The Articles of Confederation of 1777 were in opposition to the interests of the American elite. The document gave limited power to the federal government and concentrated power in the state governments, which were controlled by the popular classes. The elite were particularly concerned that limitations on property rights would be established by state governments under popular control. So the upper class formed a successful movement for a new Constitution that expanded the power of the federal government and that went beyond the separation of power to the balance of power, creating a situation where one of the three branches (legislative, executive and judicial) is able to check the power of the other two (see “American Counterrevolution 1777-1787” 11/3/2013).
The balance of power is generally presented in US culture as a wise mechanism designed to ensure that no one group has too much power. What this widely-accepted view fails to mention is that it was designed by the elite to ensure that the representatives of the people did not have too much power vis-à-vis the elite. The representatives of the popular classes were concentrated in the legislative branch, whereas the executive and judicial branches of that era were selected through processes much less democratic. So the balance of power constituted a mechanism to enable elite representatives to check the power of the representatives of the popular classes. In addition, the new Constitution expanded the size of voting districts, which facilitated that ordinary and common people would have less possibility of winning elections, since the larger voting districts required candidates to have more resources. Thus key components of the Constitution were established with the explicit intention of frustrating the popular will (Beard 1960:154-63; Miller 1991:18, 97, 105-9; Foner 1998:24; Shalhope 1990: 99-107; Edelman 1984:16).
Some commentators have observed that the writers of the Constitution established the form of democracy without the substance. Their mechanism for doing so was the concept of popular sovereignty, which is the idea that the government exercises power in the name of the people and with the consent of the people. Although this seems like a democratic concept, the exercising of power by the government in the name of the people is something fundamentally different from the exercising of power directly by the people themselves. The concept of popular sovereignty gives power to the people, but converts the people into an abstraction, into “a mythic entity that never meets, never discusses, and never takes any action” (Miller 1991:113). The concept of popular sovereignty makes it possible for political leaders who distrust democracy to invoke the rhetoric of democracy (Miller 1991: 105-28; Shalhope 1990: 102, 106).
The legacy of the balance of power remains with us. Proposed projects of law or national action must make their way in a system of checks and balances in which elite representatives are everywhere present to guarantee the protection of elite interests, generating ideologies that obscure their true intentions. At the same time, with the destruction of fledging efforts at local popular assemblies at the end of the eighteenth century, our people have not developed the practice of popular discourse. We are a divided and confused people, manipulated by the mass media, which are owned by the elite.
The system of checks and balances that we have inherited is a contentious process, and proposals that become law are based on compromise rather than consensus, and for this reason rarely enjoy the unqualified support of the majority. We lack the capacity to develop a reasonable national project on the basis of national consensus. We have seen the fall of worthy and necessary national projects: LBJ’s War on Poverty, Jimmy Carter’s proposal for the protection of the environment, and the health insurance proposal of the Clintons in the 1990s. Obama’s health insurance proposal was passed only after significant modifications that may have undermined its intention, and its initial steps at implementation are full of contention and discord. The exceptions to this pattern of contentious discord are those proposals that have overwhelming popular support on the basis of manipulation of popular fear of a supposed internal or external enemy or threat.
I have seen firsthand an alternative political process, and I can affirm that it need not be this way. But first we must rediscover our history, and particularly our history of popular struggle, which from time to time has lifted a bright star in the American political landscape, as a result of the heroic efforts at different historic moments of farmers, artisans, workers, African-Americans, women, Native Americans, Latinos, defenders of the earth, and intellectuals committed to defense of the true and the right. And we must come to appreciate the popular movements formed by the peoples of the Third World, whose anti-imperialist struggles must be tied to our own struggles for a true fulfillment of the American promise of democracy.
Beard, Charles A. 1960 (1913). An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New York: Macmillan.
Edelman, Martin. 1984. Democratic Theories and the Constitution. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Foner, Eric. 1998. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton.
Miller, Joshua. 1991. The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America, 1630-1789: The Legacy for Contemporary Politics. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Shalhope, Robert E. 1990. The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, American Revolution, Articles of Confederation, US Constitution, balance of power, Eric Foner, Robert Shalhope, Charles Beard, Martin Edelman, Joshua Miller