This paper critically evaluates Jerry Fresia's argument, presented in Toward an American Revolution (1988), that the United States failed to fulfill its democratic promise because the Constitution was designed by and for a plutocratic elite. The paper engages with Fresia's claims across two main areas: first, whether the Constitution structurally prevents meaningful democratic participation by the majority; and second, whether America's domestic and foreign conduct demonstrates a pattern of imperialism from the colonial period through the twentieth century. The analysis acknowledges some merit in Fresia's historical evidence while challenging his conclusions about constitutional reform, the two-party system, American imperialism's effect on the poor, and his proposed extra-constitutional remedies.
While Fresia's contention that the United States failed to live up to its revolutionary democratic promise — and was instead captured by a powerful plutocratic elite — has appeal, it oversimplifies the process by which elites take and retain control over resources and governmental power. In reality, at the time of the American Revolution, there was little dispute that the outcome of the Revolution would be to give greater power and freedom to those leading it: the founding fathers. While the promise of democracy was offered to common men, it was members of the ruling elite of colonial America who made the decisions to declare independence from England and who drafted both the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. It is therefore unsurprising that the Constitution does not engage in the type of wealth redistribution that Fresia appears to believe is necessary to establish a true democracy. For example, had the Constitution not prohibited interference with contracts, states would have had the power to erase obligations from debtor to creditor, thereby redistributing resources among Americans.
However compelling Fresia's argument appears on the surface, it fails to make the necessary connection between the disproportionate concentration of wealth in the United States and the failure of the common man to have a real voice in national politics. Fresia concentrates on issues such as voter registration requirements to prove his thesis that the poor majority are actively discouraged from voting. There is historical truth to those statements, as demonstrated by the poll taxes and literacy requirements used to hamper Black voter registration in the Jim Crow South. However, the history of the world — not simply the United States — demonstrates a persistent pattern of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual bias. The problem did not begin with the United States Constitution, nor was the Constitution drafted in order to remedy it.
In fact, the issues of sexual and racial discrimination, which appear so obvious and indefensible in modern light, were not viewed in the same manner during Revolutionary times. To illustrate this point, one need only note that during Revolutionary times, Africans actively participated in the slave trade to the same extent as Europeans and Americans. Neither indentured servitude nor slavery were viewed with the same level of contempt they receive in the modern world. Fresia ignores the fact that the Constitution, regardless of the intentions of the founding fathers, has evolved along with the world's changing conception of human rights. Initially, the constitutional protection that no citizen be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law protected slaveholders from losing their human chattel. Today, those same words protect the descendants of slaves from being unlawfully deprived of their life, liberty, or property. The fact that the founding fathers never intended for the Constitution to protect certain groups of people does not deprive the instrument of its power to do so.
The Constitution does provide the means for the majority to participate meaningfully in the political process. At this point in time, all non-felon adult citizens are permitted to vote in elections. If people actually seized that opportunity, the common man could have a far more meaningful voice in American politics. This is easier to see on the local level, even though local elections generally have lower voter turnout than national elections. Several cities in the American South, where the power elite continue to rely on the racial oppression of Black citizens to obtain cheap labor, have Black mayors and city council members.
Fresia would argue that local leadership by members of minority groups does not contradict his argument, because local governments have always been more representative of the common man than the national government. However, the fact that minorities are more represented at the local level indicates a problem with party politics, not with the electoral process itself. American voters are not locked into a two-party system, as demonstrated by the presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. Instead, the American people — especially the "common man" — appear to be wedded to the idea of the two-party system. It is not simply that United States presidents have come from the two major parties, but that people in the states consistently elect their national representatives from those same two parties, which are controlled by the financial elite.
Especially in this era of constant media accessibility, there is no reason for the American people to be locked into the two-party system. The fear that voting for a third-party candidate is tantamount to throwing away a vote prevents the majority of Americans from supporting candidates outside of the power elite. This fear is not a function of the Constitution; it is a function of a misguided belief that people lack the power to control their own government. The Constitution does provide the tools for an actual democracy, but it cannot force the American people to use those tools to achieve one.
"Imperialism's paradoxical benefit to America's poor"
While there is no denying that there are people in America who are homeless and hungry, there is also no denying that the vast majority of the poor in the United States have shelter, food, running water, and electricity — which is certainly not the situation in much of the rest of the world. America's poor are unique among the world's impoverished in that they consider things regarded as luxuries elsewhere to be necessities. America's imperialism, therefore, actually places America's poor in a better position to challenge the existing power structure than the poor in many other countries.
By claiming that empire is freedom, Fresia is arguing that the founding fathers' concept of freedom was their freedom to obtain and retain political and financial control of the United States. This claim is rooted in Fresia's assumption that America was an empire from its inception. Fresia supports these claims by providing evidence of America's imperialistic tendencies, which began prior to the American Revolution.
"Slavery's expansion and post-Civil War re-enslavement"
"U.S. foreign interventions as evidence of empire"
Finally, Fresia argues that activists need to work outside of the framework of the Constitution in order to effect meaningful change in America. What is interesting is that the type of wealth redistribution and surrounding politics suggested by Fresia have not resulted in greater democracy or actual freedom for the people in countries where such programs have been tried. Communism, while appealing in theory, has historically shifted wealth and power from one group to another, but has not effected a meaningful change in the small percentage of people who control such wealth and power. The fact that America is an empire is not incompatible with the concept of personal liberty for the majority of Americans.
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