It's 2024. Presidential election year. The candidates are at this point almost certain–Joe Biden of the Democratic Party versus Donald Trump of the Republican Party. Millions of Americans fret over this electoral cycle. Whether it's campaigning, donating, canvassing, lobbying, or passionately arguing with loved ones, Americans across the country expend tremendous energy upon this national political contest that occurs once every four years. From the Democratic Party's perspective, the upcoming election is deemed "the most important election of our lifetime" (a phrase which is oddly used every year) and they implore that we must vote Biden to "save democracy". On the other side of the political aisle, the Republican Party demands votes for Trump because "the [2020] election was stolen" (which has been disproven countless times via the legal system, including dismissive rulings from Trump's own appointed judges) and "we need to make America great again"* via a combination of reactionary policies targeting immigrants, the environment, workers, and even children. Both of these party declarations equally assume that:
We already have a democracy.
Your individual vote during the presidential election (and other elections as well) matters by (positively) influencing the outcome of public policy.
In this article, I will do my best to critically and thoughtfully tackle this crucial question: is the United States today really a democracy? Has the nation ever been a democracy?
*When has the U.S. ever been great? On what exact metrics do we attribute "greatness"?
The history of the United States, and in particular, the formation of its state, is paramount to answering this examination. During and after defeating the British, a few American colonists, known as the Founding Fathers, created the state framework that is still intact today, primarily via the Constitution. Most of us covered this document in excruciating detail during K-12 education, so I will spare the repetition. The founders created the three branches of government: executive, judicial, and legislative. They created the various levels of government: the Senate, Congress, Supreme Court. They canonized the method of electing a president, giving a few unelected officials the power to overcome the popular vote via the Electoral College, which has already occurred twice in the 21st century. Some principles in the Constitution are more clear-cut; others not so much. Hence, to this day Americans argue about whether a certain issue is "unconstitutional" or would not have been approved by the Founding Fathers. This single-minded attitude is incredibly pedantic and problematic, but is a natural legacy of the Founding Fathers and their agenda.
It can't be overstated that the Founding Fathers were a very select and elite group. They certainly were not representative of average Americans of their time. All the signers of the Constitution were white, landowning, wealthy men. Conveniently, these important characteristics are overwhelmingly left out of the bourgeoisie educational institutions. Notably absent in the founding of the American state were women, African Americans, indigenous Americans, the entire working class, and other marginalized groups. The right to vote was not provided to those without the characteristics of the Founding Fathers, and would only be gradually won generations later through mass struggle and direct action against the state apparatus. Some of the founders were slaveowners (i.e. Charles Pinckney), some were military men (i.e. George Washington), some were "land speculators" (i.e. Robert Morris), and others similarly comprised the upper crust of the earliest American epoch. In contrast, "Most people in the U.S. were small farmers, tradesmen, artisans, laborers, servants or slaves". Very few people received formal education during this time in the United States, but most of the founders were very well educated.
Founding Father James Madison openly complained of "the tyranny of the majority", echoing clear anti-democracy sentiment. Elbridge Gerry, of whom the term gerrymandering originates, deemed democracy "the worst of all political evils". Numerous other Founders held similar sentiment. The Founders were deeply chauvinist in thought, assuming that the majority of Americans were too unintelligent and uneducated to properly govern themselves. Perhaps William Livingston best embodied this extreme chauvinism: “the people have ever been and ever will be unfit to retain the exercise of power in their own hands.” Moreover, the Constitution was created during a special ratifying convention, of which all state representatives involved were unelected by the American people. These statements and actions are a reflection of the Founding Fathers' true sentiments towards real democracy.
The following passage from Second Rate Democracy further illustrates the hostility of the founders (and the state they created) towards the American people and a system that would accurately represent their class interests:
Madison, like many of the framers, had a distinctly negative view of human nature and believed that people were selfish, power hungry and prone to irrational conflicts. As he explained it in Federalist 10:
So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.
As Madison’s comments suggest, the other main reason why the framers did not trust the masses with power was their concern that this would undermine the interests of those with property – the upper class. As we’ve seen, virtually all the framers had a great deal of property in the form of land, businesses, ships, slaves, or banks. More importantly, at this point in our history, this upper class felt like they were under siege and that their property was at risk.
During the 1780’s, when the Constitution was written, class tensions were growing rapidly in the country, with a great deal of public animosity aimed at economic and political elites. The post-revolutionary war period was a very hard time economically for ordinary Americans as the weakened country fell into an economic depression. While farmers were away fighting the war, many of them had their farms foreclosed upon by banks. In Vermont alone, over half the farms were seized by the banks. Soldiers had been paid in Continental dollars, but that currency proved to be almost worthless. After the war, foreclosures on farms and houses continued and many farmers were thrown in prison if they could not pay their debts. Making matters worse, taxes were being raised in order to pay back the domestic and foreign creditors who financed the war. There were public calls for states to cancel soldiers’ debts, issue more paper money, allow debts to be paid with crops, and abolish debtors’ prisons. These requests fell on deaf ears in most state legislatures where bankers wielded considerable influence.
Finally, things boiled over. In 1786, the Paper Money Riot took place in Exeter, New Hampshire. Farmers, frustrated by inaction by the state, took up arms and marched on the state capital demanding the immediate issuance of more paper money. This rebellion was quickly quelled, but a more serious insurrection took place around the same time in Massachusetts, Shay’s Rebellion. Farmers in Western Massachusetts held local meetings and organized protests about debts and taxes – but the political elites in the state legislature in Boston paid little attention to them. Under the leadership of a former captain in the Continental Army, Daniel Shay, armed groups eventually marched on state court houses to shut them down and prevent more foreclosures and imprisonment of debtors. They also broke into jails to release debtors. Many in the local state militias were reluctant to confront these rebels who were often their relatives, friends, and neighbors. The state government threatened to execute any militiaman that refused to act against Shay’s forces. When this threat had little effect, the governor, with money from Eastern Massachusetts merchants, organized a mercenary force of 4,400 men to confront the local rebels. In a few months, the rebellion was crushed. Eventually, four thousand people, in exchange for amnesty, signed confessions admitting their participation in the rebellion. Shay and seventeen others were not so lucky: they were convicted and sentenced to death. (Most, including Shay, were later pardoned.)
The American state was not just founded as a result of defeating the British, which mainstream school textbooks try to stress. The state was directly created via the theft of indigenous land, ethnic cleansing, and a state policy of genocide against indigenous Americans, who had already resided on the land for thousands of years. Every single treaty made between indigenous Americans and the United States government has been broken by the latter. For further details of extensive American state and vigilantes crimes against the indigenous population, I recommend An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and The Triumph of Evil by Austin Murphy. Additionally, the land that was stolen was used with support from the American state and a large number of its founders (and their descendants) for systematic chattel slavery of native-born African Americans and foreign Africans trafficked to the U.S. via the infamous Triangle Trade network across the Atlantic Ocean. The treatment of indigenous and African Americans was done with no democratic approval (especially not from the respective groups) and thus could only have been carried out through state coercion and violence, guided by a state ideology of white supremacy and private accumulation of capital. These two groups, along with many other minority groups, were explicitly not represented by the state, and that still remains the case today. The few indigenous Americans who survived genocide are mostly confined to isolated and ecologically lacking reservations, which have the highest rates of poverty, suicide, alcoholism, and other measurable human outcomes. Meanwhile, Black Americans still have exponentially less money than their white peers, are systematically harassed and murdered by the police, disproportionately thrown into the prison industrial complex, and so on. This reality, the continuing oppression of marginalized groups (i.e. systemic racism, occupation of indigenous territory), directly contradicts the Founding Fathers' excuses that they created this convoluted system of government to "protect the minority from the majority".
At 236 years old, the United States has the oldest living constitution in the world. Some argue that this seniority is a testament to the stability of the nation, but I (along with many others) would argue that this deeply inflexible system is inherently undemocratic, not to mention that the American system has not exactly been stable. Since 1787, things have clearly changed. Whether in terms material realities, cultural attitudes, or social positions, the U.S. and the world at large require updated techniques and policies to thrive. Other nations, such as Cuba and Chile, regularly hold referendums via popular vote to update their constitutions to reflect the will of their citizens. Such actions would be expected to be found in a democracy. In 2022, the Cuban people successfully voted for and passed legislation that protects gay marriage and gay adoption throughout the island country. Meanwhile, the United States backslides in terms of gay rights and many other social issues (i.e. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court ruling that ended federal protections for abortion, Florida's "Don't Say Gay Bill"). For more specific details about how Cuban democracy works, check out this video by AzureScapegoat.
The founders made it extraordinarily difficult to alter, never mind undo, what they had concocted. An amendment requires two-thirds vote to pass. But with the two-party gridlock that has existed basically since Day 1, this percentage is almost never achieved. Out of over 11,000 attempts to amend the Constitution, only 27 have passed. This reality of a deeply rigid state is antithetical to democracy and has stifled political and socioeconomic development throughout the years.
The Electoral College destroys the hope of "one person, one vote" during a presidential election. Instead, a number of electors are allotted to each state according to population. This process makes it so the voters in some states have much more say in the presidential election than others. For example, a voter in Wyoming has roughly three times the voting power of Californians in a presidential election. Smaller, less-populated states have disproportionate representation in these elections. Just as problematic, a president can win the popular vote but lose the election because of the Electoral College. This article details the failed attempts to abolish the fundamentally undemocratic Electoral College over the years. We should not stick to this horrific system just because the Founding Fathers said so.
The Supreme Court is a select group of judges nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. These positions are held for life, supposedly to ensure the de-politicalization of members and an atmosphere of "legal objectivity", but in reality these members predictably bring their political slants into their positions. It is unheard of for SCOTUS members to be recalled, which further degrades the integrity of this particular institution when they make decisions that fly in the face of the will of the people and the concept of justice. In some cases, Supreme Court rulings are made despite a clear conflict of interest of one or more members, such as in the case of Clarence Thomas. As the current legal system was created by the capitalist class to justify its position, the Supreme Court acts naturally as an extension of their power.
For the Senate, I will quote the following astute article from Salt Lake Community College.
The Senate’s unrepresentative structure—being based on states rather than on population—has real-world political consequences. For one thing, the senators from the twenty-six smallest states hold the most Senate seats even though they represent only 17 percent of the U.S. population. They can refuse to pass legislation desired by the majority of the population, the House, and the president. Small states and rural interests gain disproportionate power in this scheme. So do Whites: the list of states with the least population correlates fairly well with the list of states with greatest percentage of White people.
The founders saw the Senate as a bulwark against unruly democratic majorities. Criminology and criminal justice professor Richard Rosenfeld summed up the situation, “The United States Senate stands today as a grotesque monument to that antidemocratic legacy; it remains largely a preserve of wealthy white male aristocrats drawn from an entirely different economic class than the people they purport to represent.” (5) Today, however, the situation is even worse. For example, in 1787 the most populous state, Virginia, had ten times more people than Delaware, the least populous state. Now, California is the most populous state and Wyoming is the least populous. California has sixty-nine times more people than Wyoming—and yet Wyoming has the same number of U.S. Senate seats as does California. The 117th Congress perfectly illustrated the partisan fallout of this undemocratic apportionment. Following the 2020 election, the Senate was split evenly, with 50 seats held by Republicans and 50 seats held by 48 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucused with the Democrats. Collectively, the 50 Republican senators represented nearly 42 million fewer people than did the 50 Democratic/Independent senators. (6)
The Senate apportionment problem is compounded by the filibuster, for it only takes forty-one senators to defeat a cloture motion and prevent a bill from being voted on. If the forty-one senators sustaining a filibuster happened to come from the least populous states, it would mean that the senators representing less than 12 percent of the population are inhibiting legislation that the vast majority of the population wants. The situation is so obviously undemocratic, that many people have argued that the filibuster is unconstitutional. The group Common Cause even tried to sue to get a federal court to declare the filibuster unconstitutional, but the suit was thrown out because the judge said the group didn’t have standing to sue. Adam Winkler, responding to Senator Rand Paul’s thirteen-hour filibuster to protest the Obama administration’s unconstitutional drone attacks, notes that the filibuster is not mentioned in the Constitution and that the first filibuster didn’t take place until 1841. The Constitution requires only a simple majority vote to pass legislation, and it carefully spells out the few situations that require a different rule—for example, a two-thirds Senate vote to remove someone who has been impeached by the House or a two-thirds Senate vote to support a treaty. (7)
Let's define democracy. In its simplest explanation, democracy is the control of a group or entity (in this case a state) by the majority of its members, in contrast with the control of a state by one or a select few as in a dictatorship, oligopoly, monarchy, authoritarian regime, or another political science label. So this naturally begs the question–is the United States in reality controlled by the majority of its population? Does the country's political system hold up to its supposed ideals, whether its citizens refer to it as a liberal democracy or as a constitutional republic?
Some reductively argue that as long as there are "free and fair elections", there is a democracy. But in the United States, your individual vote has been shown to have no significant impact on public policy decisions through expansive research. This lack of representation of the will of the people plays out every day on the local, state, and the federal levels. For me, a number of policy positions with overwhelming majority support come to mind that refuse to be implemented by the incumbent political system–abortion rights, full marijuana decriminalization, and a ceasefire in Gaza. In a recent Pew Research survey, a dismal 4% of Americans said that "the political system is working extremely or very well." Perhaps, more than ever, everyday Americans of today are alienated from the political establishment, representing both corporate parties, and the entire political system. Most Americans do not feel seen or heard, as their needs and beliefs are not given serious consideration. Aaron Bushnell is among the best representatives of the desperation the American working class feels today.
Another point must be made to critique "the importance of voting" on a purely logistical level, especially at the state and federal levels. No individual vote in the United States has ever changed the outcome of presidential elections, for example. Even in the notoriously close presidential vote count in Florida during the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, the vote difference was several hundred votes. And this is an exceedingly rare example of one state out of the 50 that comprise the United States. Other tactics, long recognized by the actual left, are far more powerful than voting–direct action, labor organizing, agitation, mutual aid, community defense networks, and so on. The Black Panther Party, for example, heavily incorporated several of these tactics to improve their communities and spread their goal of liberation to those around them.
Who then, do these politicians, both past and present, represent if not the American people? In the United States, we have a form of legalized bribery, called lobbying, that is liberally used to curry favor from elected and unelected representatives alike. Corporations from every sector (restaurant, pharmaceutical, military contractors, agriculture, etc.) frequently give massive donations, luxury vacations, and other forms of compensation to these representatives. Magically, these representatives in turn sponsor legislation that benefits these firms. Sometimes, the corporations themselves draft the legislation, such as in the case of the prison industrial complex. These startling realities are only the tip of the iceberg. Elected representatives themselves frequently hold personal stocks in corporations that are directly affected by their public policy decisions, which again signals an obvious conflict of interest. In fact, politicians serve the interests of the corporations (via deregulation, tax breaks, and other special benefits) exponentially more than they serve the people. Furthermore, in Congress for example, most of the representatives are at least millionaires. This immediately signals, overwhelmingly, that these millionaire politicians do not represent the will of the 99%, the working class. These representatives make their money by privately owning productive capacity, not by performing labor like the vast majority of Americans. Their interests, guided by the explicit framework and logic of capitalism, are maximizing profit, not for bettering the well-being of their constituents. The system is not broken; it is working just as designed. That is to say, the American political system has always served capital, not the 99%. For the minority of Congress who are not millionaires themselves, they also represent the interests of the capitalist class. They almost universally receive massive donations from billionaires, major corporations, and other capitalists to fund their campaigns. Everyone else is doing the same, and they are doomed to fail if they cannot obtain publicity that is necessary to be elected. That is to say, this is not just an individual problem, but a systemic one.
We call the United States, then, an oligopoly. Or more aptly, a dictatorship of capital. If one has substantial wealth (which can only be accumulated by occupying a capitalist class position), they can participate in a sort of democracy. But for everyone else, their voices are statistically not significant in terms of affecting public policy. By no stretch of the imagination can this current scenario be called a democracy. And both blue and red parties represent the interests of the capitalist class. Third parties are systemically prevented from achieving power by being regularly sued off ballots and other undemocratic measures. I am certainly not implying that these problems are unique to the United States. Outside of respective histories and minor, mostly aesthetically differences, the above critiques apply especially to the rest of the Global North–that is, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, as well as Global South countries such as Russia and Turkey.
I say it's time to build a genuine democracy, for the people and by the people. Voting in bourgeoisie elections will never be bring us closer to this laudable goal. It will require great collective and individual resilience and dedication, but I believe a people's democracy can be achieved.
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