Institutional limitations on United States democracy
We all have some knowledge of our government’s limitations on elected officials in the USA. Our Madisonian system was explicitly written with many veto points on the government to prevent government overreach. There are checks and balances between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; and a split between local, state, and federal powers. This was by design: in part to avoid an ‘overly democratic’ system from redistributing private property away from the wealthy.
What these institutional mechanisms to ‘prevent government overreach’ practically amount to is simply the ability for well-resourced people and corporations to throw wrenches into most any area of the political process. Laws are more easily passed in the interests of the wealthy, and are more difficult to tear down when they go against the individual interests of the wealthy. Beyond simply negative actions of jamming up gears to prevent working class policies from being put into effect, money also allows for lobbying, donations, advertisements, legal battles, etc to positively create policies that benefit the wealthy. Our laws are institutionally designed such that they favor the status quo and those individuals and groups with accumulated wealth and capital.
If a pro-working class policy is put into effect by one branch of government, it can be attacked by bureaucratic mechanisms in the other branches. If a pro-working class policy is passed locally, it can be practically nullified at state or federal levels of government through preemptive laws. Because working class organizing is a grassroots affair, we’re almost always effecting change in these lower levels of government first, while the rest of the government generally remains captured by capitalist interests. It’s common to hear one level of government say: “We’re on your side, but our hands are tied because of this other level of government”—or to hear one branch of government complain that they can’t get things done because another branch of government practically vetoes the policy.
For the organizing working class who isn’t steeped in these bureaucratic machinations, this gives the impression of being continuously redirected between different levels, branches, and departments. For organizers, this can feel frustrating and demoralizing because we have relatively simple and straightforward demands which seem like they should have proportionately simple routes to getting implemented in government.
In a recent retrospective from the Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America, they make a point of how bureaucratic rules-lawyering bullshit can affect the behaviors of socialist electeds with regard to the broader strategy of building a mass working class movement. With all the kinds of bureaucratic chicanery that gets employed, socialist electeds are heavily tempted to play similar legislative tricks, and play the electoral politics game to the point of undesireable compromises if they expect to get anything done to help the working class.
Las Vegas DSA points out that when socialist electeds primarily engage in these bureaucratic maneuvers, it "makes it very difficult for regular working class people to engage with politics at this level, which has always been seen as a net positive by the ruling elite." The more that elected socialists lean on merely using these bureaucratic, internal mechanisms to get things done, the more we neglect a strategy that builds a mass working class movement, and the more socialist electeds might become disconnected from the pulse of the organizing working class if they are too focused on bureaucratic mechanisms. But we need an organized mass movement of the working class if we are to sustain these working class policy wins and push for more. Growing the mass working class movement is the only way to sustainably overcome the institutional, economic, and social challenges to socialist policies.
Economic limitations on United States democracy
Beyond the formal rules of our bourgeois democracy are the limitations imposed on it by the level of class struggle. Politicians represent their voters, which amounts to their relevant business community and the unorganized working class. Insofar as the region’s working class is unorganized, not class conscious, or dependent on capital which is effectively controlled by the capitalists, then they will, in many intents, be superficially aligned with their region’s capitalists.
This is because, for an individual, unorganized worker, they will be dependent on the capitalists’ prospects for profiting off of hiring them (so that capitalists will employ members of the working class), and dependent on the capitalist’s ability to realize sales (so that capitalists can pay their working class wages). For government representatives, therefore, it seems that, to represent their working class constituency, they have to cater to the economic interests of capitalists, so that capitalists enter the region to “provide jobs” to their constituents, and so that working class constituents have some level of economic stability in their wage labor jobs.
The working class can be made dependent on capitalist economic circuits in other ways as well. The replacement of pension funds with 401Ks and Roth IRAs makes the working class dependent on the continuation of capitalist profit seeking for their retirements. Many of the working class also buy housing as an investment which they can eventually sell to help fund their retirement, or to rent out to pad their income—housing is not simply something they use, it is something that is thought of in terms of accumulation of exchange value. This causes the working class to act in protective ways which hurt the housing supply in general, raising the value of their personal investment at the expense of collective access to affordable housing. Additionally, many of the so-called “Professional Managerial Class” and “Labor Aristocracy” in the Global North are in positions to personally benefit from the exploitation of more precarious members of the (international) working class.
It is necessary to point out that these dependencies on capitalist circuits of accumulation are caused by the deprivation of the working class—when the working class is unorganized, these engagements with capitalist circuits of accumulation can seem as if they are the only option for members of the working class to gain more economic stability. Additionally, capitalists sometimes have an interest in the working class engaging in capitalist circuits: for example, the broad replacement of pension funds with 401Ks increases the investment capital available to the capitalist class; and more protective housing markets benefit landlords who can take advantage of a tight housing and renting market.
Social limitations on United States democracy
The unorganized working class may also have superficial social antagonisms against their fellow members of the working class. We in the working class are all competing against each other for employment because we are all dispossessed of the means of production. Because we lack common ownership of the means of production, we also lack access to many of the the resources which would allow us to care for each other communally.
As divided individuals, we settle for trying our best to look out for the needs of a smaller social circle: ourselves, our family, and our friends. However, within a discourse which takes capitalism for granted, the interests of our close circles are sometimes seemingly antagonistic to the interest of others’ close circles. For example, homeless people and asylum seekers become seen as nuisances and undesired problems for other parts of the working class.
If the working class only sees competition and antagonism among each other, and not the broader revolutionary issue of capitalist private ownership over the means of production, then they are more likely to act according to these ‘close circle interests’. Many of the unorganized working class and capitalist class will generate, buy into, and justify their actions through divisive thought and practice. Social categories will become large political issues when they would otherwise have been merely superficial differences in things such as national origin, “race”, gender, gender representation, sexuality, ableness, mental health, cultural niches, level of formal education, and the way that class is represented in social life.
The existence of these social divisions are not even usually in the interests of capitalists, because they can create political problems for capitalists who are simply looking to maximize profit. For example, outsourcing to cheaper labor in other countries (or originating from other countries) can trigger working class demands for protective border laws, nationalistic hiring, and tariffs. Another couple examples: Hiring more inclusively and having more inclusive workplace practices creates a workforce with diverse experiences, which helps create better products. Selling to more inclusive markets means a larger consumer base for capitalist goods and services. But both of these profit maximizing capitalist practices can trigger reactionary blowback from working class people who, in the interest of their close circle, would prefer the reactionary exclusion of minority social groups or social groups otherwise not their own. Their undeveloped political analysis means they have heuristics are based on the protection of reactionary social divisions.
Although these social divisions cause major problems for capitalists, these social divisions are nevertheless the result of particular capitalist social relations. Among other things, the desperate focus on ‘close circle interests’ is heavily aggravated by highly competitive labor markets or large percentages of dispossessed, precarious, or economically-worried populations. Even though the root of these reactionary divisions is found in our material conditions and a lack of material analysis, reactionary divisions are presented as if they are purely social fights around discussions of “Why this other group of people is-or-isn’t socially / culturally / genetically different from us, in a way which does-or-doesn’t make them act in society differently than us and makes our lives worse.”
Finally, although social divisions are generally problems for the capitalist class, when capitalists are in times of crisis in their profit margins, they will lean into these social divisions to attempt to break apart working class organizing solidarity.
Politicians, insofar as they represent working class voters, will be faced with the problem of how to handle these reactionary social divisions of the working class, as well as the capitalist class’s interests as they regard these social divisions.
~
In these economic and social ways, representatives in democratic governments within capitalism are constrained by the balance of the class struggle. The weaker the working class is in the class struggle, the more that superficial economic and social views will abound. On the upside of this, the stronger the working class is, the more we will see proletarian economic and social views—and at some point, this will tip into a rapid positive feedback loop for the working class.
Insofar as representatives reflect the superficial, short-to-medium term interests of the unorganized and dependent working class majority, they will often be legislating in the interests of the capitalist class (which the working class is forced to depend on in short-to-medium timescales), or promoting social-reactionary divisions of the working class (which are generated by capitalist practices on short-to-medium timescales). Furthermore, if they don’t legislate in favor of these capitalist class interests, capitalists may easily decide to use their money to run news stories and advertisements before elections, to activate these short/medium term interests and fears, and effectively replace socialist legislators with people who will act closer to the capitalists’ interests.
How these bourgeois restrictions on democracy have played out in practice
Democracy within the capitalist mode of production is bourgeois insofar as it reflects the superficial, short-to-medium-term economic and social views of its constituents (and not the long-term working class interests of the vast majority of people), and insofar as it is institutionally designed to practically favor capitalist interests. While our government claims to be a democratic reflection of the people, our bourgeois governments are constrained by the structure of the capitalist system to favor policies which create an effective environment for capitalism. Our government promotes this capitalist-friendly environment through methods such as:
Imperialistic expansion to new areas, for primitive accumulation, to exploit more labor power, and to create new markets in which to realize profits;
Protecting private property laws;
Altering the money supply through interest rates and government spending choices, to ensure a “healthy” balance between a flow of cheap investment capital and enough of a reserve army of unemployed labor;
Generally attempting to curb the excesses of capitalist anarchy (when capitalists act in their individual interests even when this is in conflict with their broader class interests) to try to protect capitalism from its own tendencies toward economic and social self-destruction.
When there appear to be tensions between the business community and the bourgeois government, it’s because the capitalist mode of production’s ‘limitations on political possibility’ are breaking down. In these situations, the government is more able to freely influence the capitalist class.
These situations happen when the capitalist class power is weak. Regularly, the capitalist class becomes uncoordinated; they each seek out one more inch of personal profit and individually act in ways which, alongside the actions of other individually-interested capitalists, breaks the broader economic political system. Capitalist profits may also become heavily dependent on government spending; capitalist class coordination breaks apart in favor of competing to appease the government’s political interests. On the flip-side, situations of government influence over capitalists may occur when working class organizing power is strong. The working class may become significantly organized, and this new condition of the class struggle is reflected in our representation. Political possibility depends on the balance of power between the working class and the capitalist class.
Although the balance of class struggle seems to be a major deciding factor, it’s not the end-all-be-all. Insofar as we have even basic formal democracy, there will always be some opportunities for working class legislative successes. These opportunities can arise around moments of seemingly externally imposed / larger-scale crisis, such as environmental disasters, international tensions, and sudden or unexpected technological developments.
The working class must protect and expand both formal and practiced democracy as a precondition to any working class legislative successes. We have seen that when circuits of capital accumulation are under threat, the most wealthy capitalists will bolster their legislative efforts to tilt our government institutions in their favor. They will even go so far as to attack formal and practical democracy in our halls of government, pulling us towards fascism instead of socialism, because they believe it will protect their immediate capitalist interests.
The organized working class protects and develops basic formal democracy. Beyond that, the level of working class organization in the struggle against capitalist economic circuits generally determines how effectively any elected representatives will be, in terms of legislating in accordance to the revolutionary, long-term interests of the working class. Finally, there may be unexpected variances in electoral politics which oust socialist elected officials. In those moments, strong working class organization will be necessary to protect working class policies from being rolled back by bourgeois politicians.