New Commonwealth
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In a world brimming over with tyranny and war, it's difficult to see how humans will ever be able to develop a commonwealth (a political unit founded in law by agreement of the people for the common good)
in which the interests of all the people are served.
Were we living in fourteenth century Europe, oppressed by the Roman Catholic dictatorship as well as whatever political despot we happened to suffer under, we might have felt that it was hopeless that humans would ever realize a society for the common good. But, by the fifteenth century, the West began to be re-invigorated by the creative dynamic of the Perennial Tradition.
By 1463, Marsilio Ficino (1433-99 CE) had completed a translation of the Hermetic writings and in 1469 he completed his translation of Plato's dialogues. Plato's writings provided the fundamental bedrock for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, resulting in such progressive political documents as the American Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights and such liberating movements as the American war for independence. America's struggle for freedom has been long and hard, and has now eventuated in a new form of tyranny under a demonic cabal.
This essay will examine the foundation principles of a new commonwealth which people must now begin to realize, recognizing that this will involve a difficult and prolonged effort. We'll first investigate America's struggle for freedom, discovering the reasons why the American dream of a representative democracy has resulted in a militaristic, imperialistic police state. We'll conclude by considering the Platonic principles which furnish a realistic blueprint for a commonwealth and outline the personal qualities which such a commonwealth requires for its realization.
"[The Framers of the Constitution] . . . had no wish to usher in democracy in the United States. They were not making war upon the principle of aristocracy and they had no more intention than had the Tories of destroying the tradition of upper-class leadership in the colonies. Although they hoped to turn the Tories out of office, they did not propose to open these lush pastures to the common herd. They did believe, however, that the common people, if properly bridled and reined, might be made allies in the work of freeing the colonies from British rule and that they--the gentry--might reap the benefits without interference. They expected, in other words, to achieve a 'safe and sane' revolution of gentlemen, by gentlemen, and for gentlemen."
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But after the war Lord Fairfax, a friend of George Washington, was allowed to retain his five million acres encompassing twenty-one counties in Virginia.
The first American revolution resulted only in a change in rulers: from the British elite to an American plutocracy. Sixty-nine percent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had held colonial office under England.
When the Shays Rebellion broke out, Sam Adams engineered a Riot Act which prohibited 12 or more persons from congregating in public and which empowered county sheriffs to kill rioters. Sam Adams, who in the Declaration of Independence had defended the right of a people to revolt, now reversed himself :
"In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death."
"The Founding Fathers did lead the war for independence from Britain. But they did not do it for the equal right of all to life, liberty, and equality. Their intention was to set up a new government that would protect the property of slave owners, land speculators, merchants, and bondholders. Independence from England had already been secured in parts of the country by grassroots rebellion a year before the battles at Lexington and Concord that initiated hostilities with Britain. . . . It is one of the phenomena of modern times that revolutions are not favored unless they are led by people who are not revolutionaries at heart."I would rather recognize the greatness of all those who fought to make sure that the Founding Fathers would not betray the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to make sure that the dead and maimed of the Revolutionary War did not make their sacrifices in vain. And so I would honor the soldiers of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey lines, who mutinied against George Washington and Mad Anthony Wayne. They were rebelling against the luxurious treatment of their gentry officers, and their own mistreatment: 500 lashes for misconduct, Washington decreed, and executed a few mutinous leaders to set an example. "Add to the honors list in that great generation the farmers of western Massachusetts who resisted the taking of their homes and land for nonpayment of exorbitant taxes. This was the Shays Rebellion, which put a fright into the Founding Fathers, especially as it led to uprisings in Maryland, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. That rebellion persuaded the Founding Fathers that a strong central government was needed to maintain law and order against unruly dissidents, slave rebels, and Indians. These were the true revolutionaries of the Revolutionary generation."
The Progressive, October 2001 |
Of the fifty-six men who had signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, only six of those attended the Federal Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 where the specially selected delegates secretly concocted a plutocratic structure of rule. Patrick Henry refused to attend the convention and genuinely democratic patriots such as George Mason, Luther Martin, John Francis Mercer, and Elbridge Gerry participated in the convention but refused to sign the new constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights and provided inadequate representation of the people.
After six weeks, John Lansing and fellow New York delegate Robert Yates left the convention, explaining their departure in a joint letter to New York Governor George Clinton. They explained that they opposed any document that would consolidate the United States into one government, and indicated that they understood that the convention was not going to consider such a consolidation. In their letter to Clinton, they warned that the kind of government recommended by the convention would not "afford that security to equal and permanent liberty which we wished to make an invariable object of our pursuit." As members of the New York ratifying convention in 1788, Lansing and Yates both vigorously opposed the Constitution.
the values of a market-driven approach to life. According to this common welfare approach to life, merchants and financiers would be restricted to what the community decided about how resources are used. The working class had put its democratic, interdependent ideals into their state constitutions and in town and city charters when possible.
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The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were selected by state legislatures--not by popular vote of the people. The capitalist class was frightened by how much power the working class had been able to muster in the separate colonies and they could see from the Shays rebellion that the people were quite capable of rebelling against the wealthy class when it seized their hard-earned lands, crops, and animals.
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention were instructed that their only job was to amend the Articles of Confederation and that any proposed changes were to be approved by all the states before they were adopted. A conspiratorial junta, led by Hamilton and Madison, had already decided that they would scrap the Articles of Confederation and write an entirely new constitution which would create a centralized government controlled by the wealthy class. The Convention met entirely in secret, and it would be fifty-three years before American citizens were allowed to see the record of what had transpired in this coup d'etat that enshrined mercantile capitalism as the imposed way of life for Americans. Of the sixty-two delegates appointed to the Convention, fifty-five showed up. At the Convention, no more than eleven states were ever represented at one time. Of the fifty-five members of the Convention; only thirty-nine signed the final draft.
The first post-constitutional major skirmish in the ongoing battle of the "common people" against the wealthy class, was the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1791. These first ten amendments to the Constitution embodied many of the working class's concerns which had been expressed during the ratification process. But it is exceptionally important to recognize that the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights omit any protection for common people against corporations or capitalist employers.
Following the imposition of a plutocratic Constitution on American citizens, there have been continual uprisings by enlightened elements of the working class in America because they have recognized that the nation suffers under an oppressive capitalist class.
In 1842 fourteen thousand people in Rhode Island voted for the new constitution, including about five thousand with property, a clear majority in the state. In April of 1842 they held an unofficial election in which Dorr ran unopposed for governor and six thousand people voted for him. The "official" governor of Rhode Island requested federal assistance to put down the rebellion and President John Tyler sent in federal troops to quash the uprising. In the Rhode Island elections of 1843, the Law and Order group, opposed by former Dorrites, used intimidation on a grand scale. Military officers threatened their men. Employers intimidated their employees, landlords their tenants, to elect the proper people. The Law and Order group lost in the industrial towns, won in the agrarian areas, and took over all major offices. Dorr was convicted of treason and spent twenty months in jail before being pardoned.
Since that time, the rapacious increase in wealth by American plutocrats has been fostered by the U.S. Constitution's plutocratic structure of government. In 1850, 1,000 southern families received about $50 million a year income while all the other 660,000 families combined received about $60 million a year. In 1920s America one-tenth of one percent of the wealthy at the top received as much income as the combined income of 42 percent of the people at the bottom.
"At the highest levels of government, the power to decide things has instead gravitated from the many to the few, just as ordinary citizens suspect. Instead of popular will, the government now responds more often to narrow webs of power - the interests of major economic organizations and concentrated wealth and the influential elites surrounding them.
"In place of a meaningful democracy, the political community has embraced a permissive culture of false appearances. Government responds to the public's desires with an artful dance of symbolic gestures - hollow laws that are emptied of serious content in the private bargaining of Washington. Promises are made and never kept. Laws are enacted and never enforced."
With all its shortcomings, the United States still provides its citizens with a wide range of freedom, more than any other country in the world, primarily because of the Bill of Rights that the common people forced on the capitalist class. In our struggle to complete the American Revolution, the people have won some other important partial victories over plutocracy:
We must begin training ourselves to understand that "democracy" is a concept that has been used throughout the world--including in America--as a scam to control the masses. Instead of a democracy--of whatever kind--we must begin working toward a commonwealth: a nation founded on law and united by compact of the people for the common good
One of the reasons why ignorant and ill-intentioned thinkers have attacked Plato, is because he was forthright enough to reveal the reality of democracy--that it is in actuality the manipulation of the masses by an elite group who fools the common people into thinking they are ruling when they aren't.
Plato had seen this form of swindle practiced on the citizens of Athens, and had seen the deadly results of such a fraud when a pseudo-democratic group sentenced his teacher and friend Socrates to death on trumped-up charges.
Plato understood that a society must have either of two basic forms of government:
Plato saw clearly that the swindle called democracy quickly degenerates into tyranny--as we have seen throughout American history. The current
demonic cabal is simply the most recent embodiment of this swindle. You can see this most clearly both domestically and abroad:
Bush and other junta members use the word "democracy" as a shibboleth to fool the ignorant American masses, pretending that they are spreading this magic form of government to as many nations as possible. "Democracy" has now become the mask for tyranny and imperialism.
As Howard Zinn has shown in A People's History of the United States,
Learning to think critically involves examining our own self-delusions and incapacities and recognizing the essential ingredients in the commonwealth way of life. Certain of our delusions and incapacities make a commonwealth impossible.
A commonwealth can only come to those who are willing to work for the best and highest in human development for all. At almost any point in a nation's history it can be said: "Yes, there are problems here, but it could be worse. Instead of being a malcontent working for unnecessary change, be thankful for what you have." That has been said to every enslaved or oppressed group in human history. That's what the white owner said to his black slave, the British trying to mollify the oppressed colonists in America and India in the 1770s. The good is often enemy to the best. Today we hear: "What oppression? We never had it so good. Don't rock the boat." For many people, life under this present plutocracy, which they have been fully programmed to experience as a democracy, appears rewarding and complete.
"Nor does this analysis pretend that American democracy once existed in some perfected form that now is lost. On the contrary, Americans have never achieved the full reality in their own history or even agreed completely on democracy's meaning. The democratic idea has always been most powerful in America as an unfulfilled vision of what the country might someday become - a society advancing imperfectly toward self-realization."
2 Harrison S. Elliott. (1938). The Process of Group Thinking,
3 Harrison S. Elliott. op. cit.., p. 6
4 Harrison S. Elliott. ibid.
Beard, Charles A. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948) Dahl, Robert A. How Democratic Is the American Constitution, (Yale University Press, 2002) Dolbeare, Kenneth M. Democracy at Risk: The Politics of Economic Renewal, (Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1984)
Elliott, Harrison S. The Process of Group Thinking, (New York: Association Press, 1938)
Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) Foner, Philip. History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 1, (New York: International Publishers, 1975) Fresia, Jerry. Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and other Illusions, (South End Press, 1988) Goldwin, Robert A. and William A. Schambra, eds. How Democratic Is the Constitution?
(Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1980) Ketcham, Ralph. The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, (New York: New American Library, 1986) Latham, Earl, ed., The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1956) Main, Jackson Turner. The Antifederalists (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1961 Manley, John F. and Kenneth M. Dolbeare, The Case Against the Constitution, (New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1987) Mee, Charles L. Jr. The Genius of the People (New York: Harper & Row) Plato, The Commonwealth Raphael, Ray. A People's History of the American Revolution, (New Press, 2001) Rossiter, Clinton. The Grand Convention (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966) Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) Smith, David. The Convention and the Constitution (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965) Smith, Page. The Constitution (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1978) Szatmary, David P. Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection, (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980) Young, Alfred F. ed. The American Revolution (Northern Illinois University Press, 1976) Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States, (HarperCollins Publishers, 1999)
No nation in man's history has ever achieved a true commonwealth. American citizens have historically enjoyed a wider range of liberties than most citizens in other countries. But those American liberties have always been at the sufferance of the rulers. When they have felt it necessary they limited or destroyed American liberties without compunction. Americans have suffered under restrictions to civil liberties throughout our history.
Most of what we hear or read today perpetuates the dangerous delusion that we live in a democracy. Even iconoclasts who strip away the democratic myth to reveal the reality of plutocracy often end their discussions with generalized theories of reform which have no hint of reality to them. A more realistic point of view is to outline the elements of a commonwealth way of life and complete the American Revolution of freeing ourselves from the mental and political restraints of imperialistic capitalism.
First, we need to realize that we don't live in a democracy, that the politicians who buy their way into office don't work for the good of people but for their own monetary gain. The richest one percent of Americans have gained over a trillion dollars in the past dozen years as a result of tax breaks.
"The decayed condition of American democracy is difficult to grasp, not because the facts are secret, but because the facts are visible everywhere. American democracy is in much deeper trouble than most people wish to acknowledge. Behind the reassuring facade, the regular election contests and so forth, the substantive meaning of self-government has been hollowed out. What exists behind the formal shell is a systemic breakdown of the shared civic values we call democracy.
"Talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them 'You are supreme: exercise your power.' They say, 'That's right: tell us what to do'; and I tell them. I say 'Exercise your vote intelligently by voting for me.' And they do. That's democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place."
Boanerges, in The Apple Cart, act 1"These will be some of the features of democracy. . . it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored society, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
One of Plato's major works was entitled Politeia
(Politeia), the Greek word for Commonwealth. The title of this work has been mistranslated as The Republic when its actual title is The Commonwealth.
"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices."
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
We must train ourselves in the commonwealth way of life by:
There are specific factors required for the commonwealth way of life.
A commonwealth is only possible when
people see the improvement of their society as a common good and are willing to develop a
genuine sense of solidarity with others. One of the major difficulties with our present society is
the inability and unwillingness of the wealthy rulers to work toward the good of all the people
in our society. They act to serve only their own interests, gaining wealth and power. As we
train for a commonwealth, we must learn to work toward a society which will serve the interests of
all its citizens, rich and poor, old and young, men and women, and people of all ethnic
backgrounds and value orientations.
We gain this understanding by experiencing oppressive forms of decision-making in the family, the workplace, the community, and the nation. By experiencing the oppression and life-destruction which anti-commonwealth regimes entail we gain an intense desire for the commonwealth way of life. We're presently experiencing the oppression of wealth and power under the
fascistic Bush regime. Obscenely rich people are using political, economic, and military force to drive America into a society with two classes: the wealthy and the poor. 
Americans have difficulty in understanding what a commonwealth means because we've lived, in the past decades, in a fairly affluent era ruled by a plutocracy masked as democracy. We're only now realizing that the United States isn't a democracy after all--it is a plutocracy controled by an evil cabal.
It's of importance to recognize the extent to which intelligent independence and self-direction in any realm are an achievement. The ability to be an independent, self-directing personality is present in possibility in original nature; but this possibility is made an actuality only through the proper kind of education. The same is true of a group.
"Independent, self-directing group conduct is . . . an achievement. Merely to offer democracy to a group does not mean that the group is able to conduct itself democratically. Just as individual independence comes gradually, first in more restricted and then in wider areas of life, so independence in a group comes gradually, first in more restricted and then in ever and ever widening areas of conduct. Whether the group be a family, a gang, a class in school, or a nation, it cannot change suddenly with any success
from complete autocratic control to entirely independent self-direction." 2
Now that the conditions of widespread affluence and freedom of mobility are no longer profitable for the American plutocracy, some of the more unpleasant and inevitable features of their oppressive order are beginning to affect American citizens directly. Perhaps the harsh realities of unemployment, slave wages, tax-slavery, and government harassment will provide
the kind of incentive we need to consider deeper values in life beyond mindless, superficial, addictive entertainment and sports--the "circuses" provided by
the present rulers. Perhaps now we can begin to ask what a commonwealth is and how we can train for it.
We must first realize just what led to our present enslavement under a fascist plutocracy, what characteristics in us allowed for our self-delusion, our being controlled by lust for possessions and social acceptance, our willingness to let others rule us as long as we feel we are getting our share. If we can understand what personal qualities lead to enslavement we can then begin to understand their
opposite: the positive qualities that make commonwealth self-rule possible.
The commonwealth way of life is possible only with people who desire to work toward full human potential. A commonwealth cannot exist in a context where some always say: "I can't do that or I can't understand that, let someone else decide who can do more or who understands more."
A commonwealth is very difficult to initiate because at almost any moment in time a ruling group is faced with people who've been trained to be and feel incompetent. The ruling group's temptation at that point is to say: "Since the people clearly can't rule themselves, we'll rule them now and continue to rule them."
A commonwealth can only begin when a small group of persons - having suffered under an oppressive form of rule and having prepared themselves for self-rule - take over the direction of a group or community. This preparation involves, among other things, the close examination of real, as opposed to assumed or imagined capacities, and the development of real competence. Even then there will be some persons in the community who can't yet participate effectively in decision-making. This is one of the major challenges of commonwealth self-rule. Will the leaders of commonwealth reform activate a process whereby others can learn to participate effectively in group decision-making or will they use the undeniable incompetence of others as an excuse for taking more absolute and final control?
It's hard for us to realize that we lack certain mental and behavioral skills required for a commonwealth way of life. We must train ourselves in the skills and understanding which a commonwealth requires.
"A democratic process is the best way to grow men and women. It is he who does the thinking, who faces the problems, who makes the plans, who alone achieves both the growth and the happiness. Our present idea and practice of leadership reserve these supreme values to the leaders. Life has become, for a large number of people, pure drudgery. Men become "robots, " machines for executing other people's desires. The leaders grow, the individuals in the crowd decline." 3
"This critique does not rely upon any idealized notions of what democracy means, but on the elementary principles everyone recognizes. Accountability of the governors to the governed. Equal protection of the law, that is, laws that are free of political manipulation. A presumption of political equality among all citizens (though not equality of wealth or status). The guarantee of timely access to the public debate. A rough sense of honesty in the communication between the government and the people. These are not radical ideas, but basic tenets of the civic faith.
Mr. Smith doesn't need to go to Washington; he and other American citizens need to complete the American Revolution and learn to refashion a government of, by, and for the people by training for a commonwealth. Mr. Smith and other citizens should look forward to the day when their skills are developed to the point that they can begin to make a difference in their community and their nation, taking back the government that's been stolen from them"The difficulty in securing democracy has been that more attention has been paid to defending it as a philosophy than to developing the methodology by which it could be made to function in life." 4
Notes:
1 Howard Zinn. (1995). A People's History of the United States,
Bibliography