A Socialist Campaign For The US Elections - Part 5

Even these modest reforms within capitalism, and fully in conformance with the requirements of bourgeois property laws, would, of course, be vigorously resisted by the owners of that fictitious capital, who would, thereby, lose all of their political power, and ability to skew distribution in their favour. Even where legislatures passed laws removing the unsupportable power of shareholders to exercise control, those laws would be challenged in the courts, and the judges in those courts, nearly all acting in the interests of that ruling class, and themselves a part of it, would strike down the laws. It would require a wholesale judicial revolution, with the executive having to remove existing judges, and put in their place, judges who would no longer act partially in the favour of the ruling class. 

This, indeed, shows the need, not only in the US, but also in Britain and elsewhere, for the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries to be completed. In Britain, the existence of an hereditary monarchy and unelected House of Lords is a visible manifestation of that requirement. Britain does not have the same kind of election of judges, police chiefs and so on that the US does. But, the US was also not created as a bourgeois democracy. It was established as a bourgeois republic. The Civil War was fought, not to end slavery, but to enforce the dominance of the Federal State over the individual states, in the interests of industrial capital. Engels noted that the federal system in the US was already acting as a limitation on US development, and demonstrated again the need for the establishment of a one and indivisible republic, as for example, established in France. 

Many of the problems with the US Constitution, and democracy in the US, stem from this its nature as a federal republic. The most obvious manifestation of that is the fact that the President is elected in a General Election, but not on the basis of the popular vote. The President is elected rather by an electoral college made up of delegates from each state. That meant that in 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush in the General Election, but did not become President, because Bush was able to obtain a majority of delegates in the Electoral College. Similarly, in 2016, Trump lost by 4 million votes to Hillary Clinton, but won the Presidency on the basis of a majority of Electoral College votes, having won some states by only the narrowest of margins, but having done so obtained all their electoral college delegates. As Trump makes clear that he will attempt to steal the election, by voter suppression, by legal moves using his stuffed Supreme Court, and directly by the use of armed fascist gangs, it has even been suggested that Trump supporters in Republican held states might even try to get their electoral college delegates to cast their vote for Trump, even if the state has voted for Biden. 

The electoral college system arises from the fact that the US is a republic rather than a democracy, and because it is a federal state rather than an indivisible republic. But, from a purely bourgeois-democratic perspective, it is an aberration. It is clearly not sustainable for Presidents to be appointed when, in fact, they have the support of only a minority of those even who have voted, let alone of the electorate as a whole. Socialists should demand the abolition of the Electoral College, and for the President to be elected on the basis of the popular vote as expressed in the General Election. In fact, socialists should question the role of President itself, as anything more than a role of Head of State. All presidential systems involve an element and tendency towards Bonapartism, a tendency that has been manifest in the time of Trump. 

Nor is there any need for a second chamber, as indeed there is no such requirement in the UK. The Senate is again a reflection of the establishment of the US as a federal republic rather than a bourgeois democracy. The argument behind the existence of both the Senate and of the Supreme Court is the doctrine of separation of powers as set out by Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws. It says that the three elements of the state, the executive, legislature and judiciary should be separate so that each acts as a check on the other, to prevent the rise of tyranny. But, each of these elements represents merely an elite, each one being closely associated with the ruling class. The perfect example, of the fallacy can be seen, now, by the fact that Trump has stuffed the Supreme Court with his own political appointees, and is set to do so again with his nomination for the replacement of Justice Ginsberg. How can anyone believe that the Supreme Court, certainly not now, is in fact separated from the Executive (Presidency), when its majority is the consequence of such political appointments. 

The Senate is constituted again in line with the establishment of the US as a federal republic. Each state, irrespective of population, elects two senators. This is the equivalent of the rotten boroughs in Britain prior to the 1832 Reform Act, whereby, some constituencies had more sheep than voters, and where aristocrats were able to buy a seat in parliament. The states with the smallest populations get to appoint the same number of senators as the most populous states, and the least densely populated states are inevitably those with large rural populations, which, like rural populations everywhere, are politically and culturally backward. Its in those areas that Republicans have been able to win a disproportionate number of political representatives, and where Trump was able to rack up his electoral college votes. 

• A socialist campaign should raise the political demand to reform the US Constitution. 
  
  
• Abolish the Electoral College, elect the president by the popular vote of the whole nation 
  
  
• Make the President merely Head of State, devoid of executive powers 

• Abolish the Senate, make the House the legislative and executive body as in parliamentary democracies 

• For Annual Elections to Congress 

• Annual Election of all Supreme Court judges 

• Election of all military top brass and state officials 

• Open the books of the corporations to see the golden threads that tie the ruling class to the political elite 

The real checks and balances on the executive comes not from other unelected elites. How can an unelected Supreme Court, or a Senate elected on the basis of the equivalent of rotten boroughs, in any way be a democratic check on the executive. The appointment of Supreme Court judges for life is an abomination. The real checks and balances on the executive comes from the people themselves. But, such checks can only be meaningful on the basis of holding the political representatives to account on a frequent basis. The Chartists in Britain demanded annual parliaments for precisely that reason.

Annual parliaments has another benefit. It means that the role of money in those elections is diminished, because for one thing it becomes impossible for those seeking election to pour billions of dollars into their efforts on such a regular basis. But, socialists should also seek to put limits on the amount of money that can be spent on elections anyway. The requirement to spend billions of dollars to get elected in the US is the equivalent of the way the landed aristocracy bought votes in Britain prior to the 1832 Reform Act.

Similarly, no socialist party would allow non-members to dictate to it who its candidates in elections should be, as happens in the US with the primary and caucus system of selecting candidates. Those systems are a farce. They allow non-members, even members of the opposing party to dictate who the party's candidate should be, and the ability to use huge sums of money, and to mobilise the resources of the media of the plutocracy for that purpose, is an affront to democracy. Socialists should campaign for the Democrats to scrap the selection of candidates by such primaries and caucuses. Only party members should have the right to vote in selection meetings, based upon a minimum length of membership, and involvement in party meetings. 

But, history indicates that, if the workers, in the US, were to mobilise around such a programme, which is entirely consistent with the principles of bourgeois property law, and of bourgeois democracy, the US ruling class would organise a slave owners rebellion to prevent it. In just the same way that the Confederacy rose up against the demands of industrial capital in the North, and as the ruling-class in Chile organised a coup against the government of Allende, so too the ruling class would not allow such changes, which in essence would mean the beginning of the end for their rule, and their privileges. The creation of workers defence squads to fight the fascist gangs, and racist cops now, the need to build democratic assemblies at local level to organise such defence of communities, the need to build committees of workers in each workplace, to fight directly for workers rights, are not only means of organising resistance now, but of creating an alternative form of workers' democracy, of workers' self activity and self government that will be required to put down any such slave holders revolt organised by the ruling class. 

Ultimately, this form of more direct, constantly mobilised democracy is superior to the form of democracy by which the bourgeoisie rules, and which inevitably involves only a privileged few, and also leads to the creation of large and powerful, self-serving bureaucracies. In 1776, the Americans were in the vanguard of the revolutions to sweep away the old landed aristocracies, and their feudal regimes, as they overthrew the rule of George III, and established their republic. It is the duty of American socialists today to take up that baton, and to make the American working-class the vanguard of the world-wide proletarian revolution, and the overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie.

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