The Democratizing of Democracy
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 1 Sep 2025
Glen T. Martin, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
Redeeming Ourselves from MAGA and Fascism
23 Aug 2025 – Modern democratic theory emerged during the 17th century from thinkers such as Althusius and Duplessis Mornay who argued against the arbitrary power of kings in favor of government that arises from the people and is directly responsible to the people. A number of thinkers used the heuristic device of a “social contract” to articulate the foundations of democracy: people make an agreement among themselves to empower an authority over them all that has a monopoly on the use of force and which is empowered to settle disputes and is mandated to protect their intrinsic rights and freedoms while fostering the common good.
This was the basic ideal in John Locke’s social contract theory, the theory that most influenced the “founding fathers” of the US Constitutional system. By contrast, the social contract theory of Immanuel Kant sees the contract differently, not as a voluntary agreement as with Locke but as an absolute command of moral reason. To live without a “republican government” protecting the freedom and equality of all citizens, for Kant, is to live in an immoral “state of war of all against all.” Hence, to unite under “republican government” becomes a supreme moral act to abolish war and live within a civilized peaceful framework (a framework that itself makes moral living possible). Kant thereby establishes government protecting freedom and equality as a supreme moral requirement for civilized human life.
In Locke’s version, our “intrinsic rights and freedoms” are “God-given” and prior to the social contract, whereas in Kant’s version, specific rights and freedoms are constituted by the contract itself: the contract is a moral duty and the republic it creates provides the moral framework for freedom, equality, and the assignment of rights. For Locke, one of these inalienable rights prior to government is to own and accumulate property. Locke begins his discussion of property initially by linking it directly to the amount of “labor” one expends in developing or cultivating something. In doing this, it looks as if he wants to affirm a moral principle regulating the accumulation of property (which it is part of the job of government to protect). But he soon goes on to repudiate any limit on the accumulation of property, thereby giving the nod to the emergent process of capital accumulation in his 17th century England.
When the founders of the US system followed Locke’s social contract model, they created a division between government and private wealth. The accumulation of private wealth was one of the inalienable freedoms prior to government and for which government was created to protect. This duality between governmental authority in the US and the private right to unlimited accumulation of wealth has been at the heart of the US system since that time. Examine, for example, the history of Supreme Court rulings. Throughout most of US history, the court ruled in favor of “owners” and against workers because ownership of “private property” was an intrinsic right that even allowed owners to possess slaves, or maintain dangerous working conditions, use child labor, or pay whatever wages they could get away with in a competitive labor market.
Today’s authoritarian government in the US (called by Senator Bernie Sanders, “rule by a billionaire oligarchy”) is a consequence of this schizophrenia at the heart of the US system. Democracy in the US system does not mean a national community of democratic debate and decision-making that eventuates in government that serves the needs of all its people fairly. Democracy in the US has always meant “free enterprise,” that is, the right to accumulate private wealth independently of governmental authority, since, according to John Locke, the social contract was established to protect the a priori rights to freedom and private property of the citizens, not to regulate or curtail these rights. There is, therefore, an inherent contradiction in the US Constitutional system between the realm of private wealth (that is supposed to be protected by government) and the common good of the people (that is supposed to be fostered by democratic government).
I believe the Kantian version of the social contract is much better (and truer to our human situation) than the Lockean version. Legitimate government takes us out of the “state of nature” in which there is only a struggle of force or power among unregulated groups or individuals and institutionalizes the equal freedom, and the protection for freedom, that gives it its morally grounded authority as government. Hence, the private wealth and enterprise of all citizens falls under the authority of government to protect freedom and equality before the law. Under Kant’s system, limits on the accumulation of private wealth, and regulations on how private wealth might be used to wield influence over governmental operations, is part of the direct responsibility of government. There need not be a contradiction between the common good and an opposing force embodied in the unlimited private accumulation of wealth.
Nevertheless, people in nearly any society can grow in moral (and hence democratic) insight. All people live within what Jürgen Habermas calls a “communicative dimension” that constitutes and embraces the moral sensibility of people. People discern aspects of society and/or government that they believe are wrong and people often envision how things might be corrected to conform with what is right, that is, morally and democratically justified. There is a growth process that takes place, both in individuals and in society that can serve as a critical force and a guide for government itself to continuously improve both its conceptual foundations and its actions. In the United States this moral force of civil society helped to end slavery, end segregation, expand civil rights, establish Medicare and Social Security, and create an ever more egalitarian society (in limited ways) under the headings of “diversity, equality, and inclusion.”
What this moral growth has not succeeded in doing is insert an amendment into the US Constitution limiting the accumulation of wealth in private hands and controlling the influence of private wealth upon government. Such an amendment would, in effect, change the social contract from Lockean to Kantian, which I take to be a truer basis for democracy. Both Republican and most Democratic politicians have been beholden to big money for their positions and have generally been willing and able to sacrifice the interests of the majority for the benefit of their monied masters.
The second major factor that has destroyed democracy within the US is the system of militarized sovereign nation-states itself. It places the US (and every other country) into what I noted above as Kant’s “state of nature.” That is, the relation among these autonomous individualized entities called sovereign nation-states is intrinsically one of “war,” whether they happen to be fighting one another at any one time or not. Kant understood that “war” is the immoral condition in which there is no binding republican law over all protecting their freedom and equality. Hence, the US has always conducted an imperialist foreign policy (at least since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823) which contradicts and undermines democracy within the US, since you cannot claim to believe in the rule of democratic law within while perpetually using force and domination without in relation to others (a truth that Noam Chomsky repeatedly points out in many of his books).
What is happening right now in the US in the form of ICE raids (cooperating with several other federal US police organizations) is precisely this immoral foreign policy brought home. Instead of everyone within the US being protected by law and the due process required of law, ICE is using sheer force to arrest and deport those whom they designate as “other” thereby operating though the immoral “war” paradigm (rather than by the democratic, due-process “peace” paradigm). The US is descending into fascism through these twin forces: the reign of huge accumulations of private wealth theoretically outside the control of the government and the on-going war-system that has always undercut democracy in favor of force and dehumanization of “the other.”
The populist MAGA base of Trump is not aware, of course, of such theoretical principles. However, they did have a sense that the dominant system it the US (calling itself “democratic”) was not concerned with their interests. It was concerned primarily with its foreign wars and clandestine catering to the super-rich. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of those who denied his base of their rights to a decent life. Little did they know that his candidacy was a gigantic “bait and switch” scam put forward by the oligarchy. People were induced to vote for someone promising to “drain the swamp” who is himself the vilest serpent in the entire swamp.
The struggle to restore democracy in the US is not being led by the many democratic Congressmen and Senators who are seriously beholden to elite wealth and power. It is being led by a few who have not yet been so corrupted. Only these few seem aware what is at stake, since the slide to fascist dictatorship has been fast and furious and, if not stopped soon, will become unstoppable.
To really succeed in restoring democracy will require reconceptualizing the foundations of democracy, as mentioned above, by passing an amendment to the US Constitution placing enforceable limits on private wealth and taking steps toward a world union under a federal Earth Constitution that would free the US from the global war-system. These amendments must make it constitutionally clear that governmental authority represents all people equally and must take concrete steps (like repealing the “Citizens United” decision) to separate corporate and oligarchic power from the free speech rights of citizens.
Another amendment that would also be essential is to institute national public banking within the US. As of now, the US Federal Reserve system (founded in 1913) is a consortium of private banks all of whom are interested in private profit and not in the common good of US citizens. Public banking would serve all citizens with banking services that do not extract a private profit from their payment of bills, savings accounts, or any other financial transactions. Hence, the present system that consists in private exploitation of people’s incomes and ability to live in a complex monetized society (through credit cards, private banking systems, etc.) would be replaced by free or low-cost public utility banking, substantially increasing the security and well-being of all ordinary citizens.
Democracy, as it derives from the 17th century theorists, means that legitimate government represents all the people and their common good. Private capital, which has worked to keep itself free from such governmental authority, has been a main factor in the destruction of democracy in the US and elsewhere. For our political leaders to overcome the rapid descent into fascism now taking place, we need a vision of restorative and transformative democracy significantly transcending the current lack-luster concept.
We need to present concrete steps for replacing oligarchic rule with true democratic rule, which requires national public banking and government placement of limits on the accumulation of private wealth (no single person needs a billion dollars, nor 100 million, nor even 50 million) and for instituting national public banking. We also need specific proposals for extracting the US from the global war-system, not through isolationism but through a forward-looking world federalism. The threat of emerging fascism in the US is a real historic opportunity for democratic leadership to get it right. However, to create such a social movement it will not do to couch the transformation in theoretical terms, as I have in this article. We should note carefully the advice of Habermas:
People do not fight for abstractions—despite the three great and ineradicable goals of the French Revolution. People do not fight for abstractions, but with images. Banners, symbols, and images, rhetorical speech, allegorical speech, utopia-inspired speech, in which concrete goals are conjured up before people’s eyes, are indeed necessary constituents of movements which have any effect on history at all. (Autonomy and Solidarity, 145)
It is high time that the US and its citizens began thinking in terms of real democracy to replace the farce that has led us to the current rise of authoritarianism and incipient fascism. All these features of democracy are present in the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. The Constitution ends the war-system and demilitarizes the nations (who are then part of a world federation protecting the freedom and equality of them all). It places limits on the accumulation of private wealth, and it institutes global public banking, allowing every person or organization access to financial services, such as loans, without needing collateral to be put up as a ransom as is now the case.
We are not alone. All the people of Earth need authentic democracy as much as we do in the USA. We need images, banners, and rhetorical force to launch a movement for global democracy. We face today the possible extinction of all humanity from nuclear holocaust or climate destruction that demands immediate visionary and inspiring action. We need a transformative vision of democracy in the US that inspires people worldwide to take back their planet and make it a decent home for all future generations.
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Dr. Glen T. Martin:
– Member, TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment
– Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
– Founder/Chairperson Emeritus, Program in Peace Studies, Radford University
– President, World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA);
– President, Earth Constitution Institute (ECI)
– Author of twelve books and hundreds of articles concerning global issues, human spirituality, and democratic world government; a recipient of many peace awards.
www.earthconstitution.world – Email: gmartin@radford.edu
Tags: Democracy, Fascism, Philosophy, Trump, USA
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 1 Sep 2025.
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Peace Education for Genuine Democracy, Good Governance and Nonviolence
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https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/04/peace-education-for-genuine-democracy-good-governance-and-nonviolence/