Socialism and The U.S. Consitution

[thriller]

Could socialism work with the U.S. Constitution? Some leftists and I were having a discussion about this. I don't believe that the US Constitution would fit at all in within socialism. First off, allowing the document to still be law would be allowing bourgeois elements into society. Secondly, the addition of amendments also allows for the repeal of them as well. This means that slavery, women' suffrage, and even freedom of speech could be repealed. I don't think this would happen in socialism, but the very process of allowing the reaction to bourgeois society seems contrary to socialism (at least my understanding of it). Arguments against mine were that amendments would be added to implement socialist policies and the repeal of amendments would be 'unlikely' and 'hard to accomplish'. Thoughts?

[Marxaveli]

The Constitution and Socialism are almost certainly not compatible. There are some good things about the Constitution, but much of it is too vague, and as a binding document, it is a bit rigid. If the revolution came tomorrow and capitalism and the entire system was overthrown, we would almost certainly have to re-write a new constitution, as our present one would allow too many ruling class principles to stay implemented and thus undermine socialism.

[rundontwalk]

This means that slavery, women' suffrage, and even freedom of speech could be repealed.
Not really.

First off, for better or worse, it's extremely hard to repeal or pass an amendment to the constitution. And any attempt to do such a thing would necessitate an entirely new regime as the Supreme Court has made itself clear on these issues.

[Tim Finnegan]

To be entirely frank, why on earth does it matter? The US Constitution is just a set of laws, disposable as any other. Nobody thinks to ask if the Indian, French or Japanese constitutions would fit with socialism, so why the American? What significance does it have beyond the purely historical?

[NewLeft]

Well, the protection of private property ends this discussion...

[rundontwalk]

To be entirely frank, why on earth does it matter? The US Constitution is just a set of laws, disposable as any other. Nobody thinks to ask if the Indian, French or Japanese constitutions would fit with socialism, so why the American? What significance does it have beyond the purely historical?
I think the US constitution is placed in such high esteem because it is the only legal basis for the existence of the country. Without it there wouldn't be a United States, iow.

[The Douche]

The constitution lays out the organization of the US government, the way our government is organized is fundamentally incompatible with socialism, it doesn't provide any authority for workers' councils or soldiers' councils. Revolution in the US will involve a radical restructuring of the organization of government (regardless of what tendency you belong to, this is obviously necessary).

And the bill of rights is also incompatible with socialism because it explicitly defends private property.

[Tim Finnegan]

I think the US constitution is placed in such high esteem because it is the only legal basis for the existence of the country. Without it there wouldn't be a United States, iow.
That's just the definition of "constitution", though, it doesn't say anything about the American one in particular. All modern nation-states have a body of constitutional law that fulfils the same function, whether or not they've compiled it into a single document (which the vast majority have done).

[Jose Gracchus]

Absolutely not. The ratification of the U.S. Constitution was the Thermidor of the American bourgeois revolution. It was specifically designed to "divide et impera" (divide and conquer--the people, that is) in Madison's own words.

The original political revolution in 1775-76, and the subsequent national liberation war, involved substantial mobilizations and energizing of the primordial American working-class, and its (white) allies, including plebeian farmers and artisans. This involved significant democratization and constitutional reform. In Pennsylvania, the workers, artisans, and plebeian farmers organized in the popular milita, calling themselves the 'Associators', enacted a State constitution which fulfilled most of the programmatic demands of the later British Chartists (some of the most radical Associators proposed that a maximum wealth ceiling be set, and property regularly redistributed among the citizenry), in New Jersey women briefly gained suffrage and political rights until 1806, throughout the colonies property qualifications on the franchise were rolled back, and white bonded labor totally vanished within the next few decades. Workers, artisans, and plebeians were crushed by post-war taxation and debt, and they took political action for tax and debt relief, and direct action against the courts and state to prevent their further impoverishment. The archaic aristocratic estates, often owned by nobility and courtiers and London bourgeoisie close to the Crown as absentee landlords, were seized by the state from royalists and parceled out to patriots and the dispossessed. In the radical 1780s, even culture and religion began changing radically--in many 'border states' between North and South, there was anti-slavery agitation, and slaveowners were expelled from many churches, and churchgoer segregation abolished (not long after the Constitution's Thermidor, this was rolled back, and the segregated religious system firmly re-established). Incredibly, in the Revolutionary years, a confluence of the economic immaturity of the slave economy (King Cotton was a product of the cotton gin and British textile industrialization, a 19th c. phenomenon and a marked expansion in the profitability and expansion of slavery) and the revolutionary zeitgeist led, incredibly, to even common manumissions of slaves by Patriot slave owners. As much as 10% of the Southern population were freedman blacks by 1800, according to some estimates. Unfortunately the South was a decadent and regressive social formation, and slavery rapidly consolidated accompanied by a much more virulent slavelord ideology and expansionism.

George Washington, for instance, made an about-face on political involvement following Shays' Rebellion, which was considered a threat to the new American ruling class. The Constitution was intended to reverse the threat caused by political decentralization and popular mobilization, and in that, it succeeded. Shortly after the Federal Constitution was passed, the State constitutions followed and rolled back the extension of the franchise. Hamilton got to pass his national capitalist development program, and the U.S. bourgeoisie consolidated its dictatorship.

I highly recommend Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Gary B. Nash's The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America, Robert Dahl's How Democratic Is the U.S. Constitution?, and Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

Asking if the Constitution is part of the liberation of the U.S. working-class is akin to asking if Bonapartism (I mean literal Bonapartism, not the Marxian term or Marxoid epithet) is part of the liberation of the French working-class. Its forms are explicitly such to enable a diffusion of popular control and participation, and to empower a professional politician class, and to diffuse power among centers of bourgeois power to make radical social change impossible.

[Renegade Saint]

As has been pointed out, the constitution was written by the 1% explicitly to keep power as far away from the masses as possible.

Electing new people to the old positions of power won't solve our problems; the problems are structual and institutional.

Just as an example; an 'independent', appointed for life judiciary and a senate that grants the same number of votes to California as to Delaware is explicitly anti-democratic, and this anti-socialist.

[thriller]

Not really.

First off, for better or worse, it's extremely hard to repeal or pass an amendment to the constitution. And any attempt to do such a thing would necessitate an entirely new regime as the Supreme Court has made itself clear on these issues.

I would have to argue, yes really. The 21st amendment was the REPEAL of the 18th amendment. It is entirely possible to repeal any amendment of the U.S. Constitution, even if it is hard to do so.

[thriller]

To be entirely frank, why on earth does it matter? The US Constitution is just a set of laws, disposable as any other. Nobody thinks to ask if the Indian, French or Japanese constitutions would fit with socialism, so why the American? What significance does it have beyond the purely historical?

Because I wanted to have a discussion about it with other leftists, hence why I posted it. I didn't think to ask about the Indian Constitution because I do not know that much about it, and we (my fellow leftist friends and I) were specifically talking about the U.S. Constitution. Sorry if my question is too n00bish for you.

[Mr. Natural]

As Jose Gracchus and others outlined, the Constitution is essentially a document of bourgeois government. I thank Jose for the book suggestions, and I will check them out for possible purchase.

I'm looking at the Constitution and answering the OP from the perspective of generating a revolutionary process in the US. The advantage of relating socialist principles to the Constitution and developing socialist talking points in a principled manner within a Constitutional frame is that this would appeal to Americans as being "American." It would not be "foreign."

The US Constitution, though, is more of a dry, administrative document than a call to liberty. The Declaration of Independence is much more inspirational.

[The Douche]

As Jose Gracchus and others outlined, the Constitution is essentially a document of bourgeois government. I thank Jose for the book suggestions, and I will check them out for possible purchase.

I'm looking at the Constitution and answering the OP from the perspective of generating a revolutionary process in the US. The advantage of relating socialist principles to the Constitution and developing socialist talking points in a principled manner within a Constitutional frame is that this would appeal to Americans as being "American." It would not be "foreign."

The US Constitution, though, is more of a dry, administrative document than a call to liberty. The Declaration of Independence is much more inspirational.

But the DofI also sanctifies private property.

[Tim Finnegan]

Because I wanted to have a discussion about it with other leftists, hence why I posted it. I didn't think to ask about the Indian Constitution because I do not know that much about it, and we (my fellow leftist friends and I) were specifically talking about the U.S. Constitution. Sorry if my question is too n00bish for you.
I'm not meaning to get at you particularly, I'm just puzzled at why Americans, seemingly unique among the world, insist on treating their constitution as something more than a legal document. It's a bit exasperating at times.


I'm looking at the Constitution and answering the OP from the perspective of generating a revolutionary process in the US. The advantage of relating socialist principles to the Constitution and developing socialist talking points in a principled manner within a Constitutional frame is that this would appeal to Americans as being "American." It would not be "foreign."
Chauvinism and socialism have long been shown to be entirely incompatible in principal and practice. If Americans aren't capable of internationalism- an assumption that is equal parts patronising and baseless- then there's no hope for them to begin with. The same logic, after all, would dictate that a socialist Britain would have to retain a crowned monarch to be viable, which isn't something that I imagine anyone here would contemplate for the briefest second.

[thriller]

I'm not meaning to get at you particularly, I'm just puzzled at why Americans, seemingly unique among the world, insist on treating their constitution as something more than a legal document. It's a bit exasperating at times.


Chauvinism and socialism have long been shown to be entirely incompatible in principal and practice. If Americans aren't capable of internationalism- an assumption that is equal parts patronising and baseless- then there's no hope for them to begin with. The same logic, after all, would dictate that a socialist Britain would have to retain a crowned monarch to be viable, which isn't something that I imagine anyone here would contemplate for the briefest second.

People seem to believe that certain legal documents (ie the US Constitution) are compatible with socialism, which I disagree with.

I agree that internationalism must be accepted and 'foreign' ideas are as important as 'domestic' ones. Also the idea that a majority of the USA (both people and ideas) are 'American' is bogus. Unless an idea comes directly from Native American philosophy or history, it will always be 'foreign' in relation to the US.

[Hexen]

What most people don't understand that the US Constitution is actually written for the bourgeoisie class not for everyone.

I see in comments on sites like Alternet, Common Dreams, etc and they keep mentioning the consitution and how it goes "goes against it" and it always drives me nuts.

[Mr. Natural]

Tim Finnegan and Thriller,

TF: People rally to that which they see as positively affecting their lives. That's people, and that's a revolutionary process.

What's wrong with this? Aren't socialism and communism and revolutionary processes leading thereto systems within which human social individuals realize their nature? Wouldn't socialist revolutionary processes be rooted in local people, relations, and communities that develop greater societal and international relations from this base?

"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals." (The German Ideology)

Is the American working class really to forego its own interests to act internationally on behalf of others? Only? This is radically alienating and cannot happen.

Never trust someone who is only in it for herself, and never trust someone who isn't in it for herself. An American revolution would have great international sympathies, alliances, and effect, but it cannot happen if people are not in it for themselves.

And socialist revolution cannot occur if people are only in it for themselves. There could be no socialist consciousness in such a situation. We already exist in such a system--capitalism--and there is no revolutionary consciousness.

Thriller, I agree that the US Constitution is not compatible with socialism; however, passages can be used to suggest socialism and promote socialist principles. How about the Preamble? "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 ...."

As for your suggestion that you aren't "American" if you aren't Native (First) American ...??? Aren't you promoting a form of alienated, racial political correctness? I probably share your underlying sympathies, but ...

I live in Tolowa territory and am generally a great admirer of First Americans and the ecological, communal relations they tended to develop within themselves and with the natural world. Charles Manning's 1491 (2006) is a great resource and read.

I frequently hike the area that was the site of the second worst Native American massacre in US history. In that event, which took place shortly after whites first invaded this area, 33 miners surrounded a Tolowa winter solstice celebration and shot, knifed, and burned many hundreds of men, women, and children to death. Apparently, only two wounded men survived this horrendous act of genocide.

I am enraged in writing this. The Tolowa are not only my fellow beings and First Americans, but they lived as well as any people on Earth prior to Conquest.

Tim Finnegan and Thriller, do you really believe the American proletariat would enter into a revolutionary process and fight it out for the benefit of others? If so, you are idealizing revolution and abstracting it from the reality of human being.

My red-green best.

[RexCactus]

They're compatible as-is, but with some massive drawbacks. The commerce clause could justify any government dissolution of Capitalism, which could move towards State control or worker control (or both if that's the trend you follow). The provision of "compensation" to seized property may be tricky, but it is not enumerated as capital. Even the undertones of protection for private property could be worked around, so long as the case that Socialism doesn't prohibit private property, only private productive property or the hoarding thereof (whether or not you think that is legitimate is your decision). I think the biggest flaws would actually be in the amendment process. For a Socialist State, the Constitution should be more flexible, but the Bill of Rights should be absolutely concrete. In its current state, even if class were equalised, a majority could still restrict the rights of ethnic, sexual, gender, &c minorities with just a relative majority and the approval of the Court. It's a complex matter, certainly, but I think you could fit Socialism within the Constitution with minimal or no changes, or at the very least fit a Constitution around Socialism.

[Tim Finnegan]

TF: People rally to that which they see as positively affecting their lives. That's people, and that's a revolutionary process.

What's wrong with this? Aren't socialism and communism and revolutionary processes leading thereto systems within which human social individuals realize their nature? Wouldn't socialist revolutionary processes be rooted in local people, relations, and communities that develop greater societal and international relations from this base?

"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals." (The German Ideology)

Is the American working class really to forego its own interests to act internationally on behalf of others? Only? This is radically alienating and cannot happen.

Never trust someone who is only in it for herself, and never trust someone who isn't in it for herself. An American revolution would have great international sympathies, alliances, and effect, but it cannot happen if people are not in it for themselves.

And socialist revolution cannot occur if people are only in it for themselves. There could be no socialist consciousness in such a situation. We already exist in such a system--capitalism--and there is no revolutionary consciousness.
While I agree that the working class cannot stumble blindly into revolution, that subjective motivation is a necessity, it must be a particular kind of motivation if it is to actually lead to a challenge to bourgeoisie dominance by a working class-for-itself. It must be built fundamentally by the identification of the working class for what it is, and there interests for what they are, and not just on vague, inherited rhetoric about the well-being of "the Nation" or "the People". It must be a revolution in their actual interests, and not the interests declared on their behalf by a coven of dead white slave-owners, and they must be pursued as a concious project of class struggle, and not because some crusty old document announces that they are entitled to them. A socialist revolution cannot occur if people are only in it for themselves, sure enough, but it also cannot occur if people are in it for King & Country, or whatever local variation on that same basic theme may apply.
What you propose here, quite frankly, is in practice no more than class-collaboration with a "progressive" bourgeoisie, and no matter how many qualifications about the possibility of long-time programmatic independence are available to wrap it in, that is simply not a project that has any contemporary value for the working class whatsoever. No bourgeois legal code can bring about socialism, and the US Constitution, for all the religious grandeur in which it is so needlessly draped, is and can be nothing more than that.

[Black_Rose]

the US Constitution, for all the religious grandeur in which it is so needlessly draped, is and can be nothing more than that. .
Such as...

The Treaty of Tripoli explicitly stated that the United States was not founded or influenced by the Christian religion.

[Tim Finnegan]

Such as...

The Treaty of Tripoli explicitly stated that the United States was not founded or influenced by the Christian religion.
Well, firstly, the history of the US since that point makes the Treaty of Tripoli sound like bad irony, so that's not really an argument one way or the other.
Secondly, I wasn't literally referring to a Christian reverence, but to the cult-like obsession with the document that is to a foreigner astoundingly prevalent and popular in the United States, one which has no parallel elsewhere in the world as far as I know. To other countries, the constitution is merely a legal text, and while some countries may attach some ceremony to it insofar as it is held to represent some set of principals regarded as central to the nation-state in question- the French and republicanism, for instance- no others have such a bizarre, slavish reverence for the document as a document, no preoccupation with it beyond the extent to which it is held to express principals existing more fundamentally than the text itself. It's a very peculiar fetish.

[IndependentCitizen]

Well, the constitution is there to ensure that the U.S style political framework remains in tack, and to protect the interests of the ruling man. Hence why Paine's welfare system idea wasn't in there...

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

why not? they do whatever they want anyways

[Revolutionary_Marxist]

I'd agree as well the Constitution is a vague document, and besides that it gives power to the corrupt branches of American government. Even though it'd be interesting to see if the Bill of Rights could be kept. Some of the amendments on the Bill of Rights I can see as being kept, but most of it would have to go. Along with the rest of the Constituion. If anything a new Constitution should be written, but based on the ideas of Socialism. Maybe perhaps something similar to the Soviet Constituion, but stronger?

[Tim Finnegan]

I'd agree as well the Constitution is a vague document, and besides that it gives power to the corrupt branches of American government. Even though it'd be interesting to see if the Bill of Rights could be kept. Some of the amendments on the Bill of Rights I can see as being kept, but most of it would have to go. Along with the rest of the Constituion. If anything a new Constitution should be written, but based on the ideas of Socialism. Maybe perhaps something similar to the Soviet Constituion, but stronger?
Good idea. Now we just need to find somebody to write it that we don't mind lynching as a Nazi turncoat a few years down the line. Want to keep with the traditions, y'know?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Any working class revolution in the US will no doubt take some parts of the history of struggles in this country and appropriate them for their own use. No doubt there may be some appeals to some of the language of certain documents from the past such as the declaration of independence and so on. There may even be some similar protections against capitalist tyranny that sound like some of the protections the American Revolutionaries fought for - like don't let soldiers run around our cities doing whatever the fuck they want to the people there. There will probably be some french revolutionary language and certainty echoes of any contemporary upheavals and revolutions internationally at that time - much like the OWS protesters have been pretty good about seeing themselves as part of an intentional movement inspired by Egypt and Greece and Spain.

Workers might set up decision-making bodies that on the surface sort of look like a parliament or whatnot, they may have elected representatives as well initially - but the goals and functions of these bodies and these positions will be totally different and in the service of a totally different order in society, it would be impossible to use congress for our purposes we will need to throw that out and build tools fit for defending and preserving proletarian democracy, not defending and preserving the running of capitalism FROM the population as all modern capitalist democracies do.

So - no, the constitution can not be appropriated as a whole. The Bill of Rights is liked by a lot of people and has been since the US rulers attached it to the constitution in order to make it a more popular document. But the consitution and the entire US government is designed around making capitalism function - protecting property, defending trade agreements, preventing capitalist competition from damaging the entire system, preventing workers from organizing independatly against capitalism, etc.

It's like a plane and a submarine may have similar features - like gliding through surfaces, propulsion, pressurized interiors, etc - but the purposes of these features are designed for totally different contexts. So you can't use a plane to explore underwater and you can't make a submarine fly.

[Revolutionary_Marxist]

Any working class revolution in the US will no doubt take some parts of the history of struggles in this country and appropriate them for their own use. No doubt there may be some appeals to some of the language of certain documents from the past such as the declaration of independence and so on. There may even be some similar protections against capitalist tyranny that sound like some of the protections the American Revolutionaries fought for - like don't let soldiers run around our cities doing whatever the fuck they want to the people there. There will probably be some french revolutionary language and certainty echoes of any contemporary upheavals and revolutions internationally at that time - much like the OWS protesters have been pretty good about seeing themselves as part of an intentional movement inspired by Egypt and Greece and Spain.

Workers might set up decision-making bodies that on the surface sort of look like a parliament or whatnot, they may have elected representatives as well initially - but the goals and functions of these bodies and these positions will be totally different and in the service of a totally different order in society, it would be impossible to use congress for our purposes we will need to throw that out and build tools fit for defending and preserving proletarian democracy, not defending and preserving the running of capitalism FROM the population as all modern capitalist democracies do.

So - no, the constitution can not be appropriated as a whole. The Bill of Rights is liked by a lot of people and has been since the US rulers attached it to the constitution in order to make it a more popular document. But the consitution and the entire US government is designed around making capitalism function - protecting property, defending trade agreements, preventing capitalist competition from damaging the entire system, preventing workers from organizing independatly against capitalism, etc.

It's like a plane and a submarine may have similar features - like gliding through surfaces, propulsion, pressurized interiors, etc - but the purposes of these features are designed for totally different contexts. So you can't use a plane to explore underwater and you can't make a submarine fly.

Interesting, but what do you believe should be done to protect the earned freedoms after a hypothetical successful socialist revolution?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Interesting, but what do you believe should be done to protect the earned freedoms after a hypothetical successful socialist revolution?

Well I think that workers will need to in the short-term set up some kind of state - a state in the sense of organizing society along the needs and wishes and defense of worker's power. This proletarian democratic state will have to take the gains of the revolution and back them up, workers might pass laws or decrees of have a "bill of rights" of their own that would ensure that racism, sexism, profiting off of private property, subservient wage-labor, etc are not allowed. The lesson of the USSR is that also you have to defend class power from internal counter-revolution so people might guarantee the right to freedom of speech and the freedom to collectively withhold labor as a defense against some coup.

I don't think there's a formula that we could work out now - we can make suggestions as to what kinds of things would protect worker's democracy from internal and external counter-revolutions, but people at the time of the revolution will have a better sense of what practical things are needed to ensure worker's power. There's no perfect set of laws that will make the difference, the main thing is if worker's actually have direct control over production - then even if there was some coup or resumption of whatever ways workers organized themselves, the workers in their workplaces could easily re-assert their power and prevent capitalists or bureaucrats from taking over.

[Inner Peace]

Only Time Will Tell.

[leemadison11]

The governing body can achieve Socialism only in case of a Uni-party system which means that there is only one party which removes the concept of Ruling and Opposition Party system and there is one entity looking towards the welfare of the state. Otherwise it is not at all possible. There will always be differentiating ideologies between Democrats and Republicans which wont allow Socialism to enter US.