entrenching the system of slave labor. The U.S. was constituted as a racist state from the start. It carried out land theft and genocide of indigenous peoples alongside the system of slave labor, which both continued and increased. Along with Black people, women and the "propertyless" were not recognized as citizens and they were all deprived of the right to vote and participate in political life. The oft-repeated slogans of the French revolution Equality, Liberty and Fraternity only applied to slave owners, property owners and landowners, with the U.S. Constitution further entrenching the compromise between slavery and oligarchy, serving to block the revolutionary drive seen in the Declaration of Independence. This included any mention of the right to revolution contained in the Declaration, replacing it with government impunity to suppress resistance and "insurrection." The Constitution's phrasing "We the people" and that U.S. government is "of, by and for the people," is repeatedly spoken of to say that in the United States decision-making power emanates from "the people." Nothing could be further from the truth and people know this. The problem with this knowledge is that it is channeled into fighting for the aspiration that the existing democracy should be defended and perfected. Kept hidden is the fact that what is referred to when the words "the people," and "rule by the people," are used, the content is not defined. Neither what is meant by "the people" nor by the word "rule" in the expression "rule by the people" are explained. Those who refer to government of, by and for the people are taking the U.S. Constitution as their reference point, not the concrete reality in the United States at any historical juncture. For all those seeking change that favors the people, unless the concrete reality is the reference point along with the claims the people are entitled to make on the society they are born into and whose wealth they produce, establishing a vantage point that is to the advantage of the people will remain elusive. For the founding fathers, "We the people" was themselves, considered the "best and brightest," and thus fit to rule. This is the same conception promoted today. Biden expressed this clearly when addressing the joint session of Congress: "Our Constitution opens with the words -- as trite as it sounds -- 'We the People.' Well, it's time to remember that 'We the People' are the government -- you and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force that we have no control over. It's us. It's 'We the People.'" He is speaking to people in government, to Congress, which means the "you and I" are not all the people making up the polity, but those in government. And those in government refers to the executive power, to his government, not everyone who makes up the Congress or even his own party in the Congress. It is the executive power which wields the decision-making power. The Biden administration, whether addressing the joint session of Congress, or the G7 Summit held in Cornwall, England recently or the NATO Summit held in Brussels, is making a clear statement that his government is in control and nobody should forget it.
Pretending the U.S. is not under siege from all quarters, when Biden questions "whether our democracy will long endure," he pathetically tries to rescue the situation by resorting to quoting from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at the time of the Civil War. He does so not only to perpetuate the perversion that it was Lincoln who emancipated the enslaved people, not the enslaved people themselves, but to promote the phrase "government of, by and for the people" to clothe his democracy in colors it simply does not have. Lincoln's Address in 1863 begins by referring to the Declaration of Independence, saying "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address he was battling the slave power and thus had difficulty referring to the Constitution with its endorsement of and compromise with the slave power. Note that he says "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," rather than how it is stated in the Declaration as a "self-evident truth" meaning that no proof is necessary, it is self-evident that all men are created equal. Turning it into a proposition makes it an aspiration for that "more perfect union" that presidents regularly refer to as a means to dismiss crimes and injustice. As an aspiration, it is also used to justify the continued existence of government structures of inequality which are guaranteed by the Constitution. When Lincoln speaks he goes on to say: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." He concludes that the task is to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The phrasing, like Biden's and the Constitution's, craftily separates the people from government. This is also readily seen in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which 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." The wording separates the government and the people, just as the expression "we the people" is taken to mean the government. The separation is necessary to enable the structures of inequality established throughout the Constitution, with government being superior to the people, the multitude, the majority. For Lincoln, the Civil War was not about eliminating the compromise with slavery enshrined in the Constitution. The system of slave labor had de facto become incompatible with the system of wage labor. Through Civil War, the industrial power sought to vanquish the slave power, with both existing north and south. Thus, for Lincoln, the issue was who would wield the national power and how this was to be determined and achieved.
Another problem with referring to the phrase "government of, by and for the people," as a reference point today is that the reference is to the U.S. Constitution, with its compromises with oligarchy and structures of inequality. The needs of the times reject both. A modern constitution must of necessity reject both. A vantage point which advantages the interests of the people requires vesting sovereignty, decision-making power, in the people and finding the ways to do this which are not based on a reshuffle of current structures of inequality. For advancing democracy today, the reference point is not the U.S. Constitution and the mantra that it can be made better. It is a completely new reference point where power emanates from the people and the claims they are entitled to make on the society into which they are born or where they permanently reside. As the people persist in taking their place, they give birth to political processes which of necessity provide structures of equality. The question of political supremacy and defining it requires that the people define who "the people" are by virtue of their act of laying the claims they see fit to make. The rulers, by defining the people as the government and separating the governing from the governed, are acting to block the people from vesting the supreme power in themselves. Using the Constitution and government "of, by and for the people," as a reference point to define a modern democracy falls into many traps which the people striving for empowerment are eager to avoid. In a people's democracy, the people using their own agency decide what is to be done under specific conditions and circumstances. The power to remove those who block the implementation of their decisions or who commit crimes against the peoples, like aggressive war or planning and instigating such wars, or participating in acts the people deem constitute violence, like killer cops or killer drones, will be held to account. The issue is one of who wields the decision-making power in the service of what rule. This is what is at stake on this July 4 in the United States.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
Biden also refers to the existing democracy and the concern of the
rulers that the legitimacy of their rule is being questioned, that the
majority increasingly sees them as no longer fit to
rule. He says: "The question of whether our democracy will long endure
is both ancient and urgent, as old as our Republic -- still vital
today. Can our democracy deliver on its promise that
all of us, created equal in the image of God, have a chance to lead
lives of dignity, respect, and possibility?" To answer his own question
and morbid preoccupation with U.S. defeat, he
does not offer any concrete solution but makes a statement of faith. He
is mesmerized by his own belief that his government in service to the
oligopolies and their competition for world
domination, will succeed in making the U.S. prevail: "We will meet the
central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and
strong. Autocrats will not win the future. We
will. America will. And the future belongs to America... We have stared
into the abyss of insurrection and autocracy, pandemic and pain, and
'We the People' did not flinch. At the very
moment our adversaries were certain we would pull apart and fail, we
came together... We summoned a new strength, new resolve to position us
to win the competition of the 21st
century."
Biden, like Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton before him, is waging the
internecine battle between vying U.S. ruling factions while
simultaneously dismissing the reality that there is a
battle between two Americas, the one of the rich and their government
and that of the multitude which is laying its claims on society,
affirming the rights of all as the people of the United
States strive to have a deciding say in all matters of concern. The
people's America is not that of the rich and their government. The
striving seen in the many demonstrations and actions of
all kinds, petitions, webinars, mass text messages and calls, is for
new arrangements of people's empowerment. This has been evident in the
persistent and determined battles against police
racist killings, for justice and equality, for immigrant and refugee
rights, where it has been firmly said, "This is Not Our America, This
is Not Our Democracy."
Lincoln talks about ensuring that government of, by and for the
people "shall not perish from this earth." But a problem the rulers
cannot overcome is that the Civil War and
Reconstruction afterwards, where the striving of the people for
emancipation was decisive in both, served to advance the democratic
revolution stemming from the anti-colonial struggle
against the British. The advance meant one form of private property
ownership, the system of slave labor, had in fact perished, to be
replaced by a system of wage slavery, with
sharecropping being one of the forms it took on. This accomplishment
proved historically that private ownership of property can be
abolished. While the people's striving for power was
defeated in 1877 through use of force and terrorism, the Civil War is
irrefutable proof that private property can be abolished -- it
happened. Nonetheless, the oligarchy as a class remained
and the fight over who wields political power, the decision-making
power, was raging. For the rich, the challenge was to perpetuate the
compromise between the ruling factions so as to
effectively rule over the multitude. This Covenant to rule over the
people and the need to conciliate interests is at the heart of all the
theories of constitution and constitutional rule in the
U.S. But that compromise is what is incompatible with the striving of
the people for empowerment.