Toward a Marxist Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution

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--Bertell Ollman

(Snip)

"When Moses invented ten fundamental laws for the Jewish people, he had God write them down on stone tablets, Lycurgus, too, represented the constitution he drew up for ancient Sparta as a divine gift. According to Plato, whose book, The Republic, offers another version of the same practice, attributing the origins of a constitution to godly intervention is the most effective way of securing the kind of support needed for it to work. Otherwise, some people are likely to remain skeptical, others passive, and still others critical of whatever biases
they perceive in these basic laws, and hence less inclined to follow their mandates. As learned men, the framers of the American Constitution were well aware of the advantages to be gained by enveloping their achievement in religious mystery, but most of the people for whom they labored were religious dissenters who favored a sharp separation between church and state; and since most of the framers were deists and atheists themselves, this particular tactic could not be used. So they did the next best thing, which was to keep the whole process of their work on the Constitution a closely guarded secret. Most Americans know that the framers met for three months in closed session, but this is generally forgiven on the grounds that the then Congress of the United States had not commissioned them to write a new Constitution, and neither revolutionaries nor counter-revolutionaries can do all their work in the open. What few modern-day Americans realize, however, is that the framers did their best to ensure that we would never know the details of their deliberations. All the participants in the convention were sworn to life-long secrecy, and when the debates were over, those who had taken notes were asked to hand them in to George Washington, whose final task as chairman of the convention was to get rid of the evidence. American's first president, it appears, was also its first shredder.

(Snip)

"What is in danger of being lost among all the patriotic
non-sequiturs is the underside of criticism and protest that had
accompanied the Constitution form its very inception. Not everyone has
been satisfied to treat this product of men as if it came from God. Even
before the Constitution was officially adopted, many people, known to
history as Anti-Federalists, questioned whether what was good for the
property-owning factions that were so well represented in Philadelphia
would be as good for those who owned little or nothing. Then as
subsequently, the main questions raised dealt with the limitations on
suffrage, the inadequate defense of individual rights and freedoms, the
acceptance and even strengthening of the institution of slavery, and the
many other benefits given to men of property."

(Snip)

Unlike political theory, the Constitution not only offers us a picture
of reality but through the state's monopoly on violence it forces
citizens to act, or at least to speak, "as if." Acting as if the rule of
law, equality of opportunity, freedom of the individual, and the
neutrality of the state, all of which are inscribed in the Constitution,
are more than formally true inhibits people's ability to recognize that
they are all practically false, that the society set up with the help
of the Constitution simply does not operate in these ways. It is not a
matter of reality failing to live up to a set of commendable ideals but
of these ideals serving to help mask this reality through
misrepresenting what is legal for what is actual, what is permissible in
law for what is possible in society. When does an ideal become a
barrier to the realization of what it supposedly promotes? When people
are encouraged to treat the ideal as a description, however, imperfect,
of the real, as in the claim that ours is a society ruled by law, where
whatever actually exists that goes counter to this claim is relegated to
the role of a passing qualification. Viewed in this way, the dynamics
of who is doing what to whom and why, together with the structural
reforms needed to change things, can never be understood."


(Snip)

"But the most fundamental contradiction in the entire Constitution cannot be dismissed so easily. This is the contradiction between political democracy and economic servitude. The framers did everything they could—consistent with winning acceptance for the document—to avoid placing the loaded gun of popular sovereignty in the hands of the people. They had no doubt as to what would happen to the grossly unequal distribution of property in our country (at present, 1 percent of the population owns 50 percent of all wealth) should this even occur (Carter, 35). Well, it has occurred, the mass of America's citizens has made little use of political democracy to obtain economic democracy. For some, therefore, the trial is over, and the verdict is in. For us, the jury, is still out. Capitalism in extremis had many catastrophes in store for all of us. And with the stakes so high, history can afford to take its time. Meanwhile, more informed criticism of the one-sided, deceptive, and biased rules of the game by which we are all forced to play can hurry history along just that little bit, and in the process encourage thinking on the role—if any—of the Constitution in the transition to a socialist society."

Full piece here...

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/us_constitution.php