To Form a More Perfect Union
PUBLIUS
Perspectives TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION BY PUBLIUS I, Publius, after some two centuries of silence on the subject of the Constitution of the United States, feel obliged in the...
...Suspect as the motives of the opponents were, their arguments carried great weight...
...The Great Depression of 1929 confirmed my worst misgivings: The "economic Royalists" had despoiled our fair land as badly as the Bourbons, Romanoffs or Caesars had exploited, emptied and exhausted their once great empires...
...The Gilded Age produced its own aristocracy, a class of capitalists living in obscene opulence, denying elementary human rights to their millions of employees, dividing the nations as decisively as in the days of patricians and plebeians, lords and serfs...
...The "we" here is "we, the people of the world," for the tyranny of the new aristocracy will, in a few years, be global...
...In contemplating "a more perfect union" on an international scale, maybe what is needed is a new series of the Federalist...
...Within a half century after Tocqueville's alarm, however, I, Publius, began to fear that he was right...
...A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views...
...Yet compared with the profound diversities existing among the nations of the world today, we were relatively homogeneous...
...We were all concerned lest the New World repeat the history of ancient Greece and Rome, where the denies goaded by demagogues turned democracy into despotism...
...As Dr...
...The creation of the United States always seemed to me to be predestined...
...a people descended from the same ancestry, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, etc...
...In the form of global corporations, the manufacturers were able to conduct their operations almost anywhere on the face of the earth...
...To "form a more perfect union" of the people of the earth—even to form an imperfect union, like the Articles of Confederation—will not be easy...
...1 was very much aw are of this eternal truth of social dynamics...
...Balances would be reached at the Federal level, because "the regulation of [the] various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation...
...Providence does not seem to have destined the separate states of the globe to come together naturally in a union...
...they could thumb their noses at any government that sought to restrict them...
...I found the opponents of the Constitution suspect...
...They could transfer their capital and technology in seconds...
...I am also aware that I am falling for your modern fad of allowing a graceful acronym to determine the character of the mission, rather than vice versa...
...It is a peculiar aristocracy, in that it need feel no attachment, arising out of sentiment or reason, to any country...
...Then our attention was drawn to something we had not thought of...
...You will remember that in Federalist Number 2, I had "taken notice that Providence had been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people...
...We were equally concerned lest the majority, even in the absence of a tyrant, might by popular vote extinguish the inalienable rights of minorities or of individuals...
...It took a foreign eye to see it—the eye of Alexis de Tocqueville, who came from the same land as Montesquieu...
...But if the Christian divinity has not so willed it, the pagan Ananke—that Greek God of Necessity—may indeed be compelling it...
...Perspectives TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION BY PUBLIUS I, Publius, after some two centuries of silence on the subject of the Constitution of the United States, feel obliged in the Bicentennial Year to speak my mind about the need for us to re-examine our role as a nation among nations...
...If some country did not conform to the edictsofthemanufacturers, dictated by their self-interest, they could withdraw their operations and employment from the disobedient nation...
...While many will evaluate the Constitution in the light of the last two centuries, I have been contemplating it in terms of the one that will soon be dawning...
...I remember his parting words that the "manufacturing aristocracy that is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world," and that "the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction...
...I avow that the time has come for us to gather our intelligences together once again "to form a more perfect union...
...It could debase labor, refuse to pay a fair share of taxes, and conduct its affairs without respect for any land...
...I submit none of my proposals in too serious a vein, for I do not have at hand the information required to argue them realistically...
...That was the real reason for the conclave in Philadelphia 200 years ago...
...Although economic Royalists continued to function, they were not the ultimate economic or political power in the nation...
...To quote myself, "They were a certain class of men who resisted all changes which might hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they held under State establishments...
...In this game, the new aristocracy could pit nation against nation, the workers of one country against those of another...
...That is why we separated powers, set up one branch of government to balance and check another, arranged for an indirect election of the President...
...But they believed this final purpose would turn out to be an empty piety under the Union...
...Is it not perhaps time for us to think of what my colleagues and I did 200 years ago— and to "form a more perfect union" of the world's people to resist, restrain, and ultimately to regulate global corporations...
...At some subsequent moment, we could try to extend tact to something like tact-PIus East Asian and Communist Entities—giving us the acronym tact-peace...
...Thai should have been clear to one and all...
...But I am gravely serious in my advice that we think about union— even if it should begin, as did our noble Union, with Committees of Correspondence that laid the groundwork for the issuing of our Declaration of Independence, which was followed by the inadequate Articles of Confederation, resulting finally in our revered Constitution of the United States...
...Unlike the papers that I wrote, these would be written before we come together instead of after...
...But at the height of my exaltation I suddenly had the sense that the old manufacturing aristocracy, now enlarged by its commercial and financial kin, was after all about to establish itself as an entity without precedent that could dictate to the world without any constitutional restraint...
...Indeed, the aristocracy of manufacture could dare to issue orders to nations, in the manner of the ancient papacy...
...I, Publius, breathed easier...
...Fear that the Leviathan would devour our liberties was, in fact, not confined to our naysayers...
...He cautioned us that a new "aristocracy" could someday arise in our democracy to upset the balances of power that we had so painfully designed...
...The union was still sovereign...
...That there should be a class of wealthy men unable to distinguish between their self-interest and the Lord's will came as no surprise to me...
...In retrospect, I will admit that I was overstating our homogeneity...
...How can we counterbalance, check, tame, socialize, put under "constitutional" control the new class of manufacturing aristocrats...
...This might be the 21st-century version of our Committees of Correspondence—to liberate the world from the aristocracy of manufacture...
...Countervailing interests placed limits on the power of the new absolutist aristocracy in the way that the lords curbed the monarchy at Runnymede...
...We might next give thought to a loose affiliation with the European Economic Community or the European Parliament, by an agreement for a TransAtlantic Community Treaty—with the appropriate acronym tact...
...They did note, of course, that our Preamble ended with a commitment to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...
...Recall that I wrote Federalist Number 10, where I put forward the concept of economic determinism 50 years before Karl Marx aped me without proper attribution...
...And then, in 1932, our faith in what modern political scientists call "pluralism" was restored with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...Without union the other ideals could not be attained, just as there cannot be a union where injustice prevails, where borders are open to any marauder, where dwelling places are overrun with disorder, and where there is no greater power to curb the spirit of faction for the common good...
...You may recall that when the Articles of Confederation were ratified, Canada was the 14th state to affix its signature...
...It is an absentee ruler, an elusive, mobile and distant sovereign over once sovereign states...
...A powerful central government, they warned, would be the beginning of a new tyranny...
...I, Publius, wrote: "The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of poverty...
...Those establishments were an obstacle to change then and still are today, when we need even greater change...
...At the end of Book II of Democracy in America, Tocqueville addressed himself to the question of "How An Aristocracy May Be Created By Manufactures...
...Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society...
...And often where supernatural inspiration is lacking earthly compulsion may suffice...
...What then, I, Publius, inquire of myself, shall we do...
...The newest aristocracy of manufacture had escaped the limitations imposed by governments...
...for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter.' Over the years Tocqueville's words have haunted me...
...Yet when we went to the people to request ratification of "a more perfect union," we met with considerable resistance...
...Franklin put it: "If we don't all hang together, we will hang separately...
...Possibly our first step should be to re-relate with Canada...
...In my hours of deepest despair I turned uncertainly to my original hope, stated clearly in Federalist Number 10: There would be other and countervailing interests...
...But I did not believe that any class—such as the manufacturers—could assume the role of "the aristocracy" in the United States under our Constitution...
...But, in my view, these objectives were subordinate to the prime purpose: union...
...We did resolve to do other things as well, such as establish justice, provide for the common defense, insure domestic tranquillity, and promote the general welfare...
Vol. 70 • July 1987 • No. 10
