Before proceeding, a few words about constitutionalism in general. A sovereign constitution is the basic form of the people’s sovereignty. This comprises the principles and practices which define a society, its true character and aspiration. A written constitution is then supposed to be an adequate expression of this sovereign constitution, and from there written laws are supposed to adequately supplement the written constitution in expressing the sovereign. (The distinction between such documents isn’t always clear. Is the Code of Hammurabi a constitution or a list of statues? The Ten Commandments? The Draconian and Solonic Codes? The Codes of Theodosius and Justinian? The synod which compiled the “official” Bible?)
As I’ve written before, by now we know that the only appropriate form of our sovereignty is positive democracy. We’ve learned how politicians, alleged experts and “elites” paid to rule us, are rationally and morally incompetent for this job. We’ve learned how in practice they’ll never do anything but aid and abet our anti-social enemies and commit crimes themselves. We know that the first proper attitude toward politics is to be anti-politician. (That’s a formulation I picked up from a blog post somewhere which I’d link if I could remember where it came form. It’s recommended as a good all-purpose answer to anyone in any situation who asks, “What do you politically believe/want?” To open up with, “For starters, I’m against politicians. Not just the current crop of crooks, but politicians period”, will often bring on agreement from others, which can be a good lead-in to more difficult topics.)
Most of all, we know about all political and economic elites that we don’t need them. We can rule ourselves. That’s the basic imperative of positive democracy: In the modern era, often called the democratic era, humanity has come of age. That is, we’ve achieved our age of majority and ought to be getting out of our parents’ house and into the wide world to find out who we are and what we can do.
But that means the democratic ideology and movement must evolve. We cannot stand still. To remain mired in belief in representatives and republics is really to regress. Belief in these was once a widening of the horizons of political thought, but that has long ceased to be the case. We now know that these are unworthy of us as democratic citizens and human beings, and that they don’t work anyway if the definition of work is that they make permanent progress toward expanding real political participation and broad-based economic prosperity. In the same way that capitalism has been proven to be a lie, since wherever its profit rate began to naturally decline it resorted to feudalist measures to prop it up, so representative government has renounced its role as a regent toward ever-expanding democracy, but instead sought to reinstate age-old authoritarian rule, albeit maintaining the sham trappings of elections, etc.
So we must now establish positive democracy. We owe it to ourselves, to our families and communities, to humanity, to history.
A democratic community may or may not choose to draw up a statement of principles. It would be more like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man than like the main articles of the 1788 Constitution.
Why do it? If we draw up a New Compact here in cyberspace, it’s really a statement of principles for a new movement, and a proclamation that this movement is continuing the long-neglected work of the original American Revolution (here in America) and a similar democratic revolutionary work elsewhere. (I hope I don’t sound too Amero-centric to non-American readers and participants. I think these principles of democracy are applicable the same way everywhere which has been integrated into globalization. Certainly many of the cultural details will greatly vary, but not the basic anti-elitist imperative.) Even if you don’t personally care about such a statement, it may be a necessary stage of developing the movement consciousness and an enticement (to potential participants) along the road of movement-building.
What are the basic principles/practices? (In positive democracy, there’s never a clear division between principle and practice. There’s no citizenship other than through citizen action. The measure of one’s capacity for freedom is that one acts as a free citizen, as much as possible, and is always seeking to expand the bounds of freedom’s possibility.) Direct democracy, political freedom (meaning the opportunity to meaningfully participate), political participation itself, all of these on an equal basis. Material equality (defined as the absence of class stratification and wealth concentrations) is the prerequisite for equality of political opportunity (remember that anytime you see pseudo-democrats and fetishists of sham “process” rights like Greenwald and the ACLU, who support corporate “rights”, corporate speech, and therefore the total domination of politics by wealth). Food Sovereignty as a political and practical imperative. Land and natural resources are things of nature, and can therefore be the property only of sovereignty itself; Western political theory always recognized in principle with the labor theory of property that to gain a possession right on the land one must productively work the land. The things we call rights and enshrine in Bills of Rights. All of this arising from the people’s sovereignty and therefore the province of human beings only, while by definition other entities can only be servants with responsibilities, never persons with rights.
From there, we can discuss and seek consensus on provisions. The only rule is that every idea has to be pro-democratic and/or anti-authoritarian. Every proposal must head in this direction. The preferred tactic in dealing with all malignities is not to use power to affirmatively destroy them (unless this is absolutely necessary in self-defense), but to negatively destroy them through refusal to recognize or enforce their fraudulent “rights” and prerogatives. To give a clear example, we must declare that corporations are not persons, have no constitutional rights, and that if they’re to be allowed to exist at all, it’s only on what the democracy judges to be good behavior. Charters, just like federative delegates, must be subject to instant recall at all times. (I’m aware that by the time it’s politically possible to enact this as policy, it’ll be possible to simply declare corporations nonexistent, which is what I recommend. But a constitutional provision like this is a good example of the kind of statement of intent which can advertise the movement. At the same time it’ll be clear that the movement has room for more rigorous proposals. The written constitutional aspiration is a floor, not a ceiling.)
Here’s another example of how we seek to dissolve illegitimate power through non-recognition of it, this one not from constitutionalism but from law (but it’s the same kind of concept). I don’t say “criminalize” derivatives in the sense of arresting people and so on; I say outlaw them in the sense that they’re declared to be uncontracts, unenforceable in any court or by any police.
The same process of breaking corporate power and the power of concentrated wealth (and shrinking government in the process) can be applied to most or all things. For example with landed property: The democratic community can defend its own right to be on the land which it productively works. It would refuse to enforce any nonexistent property right on the part of an absentee landowner, who it would recognize as a thief. The community would not prevent itself from putting that land into production on its own, for its own well-being.
Anything which extends government and corporatism is bad. Anything which, explicitly or implicitly, merely wants to maintain these is probably bad, and at any rate is unlikely to be helpful. Every idea and act must have the goal of expanding democracy and shrinking elitist authoritarianism.
So to write a constitution is to perform the act of democracy in the grand sense, and gives a sense of what the democratic movement is about. In its details this can also clarify for ourselves and describe clearly to others exactly what we want to accomplish. This in turn should help clarify strategy and tactics.
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