DEMOCRACY WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE
March 11, 2021
by Dr. Nayvin Gordon
400 Years of US Capitalism has Not Delivered Democracy—America Returns to its Roots: “Democracy” for Rich, White, Christian Men, the Economic and Political Dictatorship of the 1%.
The framers of the US Constitution knew that true democracy, the rule of the majority, was never meant to be. James Madison wrote, “The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed.... Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] ...may be overruled by a majority without property...” https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/the-founders-and-the-vote/
This is precisely why the US Constitution of 1789 did not give “the people” the right to vote, and for over 200 years the US Government has never given workers the right to vote on their working conditions. Those with property--land, slaves, industry, and money, the 1%, have always decided the working conditions of the vast majority of the people-- an economic dictatorship to exploit the working people. The 1% has always resisted the attempts of the vast majority to have both political and economic democracy. The last 400 years of struggles, from the Civil War to Civil Rights, have clearly demonstrated how hard the people, black, brown, native and women, have had to fight to get their “right to vote.”
The determination of the 1%, “property owners,” to prevent equality for all by denying and restricting the right to vote continues. In 2013 the Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html In 2021 the Supreme Court is again considering further restrictions on the right to vote. In Congress, the reactionaries and Christian Nationalist zealots are obstructing attempts to pass Federal Protection for voters. Republican controlled states are passing laws to further restrict voting rights to ensure that Republicans will always “win elections” and remain in power.
On January 6, 2021, a millionaire ex-president, a friend and ally of Wall Street, supported by 95% of the Republican Party, encouraged thousands of racists, neo-Nazis, KKK, and White Christian Nationalist fanatics to carry out a violent coup attempt designed to invalidate the votes of millions. He was not arrested but hailed as a hero and now leads the Republican Party.
The rich and Wall Street corporate moneybags, have vast power to influence politicians and elections, continue to fund the Republican Party. The handwriting is on the wall, the Republican Party, is now an openly authoritarian, racist, neo-fascist party that intends to return us to the roots of 1789, a brutal dictatorship of the 1% -- rich, white, Christian men. “Democracy” in name only.
400 years of history has clearly demonstrated that extending the vote equally to all is not possible in the US capitalist economy. The people’s desire for political, economic, and social equality for all can be achieved by building a militant egalitarian movement to end the tyranny of the 1%.
3/9/21
Dr. Nayvin Gordon writes about health and politics. gordonnayvin@yahoo.com