American government the day after...

  1. btpound
    btpound
    Do you think that the American form of government would be completely scratched, or do you think that a good amount of it would remain the same? I think the concept of checks and balances is genuinely a good idea, though the bourgeoisie use it as a trick to give the people the idea they have some manner of control. I think that it is, in and of itself, pretty democratic.

    Your thoughts?
  2. cenv
    cenv
    I'm all for scrapping it entirely and replacing it with a more direct form of democracy like workers' councils. American "democracy" is rooted in a strong, centralized federal government comprised of representatives who have power independent of their electorate. This model is completely at odds with empowering the working class as a whole and empowering individuals in their everyday lives, and without this model checks and balances become completely meaningless.

    Also, we should ditch the bourgeois paradigm that prompts us to think of political structures in abstract terms like how "democratic" they are, and instead think of things in more concrete terms: empowering the working class as a whole, and giving individuals power over their everyday lives. IMO, the term "democratic" is a meaningless buzzword, an ideal devoid of content.
  3. Revy
    Revy
    The Workers Party in America has great ideas about this. From their platform.

    Political Demands
    For us, the road to the working people’s republic, the first step on the road to the classless, communist society, is paved through the struggle for revolutionary democratic change. Winning the battle of democracy, a battle that can only be waged fully by the working class, is what provides that necessary foundation. The capitalists, through the imposition of corporatism, seek to deprive working people once and for all of their political rights — rights that were already limited under their concept of “democracy.”
    In order to defeat the reactionary corporatist tide, and to achieve victory in the battle of democracy, it is necessary to have a platform of changes we would make if in power. To that end, upon achieving victory, we will implement the following concrete changes to the political system:

    1. Abolition of the two-chamber federal legislature and bicameral state legislatures. In their place, we call for an expanded, single-chamber federal Congress and single-chamber state legislatures, with half of the body elected on the basis of one federal Representative for every 100,000 people, and one state Representative for every 20,000 people, and the other half elected on the basis of closed-list, party-recallable proportional representation.
    2. Abolition of the presidency, with its imperial war powers and unchecked executive authority, and state governorships. All executive Cabinet officers, including the chief executive of the United States and of states, should be elected by and from the Congress or equivalent state legislatures.
    3. Abolition of the appointed judiciary. Statistically random selection of all federal judges and justices, up to and including the Supreme Court of the United States, based on lists of qualified and vetted applicants. Panels of judges and justices to replace one-person decision-making. Extension of the jury system to all federal levels.
    4. Elimination of all special privileges and immunities for elected officials. No salary of an elected official should exceed the average wage of a skilled worker. The right to recall an elected official at any time must be universal.
    5. Abolition of waiting periods for the public to review Congressional or executive documents that are used to formulate public policy. Expansion and strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act. Abolition of the Official Secrets Act and similar “state secrets” laws.
    6. Public control of all elections through the creation of a non-partisan National Electoral Council, which shall be responsible for creating an electoral system that includes all parties in the process. Creation of “blind” electoral districts and the abolition of gerrymandering.
    7. The right to vote and hold office for all persons beginning at the age of 14. Removal of all barriers restricting the civil, democratic and economic rights of young people.
    8. Abolition of all laws that restrict the civil, democratic or economic rights of those convicted of crimes, including felonies. The right to vote and hold office for all persons held in jails and prisons. Full civil and democratic rights for prisoners, including the right to receive uncensored correspondence and political literature. Incoming and outgoing mail only to be checked for contraband.
    9. Abolition of all laws that give corporations the same rights as citizens. Abolition of all laws that restrict the right of working people to participate directly, either individually or collectively, in the political process.
    10. An end to the “state’s rights” federal system and for final union of the country. Standardization of all laws and regulations that affect citizens. Federalization of all civil liberties and civil rights legislation and enforcement.
  4. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    I'm all for scrapping it entirely and replacing it with a more direct form of democracy like workers' councils. American "democracy" is rooted in a strong, centralized federal government comprised of representatives who have power independent of their electorate. This model is completely at odds with empowering the working class as a whole and empowering individuals in their everyday lives, and without this model checks and balances become completely meaningless.
    I don't think this is quite so. While I am for revolution, the Constitution of the United States in its purest fundamentals is designed for revolution to occur. Thomas Jefferson himself thought that throughout the future America would undergo a major revolution every decade. Mainly, I would add a lot of amendments that would secure power to the workers' councils just like you said, but the current Constitution can still permit that. In fact, while it does outline the role of the federal government, it does not stipulate exactly where that power comes from. In capitalism, it comes from the capitalist institutions. After a socialist revolution, that power would be based entirely on the workers' councils. In fact, that is the very essence of the Marxist approach to revolution in an industrialized nation: preserve the good that was created by the bourgeois revolution long ago, yet abolish the current modes of bourgeois dictatorship. So in conclusion, we should radically revise and most importantly ADD ON to the US Constitution, not just scrap it. After all, the capitalists are scrapping our constitutional rights daily.
  5. Raúl Duke
    Raúl Duke
    Since I'm an anarchist...the American state will be abolished and replaced with an Anarchist system.
  6. The Ben G
    The Ben G
    Since I'm an anarchist...the American state will be abolished and replaced with an Anarchist system.
    I like the way you think
  7. redphilly
    redphilly
    Marxists want to do away with the capitalist state. Marx, Lenin and others advocated a workers state based on direct democracy through workers councils. To do away with the so-called separation of powers inherent in bourgeois constitutions and have both executive and legislative power exercise by the working class and its allies. The bourgeois state must be smashed, broken up and done away with.

    The working class can't use the bourgeois state to achieve a socialist revolution.

    Folks might take a look at this document from the Fourth International: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Socialist Democracy
    http://www.internationalviewpoint.or...php?article921

    It say a lot, IMO, to explode the mythology foster both by the right and by left-wing anti-Marxists regarding the nature of a revolutionary state. Bold my emphasis.

    What is the dictatorship of the proletariat?
    The fundamental difference between reformists and centrists of all varieties on the one hand and revolutionary Marxists, i.e., Bolshevik-Leninists on the other hand, regarding the conquest of state power, the need for a socialist revolution, the nature of the proletarian state, and the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat consists of:
    a) The recognition by revolutionary Marxists of the class nature of all states and of the state apparatus as an instrument of maintaining class rule. In that sense, all states are dictatorships. Bourgeois democracy is also the dictatorship of a class.
    b) The illusion propagated by the reformists and many centrists that "democracy" or "democratic state institutions" stand above classes and the class struggle, and the rejection of that illusion by revolutionary Marxists.
    c) The recognition by revolutionary Marxists that the state institutions of even the most democratic bourgeois states serve to uphold the power and the rule of the capitalist class (and, in addition, in the imperialist countries, the exploitation of the people of the semi-colonial countries), and therefore cannot be instruments with which to overthrow that rule and transfer power from the capitalist class to the working class.
    d) The recognition by revolutionary Marxists that the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, in the first place destruction of its military/police repressive apparatus, is a necessary prerequisite for the conquest of political power by the working class.
    e) The recognition by revolutionary Marxists of the necessity for the development of the consciousness and mass organisation of the workers in order to carry through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.
    f) The necessary conclusion drawn by revolutionary Marxists as a consequence: that the working class by itself can exercise state power directly only within the framework of state institutions of a type different from those of the bourgeois state, state institutions arising out of sovereign and democratically elected and centralised workers councils (soviets), with the fundamental characteristics outlined by Lenin in State and Revolution - the election of all functionaries, judges, commanders of the workers or workers and peasants militias, and all delegates representing the toilers in state institutions; rotation of elected officials; restriction of their income to that of skilled workers; the right to recall them at all times; simultaneous exercise of legislative and executive power by soviet-type institutions; drastic reduction of the number of permanent functionaries and greater and greater transfer of administrative functions to bodies run by the mass of the concerned toilers themselves. In other words, a soviet type representative democracy, as opposed to the parliamentary type, with increasingly wide-ranging forms of direct democracy.

    my two cents
  8. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    My argument is that the American Constitution is actually designed to be revolutionized, so scrapping it would be unessecary. What is necessary is abolishing the bourgeois state, and the bourgeois state is not fundamentally written into our constitution, save for some recent bourgeois revisions that can easily be scratched. My point is, the power of the State isn't in the constitution: it is in capital itself.
  9. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    Example: The American Civil War of 1861-1864 was a revolution, yet the Constitution was not scrapped.
  10. redphilly
    redphilly
    Yes, but it was the /continuation/ of the bourgeois revolution begun in 1776. It didn't require the smashing of the state, but the constitution was modified to allow that Blacks are human beings. The actual "reform" of America brought by the Civil War was temporary and ended with the compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of Union troops from the South. In very short order a sytem of segregation was instituted that lasted almost 100 years.

    All that said, a socialist revolution would require a different set up entirely - the direct rule of the working class. Marx was pretty clear that it would be impossible for the workers to lay hold of the bourgeois state machine and use it for its own purposes.

    Look at it this way. Say in 2012, the Socialist party and other socialist groups were to run a unified candidate for President and a slate of congressional and senate candidates in the midst of the second great depression brought on by the waste of resources on the wars and the bailouts. On election day, they are all elected to office but short of a majority needed to make big changes. Do you really think they would get anything accomplished? FauX news would be going 24/7 about the impending doom of the republic, both the Democrats and Republicans would find a sudden unity in defeating any program of the government.

    IMO, revolutions are not about elections. Sure we should participate in them to propagandize for our ideas, btu you can't elect socialism. Revolution is more about the revolutionary self-activity of the working class and the mass actions of that class to bring down capital.

    Of course, there are hard-won gains in the bourgeois constitution - voting rights, free speech, assembly, press, habeas corpus. All of these should be preserved. These rights were fought for and paid for in the blood of rebels - not given to us by the ruling class. Again, we need a democracy based on workers councils, not bourgeois parliaments.


    Example: The American Civil War of 1861-1864 was a revolution, yet the Constitution was not scrapped.
  11. redphilly
    redphilly
    The state is the expression of the rule of one class over another. The US Constitution is the codification of that rule in the US. It's designed to be modified (slooooowly) but not revolutionized. The document itself is resistant to change. For example, look at the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment at what was the height of the feminist movement. They could not get it through the state legislatures.

    Do you think an act making the Fortune 500 the property of the people would sail through the states?

    My argument is that the American Constitution is actually designed to be revolutionized, so scrapping it would be unessecary. What is necessary is abolishing the bourgeois state, and the bourgeois state is not fundamentally written into our constitution, save for some recent bourgeois revisions that can easily be scratched. My point is, the power of the State isn't in the constitution: it is in capital itself.
  12. cenv
    cenv
    In addition to all the great points redphilly brings up, I have to ask... what would be the point in keeping the US Constitution? Lots, if not most of it would have to be scrapped. Right off the bat, the first three articles are about the three branches of government, so these would have to be thrown out, and that's probably just the tip of the iceberg. By the time we finished "modifying" it, the constitution wouldn't even be recognizable as such. In fact, the act of keeping the constitution following the revolution would probably be purely symbolic... and symbolically, what kind of message would keeping the constitution send across?

    Oh, and I doubt Thomas Jefferson anticipated a proletarian revolution that would shred the social fabric of society and do away with capitalism itself.
  13. Autodidakt
    Autodidakt
    Before I defined myself as a revolutionary I designed a system I called noocratic democracy. I don't agree with noocracy any more, now that I've researched the idea. However, the structure itself can be modified for socialististic purposes. I'll give you the simple description now, just ignore the parts that support the academic hierarchy.

    It is a four branch system with a Congress, Ministry, Court, and Council of Facilit[at]ors.

    the congress has a Senate, House of Representatives, and National Assembly. The Senate is elected by national conventions. The House of Reps is elected by provincial conventions. The National Assembly is elected by proportional representation and it holds veto power over the other two houses with a 2/3 majority.

    The Ministry is my version of separation of executive powers into five ministers elected directly by the people. they are the ministers of State, Peace, Education, Development, and Economy. It takes too long to describe their individual duties, but their titles give a broad sense of what they govern.

    The Supreme Court would include 13 judges with no chief justice. I happen to like the American Supreme court structure quite lot even if I don't agree with the court itself all the time.

    The fourth and most important branch is the council of facilitors which is elected from national convention. Its members chair all meetings of the congress and they run all fact-checking parts of the government.

    More will follow if you all want to hear more, comrades. I'll see the reaction first. Don't have enough time now to write more.
  14. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    It seems J.P. Cannon agrees with me that the United States Constitution's framework can be revolutionized as opposed to reformed without scrapping it.
    James P. Cannon, Socialism on Trial, section :Government in a workers' state and capitalist government:
    Q: What is meant by the expression “overthrow of the capitalist state”?
    A: That means to replace it by a workers’ and farmers’ government; that is what we mean.
    Q: What is meant by the expression “destroy the machinery of the capitalist state”?
    A: By that we mean that when we set up the workers’ and farmers’ government in this country, the functioning of this government, its tasks, its whole nature, will be so profoundly and radically different from the functions, tasks, and nature of the bourgeois state, that we will have to replace it all along the line. From the very beginning the workers’ state has a different foundation, and it is different in all respects. It has to create an entirely new apparatus, a new state apparatus from top to bottom. That is what we mean.
    Q: Do you mean that there will be no Congress or House of Representatives and Senate?
    A: It will be a different kind of a Congress. It will be a Congress of representatives of workers and soldiers and farmers, based on their occupational units, rather than the present form based on territorial representation.
    Q: And what is the meaning of “soviet”?
    A: Soviet is a Russian word which means “council”. It is the Russian equivalent for council in our language. It means a body of representatives of various groups. That is what the term meant in the Russian Revolution. That is, the representatives—they called them deputies—I guess we would call them delegates. The delegates from various shops in a given city come together in a central body. The Russians called it the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
    Q: Now, what is meant by “expropriation”?
    A: Expropriation we apply to big industry, which is in the hands of private capitalists, the Sixty Families —take it out of their hands and put it in the hands of the people through their representatives, that’s expropriation.
    Q: Is it a question of principle that there should be no compensation for property expropriated from the Sixty Families?
    A: No, it is not a question of principle. That question has been debated interminably in the Marxist movement. No place has any authoritative Marxist declared it a question of principle not to compensate. It is a question of possibility, of adequate finances, of an agreement of the private owners to submit, and so forth.
    Q: Would the party gladly pay these owners if they could avoid violence?
    A: I can only give you my opinion.
    Q: What is your opinion?
    A: My personal opinion is that if the workers reached the point of the majority, and confronted the capitalist private owners of industry with the fact of their majority and their power, and then we were able to make a deal with the capitalists to compensate them for their holdings, and let them enjoy this for the rest of their lives, I think it would be a cheaper, a cheaper and more satisfactory way of effecting the necessary social transformation than a civil war. I personally would vote for it—if you could get the capitalists to agree on that, which you couldn’t.
    Q: What attitude does the party take toward the ballot?
    A: Our party runs candidates wherever it is able to get on the ballot. We conduct very energetic campaigns during the elections, and in general, to the best of our ability, and to the limit of our resources, we participate in election campaigns.
    Q: What campaigns do you remember the party having participated in in the last few years?
    A: Well, I remember the candidacy of Comrade Grace Carlson for the United States Senate last year. I have been a candidate of the party several times for various offices. In Newark, where we have a good organisation, we have had candidates in every election for some time. I cite those three examples. In general, it is the policy of the party to have candidates everywhere possible.
    Q: Does the party at times support other candidates?
    A: Yes. In cases where we don’t have a candidate, it is our policy, as a rule, to support the candidates of another workers’ party, or of a labor or a farmer-labor party. We support them critically. That is, we do not endorse their program, but we vote for them and solicit votes for them, with the explanation that we don’t agree with their program. We support them as against the candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties.
    For example, we have always supported the Farmer-Labor candidates in Minnesota in all cases where we didn’t have a candidate of our own party. We supported the candidates of the American Labor Party in New York in similar circumstances.
    Q: What is the purpose of the party in participating in these electoral campaigns?
    A: The first purpose, I would say, is to make full use of the democratic possibility afforded to popularise our ideas, to try to get elected wherever possible; and, from a long range view, to test out the uttermost possibility of advancing the socialist cause by democratic means.
    Q: What purpose did you and associates of yours have in creating the Socialist Workers Party?
    A: The purpose was to organise our forces for the more effective propagation of our ideas, with the ultimate object that I have mentioned before, of building up a party that would be able to lead the working masses of the country to socialism by means of the social revolution.
    Q: What is the attitude of the party, and the opinion of the party, with reference to the government, as it exists now, being capitalist?
    A: Yes, we consider it a capitalist government. That is stated in our Declaration of Principles; that is, a government which represents the economic interests of the class of capitalists in this country, and not the interests of the workers and the poor farmers; not the interests of all the people, as it pretends, but a class government.
    Q: What opinion has the party as to differences within the ruling class from the point of view of more liberal or more reactionary?
    A: We don’t picture the capitalist class as one solid, homogeneous unit. There are all kinds of different trends, different interests among them, which reflect themselves in different capitalist parties and different factions in the parties, and very heated struggles. An example is the present struggle between the interventionists and the isolationists.
    Q: Does the party take an attitude as to whether or not the Roosevelt administration is more or less liberal than previous administrations?
    Mr. Schweinhaut: I object to that as irrelevant.
    The Court: Sustained.
    Q: Is it possible for a difference of opinion to exist in the party on the question as to whether the transformation will be peaceful or violent?
    A: I think it is possible, yes.
    Q: So that there is no compulsion on a member to have an opinion as to what the future will have in store for the party or for the workers?
    A: No, I don’t think that is compulsory, because that is an opinion about the future that can’t be determined with scientific precision.
    Q: What steps, if any, does the party take to secure a correct interpretation of party policy by individual members?
    A: Well, we have, in addition to our public lectures, and press, forums, and so forth—we have internal meetings, educational meetings. In the larger cities we usually conduct a school, where we teach the doctrines of the party. Individual comrades, unschooled workers who don’t understand our program, or who misinterpret it—all kinds of provisions are made to try to explain things to them, to convince them of the party’s point of view. That is a frequent occurrence, because, after all, the program of the party is a document that represents pretty nearly one hundred years of socialist thought, and we don’t expect an unschooled worker who joins the party to understand all those doctrines as precisely as the professional party leaders.
    Q: What can you tell us about the differences and degree of knowledge of various members of the party?
    A: Well, there is a big difference of various members and of various leaders.
    Q: Is it always possible to correct every mistake that every member of the party makes?
    Mr. Schweinhaut: I object to that.
    The Court: It seems to me the answer to that is obvious.
    Mr. Schweinhaut: I will stipulate that it isn’t always possible.
    Mr. Goldman: That is fine.
    We cant skip steps
  15. redphilly
    redphilly
    @Amistad -- OK, perhaps Cannon agrees with both of us; in the sense that he plainly says it will be a very different type of government. Socialism on Trial is a classic and should be read by all. Of course, we all have to understand the context. The SWP leadership was on trial for sedition under the Smith Act and they had to be very careful what they said and how they framed it. Job one was to keep the party legal instead of getting it banned and this was accomplished.
  16. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    By Red Philly
    Do you think an act making the Fortune 500 the property of the people would sail through the states?
    Actually, yes. Now, as I hope you all know from my threads on the importance of a uniformed Red Guard I am not advocating reformism, elections-only, etc. But given any situation, the first step is to abolish all capitalist programs in the constitution and give the democratic institutions provided in the constitution to the proletariat. It is probable that that will come with the bashing of more than a few heads. But as far as the constitution is concerned, we are at least lucky that we aren't fighting a system like the Tsarist one with absolutely no framework. The Russians had to start from scratch with their constitution, but here at least the bourgeois-democratic phase has already been achieved, now it is time to turn those bourgeois-democratic institutions into proletarian-democratic ones. That is the socialist revolution. The state isn't going to vanish overnight, and to start from scratch the day after seems uneccessary when the capitalist state can be overthrown without having to construct society all over again from the dark ages.
  17. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    @Amistad -- OK, perhaps Cannon agrees with both of us; in the sense that he plainly says it will be a very different type of government. Socialism on Trial is a classic and should be read by all. Of course, we all have to understand the context. The SWP leadership was on trial for sedition under the Smith Act and they had to be very careful what they said and how they framed it. Job one was to keep the party legal instead of getting it banned and this was accomplished.
    Yes, but he wasn't dishonest at all. He wasn't lying just to avoid not going to jail: he was very sincere in his answers. Hence he and his comrades went to prison, which I might add, is another piece of evidence that the capitalist state is violating the fundamentals of our democratic constitution. That is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
  18. samofshs
    samofshs
    well, you said america has checks and balances. it doesn't now. ever heard of "signing statements"?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfficjv77kY
  19. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    I said the constitution is supposed to ensure checks and balances but I also said the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has destroyed that and many other fundamentals. What I want to do is to dissolve the state (police, army, etc.) and replace them with worker controlled institutions of the same type. I want to put the government institution in the hands of the proletariat, ie, the soviets. There is a difference between "state" and "government."
  20. samofshs
    samofshs
    I said the constitution is supposed to ensure checks and balances but I also said the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has destroyed that and many other fundamentals. What I want to do is to dissolve the state (police, army, etc.) and replace them with worker controlled institutions of the same type. I want to put the government institution in the hands of the proletariat, ie, the soviets. There is a difference between "state" and "government."
    but this government would not function under control of the people. it only (barely) functions now with massive amounts of propaganda.
  21. chegitz guevara
    chegitz guevara
    If we're going to keep the Constitution, shouldn't we also keep the Magna Carta?
  22. samofshs
    samofshs
    Yes, but it was the /continuation/ of the bourgeois revolution begun in 1776. It didn't require the smashing of the state, but the constitution was modified to allow that Blacks are human beings. The actual "reform" of America brought by the Civil War was temporary and ended with the compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of Union troops from the South. In very short order a sytem of segregation was instituted that lasted almost 100 years.

    All that said, a socialist revolution would require a different set up entirely - the direct rule of the working class. Marx was pretty clear that it would be impossible for the workers to lay hold of the bourgeois state machine and use it for its own purposes.

    Look at it this way. Say in 2012, the Socialist party and other socialist groups were to run a unified candidate for President and a slate of congressional and senate candidates in the midst of the second great depression brought on by the waste of resources on the wars and the bailouts. On election day, they are all elected to office but short of a majority needed to make big changes. Do you really think they would get anything accomplished? FauX news would be going 24/7 about the impending doom of the republic, both the Democrats and Republicans would find a sudden unity in defeating any program of the government.

    IMO, revolutions are not about elections. Sure we should participate in them to propagandize for our ideas, btu you can't elect socialism. Revolution is more about the revolutionary self-activity of the working class and the mass actions of that class to bring down capital.

    Of course, there are hard-won gains in the bourgeois constitution - voting rights, free speech, assembly, press, habeas corpus. All of these should be preserved. These rights were fought for and paid for in the blood of rebels - not given to us by the ruling class. Again, we need a democracy based on workers councils, not bourgeois parliaments.
    well in amerikkka, these rights don't actually exist if you look at it hard enough. look at florida elections; they are a JOKE. I don;t have the right to free speech either, can you imagine what would happen if I called you on the phone and said "BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB ALLAHU AKBAR BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB." and hung up? their wiretapping asses would have me behind bars in a week without a fair trial. WHOOPS! there goes habeas corpus as well. and if you print anything that the government doesn't agree with I gar-un-tee you that it won't get published and be publicized.
  23. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    If we're going to keep the Constitution, shouldn't we also keep the Magna Carta?
    EXACTLY MY POINT!! Think of how many revolutions (and reactions) have happened and the Magna Carta endured! Centuries, man! The most democratic documents are designed with revolution in mind. The US Constitution doesn't specify where it draws its power, it just says "the people" but it could easily be changed (via revolution) to derive its power entirely from the soviet councils.
    By samofhs
    well in amerikkka
    OK, I see where your argument is coming from, but when people say "Amerikkka" I have a hard time tking them seriously.
  24. Tablo
    Sorry, but I wouldn't even hesitate to use the Constitution as toilet paper. We don't need to keep the constitution. If we are going to make some new revolutionary government then make something new and catered towards the peoples needs.
  25. A.R.Amistad
    A.R.Amistad
    Overall the Declaration of Independence is a much more historically significant and important document to revolutionaries and Americans than the constitution.
  26. Il Medico
    Il Medico
    Representative Democracy will be scraped in favor of a much more direct form of Democracy under communism.
  27. CornetJoyce
    CornetJoyce
    In addition to all the great points redphilly brings up, I have to ask... what would be the point in keeping the US Constitution? Lots, if not most of it would have to be scrapped. Right off the bat, the first three articles are about the three branches of government, so these would have to be thrown out, and that's probably just the tip of the iceberg. By the time we finished "modifying" it, the constitution wouldn't even be recognizable as such. In fact, the act of keeping the constitution following the revolution would probably be purely symbolic... and symbolically, what kind of message would keeping the constitution send across?

    Oh, and I doubt Thomas Jefferson anticipated a proletarian revolution that would shred the social fabric of society and do away with capitalism itself.
    Aside from the Bill of Rights, which was adopted to restrain the new government from suppressing rights long recognized in provincial constitutions, there isn't much worth keeping.

    Jefferson knew nothing of "proletarian revolution," nor did Marx know of peasant revolution. Jefferson accepted the constitution of 1787 as an accomplished fact but his criticisms are well known. He had not been unhappy with the constitutions that existed before 1787. He predicted that the presidency- "a bad edition of Polish kingship"- would eventually turn into despotism. His constitutional thought is largely embodied in the "ward republics" he espoused, in which "decisions are made by the people themselves, acting personally and directly, in mass."

    In 1776, if you had given an association test- "Life, Liberty and...?" a hundred out of a hundred gentlemen would have blurted out "Property." Jefferson's substitution of "Pursuit of Happiness" is known to all. In 1789, he argued against the inclusion of property as a fundamental right in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. He asserted that wherever there was absentee-owned, unfarmed land and landless men, property right contradicted the rights of man; and the landless man had a right to till the soil, paying a nominal fee. He had begun to question the regime of private property, and a new constitution should follow that to the logical conclusion.
  28. Kamil
    Kamil
    Thank you for the information about Jefferson, I once came across a book called "The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson" but never actually read it, regret it now.

    While Marx did "know" of peasant revolutions- he was well versed with the many peasant uprisings of the past- he only said that the peasants would not be the initiators of the socialist revolution. And in fact they didnt- even in the Revolution of 1917 them embryonic form of the soviet state began in factories with "factory-shop commitees" and the industrial soviets. Despite the peasants taking part in the revolution the seeds of socialist organization started among the proletariat, and from there it was the subsequent Lenninist Dictatorship of the Proletariat that aided, educated and assisted other revolutionary movements (even peasant-based ones), though its debateable how much of a DOTP it really was after a few years.

    Marx said that form of the new society would develop in the shell of the old one, Jerrersons ideas, the Radical Democrats and instrumental forces behind Reconstruction are all the primitive roots of a larger North American tradition that was inching along towards organized labour and the coming Socialist revolution.

    Here are a few exerts from JD Bernal, from his piece The Word, The Flesh, and The Devil that I find approriate to what Comrade Amistad was saying about the constitution:

    the state of the present and the forces operating in it contain implicitly the future state and point the way to its interpretation.

    we must keep in mind that the state of development at any one time period must be a self-consistent whole. Each line of development must have reached the level which is implied by the necessities of any of the other lines: for instance, the chemical control of life requires the development of chemical technique and apparatus of a very high order

    But still, Jefferson was a product of his time, and a fucking slaveowner. Love em or Hate 'em Bob Avakian wrote a good piece revealing the bullshit side to Jeffersons theories ect. And while were on the topic Ezra Pound wrote a weird little paper comparing him to Mussolini lol
  29. CornetJoyce
    CornetJoyce
    Pound wrote an entire book comparing Mussolini with Jefferson but after doing a little reading, he transferred his affections to John Adams. Avakian's bullshit aside, Jefferson's moves against chattel slavery are well known. He lived off the labor of the chattel slaves of Monticello, and Marx and Engels lived off the labor of wage slaves at the Diamond Thread Company. Avakian lives off his Mom. They're all politicians, not saints.