If, as seems now likely, the Democrats win the Presidency, an control of the Senate, they should put in place the machinery to impeach all of the Republican appointed Supreme Court judges, who could stand in the way of any progressive legislation by the Executive. The Republicans have pushed through the Senate the appointment of Trump's nomination, Amy Cony Barrett, at the last minute, in an obvious attempt to be able to frustrate any Democrat legislation, and in order to attempt to overturn much of the progressive legislation and court decisions of the last 60 years. That is just a part of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois counter-revolution they have been undertaking, in the same way that a similar counter-revolution has been undertaken by the petty-bourgeoisie in Britain, in the form of Brexit.
That Supreme Court judges should be able to frustrate the wishes of the population, via their elected representatives decisions, is itself clearly an affront to democracy, that those judges are political appointments for life is an even greater insult. The Republicans moves to get Barrett's appointment ratified at this stage, is clearly a political manoeuvre, but only marginally less so than their other appointments under Trump. Ideally, socialists should push the Democrats to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution itself, by scrapping the Electoral College, and making all Supreme Court judges subject to annual election, but introducing any such constitutional amendments would itself run into opposition from a Supreme Court stuffed with Republican nominees put their to further the counter-revolutionary coup being undertaken by the petty-bourgeoisie, and its representatives within the Republican Party.
The Democrats should feel no compunction about using the impeachment process to get rid of those Republican political appointments, because impeachment is itself a political rather than legal process. It is quite clear that the impeachment of Donald Trump by the House of Representatives demonstrated that he had broken the law, backed up by all the evidence from Mueller et al, but that his acquittal by a Republican controlled Senate was a political decision, pure and simple. So, Democrats should feel no issue about using impeachment in he same political manner to remove the Republican judges that have been stuffed into the Supreme Court.
Socialists in the US, however, need to be aware that this counter-revolutionary coup is being undertaken, not just in the US, but in Britain and elsewhere too. We should follow Marx's advice in standing, in action, with the progressive bourgeoisie to defeat that counter-revolutionary coup, but standing with them in action, does not at all mean subordinating our own organisation, politics or tactics to theirs. We demand that the liberal and social democrats, and those that call themselves democratic socialists, at the least stand up for the revolutionary ideas under which the bourgeois revolutions were fought in the 18th and 19th centuries. But, we warn workers that these allies cannot be counted on to do so.
In the US, workers should vote Democrat, and prepare to fight, in the elections. Just getting rid of Trump is not enough. Its necessary to defeat the the counter-revolutionary coup of the petty-bourgeoisie, and to do so by advancing our own proletarian revolutionary ideals. Its necessary for socialists to use the elections to talk to millions of workers, to draw them into the political struggle being fought out within the Democrat Party itself, to take that political struggle into the trades unions, and all other organs of civil society, turning the Democrats outwards to the struggles of the working-class. It is necessary, by these means to build the revolutionary core inside the Democrats that can create a real, mass, revolutionary, workers party.
3 comments:
Doesn't impeachment still require though that the impeached person actually be guilty of crimes, even if the standard of proof isn't as high as that for a criminal trial?
While I'd have no problem impeaching Republican Supreme Court justices who were actually guilty of crimes, surely impeaching them on trumped-up charges for purely political reasons would be an even worse look then when the Republican-dominated US Senate acquitted (again for purely political reasons) a Donald Trump who was clearly guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused?
Nope. Its a political not legal act. Trump was clearly guilty was found "innocent" by a Republican Senate on purely political grounds. Nixon, was never convicted by the Senate either, but resigned first. So, I'd convict them of the crime of being appointed by Republicans on purely political grounds. I really don't care if its a bad look. The Trumpists and Republicans are trying to carry through a counter-revolutionary coup, just like the Brexiters in Britain. I'm in favour of using whatever means are required to defeat it.
The liberal and social democrats claim that they want to fight the reactionaries by purely constitutional means rather than by working class direct action, so I say, hold hem to their word. get them to use all constitutional means possible to defeat the counter-revolutionaries. Hold yourself to at least the ideals of the American or French revolutionaries of 1776, and 1789. But, of course, they won't. That should be a lesson for workers everywhere on how much they can trust in an alliance with such democrats, as against the need to develop their own revolutionary workers parties.
I have to record my agreement with you on this.
Too little attention is paid to the purely political character or aspect of these situations.
The Constitution of the United States was written on paper, not carved in tablets of stone. It is not, as history has shown, unamenable, and is plainly in need of some major revision.
Hopefully, more and more people will come round to seeing this, creating the momentum for such moves.
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