As to being rubbed wrong way, I'd agree about a group suggesting a Consitution, or ANYTHING, is a 'remnant of bourgeois society.' That's flaming, useless jargon, imo.

It means, literally, the people of the society make the decisions of the society.

As for the question... In all honesty, our constitution is shabby for ANY 21st-century society. Not unreasonable; who would expect people to write good law for a nation three hundred years distant?

Ironically, even Jefferson thought every constitution should be rewritten every 20 years as to not subject the living to the laws of the dead.

And that slavery was okay - provided they were his slaves.

The more I learn about him, the more I come to the opinion that Jefferson was basically the Bill Maher of the era.

'Dictatorship' does NOT mean what you state.

As well as the post count of the person doing the insulting.

Regardless, I wasn't insulting you. I was telling you that you were uninformed. I then informed you. The term "Dictatorship of the proletariat" does in fact mean exactly what I told you it means. You've got a whole internet at your fingertips. Maybe you can look it up.

I suppose instead, you will choose to remain uninformed. There's a word for that, but I wouldn't want to insult you.

I wasn't using the term "dictatorship" in the modern sense of a strongman figure like Hitler, but in the way Marx used it. He considered capitalist democracies to be dictatorships of the capitalists, but I probably should have used better terminology.

and I expect you understand my statement. Whether it works well or not, we elect our representatives. We are, also, able to amend the Constitution to change incompatible aspects, such as Supreme's egregious decision.

But it does not look to me like we actually can amend the constitution.

I strongly suspect even if you could get 70% of the people to vote for something, it still would not be enough to get the house, senate, president, and the states to agree to it.

That would go for virtually anything, given the way our partisan divide works, or rather fails to work.

When you throw money into the mix, it becomes even less possible.

And it's obviously working well as the document for a Police State, so that might be an issue of perspective.

providing enough people want a change but the changes aren't easy to make so it doesn't just blow which ever way the wind is blowing at any point in time.
When enough people demanded it, women got to vote, colored people got to sit where ever their hearts decided they wanted to, young people old enough to go to war at 18 could vote at 18. Prohibition was tried and finally changed back because it didn't work too good.
This is what is called a living constitution and that's how it should be. We don't need a complete overhaul, just adjustments from time to time.

But the right of the government to levy taxes to provide for the general welfare is also stated. So what you can't have is a communist society where property is abolished, but you can have government programs.

If you look at the USSR consitution though, its a very different creature:
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html#chap10

ARTICLE 131. It is the duty of every citizen of the U.S.S.R. to safeguard and strengthen public, socialist property as the sacred and inviolable foundation of the Soviet system, as the source of the wealth and might of the country, as the source of the rosperous and cultured life of all the working people.

Persons committing offenses against public, socialist property are enemies of the people.
ARTICLE 132. Universal military service is law. Military service in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army is an honorable duty of the citizens of the U.S.S.R.

I'd be more inclined to try to dig up some documents from the Paris Commune. Most in this group would likely not be looking for a completely statist society such as Russia or Cuba, though there is obviously much to learn from what they tried as well. The problem is how to balance the initial control you need to defend your state against others who see an opportunity - that's where the Commune fell quickly so we'd have to study what they did wrong- against the desire to have a more libertarian type of Communism/Socialism. We may have to give up a little more control then we'd like at first.

Liberty Vs. Security.

I am a fan of it. My personal feeling is that the great unexplored frontier is the localization of government, moving a lot of programs to the local level. I've always said with welfare, for instance, that if people saw the elderly and children in their own community standing next to them that their tax dollars were going to, nobody would complain about the high taxes, the wealthy would feel proud of the good they were doing by paying more.

A good example would be my own suburb here in South Texas. On the west side big new developments, McMansions, top schools, folks driving into the city for good incomes. On the east side the original "old" town - lower incomes for the most part, older housing, older schools. The west side is already very generous to the charities here in our town, and I'm sure will continue to be. But even if we can feed and clothe our entire town through our own "Neighborhood Center", even if we enacted a local tax and our west side brought the east side up to a much higher standard of living, it still is going to pale when compared to Bill Gates and his wealth out in Washington. Maybe Bill would distribute his money around Seattle, and everyone would be living much nicer, but how does that compare to Detroit?

Another example would be schools. Public schools are largely dependent on their local property taxes. What do we see as a result? Some excellent districts and some in which they can barely afford to be open or have supplies because the tax base is so low.

This is the reason we do things on the national level.

Detroit v Redmond is a fine example. The issue with a Detroit is it really calls for systemic local changes, and long distance welfare doesn't address that. You see its a two way street: I said the rich seeing the poor they were helping would be a benefit, but its also a benefit for the poor to see the rich who are helping them, that business owner with the local shop there in Detroit. Once they see that guy, the impetus to defend and promote his local business as a source of sustenance is also there, and you can begin to grow a powerful "buy local" movement. This building up of the local economy, a sense of independence is the real cure for those regionally depressed areas.

Seriously, our state Rep is the Stacey "don't say gay" Campfield, I don't these fools to run a foot race let alone anything important.

Read about it here:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-18/politics/30039546_1_blue-states-federal-taxes-red-states

So these states already consume all the welfare money, while bitching constantly about ruggedly independent they are. Maybe if they had to pay directly their tune would change a little.

nt

But next time you really need to define terms so we know WTF you think you're talking about.

Terms: socialist. capitalist. bourgeois. Dictatorship of the Proletariat. constitution.

Define them instead of tossing them around. Makes a difference.

Several of those terms are used fairly often in this group and no one seems to have trouble with definitions. Oh, and here's some free advice: I would have been more than willing to clarify any of those terms, if you had asked politely, but since you decided to be a rude smartass about it, I feel no need to help you. I swear, what is it about the internet that makes people lose common civility?

The first thing I notice is that the Constitution is incompatible with anything that comes to power via "Revolution", unless by revolution you mean "election". I'm assuming that if you had meant "election" you would have said that. So any party that came to power by means other than election would be fundamentally at odds with the Constitution by virtue of that party's means of ascension.

Know what I am saying?

Now, other than that, assuming a Constitutionally valid ascension to power (via elections), I do not believe there is anything in the Constitution particularly that would preclude a democratic socialist party from governing successfully in the context of a multi-party system where the party would vie for popular support with various other political parties representing a broad range of ideologies.

As far as I know that is the only context in which the Constitution is compatible, unless amended beyond recognition. If you are describing some different context, I do believe our Constitution would be fundamentally incompatible and you would be choosing between your option number 2 or number 3.

In a fundamentally fair and sound system, I think I would agree with you. Definitely, I see nothing in our constitution that would prevent an elected socialist party from being quite successful. We have many socialist programs that work swimmingly already.

I don't fully agree with you that revolution is completely incompatible with the constitution.

Our voting systems appear to be compromised, and it is fairly clear that the GOP are working as hard as possible to corrupt them.

If they continue to be successful in spreading and controlling electronic voting mechanisms, while purging and preventing potential voters, we might well come to a point where it could take a revolution to get to the point where one could have a legitimate election.

In fact, I look at some of the laws of recent years, and see them violating the constitution already. If the government that is in place will not uphold the constitution and manipulates the laws to control election results, how do you get back to a government that is of and by the people?

If the election results were totally controlled I might agree with you. Fortunately there is independent opinion polling to confirm the election results. Crooked voting computers, stuffing ballot boxes, gerrymandering, poll taxes, ID card requirements, grandfather clauses, etc., are all standard attempts to manipulate the election results. That's always been around, it's nothing new. It's bad and it can influence the outcome of elections but ultimately cannot control election results.

And here is why:

Long before there would be enough critical mass for a movement to bring extra-constitutional change, just enough of the movement's demands would be met by way of the standard ballot-box technique to appease the movement temporarily.

In other words, this formula:
1. Some people want a revolution.
2. They instigate a movement for revolution and it grows big.
3. Election rolls around in 2 years and the movement votes.
4. Just enough change is elected to get the movement to lose momentum.
5. Rinse, Repeat.

In other words again, if you have enough people for a revolution, you won't need one. The real work is in the organizing.

Besides elections there is a process for Constitutional amendments. Also there is a process for Constitutional convention, which to me sounds like a bad idea, but some people like it.

Now, besides elections and Constitutional amendments, there is also a broad array of direct action techniques including petition, protest, strike, civil disobedience, convincing people, etc. Use of these techniques has been very successful in bringing social change in the past. These techniques do not meet most people's definition of 'revolution'.

But this does lead to another interesting question:
When does a mass movement such as a general strike or boycott "cross the line" to where it can be called a revolution?

I don't think there is a clear dividing line there. Certainly many labor strike participants in the early 20th century and many civil rights protesters in the 1960s believed they were engaging in Revolution. And in a sense they were. But not in the conventional sense. Although from their perspective they could not have known one way or another.

Interestingly participants in radical social movements do not necessarily know whether the movement will lead to their demands being met by the power structure within the context of the existing governing framework, or whether it will lead to some more fundamental change.

"Fortunately there is independent opinion polling to confirm the election results. "

The complacency in that astounds me, and I think that your whole first paragraph shows a stunning faith in a faulty system. "independant opinion polling" comes out all over the board because it is based on a pollsters best guess at who will vote. It can be used to explain virtually any possible result. Exit polling on the other hand, is fairly useful. We've had several elections now where the end results did not match our exit polling. That disturbs me greatly.


You are absolutely correct in saying the members of a revolution don't know where it will end up. History's pretty clear on that. Particularly when violence starts, the end result will always be in question. And the most egotistical and corrupt seem to have a way of rising right to the top of any power structure.

Monopoly

nt

I direct you to our SOP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1024881

Bolding mine.

This is a group of highly knowledgeable and perceptive posters. Anyone with any civil questions about what terms mean will be richly rewarded by responses. Thank you!

And thank you to brother white_wolf for an interesting and provocative topic!

this was a document created by male land-owners who owned "slaves" and viewed them as 2/3 of a person... Women, children - not even acknowledged. I'd keep the separation of church/state (only I'd really separate them) and even some of the "bill of rights". Capitalism unfortunately takes those individual rights and turns them into rewarding behavior that is undesirable - freedom to rip off your neighbors, freedom to hoard money while others are homeless etc...

I've seen attempts by Occupy to write a new one and I have to admit after 250 years of oppression I'd be inclined to do the same.

if nothing else. Although I think that you could interpret the current one to take care of most socialist programs. Property rights (means of production) would be the sticky one, but you could always pay off the "owners" of the means of production with non transferable "bearer" bonds, payable in 100 years.

I could forsee something along the lines of a 6 week (or however long it takes) general strike bringing the system to it's knees and then in the negotiations for "settling" the strike, you require a Constitutional Convention. With universal sufferage of course, so that EVERYBODY voted.