USA - the undemocratic society.

Unelected undemocratic US Supreme Court which can over rule legislation passed by Congress which itself is undemocratic if slightly less so than the Supreme court.

We recently ran a piece on this blog where we explained how the US is a censored society. The privately owned capitalist mass media and the two capitalist parties the Republicans and Democrats make sure of that. And if they need any help the state which they control gives them a hand out. And the education system does its part also.

How many people have you met who have never heard of Eugene Debs, of the great 1934 strikes that changed this country, of the fact that when they were murdered by the state both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were both talking of working class unity and socialism? The mass capitalist media hides these facts, censors these facts.

The so called liberal media does its work also. Even shows such as Bill Maher which criticize the politicians and other aspects of American capitalist life. What these never do is put forward an alternative. For example put forward the need to break the monopoly of capitalism over US politics and build a mass working class party. If they put forward this alternative they would be off the airwaves so fast their heads would spin. It is because they do not put forward an alternative that they are allowed to appear again and again on the mass capitalist media such as CNN. Their continuous criticism is not dangerous because they put forward no alternative. In fact their continuous criticism to some extent makes things worse as they can help to demoralize people by focusing only on how bad things are and how the big powers rule and how give no alternative.

But in this small piece today I would like to draw our attention to something else. That is the fact that the US is not a democratic society. I will only focus on the electoral aspect of this for today and leave out the economic dictatorship of the corporations over society. We recently had the spectacle of the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell. She came to infamy first by appearances on the Bill Maher show spouting on about witchcraft and masturbation being as bad as adultery and later frightening people with the idea that scientists were developing "mice with fully functioning human brains." Why did Maher not have on a union activist, a community activist, and have them talking about their struggles and how they stood for struggling to make everybody's life better. Of course if he did he would have to face the wrath of the corporations and capitalism. This idiot O'Donnell has now won the nomination of the Republican Party for the Senate seat in Delaware.

So how does this link in with the US not being democratic. As I said there is of course the censorship and who decides who gets on the mass media outlets. But i want to look at something else. The population of the state of Delaware in 2009 was 885,122. This state, like all states, has two Senators. Each Delaware Senator so-called represents approximately 440,000 people. Now let us take another state - California. The population of California is 36,961,664. That is there are roughly over thirty six times as many people in California as are in Delaware. But yet California has only two Senators, the same as Delaware. Each California Senator so called represents about 18 million people compared to 440,000 in Delaware. This is completely undemocratic.

Then there is the other twist to it. Most of the small states are rural states or with a high percentage of middle class voters. When each state whatever its size has two Senators this gives an important advantage to the rural and middle class population of the country over the big centers of working class population. This was the whole idea when the constitution was set up. The idea was to keep the working class down and less influential, to weaken their power in society. US society is gerrymandered, it is undemocratic. voters. And I am leaving out that they have made it legal for the corporations to employ thousands and thousands of so called lobbyists to bribe the politicians. And I am leaving out the unelected Supreme Court which can strike down laws. And I am leaving out where they take the vote away from people who have a felony on their record.

US capitalism goes to war world wide, has military bases world wide, and justifies this by saying it is fighting for democracy. But it is not democratic itself. It is a dictatorship of the major corporations masquerading as a democratic society.

For the building a of a mass working people party.

For an end to the gerrymandering and for all votes to be counted as equal and an end to the electoral college and unelected Supreme Court.

For the building of working peoples committees which would coordinate working peoples' struggles in the workplace and communities and lay the basis for a democratic socialist society.