The challenge was to offer democratic concessions, create an appearance of democracy, but frame a document for rich property owners in charge of the process for their own self-interest. Only the privileged could vote. Women, blacks, Indians and children couldn't and most who qualified didn't bother. The process, and what it produced, showed operatively democracy is little more than fantasy, but it wasn't designed to appear that way.
The "people" got to elect lower house members, who, in turn, elected senators to the upper chamber. The system stayed that way until the 17th Amendment (ratified in 1913) allowed voters in each state to elect representatives to both Houses of Congress.
Also proposed was a chief executive, a national judiciary with a Supreme Court, and provisions for admitting new states with republican governments. In addition, the Constitution had procedures for amendments and much more, including terms of office and staggered elections to prevent too many officials being unseated at the same time. In the end, the final product was a bundle of compromises, yielded little of substance to "the people," and assured power was left to the powerful.
The Constitution's opening words were "We the people," but, in fact, they were nowhere in sight. The framers "engineered a conservative counter-revolution....whose purpose....was to thwart the will of the people in whose will they acted." Government under the new document was created to fill the vacuum created by the defeat of Great Britain. It restored the essential British commercial and financial system and put it under new management. Monarchal wrappings were removed, everything changed, and yet everything, in fact, stayed the same. Rarely, if ever, was there so much rebellion with so little cause, and with so little to show for it.
Consider the Constitution's crowing achievement, at least so we're told - the Bill of Rights. Adopting them made the difference to get 13 states to ratify the document and make it law. Their protections weren't for "the people." They were for the privileged who wanted:
-- prohibitions against quartering troops in their property;
-- unreasonable searches and seizures there as well;
-- the right to have state militias protect them;
-- the right to bear arms, but not the way the Second Amendment is today interpreted;
-- - the rights of free speech, the press, religion, assembly and petition - largely for the monied and propertied interests;
-- due process of law with speedy public trials; and
-- various other provisions worked out through compromise; two additional amendments were proposed but rejected; Jefferson and Madison wanted them; Adams and Hamilton were opposed; they would have banned monopolies and standing armies; in the end, the first 10 alone were adopted; we never saw what difference the other two might have made.
Piven's main point isn't that "constitution-making" limited "popular power." It's that "disruptive power challenges (of the time) could not be (entirely) ignored...." The founders established a republican government, popular liberties (to a degree) were conceded, and the idea (if not the reality) of the "consent of the governed" became a fundamental principle of political thought.
Further, in subsequent decades, suffrage expanded, taxpaying requirements replaced property ones, and these, too, were gradually eliminated. By the 1830s, most white men had the right to vote. It's unlikely these changes would have happened under British rule. So while was no disagreement on how government was to be run, (in John Adams' words, by "the rich, the well born, and the able,") the mob, according to Piven, "played a large if convoluted role in the construction of a new state with at least some of the elemental features of democracy."
Dissensus Politics, or the Interaction of Disruptive Challenges with Electoral Politics - The Case of the Abolitionist Movement
Piven defines "dissensus" as a tug of war between the need for political leaders to "mobilize majorities" and "disruptive challengers work(ing) to fragment them." She also calls this "the key to understanding" disruptive protest power over public policy decisions. Political coalitions are at times fragile and vulnerable. When opposition to consensus surfaces and builds, it can be fractious, disruptive, and an "opening (to get) policy concessions on the (breakaway) movement's issues."
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
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