Democratic rights and the attack on constitutionalism

WSWS International Editorial Board meeting

Democratic rights and the attack on constitutionalism


By Richard Hoffman
23 March 2006

This conference has raised important issues concerning the attacks on democratic rights, directed to the question of whether capitalism as a social system is continuing in an upward direction or is in serious decline and confronting the emergence of a revolutionary situation.

I would like to contribute some general observations on the legal-historical aspects of these issues.

The current state of affairs in the United States concerning constitutional government and law is a profound expression of a social and political system in an advanced stage of disintegration. Indeed, it reflects the decay of liberal capitalism as a world historical system in a country which did once represent the apogee of democratic government, grounded in the most noble ideas of human culture and emancipation.

I think it worthwhile to remind ourselves, as we appraise the political culture and attitude of America’s ruling elite today, of the ideas and political culture that guided the founders of the American Republic, for in these ideas is distilled the cultural and intellectual outlook of the most advanced elements of a social class in the ascent. Such a review reveals as much about their outlook as it does about the present leadership of the United States.

Lying on his deathbed in 1826, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, between 1801 and 1809, wrote his last letter, declining for reasons of poor health an invitation to attend the 50th Independence Day celebrations in Washington. He apologised for being unable to attend and continued:

“I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

“That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favoured few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

If anyone remains uncertain about why the socialist movement vigorously defends democratic rights, he or she would do well to go back and read again some of the writings of the Founding Fathers. The ideas they expressed, which found embodiment in the Constitution and the inalienable rights it proclaimed, have an enduring relevance, including in the socialist struggle to construct a human society. We defend these principles, and the ideas from which they emanate, as our own, without reservation, against America’s present ruling elite.

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The Bush administration is attempting to destroy these centuries-old democratic foundations and establish a form of dictatorial rule freed from the constraints of law.

In terms of democratic principles, what lay at the heart of the seventeenth century political conflict was, in the language used at the time, the issue of private or personal interests against the “Common Interest”. Democratic constitutional theory developed out of the social struggle between the personal interests of the king and those aligned with the monarchy, against the broader social interests of the ascendant bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie sought to place government on a wider social basis, through which it could pursue its interests and eliminate arbitrary personal rule. Its aims found expression in the political conception of a government of laws and not of men, formulated by the English political and legal theorist James Harrington in 1656.

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Liberal democracy as it emerged in its relatively finished form in the United States was the product of three great revolutions and accompanying civil wars: the English Revolution and Civil War, the American Revolution (1776-1781) and the American Civil War (1861-1865). The constitution itself was the product of six years of flourishing political and intellectual debate between 1781 and 1787, in which attention was frequently directed back to the English Revolution—particularly by the radical Whigs, who believed that government in Britain had been corrupted over the past century and who were determined to ensure that the peoples’ rights would be secure and inalienable forever.

This system of government and rights, developed through a long and extraordinary struggle for liberty, is being stripped from the American people—and in other countries such as Australia and Britain—with barely a murmur in the political establishment. This is a startling expression of the general erosion of democratic consciousness within the population as a whole and in particular in the middle classes, which have historically formed the social basis of bourgeois democracy. Ultimately, this is the product of decades of social and cultural decay under the pressure of American capitalism and everything it stands for: exploitation, aggression, possessive individualism, misogyny and backwardness.

In his recent speech, to which David North and Patrick Martin have already referred, Albert Gore may perhaps have recognised the seriousness of what is happening, but he was not prepared to fight the disenfranchisement of the electorate in the 2000 elections. As we all know, the Democratic Party as a whole has joined with complete alacrity the destruction of the constitutional system. Indeed, just the other day Carl Levin, the senior Michigan Democratic senator, led the ratification of a bill initiated by the Bush administration, which outlawed access to the courts for Guantánamo detainees. This is now known at the Graham-Levin Act.

As a general proposition, I would suggest that the outlawing of courts is not something that a ruling class confident of itself and its social position would feel any need to attempt. Unlike the English bourgeoisie in the seventeenth century, the American ruling class no longer embraces a system based on laws implemented by courts—it does not feel that such a system sufficiently enables it to pursue its interests unhindered.

more at http://wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/rhof-m23_prn.shtml