Also on Greenwatch Cable show, channel 17, every other Wednesday
night--next showing is Sept. 17th.
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On September 17th 1787, the U.S. Constitution was ratified by two-thirds
of the colonies, and thus adopted. The constitution is the supreme law
in the U.S., and it is an instrument of class power, intended by its framers
to preserve the influence of property owners over the American political
economy.
Despite popular claims of U.S. democracy, the constitution was intended
to blunt the possibility of "the people" from acquiring power or making
effective changes in the structure of government, in particular property
relations between the elite and the marginalized.
The framers of the constitution were, in fact, often contemptuous of democracy. John Adams attacked Thomas Paine's book Common Sense because it was "so democratical, without any restraint or even an Attempt at any Equilibrium or Counterpoise, that it must produce confusion and every Evil Work." Thomas Jefferson believed that working people were "the panders of vice and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned," and he had limited faith in ability of the "swinish multitude" to govern themselves; they were ruled by passion, not reason
Indeed the incentive for creating a federal system and writing a constitution emerged because indebted farmers in western Massachusetts, organized as a class in revolt and led by Daniel Shays, had taken arms against the state government, which was dominated by wealthy merchants and did not act in the interests of the vast majority of the people. Fearing large-scale class war-- James Madison warned that "Great commotions are prevailing in Massuchusetts. An appeal to the sword is exceedingly dreaded"–the national elite met in Philadelphia in 1787 to construct a new nation, with a strong federal government and constitution. There were 55 men in Philadelphia, and the historian Charles Beard studied their backgrounds and their motives in his landmark 1913 book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. The primary objective of government, Beard explained, was to determine the property relations between members of society; thus the dominant classes had to either control the organs of government or to enact rules that were consistent with their larger efforts to continue their own economic affairs. The men at Philadelphia did that.
A majority of the framers, Beard discovered, were lawyers, most holding great wealth in terms of land, and often slaves. Many had manufacturing and shipping interests. Over one-half were creditors, and 40 of the 55 held government bonds. Most of the makers of the constitution, then, had a direct economic interest in establishing a strong central government, at the expense of the needs of the majority of the people. Manufacturers needed a strong government to establish protective tariffs and subsidize industrialization; moneylenders wanted to stop the liberal printing of paper money to pay off debts; land speculators needed a federal military force to protect them as they grabbed Indian land on the frontier; slaveholders sought federal security against revolts and runaways; bondholders needed a strong central government able to raise monies via taxation to ensure that their bonds from the War for Independence would be honored
The men at Philadelphia thus had strong class motives to see a federal system established, and they were candid about their interests. John Adams contended that the U.S. ought to be governed by "the rich, the well-born and the able," and he believed that democracy was "the most ignoble, unjust and detestable form of government." Alexander Hamilton agreed and went further. He believed that society was divided between the "rich and well born" and "the people." The masses, however, were "turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right." Hamilton's solution was to give "to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government." Hamilton, thinking of Shays' Rebellion, also wrote of the need for the new government to be able to "repress domestic faction and insurrection."
Far from being an instrument of democracy, the constitution was a
document written to maintain and extend the privileges of the upper class,
of the men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 to invent a new nation to protect
their property interests and those who ratified the constitution on September
17th, 1787.
Further reading:
Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution