Down With the U.S. Constitution! Here's Why.

No person living today ever voted to accept and abide by The Constitution

May 16, 2024

The very first words of the U.S. Constitution are a lie. It was written by the rich haves, for the rich haves and in the interests of the rich haves.

In my earlier posts, “U.S. Constitution: Help or Hindrance” and “The U.S. ‘Founding Fathers’ Were Enemies of ‘We the People’,” I explained that the Founding Fathers created the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of proving the rich class of haves with a strong central government with which to repress the rebellious have-nots. Just prior to the Constitutional Convention the have-not farmers of Massachusetts rose up against the rich rulers with what came to be known as Shays’s Rebellion, which scared the living daylights out of the rich haves because it almost removed the rich from power in Massachusetts. This is what motivated the rich to create the Constitution. Then shortly afterwards, George Washington as president used the power of the new federal government to repress another uprising of the have-nots against the haves: the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania and neighboring states.

I further explained that the Constitution is designed to protect class inequality and this is why the rich teach us to worship the Constitution as if it were handed down by God. The Constitution imposes on us a form of government that makes it easy for a few rich people to control the vast population of hundreds of millions of us by merely controlling (with various bribes that are now called ‘lobbying’) a few hundred individuals sitting in Washington, D.C.

Genuine democracy of, by and for the have-nots requires voluntary federation of local assemblies of egalitarians, not a strong law-making central government

I have argued that what we need in order to have genuine democracy (described here) is NOT a law-making central government but rather voluntary federation of sovereign (meaning there is no higher law-making government body) local assemblies of egalitarians (local here means more or less the size of a U.S. zip code).

What about the Bill of Rights?

The Bill of Rights does not protect us from the rich upper class that treats the have-nots like dirt (as described here with many examples.) What we need is an egalitarian Bill of Rights, like this perhaps.

The strong military force that we the have-nots need to protect ourselves from our enemies does not require a strong law-making central government; on the contrary

Recently a friend of mine objected to the idea that we should not have a law-making central government. She said a law-making central government was necessary in order to have a military force capable of defending us against a foreign enemy.

I don’t think that the military force we need requirs a law-making central government. I write about the military force we need in “Egalitarian Militias.” The anarchists defending the half of Spain that was essentially egalitarian in 1936-9 against the fascist General Franco relied on such a militia. This militia was militarily strong. The defeat of the anarchists by General Franco was not due to any inherent weakness of their militia; it was due to fatal mistakes the anarchists made, which I discuss here.

I think that the words of Peter Kropotkin in his 1907 The Conquest of Bread are worth reading in this regard; he explains the source of the strength of a military force:

Imagine somebody saying twenty-five years ago: “The State, capable as it is of massacring twenty thousand men in a day, and of wounding fifty thousand more, is incapable of helping its own victims; as long as war exists private initiative must intervene, and men of goodwill must organize internationally for this humane work!” What mockery would not have met the man who would have dared thus to speak! To begin with he would have been called Utopian, and if that did not silence him he would have been told: “Volunteers will be found wanting precisely where they are most needed, your hospitals will be centralized in a safe place, while what is indispensable will be wanting in the ambulances. National rivalry will cause poor soldiers to die without help.” Disheartening remarks are only equalled by the number of speakers. Who of us has not heard men hold forth in this strain?

Now we know what happened. Red Cross societies organized themselves freely, everywhere, in all countries, in thousands of localities; and when the war of 1870-1 broke out, the volunteers set to work. Men and women offered their services. Thousands of hospitals and ambulances were organized; trains were started carrying ambulances, provisions, linen, and medicaments for the wounded. The English committees sent entire convoys of food, clothing, tools, grain to sow, beasts of draught, even steam-ploughs with their attendants to help in the tillage of departments devastated by the war! Only consult La Croix Rouge, by Gustave Moynier, and you will be really struck by the immensity of the work performed.

As to the prophets ever ready to deny other men's courage, good sense, and intelligence, and believing themselves to be the only ones capable of ruling the world with a rod, none of their predictions were realized. The devotion of the Red Cross volunteers was beyond all praise. They were only too glad to occupy the most dangerous posts; and whereas the salaried doctors of the State fled with their staff when the Prussians approached, the Red Cross volunteers continued their work under fire, enduring the brutalities of Bismarck's and Napoleon's officers, lavishing their care on the wounded of all nationalities. Dutch, Italians, Swedes, Belgians, even Japanese and Chinese agreed remarkably well. They distributed their hospitals and their ambulances according to the needs of the occasion. They vied with one another especially in the hygiene of their hospitals And there is many a Frenchman who still speaks with deep gratitude of the tender care he received from a Dutch or German volunteer in the Red Cross ambulances. But what is this to an authoritarian? His ideal is the regiment doctor, salaried by the State. What does he care for the Red Cross and its hygienic hospitals, if the nurses be not functionaries?

Here is then an organization, sprung up but yesterday, and which reckons its members by hundreds of thousands; possesses ambulances, hospital trains, elaborates new processes for treating wounds, and so on, and is due to the spontaneous initiative of a few devoted men.

Perhaps we shall be told that the State has something to do with this organization. Yes, States have laid hands on it to seize it. The directing committees are presided over by those whom flunkeys call princes of the blood. Emperors and queens lavishly patronize the national committees. But it is not to this patronage that the success of the organization is due. It is to the thousand local committees of each nation; to the activity of individuals, to the devotion of all those who try to help the victims of war. And this devotion would be far greater if the State did not meddle with it.

In any case, it was not by the order of an International Directing Committee that Englishmen and Japanese, Swedes and Chinamen, bestirred themselves to send help to the wounded in 1871. It was not by order of an international ministry that hospitals rose on the invaded territory and that ambulances were carried on to the battlefield. It was by the initiative of volunteers from each country. Once on the spot, they did not get hold of one another by the hair as foreseen by Jacobins; they all set to work without distinction of nationality.

We may regret that such great efforts should be put to the service of so bad a cause, and ask ourselves like the poet's child: “Why inflict wounds if you are to heal them afterwards?” In striving to destroy the power of capital and bourgeois authority, we work to put an end to massacres, and we would far rather see the Red Cross volunteers put forth their activity to bring about (with us) the suppression of war; but we had to mention this immense organization as another illustration of results produced by free agreement and free aid.

If we wished to multiply examples taken from the art of exterminating men we should never end. Suffice to quote the numerous societies to which the German army owes its force, that does not only depend on discipline, as is generally believed. I mean the societies whose aim is to propagate military knowledge.

At one of the last congresses of the Military Alliance (Kriegerbund), delegates from 2452 federated societies, comprising 151,712 members, were present. But there are besides very numerous Shooting, Military Games, Strategical Games, Topographical Studies Societies "these are the workshops in which the technical knowledge of the German army is developed, not in regimental schools. It is a formidable network of all kinds of societies, including military men and civilians, geographers and gymnasts, sportsmen and technologists, which rise up spontaneously, organize, federate, discuss, and explore the country. It is these voluntary and free associations that make up the real backbone of the German army.

Their aim is execrable. It is the maintenance of the Empire. But what concerns us, is to point out that, in spite of military organization being the “Great mission” of the State, success in this branch is the more certain the more it is left to the free agreement of groups and to the free initiative of individuals. Even in matters pertaining to war, free agreement is thus appealed to; and to further prove our assertion let us mention the three hundred thousand British volunteers, the British National Artillery Association, and the Society, now in course of organization, for the defence of England's coasts, as well as the appeals made to the commercial fleet, the Bicyclists' Corps, and the new organizations of private motor-cars and steam launches.

The State is abdicating and appealing in its holy functions to private individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its domain. And yet, the facts we have quoted let us catch only a glimpse of what free agreement has in store for us in the future, when there will be no more State.

JOHN SPRITZLER'S Substack

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