Part of what I see with 50501/Hands Off protests is that they have a theme of “defending the Constitution” from Trump. This is really a somewhat conservative position and doesn’t have much historical rigor to it.
Prof. Aziz Rana of Boston College Law School is having a moment on Jacobin Radio right now. His basic thesis is that the Constitutional order is so deeply antidemocratic that the left argued with itself and the liberals over whether to focus efforts on challenging it in the early 20th Century. In the broad sweep of history since then, Americans have come to view the Constitution as a sacred text, but in fact, that order is part of what gives the Republicans and the far right their advantages despite losing the popular vote.
The shorter interview: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S250424 (April 24, 2025)
The 4-part long interview: https://thedigradio.com/archive/ (see the Aziz Rana episodes starting in April 2025) - Part 4 isn’t up yet.
So why should we venerate the Constitution, when it holds us back from real, direct democracy? I think part of what our liberal friends and family hold onto is a trust in the Constitution and the framers. They weren’t geniuses, they were landowners worried about kings taking their property. Use these interviews, or Prof. Rana’s book, to handle those arguments.
Yeah, we should change that.
Yeah, we should change that.
That one I’m a lot less sure about but we can talk about it.
Yeah, they also said we shouldn’t have a bill of rights.
Also, the need to protect government against “the mob” and how it’s not as simple as just “let’s let people vote and whoever wins the popular vote gets to rule because that’s democracy” should be absolutely starkly apparent after November of last year. Trying to build a government that works is not really a simple thing, and just like in engineering, saying that some tool is deeply flawed isn’t always necessarily an argument for why things will get better if we just get rid of it (without exploring what the alternate option is going to be and how it’ll play out).
But mostly we’re in agreement. Glad we worked all that out! It turned out to be really simple, who knew.
Trump has never won the popular vote. In fact, it’s very common for Presidents to get elected while losing the popular vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin
I think socialists can and should focus the message on issues like healthcare for all, childcare for all, housing, etc., but in order to actually win and protect those gains, you need to have deep, direct democracy in which people have the time and ability to participate in the decision-making that affects their lives. The Consitution (and I would argue representative democracy in general) doesn’t provide that. I won’t go into all of it here, but there are socialist currents like communalism, libertarian socialism (nothing to do with right wing libertarians, they stole that word), and social ecology that discuss alternative decision-making systems.
Wow! We really do agree on a lot of things, this is amazing.
Great! Can you point me to some examples of where these things have been put into practice and not succumbed to the systemic forces I talked about which tend to send government askew? Since these are such better things and the constitution of the United States is such a pile of shit by contrast, I’m sure you have tons of examples.
Glad to. Here are a few to start with:
Turns out that authoritarians hate democracy!
Your smug, holier-than-thou tone makes me not want to engage with you beyond this comment and makes me wonder how much of a good-faith interaction we’re having. I’ll let you do the rest of the digging if you’re curious about libertarian forms of socialism! This is, after all, socialism@beehaw.org.
Okay, so why would I want to adopt a governmental system that, if history is any judge, is going to get destroyed by some external military? Isn’t that a flaw that is more severe than the electoral college?
I mean I do completely agree with you in terms of making life better and the problems of modern government. I was asking that specific thing because of genuine interest in talking substantively about it, and you’re not wrong about the overall smug and hostile tone I’m taking. I do apologize. But, on the other hand, you came out with an incredibly smug tone (“How to explain to libs in crisis”), and other people in the comments have been incredibly directly insulting (as well as just generally incredibly unproductive in the conversation). Generally speaking, when someone’s rude to me or about me, I’m not real polite to them in turn. IDK, maybe you are right and I should not be rude. If you’re really trying to talk about this, instead of concocting insulting strawmen and talking about “libs,” then sure let’s talk. Why is a governmental system that’s easy to crush a good one to adopt even if life is temporarily better before it gets crushed?
There’s nothing inherent to libertarian socialism that makes it especially vulnerable to military opposition. It was just a fact of that particular political/military moment that multiple well-armed and well-financed enemies were highly motivated to destroy them. Any political system can be destroyed if you throw enough tanks at it! That said, the Spanish anarchist forces were known for being very effective and might have won if not for fascist support of their enemies and soviet desires to replace them with bolshevik communism. In Mexico, the Zapatistas are still around, have successfully fought off both cartel and state forces (working together!) in the past.
I’m glad you’re here for a real convo. Sorry if I came off as combative in the OP – I thought that by posting it in this topic that I’d be talking to socialists and that those socialists would already be on board with heavy left critiques of the american constitutional system. I don’t mean to condescend to liberals – shouldn’t have used “libs” I guess – but I think of them, in the US, as primarily just trying to get the democrats back into power and then mostly disengage. The most outspoken of them tend to have much more energy to fight universal healthcare and other the social democratic reforms of a Bernie Sanders rather than actually take aim at the capitalist, state, and other hierarchies making our lives worse. As a result, I don’t believe they can be effective against right wing and fascist elements in the US and feel the need to recruit them to the socialist and anarchist cause.
Okay, now I imagine that I went off a little digression just like that one, but talking about socialists or anarchists.
See how unproductive that would be? Even when you’re using the fact that it was aimed at a “friendly” audience which would surely agree about how shit these people are is factored in? Dude, just stop doing that. Categorizing people and deciding that obviously these people on the other side all believe X, and that’s a bunch of shit because they are stupid et cetera and they’re always attacking us, is just a really bad use of time. I can’t tell you the number of times someone on Lemmy has told me all about what I believe (which, just like everything you just said in the quoted part, has absolutely nothing to do with anything I actually believe) and then insisted against my opposition that I must believe that, because they already know I am in the category?
Dude just say what you’re saying. Believe what you’re believing. If someone pipes up with a different point of view, hear what their point of view is before you start mocking it and deciding that they must believe absurd dangerous things and are stupid. Most people have some level of sense to what they say, a lot of times they come from a different world and so the problems and the realities they’re aware of are different than yours. Maybe one or the other of you is right or wrong, maybe they both have some truth, but this whole “everyone on the other side is in a particular category with a particular name and let me tell you all about the stupid things they believe” method of argumentation just needs to cease. That’s part of why I had a negative response to this OP article, it was partly your presentation but also partly just that this kind of “let me tell you why my enemies are stupid” construction is almost always being made with some level of dishonesty to it.
As applied to this particular comments thread and this particular OP article, pretty much no one believes that the constitution is a perfect document or that it will protect us all on its own. I’ll speak only for myself, but I think that a lot of what it talks about is valuable: Listing out specific freedoms which a government’s attempt to infringe on would categorize it as a dangerous tyranny, and then the power and name recognition it has to sway people’s loyalty when they might otherwise be loyal to the tyrannical government instead. That’s it. That’s the main value right now. I actually don’t think you would need to destroy the constitution to address any of the massive problems predating Trump, any more than they needed to in order to get rid of slavery or give women the vote, but it’s sure not going to save us if we don’t save ourselves. And we need saving way beyond anything that is written down there, again even before Trump came along.
Furthermore, I think a lot of the problems of corporate corruption in the United States can chug along fine and dandy without the constitution. Like I said before:
What this country actually needs is a massive people movement to get the crooks and tyrants out of government. Trump didn’t invent any of that or even close to, but if him trying to have the government kill everybody who looks at him funny or gets in his way is what it takes to get that going, let’s fucking take advantage and accomplish some things, lord knows we need it.
Is it your impression that there are not multiple well-armed and financed enemies highly motivated to destroy the United States right now? Or the EU? I think that if Russia or Iran had the ability to crush the US in similar fashion, they would. Currently they can’t. That’s a reality of geopolitics and it’s important.
My point is, more or less, that once countries grow to a certain level of size and power they start to face a whole new class of problems once the crooks start to move in and try to take over all their levers. Right now our answer is to build massive states and then try to shield the levers of power so that the assholes can’t take them over, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s been an abject failure. I don’t think that means the whole endeavor is doomed but I honestly don’t really know what the answer is. I want to say that better media, better education, workers organized into unions and wielding political power that way to enforce better representation in government, and reforms to a lot of these decrepit systems that are supposed to make “politics” represent the will of the people, is the answer, but I feel like nothing you can set up is going to last unless people are fighting to maintain it, and I feel like they aren’t going to fight to maintain it once it’s set up and they’re comfortable.
Maybe the answer is states of limited size. The EU countries seem like they’re more civilized than the US and the US just has these insurmountable problems to face in keeping corruption at bay.
I don’t feel like getting rid of state power is sustainable. If that’s what you’re talking about, I haven’t looked over your materials. It is fine if you want to say that life will be happier if we can live in a much more stateless society where we just don’t have to deal with any of these issues, but my argument would be that without something to enforce the removal of entities of power from the outside which will trample all over the paradise, it’s just not going to last that long. You can get rid of power, or you can try to safeguard power, but if you get rid of it then don’t be surprised when you find yourself powerless against the outside sometimes.
If you want a global revolution such that we don’t need a powerful state anymore, because no chemical company can build a plant next door, no hostile nation can invade or sponsor your enemies to violence against you, I feel like that could be the answer but it seems even more unrealistic than reforming the US to something sensible. And that already seems nigh insurmountable. IDK, maybe I am wrong, maybe this whole nightmare will be the catalyst for American people to try to fight to make something decent again.