US Constitution Fails to Live Up to Its Name

Mainstream academics in the United Kingdom and United States think that a constitutional political system is like this: The constitution is the supreme authority above all and also a manifestation of natural and common will, and, therefore, the U.S. is a society of democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law.

However, the U.S. Constitution itself is a paradox. On the one hand, it enables the bourgeoisie to monopolize production and strip away power from the people; on the other hand, it talks about “rule by the people” and freedom for all in various arenas. In reality, these two sides cannot coexist, so which of the two is in fact the reality?

In the United States, it is true that the Constitution is supreme over the will of the American public, but it does not overpower everything. The U.S. Constitution is not the highest supreme authority; rather, the will of the U.S. capitalist oligarchy is. The interpretation and implementation of the U.S. Constitution and laws change according to the interests and will of this monopoly. The bourgeoisie is able to achieve all of these manipulations because society relies on the monopolizing production these tycoons own. The bourgeoisie claims that its interests are the common interests shared by all members of society, giving an element of universality to its selfish ideas. Contemporary American independent intellectuals, such as academics in critical legal studies, do not deny this phenomenon.

Hence, we can see that the ideals of the U.S. Constitution are not compatible with its actual implementation. U.S. constitutional scholars and their Chinese followers promulgate a certain type of all-encompassing, God-willed “constitutional governance” that does not exist in reality. These paradigms are myths that America uses to fool the public in order to maintain totalitarian rule. They are also psychological war weapons that American tycoons and their partners in China use to topple Chinese socialist society. But of course, a constitutional system that could be compatible with socialism does not exist.

Of the U.S. founding fathers, Hamilton revealed truthfully in "The Federalist Papers" the essence of American constitutional governance: It is a type of rule, in which all means should be used to prevent the majority of poor people from encroaching on the benefits of the few property owners. It is best to achieve this goal, not by feudal totalitarianism, but in such a way that “the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.” And this is best exemplified in the federal republic of the United States.

The wheels of American politics have been turning steadily for 200 years, in essence because of the maturity, power and organization of the American bourgeois class, compared to the relatively naïve, meek, scattered proletariat. Externally, the main reason for its smooth functioning was that imperialistic nations have been using neocolonialism to exploit the "Third World," and not because of their “marvelous” system. For example, because of the relative ease of their external environment, the bourgeoisie and the U.S. Constitution made it through critical moments like the Civil War. However, developing countries like India and the Philippines, which implemented American-style democracy, failed because their bourgeois class was too weak and dependent, failing to solve its long-time problems to gain control.

The power of the American presidency is not locked in the cage of the U.S. Constitution, but rather in the cage of capitalistic, monopolizing tycoons. American government officials often breach constitutional and legal limits, using the power in their hands to help capitalist, profit-seeking groups earn huge profits, while themselves earning a huge sum of commission. They are not obstructed in any way. In the United States, it is common to see a “revolving door” phenomenon, in which one person is involved, simultaneously or consecutively, in both the business world and government. On the other hand, if one breaks through constitutional and legal limits to harm the sacred property rights of the bourgeoisie, he will certainly be punished. In reality, there is one law higher than the Constitution: It is not the will of God or natural law, but of the monopolizing capitalists.

To protect the essential power of the bourgeoisie, the U.S. Constitution must protect the foundation of bourgeois totalitarian rule, the right to monopolize production. Since the Constitution acts as a disguise for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, it has to bear a certain degree of hypocrisy. It cannot explicitly recognize that the U.S. is a bourgeois, totalitarian nation, so it also contains those abstract concepts of “freedom for all,” “human rights,” and so on. Yet, there is an irreconcilable conflict between capitalism and democracy: As long as the bourgeoisie has a monopoly on production rights, democracy and freedom will not exist for all U.S. citizens. This is the reason why the U.S. Constitution fails to live up to its name.

On the same point, the Chinese constitution is absolutely different.

Proletarians govern the country in a fundamentally different way from the bourgeoisie. Socialist countries take note of the consequences of the U.S. Constitution and will not make any room for the bourgeoisie to seize power. Gorbachev failed to reform the political system in the USSR because he based the reform on Western constitutional governance. This failure is a lesson, from which we should all learn.