Varn Vlog
Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Reimagining Democracy: A Critical Analysis of America's Constitutional Framework with Lucas de Hart and Luke Pickerel
What if the very framework meant to safeguard democracy is actually undermining it? Lucas de Hart and Luke Pickerel join us from the Democratic Constitution blog and podcast, who offer a bold critique of America's constitutional framework. As members of the Marxist Unity Group, Lucas and Luke draw on the ideas of influential thinkers like Vladimir Lenin and critiques from Charles A. Beard and Robert Dahl. They urge us to reconsider the Senate's malapportionment, the presidency's expansive powers, and the unelected nature of federal justices. Their call for a democratic constitution is both a rallying cry and a thought-provoking challenge to existing power structures.
Our conversation takes you through the labyrinth of the American political system, dissecting the obstacles it poses to strategies like the popular and united front. We scrutinize the constitutional structure that incentivizes legislators to shift power toward the executive and judiciary branches. We confront liberal fears that altering the Constitution might backfire, ultimately asking whether adhering to a framework that allows for minority domination is the real threat to democracy. The episode also compares the U.S. governance model with global systems, exploring whether a shift toward models like Sweden's might offer a more truly democratic path.
Peeling back the layers of America's founding myths, we examine the economic origins of constitutional flaws and how this impacts representation today. From the strategic sidelining of democratic input in foreign policy to debates on state rights and American identity, Lucas and Luke guide us through a critical analysis of the Constitution's role in both preserving and challenging democratic ideals. As we question the foundation of the American republic, we invite you to ponder the universal struggles of maintaining democratic principles and the potential paths toward a more equitable future.
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Host: C. Derick Varn
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Hello, welcome to our blog. And we are here today with Lucas de Hart and Luke Pickerel of the Democratic Constitution blog, available on Substack, and the Democratic Constitution podcast, available wherever there's podcasts, and you are both members of Marxist Unity Group. Luke, you've written for Cosmonaut Magazine and you thus are also in the DSA, and you thus are also in the DSA, because I think to be in the Marxist Union group, you have to be in the DSA, being that it is the caucus in the DSA. Okay, luca and Lucas, I became familiar with Luke's work a little more than Lucas's, although I've familiarized myself with Lucas's work in the last couple of weeks around the democratic constitution and what we might call democratic, democratic, republican, small r-ism.
C. Derick Varn:Unfortunately, those two words get used in American political discourse so much over the last two centuries they mean like 85 different things. So we're just going to make sure, when we're talking about it, we mean small r republicanism and small d democrat. And you are also part of the critique coming from various people of the Constitution, which I think puts you in a kind of different light than, say, platypus affiliated society, which thinks that, uh, socialist republicanism can be manifested through the bourgeois values, uh push their extent and and expanded to the working class via the current constitution. Um are. Maybe they would believe that. It's actually unclear if they actually believe that, but that seems to be the current reading, so I've gotten that out of the way. Luke and Lucas, what the fuck is wrong with the Constitution?
Luke Pickrell:Well, thanks, derek, for having us on First off, it really means a lot that you take the time to talk with us and take the time to have this subject on your show, because we think it's a really, really important subject. You know, in many ways we're not really adding anything too new to the discussion around the Constitution. There's always been a critique of it. Folks who we've learned a lot from, for example, aziz Rana, robert Ovitz, robert Dahl, sanford Levinson, dan Lazare, but even going farther back, folks like Charles A Beard, folks in the Socialist Party of America, alan Benson, crystal Eastman, other folks More recently, seth Ackerman had an article called Burn the Constitution and Jacobin in 2011. So, in many ways, we're not pointing out new critiques.
Luke Pickrell:When it comes to our Senate, which is malapportioned in that each state, regardless of its population, gets two senators. I believe we're also the only country in the world that has that bicameral legislative system plus a Senate then with a veto power. There are very few countries that have bicameral legislative systems none, as far as I know of like the US that has then an upper house with a veto. Folks are aware of the president, the expansive power that the president has. Federal justices are unelected. There's the Supreme Court, there's gerrymandering, there are so many different things, and so really, what we're saying is this stuff matters, the left should care about this stuff, and that's what's new. That really is. What new is that now there's a section of the left we think and we think it's growing saying, oh, the Constitution is a problem, okay. And then perhaps we're taking a little step further, even in saying it needs to really be focused on and the alternative should be a democratic one.
C. Derick Varn:Lucas.
Lucas De Hart :Yeah, I mean Luke, Luke said most of it pretty much. That's. That's what the game plan is, that's what it is. But yeah, you know, I, I, I, what? 2021, 2022. Yeah, About when the Ukraine war started.
Lucas De Hart :I just finally decided to kind of start a little blog. You know it was just me kind of messing around a little bit. You know I have mentors who are family friends, who some of them they've been thinking about a democratic constitution and and democratic republicanism, the fight for a democratic republic, particularly the influence they were studying in the mid-70s, was Vladimir Lenin right and for decades, how he wrote and fought so specifically for a democratic republic, for a constitution that gives everyone, one person, one equal vote in a representative assembly. So you know, so particularly, I'll just name Gil Schaefer. He was so instrumental in kind of saying there needs to be a publication, there needs to be a literary center that focuses on this.
Lucas De Hart :That's how you're going to get a movement started. You know you need the intelligentsia. In a sense you need the intellectual community. Those that are interested in the academic and activist work need to focus on expanding this amongst the advance, amongst the vanguard right. Realizing this has to be the primary goal. Everything else you can talk about and everything else we may need, but how are you going to have the means to your ends without it?
C. Derick Varn:and so, eventually, me and luke just were able to connect on that and and we it's been such good, um good fun, to have a good teamwork, um a good team member to do all this so I've been a partisan of charles a Beard and Robert Dahl's work on democracy not so much his work on polyarchy and that's not going to come up so much today I kind of think that's a little weird but his work on democracy and federalism, particularly how democratic is the American Constitution, which also indirectly critiques the Swiss canton system and some other things, canton system and some other things. Um, for a fairly long time I have also uh been highly influenced by the now 110 year old uh an economic interpretation of the constitution of the united states. Um, I also like uh a book that was edited by uh um Bertel Ullman on uh constitutional interpretations, uh from the left, including an interestingly considering how most liberals and leftists are kind of horrified by them, the anti-federalist um, who I tend to think had some more points than we like to admit, and we're not necessarily the right wingTea Party ideologues that they often get written as today. But let's go into these particular conflicts in the Constitution.
C. Derick Varn:I am vaguely familiar with the work of Aziz Rana I haven't read enough of it, I'll be quite frank around. I haven't read enough of it, I'll be quite frank. And I also read Marxist unity groups, you know, dealings with the Constitution From what I can tell, and that you guys are a little bit more specific in your critiques of the Constitution than the general Marxist unity group, and I don't say that to like say that you're different from them. You're obviously in the group, but this is your primary focus and you have primary concerns about democracy. So I wanted to like what would you think a democratic constitution would look like? What should we be aiming for? And then we can go into some of these thinkers and what they might say.
Luke Pickrell:Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that makes the DSA great great is not too strong of a word, but it is a good word to describe, I think, Marxist Unity Group is that people can unite around particular projects but also have some differences and have differences of focus. And so I think Lucas and I do stand out as being more focused on the need for a democratic constitution, specifically surrounding the idea of one person, one equal vote, which, in my mind, not only, of course, invalidates the existing Senate, but actually to bring in a line from Aziz Rana's latest book directs mirth at the entire system that we have, because there are so many institutions that are very powerful, that are not subject to any vote and that, if they are subject in some way to some sort of initial vote, wield exorbitant power. Thus one, I think, can take that demand for one person, one equal vote directed at the Constitution, and have it hit essentially all aspects of the Constitution. Now, another side of this would say well, the Constitution that we need, or the document that we need, needs to really explicitly guarantee socialism. Perhaps it even needs to have socialism written into that document. So that would be one different, one difference, perhaps the idea of creating democratic mechanisms that then can be used by the working class to create socialism, versus a constitution, a founding document of a new society that explicitly solidifies a socialized economy.
Luke Pickrell:The other question would be around how does the ruling class rule, and is it just as important, for example, to critique the standing army as it is to critique the Senate? And then that becomes a question, I think, of how does one understand the state, how does one understand where power lies? But, more fundamentally, just what does one think is important to talk about and what does one think will connect with people? For example, I've used the issue of gun control as a way to say hey, we don't live in a democratic society because people might want various things, and yet that can't get through our existing political system. Now I could be critiqued, because how does my discussion around gun control relate to the argument for a need to have a standing working class army? Are those two things contradictory? I don't know. I'm not really so concerned about that, as I'm more so concerned to find ways to expose our existing undemocratic institution. So that's sort of one example I think of where some of the some of the differences play out.
Lucas De Hart :Just real quick, I was just.
Lucas De Hart :I just another way to maybe look at it also is you know, maybe this isn't the right way to put it, but, like within Mug, I think there's more of a focus on oh, the Democratic-Republicanism is part of this socialist revolution that's going to happen, right, to transform this country. Rather than potentially looking at it as a democratic-republican revolution, a democratic revolution for a constitution that guarantees one person, one equal vote and one assembly right of the people, and through that you're passing economic and social policy that will move towards socialism, right. But the point is you need the means to the end, you need the political power. That is the primary goal and that's what we're sticking to, whereas Mug is more, has a conglomerate right of issues that are kind of on the same level, Whereas we would kind of and I've often used the phrase it's the key to unlock the door, it's the missing puzzle piece, you know it's it's. Luke often uses the one phrase you know it's the it's the chain easiest to grab onto to to reflect that change that we need.
C. Derick Varn:Okay, and and that makes it clear I mean what there's a bunch of ways you can interpret that. For example, a democratic constitution will be necessary For something like even classical Kotskyism to work, because the belief in the Second International Was that, since the majority of people are some kind of wage earner and that wasn't true in Germany at the time of the SPD in its Second International period, but it is actually true for us Majority of Americans are some kind of wage earner that a socialist politics that could speak to that in a democratic format would be viable, and a lot of the way that current progressives and, let's say, democratic socialists align with those progressives. And if we can even call them democratic socialists I'm a little bit iffy on whether I would consider them so and I'm not in your organization, so I'm not required to say that I don't have to care about. So I'm not required to say that I don't have to care about those, what the electives say they may or might not be. There'd be more ways to hold them accountable, because right now the primary way to hold electeds accountable is money, let's be quite frank, and the DSA doesn't have a ton of it. There's no left organization that isn't an NGO that has some kind of corporate relationship, that has a ton of money. Those do exist, but they have no interest in doing the current system. They get tax benefits from it.
C. Derick Varn:Politics viable I think about, for example, we talk a lot about the popular front strategy, the united front strategy, the united front from below, the united front from above. In America, under the current constitution, the only one of those that can be implemented as they were written was the united front from below. Because we don't have a parliamentary system. We have 50 different sets of laws. We don't really have a way to form coalitional governments in any meaningful democratic sense or even classical parliamentary sense. It doesn't exist in the United States at the level of state level. Parties make it even harder to do.
C. Derick Varn:But it wasn't easy before that and we know that our system was created to be both anti-monarchical but also monarchical at the same time. And I think we see that in the constant expansions of the executive, the way that in our current undemocratic representation there's actually an incentive for legislators to give up their power to both the executive, the administrative state and the judiciary. I mean, they do it all the time. They've been doing it for most of the 20th century and most of the 21st, and that's incentivized by the structure of our constitution. I mean, it's pretty clear.
C. Derick Varn:So there's that the constitution's also made really hard to amend, really, really hard to amend, and and now it's become pretty much impossible to do so. Um, but when you, when you bring this up to well-meaning liberals who realize some of the problems in some of the history, they get afraid that what's going to happen is the right's going to seize it and write their even less democratic constitution, and there is a real problem for that. But it seems to me that that fear, actually like many fears we have in our current political system, reifies the status quo, with the only way you can change things is through the presidency, which is a very hard way to change anything actually.
Lucas De Hart :So I want to get your responses to those kind of things yeah, real quick, I'll just say that, um, yeah, I mean, we just had a discussion about this um earlier today, luke but the kind of the risk right of going at it like the right is seized to prepare for a situation, if they feel like they can get there, right for a constitutional convention, article 5, whatever get the constitutional amendments they want, right to limit government as much as they can, to bring it far more back to simply only states' rights and the federal government not having the power, you know, for federal universal legislation, right, but the risk is just the same, the risk of holding on to what exists currently, to hold back, you know, the right in some way it is just as much if you want to say that.
Lucas De Hart :It's just as much of a risk as going for it and saying no, this is what we really need. We need a new framework and it needs to be a democratic framework. And so it's not just liberals there's plenty on the left that also are like no, don't touch the Constitution and it's and they'll admit, they'll readily admit all of these things that that that we know to be true, the reality, the Senate, the Supreme Court states rights, the president, the executive, the veto, all that, they'll readily admit all these things. The critique is there though. They're like but, but we can't do it. Or it's the fear, right, and it's a fear. It really is a fear-based thing a little bit, but they see it, they see the writing on the wall, but they can't do anything other than just grab on tight to what we have, as it's slowly or not so slow, necessarily disappearing are not so slow necessarily disappearing.
Luke Pickrell:Yeah, the fear is real. People being afraid is something that I encounter a lot, and it's understandable, because the idea of opening things up can be afraid or excuse me can be scary. Up can be afraid or excuse me can be scary. The idea of saying, okay, here's the opportunity to change something. There are a few ways to react to that. On the one hand, I like to quote Martin Luther King Jr saying okay, the time is always right, essentially for democracy. Chances are, when you're saying wait, it's usually a wait, and here are all the reasons why something can't happen. But the other thing that I think can be potent and I think is actually starting to, I hope, seep into some sort of collective consciousness, is that the thing that people are grasping onto you know Lucas used that term grasping onto, which really is what people do. They want to hold on tight to something sort of for dear life is actually the thing that is hurting them, and this is a point that Daniel Ziblatt and Stephen Levitsky make in their book Tyranny of the Minority. They're two professors over at Harvard. They came out with this book about a year ago which is that the Constitution creates the political framework for a minority to tyrannize a majority, and this is a major issue, and that is the great contradiction is that you're trying to hold on to something that is supposed to protect you, we've been told so. The myth, I would argue, goes at the same time, it's the thing that's harming you, and Aziz Rana actually refers to this as the constitutional bind, and I like to think that that contradiction is building, in the sense that, or I should say, the bind is that intelligent people who think critically don't have to think too hard I don't think once. Perhaps they know where to look to see that the Constitution does exactly what Daniel Ziblatt and Stephen Levitsky say and that it empowers a minority. And yet the bind comes in when they encounter all of the constitutional veneration that built up especially during the Cold War, which is again something that Aziz Rana talks about. That's then where the bind comes in.
Luke Pickrell:Gosh, this thing is harming us. It gave us Donald Trump in the first place through the Electoral College, but gosh, darn, it aren't those checks and balances supposed to hold him accountable? But gosh, darn, it aren't those checks and balances supposed to hold him accountable. Isn't the court supposed to step in? So on and so forth. And what can I say? I think those contradictions are building. I wish they would build faster. And of course, there are some people who speak the language of democracy who will never look to resolve those contradictions. Joe Biden is not going to try and understand the constitutional bind. Every time he talks about America being a democracy, I argue AOC isn't either, or any of the justices on the Supreme Court. So they make things more difficult, of course, when they call the United States a democracy. But I think those contradictions are building the United States a democracy.
C. Derick Varn:I think those contradictions are building. Well, one of the things I've always thought about about the US is I like to call it the Bardiga bind, which is actually something for obscure left communists to pick up on. But I'll explain it. The problems of democratic republicanism and democratic parliamentarianism and capitalism were very clear to Marxists very early on. That did not mean that we historically rejected any notion of democracy In fact, marx is pretty clear on that. But because of those binds being normalized as essential to democracy itself and being read back into prior quote democratic societies like, say, the Athenian democracy, which is not a democracy in the way we mean it, since citizenship was so exclusive to such a few group of property holders, it would be properly speaking more to call that like a direct oligarchy, but nonetheless that's the narrative in which we tell ourselves. So someone like Bordiga encounters that and he turns over time against the concept of democracy itself because he takes the capitalist representation of democratic norms as the only representation of democratic norms. Right, and I think we see this today and a lot of the way people are frustrated, even on the left, with With the idea of democracy, and that's a problem for me because I have not seen where technocratic oligarchs are Apparatchiks, are particularly better at governing than just, you know, the general will of everybody. But that's where we are, and in America it's particularly true. I think you know, right wingers are actually telling the truth and they say we're a republic, not a democracy, and I'm like we're barely a republic, like it's such a weird like.
C. Derick Varn:No one on earth adopts the American congressional model as their model for how to run a government, even when the United States topples other governments and stars democracies. They don't install an American constitutional democracy because they know it probably wouldn't work, because it barely works here. And yet you see people I think about the 5-4 podcast, the podcast of Supreme Court watchers. Yeah, they're interesting, make a lot of good points, but even then they're like well, the administrative state is a representation of democracy and I'm like how, how? It's not that different from the judiciary?
C. Derick Varn:They're both mostly appointed by the executive, they're both quasi-partisan, even when they're not supposed to be, and and you just have one unelected bureaucracy fighting another undirected branch of government. It doesn't seem like it's like, for from my standpoint it's a lose lose, but a lot of and that's, I think, is more specific to liberals. They are terrified that the public will reject expertise and and I have the opposite view that the reason why the republic rejects expertise is because they see expertise as expressions of partisan hackery, more often than not because of the nature and structure of our government. Now, I know that's a gamble, but it's a gamble that I kind of think we need to be able to take a risk on. But I want to turn that over to you.
Lucas De Hart :Yeah, like, because you mentioned republic democracy. I mean, this is the thing I go over a lot is that, like, republics come in very many different forms. Right, a republic does not make a democracy. A republic can be democratic or it can be anti-democratic.
Lucas De Hart :You know, luke and I just had a had a show on Thomas Paine and the Democratic Republic, had a show on Thomas Paine and the Democratic Republic, and he's very and you know, and one of these a book to highlight very good history that came out in 2017 is Jonathan Israel's the Expanding Blaze, which is kind of about the era that others call it too, but he mentions in it the era of the Democratic Revolution. And you had these. You had Republicans that were Democratic, like Thomas Paine, benjamin Franklin. They were for a specifically Democratic Republic, and then you had framers and founders and colonists who were for an aristocratic republic, like John Adams, madison, and so it's it's really helpful, I think, to break it down.
Lucas De Hart :Sometimes maybe you don't need to go this simple, but I think it's really helpful to break it down into a republic is a representative form of government, a democratic, a democracy is a system of the people.
Lucas De Hart :Put it together, it is a republic of the people, meaning everyone in the institutional bodies and the representative bodies has an equal vote, whereas, as we see, the US system and part of that goes to the complexity of the US Constitution, the system it sets up Tom Paine again says what you need is a simple government that is efficient and performs and brings progress right, and so I just think it's helpful to break those things down a little bit about what a republic really is, what is a democracy really, and what does a democracy look like in a representative, structured form rather than, let's say, a lot of right-wingers when you hear, when they hear the word democracy, they immediately jump to oh, athenian democracy, direct democracy, and in my eyes, none of us are talking about that. None of us are talking about a direct democracy. We were talking about representative government that creates universal and equal rights, and that right begins with the basic right to an equal vote.
Luke Pickrell:In terms of how the left understands democracy and socialism. This is something that I'm particularly interested, I think, because I came into the left through the International Socialist Organization, what I would define as a Trotskyist organization, and never once said the word democratic republic, never once said the word constitution. If I said democracy, it was bourgeois democracy, and the term bourgeois democracy was used to describe the existing state that we have in the US and just the general way in which the capitalist class rules. They rule through bourgeois democracy. Don't we all know that democracy is kind of a scam? And don't we all know that we need socialism? We need the socialist revolution, and therefore we go about doing various things, usually in the workplace, usually through selling the paper, strikes, so on and so forth, to bring the working class to a boil, to the point at which it realizes it needs socialism. We do the socialist revolution and then through that come workers' councils. We do the socialist revolution and then through that come workers councils, and then workers councils and Soviets become the way of administering the state, not some kind of parliamentary democracy, not some kind of democratic republic, because, again, we've tried democracy it's bourgeois and that's how the ruling class rules, ruling class rules.
Luke Pickrell:So it's been particularly interesting for me to break out of that, essentially break out of the dominant way of how the left sees democracy, which is usually through that bourgeois, as a pejorative bourgeois democratic lens, and as to say, our task now is to agitate for socialism. And because our job is to agitate for socialism, that should be the main, that should be the essence of our political agitation, if you will. We describe the various problems in the world the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist website might be the best example of the left describing the problems in the world and then we conclude by saying hence the need for socialism, hence the need to join our party to fight for socialism, so on and so forth. And I think the point that we're trying to make is that that misses the mark misses the mark. Derek, you pointed out all the various obstacles that our undemocratic system puts in the way of people trying to make political change. The point is to say we need a democracy.
Luke Pickrell:Through democracy we could imagine a successful struggle for socialism. It's not going to cure things, it's not going to realize the great world that we want, but it's going to remove a major obstacle to getting what we need. And because it is a major obstacle. Hence, we're really going to direct a lot of our political agitation towards that. And so it is new for the left, I think, to start thinking like this. It is new for the left, I think, to start thinking like this. I've written in various places that I think the left is starting to make that turn in a way I shouldn't say the left, I'd say a certain section of the left. If think within the American left, in terms of imagining a political strategy, how we understand our particular state, and it just so happens that that's actually not a brand new window. That's us really just rediscovering what's been lost over oh, I don't know 80 to 100 years, and returning to our Democratic-Republican roots.
Lucas De Hart :I just want to say, varn, thank you so much for having us. I got to check out. Luke will continue on the work here, but I really appreciate the discussion and having me on.
C. Derick Varn:Thank you, we'll get to rest of the day. Take it easy, lucas. So just to pick up from there. Sure, let's a lot of the people who form my thinking on Republicanism.
C. Derick Varn:Democracy I probably am a little bit more pro direct democracy than a lot of people, but I realize that that's a harder sell. Pro-direct democracy than a lot of people, but I realize that that's a harder sell. And I also realize that Athens is a very bad model for what it is, because what I said before it actually was a pretty exclusive who was included in their direct democracy. But I've been moderated in that view by people like Quentin Skinner and thinkers like that. I wanted to go over a few of these thinkers because I don't think a lot of leftists you know I spend a lot of time explaining all these obscure Marxist to people but a lot of these other thinkers of on constitutions, constitutionality and democracy I, I think are not as well known on the left. I know Marxist Unity Group because of their lineage through with some relationship to the CPGB Provisional Committee and Mike McNair's relationship to Quinn Skinner are familiar with Quinn Skinner. But let's talk about, maybe, what some of these ideas are. Let's talk about Aziz Rana. We talked about the constitutional bind and also his notions of freedom and what I think the book that comes to mind is Two Views of American Freedom or Two Views of Freedom I can't remember the exact title, but I read it a long time ago. So we have the constitutional bind because we built a cult. We have built actively and on purpose a civic religion that has come up in many times. I mean right after the Civil War it was enforced for good and for ill, but particularly during the Cold War, a lot of American traditions that we think are very old, such as Thanksgiving and the Pledge of Allegiance, and and and and and actually root to between the 1930s and the 1950s. Before that some of them had roots. Thanksgiving, for example, there was various Thanksgiving traditions in various areas of the country in the 19th century, particularly after the Civil War, traditions in various areas of the country in the in the 19th century, particularly after the civil war, but that one story was an active project of the cold war and a lot of people don't know that like it it's. It is in a very like hubbs-bombing and since an invented tradition that's actually much later than the period that.
C. Derick Varn:It's right that it's talking about um and the unity of the founders. The founders, um, is another one of those myths. Like I have been radically surprised as an adult reading the writings of various founding fathers. Uh, how all over the place they were. Um, you know, some of them really do come across as villains in history. Others, like madison, are completely rewritten to be way more, uh, palatable to the public. I mean, you can think about the federalist paper where madison's talking about the protection of the rights of minorities and it's liberals forget to mention it was the minorities of the rich and property owned that he was talking about. I I didn't care about any other minority Like so. But yet there are other founding fathers who are radically democratic campaigns. One of them, sometimes Tom, sometimes Benjamin Franklin, is one. Thomas Jefferson is all over the place and the most, probably one of the most highly contradictory people.
C. Derick Varn:And then you have the fact that a lot of what I would consider maybe the villains of the constitutional battles around the establishment of the Constitution did have somewhat progressive politics on certain things. The big example, I think, is John Adams. John Adams was pretty good on slavery. He was pretty good for the time on on gender. He was basically a monarchist in some ways, or helped pass laws because, again, he was an executive to come pass laws himself that were pretty blatantly unconstitutional. So it's uh, you know, for a moment too. Like you know, we're barely into the republic and we already have this um, so I wanted to maybe get into what you guys interpret the the cost. Where does our constitution come from, according to your understanding of how it got so anti-democratic?
Luke Pickrell:Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it's funny. I think it was reading a people's history of the United States many, many, many years ago and reading about the origins of the Constitution. That got me thinking about political problems in sort of a systemic way. I kind of kind of an interesting, an interesting little thing to think back on.
Luke Pickrell:I think it's helpful to think about the framers when they're going back, when they're creating the federal constitution, at least as and this might even be a charitable interpretation of trying to maneuver through a rock and a hard place essentially they have two conceptions of where tyranny can come from. It can come from a single person or it can come from many people. So democracy is a pejorative to many people. Democracy would lead to anarchy, just as the rule of one would lead towards tyranny, and so the idea is that, okay, the way we work through this is to create a system with checks and balances, and, as far as I know, the model one that they had was, of course, in Britain, and in fact some people, like Gordon Wood, for example, say that the idea of preserving that, what was actually sort of falling apart in England, was a reason for the revolution, but regardless of who the individuals were at the time. I think it's important to understand that for most people, democracy was a bad thing. Most people, democracy was a bad thing. Democracy would be the overbearing majority, that the majority opinion could be overbearing and dominating, and I think today we have to argue that actually, democracy is the best chance we have. It's a particular system of the rule of a minority that's gotten us in a lot of trouble, and so democracy no longer deserves those negative connotations. In fact, it's what we need.
Luke Pickrell:The other thing I suppose it's important to think about in terms of the framers is that a lot of constitutions are being made. You know they're making a lot of these state constitutions too, and Robert Ovitz has a book that came out a few years ago called we, the Elites, and he talks a little bit about the creation of the federal constitution as a reaction to some of these more democratic state constitutions, like, for example, the Pennsylvania constitution that Tom Paine was involved in, and that's not a new point. I think Gordon Wood also makes that point. But while there might be some utility in looking at the individual folks who came up with this constitution yes, some of them owned slaves and had all these ideas that we abhor. I think a fundamental one is that democracy was not seen as a good thing, and yet, of course, our whole project is to argue that democracy is a good thing. That's what we need.
C. Derick Varn:So let's talk about the economic roles of the framers. The United States as a bourgeois republic is actually kind of an interesting idea. I do think it ended up as a bourgeois republic. I may be idiotic, maybe not. I don't think we actually began our bourgeois republican period until probably the end of the Civil War to, to be quite frank, I don't think you could probably call us that beforehand, but it also was based on a settlerism that modeled itself on yeoman uh property and what we might call pre-industrial agrarian um bourgeois relations. I mean to use really technical Marxist terms, and what I mean by that is we didn't have a lot of industrial production. There wasn't a lot of industrial production even in England. Yet when we first developed, the model that we used was the aristocratic enclosures and this idea of freemen, particularly yeomans, who engaged in free labor and exchange. But the right to hold property um was kind of in a in-between phase between its phase and what we might call feudal and I'll put that in quotation marks because feudal is a contested term and early capitalist relations, and so it does seem to me that there's a lot going on in protecting that ability to maintain property in the Constitution, and I don't think.
C. Derick Varn:I think Charles Beard is right about that and that is reflected particularly in the policies of the Federalist. But a lot of modern American liberals really seem to like the focus on the Federalist because they'd also advocated for a strong singular state and a strong singular economic policy. I mean, hamilton, famously, was pushing for a national bank before a lot of other places even dreamed of it. How does that affect the limitations of the constitution? I mean, like, like cause? I do think, like, as you know, as people who are, who are at least informed by a Marxist analysis, we do have to ask ourselves what are the class conflicts that are leading to the Constitution being the weird way it is? Because our Constitution is particularly strange and also and I know this actually cuts against a lot of American self-conception of a young nation, very old I think it's the longest standing Constitution on the planet. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that. So let's go into that a bit. What do you think is the economic origins of the flaws of our constitution?
Luke Pickrell:Yeah, I think that's correct from the reading I've done. Robert Ovitz also points that out in his book. It's a document that's structured around preserving private property, I suppose. On the one hand, it's also a document that's particularly concerned with getting back money so that it can pay debts that are incurred from the war. As I understand, that's one reason, for example, that there's a concern of creating an unelected federal judiciary, because these state judicial systems are, for various reasons, just a little bit too amenable to people who don't want to pay back their debts. So there is a concern to create a federal system that does have the authority to protect this property.
Luke Pickrell:And then, of course, as other folks have pointed out, one major source of property is slaves. And then there's a lot of back and forth that goes into okay, how do the slave states get a say in the constitution? Slavery, you know, literally being written into the constitution and it's saying, you know it's. It's saying we, the people, you, the people, have the power to change things. But oh, by the way, you can't change slavery for 30 years, you know, by the way, we're going to take away that particular ability for you to do that. Um. So I think that's very helpful.
Luke Pickrell:The one thing I will say is that people can look at the constitution and say the problem with the Constitution is that it enshrines private property. I forget where exactly in the Constitution it says something, maybe the Commerce Clause or something like that. It's not super explicit, but sure, yeah, that's the bit of the Constitution that's interpreted to protect private property, among many others. The thing I focus on is the political discussion. And, ok, how does the Constitution set up political obstacles that make it hard to make or to change the laws that can then shape society, the laws that can then shape society? So, yes, absolutely, I think we can look at the Constitution in terms of protecting particular economic interests and then what with the development of capitalism? Continuing to do that? And I usually emphasize all of the minoritarian checks again to use a Robert Ovitz term all the minoritarian checks that are in place on political decision making.
C. Derick Varn:So what are some of those minoritarian checks that people should be looking out for? I mean, the obvious is the Senate and Judiciary. But what are some of the more subtle ones? I mean the obvious is the.
Luke Pickrell:Senate and the judiciary. But what are some of the more subtle ones? Yeah, yeah, well, that's an interesting question. Let's see if I can think of some.
Luke Pickrell:Of course, the Senate, as you said, it's set up in such a way and folks might know this already in which there are two senators for every state, regardless of the population that exists in the state, and that then creates these very strange things that can happen.
Luke Pickrell:So there's a veto in the Senate, but that veto if you say OK, 40 senators I believe it would be could create a veto can now, because of different population changes, represent, I believe, as little as 10 or 11 percent of the population, have a situation in which, again because of that malapportioned Senate, you can have Supreme Court justices I believe there are three of them currently sitting who, let alone if they were nominated by a president who didn't win the popular vote, would then be confirmed by a majority of the Senate.
Luke Pickrell:That would actually represent a minority of the population in terms of the states they represent. So one fun one I like to think of is that Clarence Thomas, who everyone is rightfully hating on right now. He's one of those folks you know who was confirmed, I forget, by I don't know 52, 51 senators. Perhaps the 58 or 59 senators who voted against him represented more of the population than did the senators who voted to confirm him. So that's one way. You have the executive, the various powers within the executive branch, you have the electoral college. You have the Supreme Court, you have the various federal judiciaries. Those are ones that immediately come to mind.
C. Derick Varn:In what ways do you think that this anti-democratic tendency has gotten worse in the 20th and 21st century? Because we know, I mean, there's a lot of this is from the beginning, but I think we really do have to look at the fact that it's a it's increased kind of dramatically since world war two. So I'm turning it over to you as well yeah.
Luke Pickrell:well, one way to answer this question is to look at how population centers have shifted in the United States, because people move in the United States, but we give political representation not to people but to geography, to geographic locations, to states. So I believe there are a few articles out now saying that by I forget if it's 2030 or 2040, something like 70% of the United States will be represented by 30 senators, and then, of course, the opposite, something like 30% of the population will be represented by 70 senators. The other thing that does is not just essentially disenfranchise everyone, essentially disenfranchise everyone. It particularly impacts folks of color, because you have particular states, for example, like California, that have, at this point, gosh, I think, maybe a little bit of a majority of people of color that have the same two senators as, for example, wyoming. That is a state that's 80% lighter. So I think one way to exemplify that is just to say look, as these population centers shift, we are still beholden to the Senate, a very powerful institution that isn't changing along with that.
C. Derick Varn:One thing I think has become very clear to a lot of Americans period, but leftists in particular, is that foreign policy has been strategically removed from democratic input. So if you look on most of the last wars the operation in Gaza even amongst conservatives they're supported less than the politicians representing them would make it appear. But also, since you know, things that were absurdly used to control the president, like the Police and War Powers Acts and stuff like that to rein in treaty obligations, have been used to remove the legislature's ability to declare war. I mean, we haven't had a legislature declare war, I think, since what World War II?
C. Derick Varn:Maybe the Korean War, I think it's World War II and which means that While there have been authorizations of force pushed by Congress, there's no public accountability for those actions and it makes the military and stuff around the military particularly unresponsive to public concern, especially once you get rid of general conscription. Now I'm not saying one way or another whether we need general conscription. Now I'm not saying one way or another whether we need general conscription, although I kind of think if you have a real democracy and you have general conscription, you're a lot less likely to go to war. But nonetheless, what do you make about that, particularly this period where we're very concerned about how foreign policy has been going for the past 40, 50 years.
Luke Pickrell:Yeah Well, there's a quote from C Wright Mills that I really really like. C Wright Mills, I think, said this in oh gosh, 1956 or so not too long before he died. He's critiquing the state. He never launches a full-throated critique of the Constitution, but I think he's within this ballpark. I'm sure he's aware of Beard and so on and so forth. He has a quote where he says something to the effect of people are aware of the power that the state has. People are aware that the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people are aware that big decisions are being made and they're also aware that they have no say. And so I really like that idea, that idea that there can be huge decisions made and a foreign policy decision of dropping atomic weapons on people is a huge decision. And then they're also aware that, whether or not they're particularly interested I like to think everyone would have been interested at the time that they don't have any say really in what happens, that big events happen in the world and they're not a part of it, and US support for Israel and ask, okay, to what extent do we have any say in our foreign policy?
Luke Pickrell:Very early on in November, perhaps you know, just a month after October 7th, I went to a protest in San Francisco and you saw, you know most of your signs that you might see at a protest. There was one sign, though, that was referencing a poll that had come out around the time saying something like however it was measured, 60% of Americans support, if not, an outright ceasefire, support the US, toning it down a good notch. And yet, the day after Congress passes this multi-multi-million dollar, if not billion dollar, military spending bill and the sign read it had that stat, it said 60% of people want this, and yet we get X, y and Z dollars. And then the reverse of the sign said no taxation without representation. I thought, huh, that's pretty interesting. That's a slogan that I'm not used to seeing these days. And yet it's speaking to something that I think people feel, which is, hey, hold on a sec. Our government is doing things in our name and yet we don't have a say over this situation.
Luke Pickrell:And again, going back to then, how the left takes events that happen in the world and describes them to people and uses them for political agitation is something I'm concerned about. One way to handle that is to say, yeah, imperialism, the US, so on and so forth. This is why we need a socialist revolution. I prefer to take that and say, yeah, these events, us foreign policy, so on and so forth. This is why we need to change our constitution. This is why we need a democracy, because we don't have political power to make any of these larger decisions. It's not even up for us to determine. So just to say that's another way in which I think questions around foreign policy, what the US does, what the state does, can that, when people are aware of what's going on and aware that they don't have a say, they'll, they'll want to have a say, and then one thing we can do is then say this is how you could have a say.
C. Derick Varn:OK, there is a couple of areas where this gets a little bit more muddled and I'll bring up one of them. So we can think about indigenous peoples in the Americas in general, but specifically in the Anglosphere. So we'll just talk about Canada and the United States in this case. What would a more democratic polity do about that? Because those questions are the questions that do lead some people into Hobbesianism, and we can get to that in a minute. But like what? What would your suggestion be for handle, handle indigenous rights, representations, etc. In a more democratic constitutional order?
Luke Pickrell:it's a good question.
Luke Pickrell:The first thought that comes up is that, in the event of having a constituent assembly in which we have the ability to write the new political rules for a group of people, that people representing those groups should have a say and then should also have the ability and I believe this is in Mugg's Seven Points of Unity to decide to not be a part of whatever comes out of that constituent assembly, that whatever comes out of that constituent assembly.
Luke Pickrell:So just to say that people should get representation. I know in some parts of the world, certain sections of the constituent assembly have been reserved for particular political interests, sometimes indigenous interests. I think that's something that could certainly be explored. I don't have, though, any real pretensions of knowing exactly how it could play out, except to say that I have to think that making things more democratic could solve a lot of those problems. The only other thing I'll add in is that, at least around African-Americans and perhaps the question around self-determination, I think there has been some recent research done as to how people saw a constitution working in their favor. Separation Aziz Rana has written a little bit about this. There was also, at one point, the idea of making a more democratic constitution, a more democratic United States, with the idea that we're sort of all in this together in some sense.
C. Derick Varn:I guess one thing to ask and this is particular to the US, I mean most of this is particular to the US, mean most of this particular to the us, but this is really particular to the us um is, what do we do with the states? Because we have 50 different little polities, some of which are tiny, most of whose borders are historical accidents, and, um, you have the way in which, the way that they are currently drawn, there is a problem that creates something like a seeming need for federalism, because California and Texas and Florida and New York can really boss things around in a way that I don't know in a truly democratic system would necessarily go that way. I'm not so sure that it would. But you know, when I talk about like hey, we need to like, maybe completely redraw the regions of the country and administrative lines that you know make fucking sense, um, people, people get more scared of that in some ways than they do even talking about amending or rewriting the Constitution.
C. Derick Varn:And I find it interesting because most Americans do not particularly identify with their state of residence. It's not like I feel strongly as a Utahan or strongly as a Georgian, the two places I've spent most of my life, nor those two places, even though they're both nominally very conservative anything alike, even in their conservatism. But I also don't know why we would want these borders here. There's many problems created by them, including resource wars, which can't be hot wars, but you definitely have court wars over things like water, access to agricultural land, access to industry that a truly democratic polity would have to fix. So what would your suggestions be for that? Or would you just think about, like, abolishing the states altogether and starting to redraw the map upon more rationalized lines? Just throw that out to you.
Luke Pickrell:Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think there are a few things. One, the question of states and states really is. I think it was reading oh, I forget who wrote it, but there's a great three-part series on Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and he goes into just the history of the civil rights movement and just how gosh darn difficult it is to, or it is and it was um for uh anything really progressive to take place in the name of uh state's rights, in the name of defending uh those particular states, uh ability to essentially wage war on black people. That's sort of aside the point, yet it is a part of living in the United States is this question of states and state rights.
Luke Pickrell:The other thing I'd say is there's a real place, I think, to return to that critique of look, people should have political rights, not states, if you will, we should have a system based on one person, one equal vote, where everyone in the United States has a vote and their vote is no more greater than anyone else's, nor is it impeded in any way. And again, then that brings us back to the Senate, I should add, and, as you mentioned, the difficulty of changing the Constitution Anytime we're talking about any of these bad aspects about the Constitution, like the Senate dealing with that then runs you into you know well how the hell do we change this thing. So with that, then runs you into that. You know well how the hell do we change this thing. So, of course, just pulling one thread kind of takes you up the whole tangle of ladder, if you will. I think there's reason to seriously consider the power that states have.
Luke Pickrell:Again, again, I don't make it much a part of my critique, only to point out that when people are concerned about states' rights and federalism, for example, as some people on the left have been there have been a few articles about that you need to talk about the Constitution. You can't talk about these issues that are important without, I think, bringing it back to the larger question of how do you make the laws in our country? Who makes the laws in our country? And then, it being so, gosh darn difficult to imagine changing that process. Gosh darn difficult to imagine changing that process.
C. Derick Varn:Okay, so I guess the question would be now and this will probably be the last question, but it's going to be kind of a doozy, just a heads up how would we go about this, like, how do you go about actually running a more democratic, small d republic, small art.
Luke Pickrell:Well, that's a good question. I'll take it in two parts. I'll add a little bit of a question. I'll start with saying what am I doing right now? Because I don't know if we'll ever get to this goal. I don't know if we'll ever get a democracy, I don't know if we'll ever get socialism, so on and so forth.
Luke Pickrell:But what I think is important to do now is to talk about the issue, and that seems sort of banal, because, well, it can seem sort of banal in a way, though I wouldn't discount the importance of talking about something but again reintroducing this idea to the left, saying to people who call themselves leftists, who call themselves socialists, who are leftists and who are socialists, this is something that you should care about. The Constitution, democracy, this is important, it's in your history here. Take it, let's go, let's, let's run with it. The other thing, then, is to write and to in any way try and connect the various issues that people experience in society to the lack of political power, to the Constitution. Sometimes that's easier said than done or, excuse me, sometimes that's easier to do than other times, for example, when the Supreme Court comes in or when the President does something. But the reality is is that we're always living in an undemocratic society. The Constitution is not undemocratic only when the Supreme Court does something we don't like, or only when the president does something we don't like. It's always structured that way. So to keep up that agitation and to keep up that analysis, to keep people engaged In terms of what things would look like, in terms of what things would look like, I think that if the United States and I will probably get in trouble for saying this, but if the United States had a political system like Sweden, it would dramatically change the structure of world politics.
Luke Pickrell:Now I'm not saying that that's my map for the future, but I'm saying that's sort of the logical conclusion of all the things I've been arguing. I've been arguing that we need a unicameral legislative system that doesn't have a strong executive, that doesn't have a very strong judiciary, that meets those basic requirements. For how, example, the Russian social democrats described democracy within the first two points of their 1903 program around a unicameral legislature based around universal and equal suffrage. So that's one way I'll describe. It is saying look, the United States having some semblance of a democracy would have ramifications. It might not be immediately socialist. We might be able to critique it as not meeting certain desires.
Luke Pickrell:But I think, to stay consistent, I would say look, we would have a single, unicameral legislative body. That body would have unimpeded lawmaking power. Its decisions could not be overturned by a Supreme Court. They could not be vetoed by an executive. I suppose the other person who I think about in regards to this is Victor Berger. Victor Berger I think it was in 1911, put forward a bill in the House, I believe sincerely thinking that the existing Constitution would allow that bill to pass. That would have abolished the Senate. And in that bill he basically spells out saying the Senate is a menace to society. We need, then, all power in a single legislative assembly, unimpeded lawmaking power, so on and so forth lawmaking power, so on and so forth.
C. Derick Varn:All right, luke, I would like you to suggest where people can find more of your work.
C. Derick Varn:I mentioned that your blog and your podcast and they will be in the show notes, but is there anything else you'd like to plug or tell people to look up for more information and the debates around this?
C. Derick Varn:For more information and the debates around this? Because, I will say, I think it's vitally important, but, for lack of a better term, a lot of leftists find European stuff a little bit more sexy, for whatever reason, than they do actually talking about our own history, probably because our own history is pretty ugly, but we have to deal with it if we're ever going to do anything here, and the other option people seem to gravitate to is either some kind of Hobbesianism, which I think is a disaster, or some kind of third worldism, which I think is unlikely just unlikely to work. It's hard to ask the literally least powerful people in the world to do all the work for you. So I think people being involved in this and thinking about it and developing their responses to it is important. So where can people engage with you to push this conversation in various directions, even if they don't agree with everything said here today.
Luke Pickrell:Yeah Well, first off, thanks again for having me and Lucas on, thanks for reaching out and allowing us to talk about this topic I have. There have also been debates that have played out perhaps more within a lefty sphere, if you will, on Cosmonaut. They're a little older, but debates around maybe from a more Trotskyist perspective versus what I'm talking about. There was actually an interesting one that was published not too long ago between three Mug members, including myself. If folks are curious how this discussion can look inside of Mug. I've also written for Democratic Left, which is one of DSA's publications. I've also written for Socialist Forum, which is another one of DSA's publications, so I'd encourage folks to look at that. I'd encourage folks to check out all of the books that you know you and I have mentioned. I think these are valuable resources. I think you've read a lot more of them than I have, but you know that's that's neither here nor there.
C. Derick Varn:I'm old, I've had more time.
Luke Pickrell:No, I, I appreciate it. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I'd say, and really appreciate folks looking at it and engaging with it, because that's really what I want, assuming it's a kind, not too mean engagement is just to engage with this. I do my best writing when I have people to respond to, and I think other people also make very good points, and it's a conversation that we need to have.
C. Derick Varn:All right, I would totally agree, um subscribe to your blog. Um, and I do listen to your podcast, so I would endorse it. Um, even if some of this seems a little american, specific and dry for those of you abroad. Um, I do think maybe understanding the internal weirdnesses of american politics would make your understanding of america a little bit. Or the United States we don't speak for everybody, sorry the rest of the continent, two continents but of the United States a lot clearer to people.
C. Derick Varn:I've talked to friends from Sweden and explained American law to them and they were like I didn't know that. Oh, know, um, uh. Or I've talked to people in korea and they're like, wait, you guys, your public opinion and your government are totally, like, not copacetic with each other. Interestingly, uh, just as a little side note, um, when I was in mexico, they actually did get it like it was very clear to a lot of people that Americans and the American government are the gringos and the gringo state. Just use good words here. We're pretty different, but I do think understanding the problems of our democracy in quotation marks um, it would make a lot of sense and it's gonna, and I think it's gonna become more important as, frankly, I've seen both parties, even though the democrats are protecting democracy and I can't even put enough quotation marks around that actually for it to be taken seriously by me but uh, uh, both parties are are protecting democracy through anti-democratic means. But, my european friends, there's plenty of studies talking about how you guys are getting less democratic too, and the eu is an example of that. But even within your own individual EU member states and for those of you who aren't in the EU, I would look up the post-democracy or post-democratic slide or all that kind of stuff in Europe to see that there are parallels.
C. Derick Varn:This is mostly an American conversation or a United States conversation. Again, asterisk, I know that that's presumptuous and chauvinist of us to claim the entire two continents. I mean, it's pretty clear that we literally wanted to at one point. But whatever that will, maybe in seeing in the way we're not so democratic, maybe you can also understand your own country's governments a little bit more clearly too. I have often found that the particularities of, say, france and Britain and Spain or the EU become clear to me when I compare them to the weirdnesses of the United States, to see how different the weirdnesses are, but how they also kind of mirror each other, and so I hope I invite people to do that so that people know that I don't just think this is a US conversation. The majority of my listeners are in the US, but not all of them, and I know that. So there you go. Thank you so much, luke, and I'm going to thank Lucas and Absentia and anything you'd like to say as the last word.
Luke Pickrell:No, my, my, my pleasure, derek the. The conversation will continue and you know, we keep on struggling and keep on trying as we can.
C. Derick Varn:All right, thank you so much.
