Tag: bourgeois

A New U.S. Constitution?

On Sunday October 25th, 2020, the Chilean people voted to rewrite the nation’s constitution. The plebiscite was a landslide victory for change: 78.24% voted for, and 21.76% against. A special convention will be formed with newly elected members, and the rewrite will be submitted to the people in 2022.

Why did Chile vote to rewrite their constitution? According to the New York Times, Chile is being wrecked by crises in both income inequality and a decaying public service system. And these have been the base reasons for unrest in the South American country since October 2019. Chile has many natural resources, but they are being exploited by billionaire capitalists from both within and without, as always happens in a free-market economy.

Chile has been a very stable nation compared to its neighbors for decades. Why? Mainly due to the overthrow of a duly elected Marxist president in 1970.

Socialist Salvador Allende was the first radical-Leftist to be elected president of a Latin American liberal democracy in 1970. And for the usual reasons, fascist military leaders, with much help from the United States government, conducted a coup d’etat that overthrew him. He was then replaced by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and he was a brutal, brutal dictator. The fascist leader committed various human rights abuses during his tenure, including forced disappearances, murder, and torture of political opponents. A government commission report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, Pinochet’s government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.[112] He reigned for 17 years.

In 1980, ten years before his removal from power, a constitution was written and approved by fair election in Chile by a special government commission. The Chilean people will have been living under that same constitution from 1980 to 2022. It is one of the last relics of a very dark chapter in Latin American history.

With the victory by the people, current Chilean Pres. Pinera stated, from the NYT,

“This plebiscite is not the end; it is the beginning of a path we should all undertake together,” President Sebastián Piñera said in an address from the presidential palace.

“Until now, the Constitution has divided us,” he added. “As of today, we should all cooperate to make the new Constitution become one home for all of us.”

Chile, night of 10/25/2020 after election victory for the people’s rewrite of the constitution.

Why do I choose this event for this week’s post? First and foremost, it is wonderful for the Chilean people for they now have a chance to enact some much needed far-Leftist reforms benefitting their entire nation, not just the rich and powerful. Second, it made me contemplate how the American people and our current governmental system is so tied to the U.S. Constitution, and maybe it’s time for a change.

The Constitution of the United States was enacted in 1789, over 225 years ago. And who wrote it? The most bourgeois, of the bourgeois of the 18th century New World. There is no way to express how “elite” these men were with their money, extensive educations, and even with the human beings many owned. Yet they are still consider near gods ruling over the pantheon of American history. The “Founding-Framers (Fathers)” are worshipped by the masses due to centuries of 1% rule.

When you look at who these men were, who do you think they wrote the Constitution for? For themselves and others of their status.

This is painfully obvious when one looks at it the right way. The United States is not built on freedom and equality for all. It is born out of the oppression by a select few who made up all the rules at the conception of the country. They wrote the Constitution so only the white, landowning, males of this nation could vote. It is so obvious. And despite how many amendments have been added to the document, it is still just advances upper-class rule. Those in power twist and contort words and clauses to justify their rule over us men and women below. The rich calling themselves liberal, or progressive, still look to this aged document to justify their superiority over us.

My question is why do we still have our lives in lockstep with the most elitist men in U.S. history? It is written for upper-class rule, not for the benefit of the people. Yet the people look to it as near scripture due to a massive system of coercion. Everything is evaluated beside the Constitution of the United States. So maybe we should break free.

The American people are in no way prepared for far-left ideologies at the moment. So instead of speaking about violent revolutions and “dictatorships of the proletariat,” we should right now frame change into a mere rewrite of the U.S. Constitution. To this day everyone still has a bitter taste in their mouth regarding Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism due to Cold War propaganda. But if we can reframe the progression to a far-Left government through the rewriting of our founding document, it may work sooner. We won’t have to metaphorically burn down everything like the Bolsheviks did. And this is not reformism or liberalism. This nation, for decades, if not centuries, will not be satisfied without a Constitutional democratic government. So let’s just change the Constitution. We can write it as we want with lines concerning the abolition of capitalism and true equality among all peoples.

In conclusion, American society, just like any other, is not bound to the Constitution of the United States through some divine order. Just like Chile, we can rewrite a new binding document. Another social contract. This country worships the Constitution and we look to it to answer every question. So let us think about just abolishing the current Constitution in order to construct and implement one that is written for the many, not they few. The one we have now was written by and for the 1%; not the 99%. Let’s just consider this strategy and maybe we will find a more palatable way into American’s hearts.

Power & Social Control: How We Will Win Against It

Bourgeois democracy has failed us.

It has not failed us because it’s Utopian characteristics or attributes are completely misguided. No, it is wrong in that the 1% has manipulated the system so brilliantly that we are rendered unable to advocate for ourselves as a class. How? Marxist theorists call it “false consciousness “:

“…the notion that members of the proletariat [the working class, or 99%]unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their genuine interests within the social relations of production under capitalism. False consciousness denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and legitimize the existence of social classes.” – “False consciousness.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 17 Oct. 2016. academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/false-consciousness/605373. Accessed 30 Dec. 2019.

Through this notion, most of us, the 99%, have been so manipulated through rhetoric that we cannot perceive reality as it truly is. We are not necessarily brainwashed, but rather so indoctrinated through various social means that we put the capitalists’ interests above our own, thinking that this is naturally right. But it certainly is not. The separation of society into the 1 % and the 99% is not a priori. Rather, it is created by the upper class in order to legitimate their own rule over us.

This is why I am calling for a group of leading far-left party members to be given temporary control over our government until this false consciousness can be eradicated. The capitalists will not go quietly and will even take up arms in the defense of this worldview. There is nothing the 1% will be shamed by; anything to preserve the status quo that will perpetuate our servitude.

V.I. Lenin called this group of leaders the “vanguard party”. They will lead us until the masses are ready to take over the reins of self-governance themselves. So in the meantime the vanguard party will install a “dictatorship of the proletariat, ” or the interests of the 99% will be enacted and defended despite all of the efforts by the 1%. The vanguard party will rule with no limits for the interests of the 99%. The 1% will no longer control us in any form or fashion. A true dictatorship of the many over the few.

Gentrification Here In America

For this post I want to talk about an issue that hits close to home for me. It deals with a concept some may not know the definition of or have heard of but don’t know what exactly it entails. I’m talking about gentrification.

The exact definition of gentrification from Brittanica Academic is:

the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanied by a wave of middle- or upper-class people moving into the area and displacing poorer residents

And what’s further:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report Health Effects of Gentrification defines the real estate concept of gentrification as “the transformation of neighborhoods from low value to high value. This change has the potential to cause displacement of long-time residents and businesses … when long-time or original neighborhood residents move from a gentrified area because of higher rents, mortgages, and property taxes. Gentrification is a housing, economic, and health issue that affects a community’s history and culture and reduces social capital. It often shifts a neighborhood’s characteristics, e.g., racial-ethnic composition and household income, by adding new stores and resources in previously run-down neighborhoods.

The possible negative effects of gentrification are, but not limited to:

Displacement through rent/price increases

Loss of affordable housing

Commercial/industrial displacement

Unsustainable property prices

Displacement and housing demand pressures on surrounding poor areas

Community resentment and conflict

Homelessness

Secondary psychological costs of displacement

Increased cost and charges to local services

Loss of social diversity (from socially disparate to rich ghettos)

Under occupancy and population loss to gentrified area


Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly, Gentrification Reader, p. 196. © 2008 Routledge.; Rowland Atkinson and Gary Bridge, eds., Gentrification in a Global Context: the New Urban Colonialism, p. 5. © 2005 Routledge.

This an important concept in terms of income-inequality rights. Big investors may come to a “ran-down” neighborhood, start some huge new development to serve bourgeois interests, and then drive people out of their homes along with other negative impacts. And it hits close to home for me because it is affecting a special place for myself right here in Louisville, KY. Let me explain:

There is an area in Louisville called Germantown/Schnitzelburg (G/S) which is composed of a few adjoining neighborhoods where an enclave of German Catholics moved into soon after arriving from Europe. And this is where my family is from and where I spent a lot of my young adult/university days. But G/S shares a border with the trendy/hipster section of town, and they are beginning to run out of real estate. So, in response, they are currently gentrifying G/S and bringing all the negative effects in with it. They are running out good, hardworking people from their family homes by increasing rent/tax prices and renovating old warehouses into apartment buildings and transforming little family bars into hipster hangouts.

The repertoire of the capitalist/bourgeois machine effects can hit the people in many ways. Gentrification is one of them.