Uhhhh, I don't think a document that outlines the basis for a type of democracy is anti democratic. There are plenty of things wrong with it though, maybe talk about those parts instead to build a stronger case against the constitution
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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The supreme court is 9 ppl appointed for life, so that's antidemocratic. The Senate is 2 ppl per state regardless of population, that's antidemocratic. Amendments need 3/4 of the States, not people, to go through, that's antidemocratic. The federalist papers specifically discuss the desire to prevent the people ("the mob" they called us) from having much power.
Why are these things anti democratic? If you want to go down this path you first need to establish a clear definition for what is and isn't anti democratic. Is a doctor anti democratic because he wasn't elected by popular vote? The supreme court is appointed by the current sitting (democratically elected) president. Should every government position require a nation wide popular vote? Is that really the only way to have a democracy?
You and I can disagree about our minimum level of democracy, but how will we actually change society if we don't change how the decisions are made in society?
For me, the most possible democracy is when the people affected by a given decision (and only those people) are the ones who make the decision in a way they consider fair (however fair is defined) and are empowered to do what they decided on.
If the same group of people instead choose, via 1 person = 1 vote, one or more among them to make the decision, it's less democratic in my view, but at least they each had an equal vote.
If the same group of people instead choose, via any voting system that changes 1 person = 1 vote (e.g. x amount of votes for each parcel of land), one or more among them to make the decision, it is even less democratic, because they did not all have an equal vote due to variations in how many people live in each parcel of land.
The current US Constitutional system has us here, between the above example and the below one, because land parcels in large part determine relative voting power and then the electeds make appointments of further decision makers, such as the Supreme Court.
Zero democracy is when the person/people making the decisions are not chosen by the people affected by the decision and the people affected by it have zero say in the decision.
I'll preface by stating that I'm not an American.
I think society is too interconnected and any decision in any area could be argued to have an effect on the entire population. I also think it's good to have competent people in positions of leadership. I don't think that most people are capable of choosing who is well suited for a given task. In that sense I somewhat agree with what you said here "people affected by a given decision (and only those people) are the ones who make the decision" though I believe I'm arriving at this conclusion from a different perspective than you. I would also point out that in both cases it is inherently less democratic than the current us government (as in less people are given more power) though I think this is partially desirable since a true perfect democracy won't select who is most capable, but who is more popular.
I don’t think that most people are capable of choosing who is well suited for a given task.
Just to clarify, do you mean that you just don't think most people are informed enough as to every person who is an expert in something, or are you meaning that people are not intelligent enough?
What is the difference
Pretty damn big.
Not being able to name every expert in every field doesn't make you unintelligent.
"[in]capable of choosing" could either mean "at this time, without full facts", or it could mean "intrinsically". The former is fine, but any rhetoric that only our "betters" should be voting, whether that be measured by wealth, intelligence, ethnicity, gender, or anything else, is at best elitist, and at worst bigoted and authoritarian.
The supreme court is 9 ppl appointed for life, so that’s antidemocratic.
Yeah, we should change that.
The Senate is 2 ppl per state regardless of population, that’s antidemocratic.
Yeah, we should change that.
Amendments need 3/4 of the States, not people, to go through, that’s antidemocratic.
That one I'm a lot less sure about but we can talk about it.
The federalist papers specifically discuss the desire to prevent the people (“the mob” they called us) from having much power.
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.
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
Wow! We really do agree on a lot of things, this is amazing.
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
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:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvwoHdNGq9wUbrwTZ2k8yXE5oABPBQ4NX Here is a playlist of videos covering a bunch of current and recent movements in Latin America. The Zapatistas are particularly awesome!
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAEhRRDvHHQ here's a whole documentary about what life was like in anarchist parts of Spain between WW1 and WW2. This society was eventually destroyed militarily by a Nazi-supported right-wing dictatorship, rather than any internal weaknesses.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina Makhnovist Ukraine did a similar thing and was similarly destroyed by various militaries (especially the bolsheviks) in Russia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everyone knows that when the ship is having trouble and seems like it might be out of control, the first thing to do is destroy the wheel. After all, it wasn't working right, it was a big problem.
The discussion on this post is a sick joke and parody of the content of the interview and real life. You want to call all the leftists on lemmy right wingers because we believe something that is obvious if you have ever lived on the west? You all are precisely the type of people who hold the constitution to be a sacred document instead of actually understanding the legal framework within or it's intent. You really think you are going to be protected by a document that describes Black Americans as three-fifths of a person and in the amendment that overrides that language makes room for the carceral state? You really think you're going to be protected by a document that describes a non functional state? The constitution as a legal framework is fundamentally broken, no amount of bolstering that is going to fix it. It is because of the design of government as described in the constitution is why the US federal state is unable to operate and it is because of the constitution you've seen a minority of view points, neo-liberal conservatives, take it over to destroy it. By criticizing the constitution you are not threatening your rights or liberty, a constitutional convention that doesn't include the right wing is required for anything to change in America or it will dissolve.
The Frozen Republic by Daniel Lazare - https://archive.org/details/frozenrepublicho0000laza/page/n5/mode/2up
Read this book. It is from 1996. I read it the first time in 2002 while I was in law school and it really opened my eyes. The accounts on this thread who immediately go to attacking leftists on lemmy and protecting this document are running on pure vibes and low education. No other modern democracy runs on anything like it for a reason. No other modern democracy is unable to rewrite their document as appropriate, the fact that the US is stuck with this and people like Phillip are why you're going to descend into fascism while screaming to protect the past. You are the conservative.
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