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The
future of democracy
‘We the People’ have come a long way, but there is still far to
go
By Lisa Rayner
Tea Party Publisher
What
does it mean to live in a democracy? I’ve heard it said that
“the United States is a republic, not a democracy.”
I’ve also heard that in a “pure” democracy, 51 percent of the
population could conceivably vote
to enslave the other 49 percent. This second
statement is false.
Political
scientist Benjamin Barber says, “Democracy is often understood as
the rule of the majority, and rights are understood more and more as
the private possessions of individuals and thus as necessarily
antagonistic to majoritarian democracy. But this is to misunderstand
both rights and democracy."
Democracy is “government by the people in which the supreme
power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by
their elected agents under a free electoral system." This
supreme power or sovereignty is decentralized and distributed
equally among citizens. This idea is often expressed as “one
person, one vote.”
There are degrees of democratic participation. The most
“pure” form is face-to-face decision-making within a community,
organization or workplace. With “direct” democracy, citizens
create initiatives, referendums and other electoral tools to enact
or repeal laws.
Most democratic nations, including the U.S., are republics,
which elect representatives to make most laws. However,
representatives are allowed to make decisions opposed by a majority
of citizens. Citizens may vote such representatives out of office or
create initiatives and referendums to change the representatives’
decisions.
Majority
rule is not by itself democratic, however. Democracy necessarily
includes guarantees of human and civil rights that cannot be voted
away. The U.S. Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech,
expression, religion and conscience, assembly, and the right to
equal protection under the law. Other laws protect other civil
liberties and rights to bodily integrity, such as the right not to
be enslaved.
Once upon a time, only kings were “sovereign.” They held
the supreme power. Then wealthy aristocrats fought to obtain greater
sovereignty for themselves. However, these “Lords of the Manor”
ruled over their feudal estates without caring much about the
concerns of the serfs and indentured servants who worked the land
and maintained the estates. The serfs and indentured servants, while
not slaves, had no rights to govern themselves and no civil
liberties.
Beginning with the United States, democratic rights were
appropriated by white, property-owning men. These rights were later
extended to white men who did not have property. At the time, many
white, property-owning men argued that white men without property
should not be sovereign individuals, because that would be an
infringement upon property-owners’ rights. Luckily, property
owners lost the argument and personal sovereignty was placed before
property rights. Only after long, difficult struggles were
democratic rights such as voting obtained for nonwhite men, and
finally, women.
Society is still far from achieving full democracy, however.
“We the People” do not have sovereignty within corporations.
Corporations, even those with publicly held stock, are run like
feudal estates. Employees, like serfs, are not covered by the Bill
of Rights. They cannot vote for their Board of Directors, CEO or the
laws of their corporation. They have no right to free speech, due
process or other civil liberties. Employees’ personal privacy can
be invaded by drug testing, phone tapping and e-mail surveillance.
Employees can be hired, laid off or “sold” to another
corporation without their consent. Corporate offices and plants can
be opened and closed with no input from employees or the communities
dependent upon them for employment. Corporations even have
jurisdiction over whom employees may date or marry. Even the very
thoughts of employees are “owned” by their corporation as
“intellectual property.”
Unions have fought for and won very limited rights in some
countries, such as the right to organize and to collectively bargain
for wages and safety standards. However, only worker owned
cooperatives are fully democratic.
Obviously, many corporations are good employers who are kind
and generous to their employees. However, that is like saying that a
king is a “good and kind” ruler. He’s still a king.
Furthermore, the economic and political might of
multinational corporations is now greater than that of nation
states. The 51 largest global economies are corporations, not
states. The “one dollar, one vote” influence of corporate money
frequently overrides “one person, one vote” governments.
Communities in which corporations extract resources, have factories,
offices or retail stores or dump waste have little democratic say
over corporate policies that affect the community.
There is also a corporate takeover of community gathering
spaces underway. The “public commons,” as these spaces are
called, are becoming privatized. For instance, as publicly owned
main streets lose economic power to privately owned malls, people
lose their right to free speech, to protest, to due process, to
govern, and much more. For example, at the Flagstaff Mall, mall
policies prohibit the distribution of “outside literature.” You
won’t find a public bulletin board at the mall. Nor are you likely
to find Flagstaff Tea Party or Flag Live! at the mall (though a few
hair salons at the mall do allow FTP to be delivered for the benefit
of customers). You can’t even buy a copy of the Arizona Daily Sun
or the Arizona Republic at the mall.
Meanwhile, security guards patrol the mall, ready to arrest
not only shoplifters but also those who might wish to peacefully
protest any policy of the mall or its stores.
In addition, the corporate push to privatize utilities,
schools, roads, public lands and more removes these resources from
democratic control.
International trade agreements are designed to protect
corporate property rights. The World Trade Organization gives
corporations the right to challenge national, state and local laws
that stand in the way of financial profits. WTO tribunals, which
investigate allegations that nations are violating free-trade
agreements, are conducted in secret. Documents, hearings and briefs
are confidential. Three non-elected trade bureaucrats decide cases.
No conflict-of-interest regulations govern who may be appointed to
the tribunal’s three-member panel.
Since the WTO was created in 1995, all health, human rights,
labor and environmental laws reviewed by the WTO have been ruled
“illegal barriers to trade.” Remember “dolphin-safe tuna?”
This phrase appeared a few years ago on some cans of tuna. Then the
WTO forced the U.S. Congress to overturn the law that was designed
to protect dolphins from being caught in nets used to catch tuna.
We do not have to let our democratic sovereignty be quashed
by corporate property rights. Corporations are not people (although
U.S. law treats them as such). “We the People” must achieve the
personal and political will necessary to become the full, democratic
rulers of our nations and ourselves.
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