Is the US a democracy? Let's bust the myths of the mid-term elections

39 governorships. However, do not be fooled into thinking the United States is a functioning democracy. Here is a rough guide to the political myths that define the “land of the free”.

Myth #1: America is a democracy.

NO, it’s a republic. The (second) US constitution of 1787 was framed by an oligarchy of slave-owning, land-owning capitalist farmers to protect their own property interests against the mass of landless and urban labourers. Certainly this 1787 version contains democratic safeguards against a central US government imposing its will on the states.

Plus it has attached (after a fight) a Bill of Rights agreed in January 1792, which enshrines some basic individual rights for white men. But the 1787 constitution was drafted explicitly to replace an earlier version adopted after the American revolutionaries threw out the Brits (with a little help from the French monarchy).

That first American constitution effectively created 13 new countries which were loosely linked. But in August 1786, in Massachusetts, landless peasant farmers protesting the debts loaded on them by urban bankers, rose in a second uprising known to history as Shays’ Rebellion – named after one of the leaders, Daniel Shays, the son of Irish immigrants. The rebels were joined by penniless Revolutionary soldiers whose wages had not been paid by the oligarchs who benefited from ousting the British.

This new conflict was an intra-American class war. The existing, weak federal government lacked the troops to suppress the rebellion, so Massachusetts was forced to raise its own domestic militia (paid for by 125 rich merchants) to do the job.

Shays’ Rebellion so frightened the ruling landed and merchant oligarchy that they agreed to write a new, more centralist constitution – the existing one – to ensure the federal government could put down any more plebeian revolutions.

In addition, the election process was deliberately rigged to ensure that ordinary voters could not destabilise the ruling oligarchy. This was achieved by filtering the election of representatives through intermediate electoral colleges that could be trusted to vote for members of the oligarchy or their agents.

This mechanism remains in the presidential electoral college that ensured Donald Trump became president though he lost to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes. Similarly, George W Bush became president though he was defeated by Al Gore in the 2000 election.

Myth #2: Trump represents the white working class.

THIS is a myth propagated in the UK, most assiduously by the BBC and London print media. It is rubbish. Only a third of Trump voters in 2016 had an income below the US median of $50,000. True, 69% of Trump voters did not have a university degree. But 71% of all Americans don’t have college degrees.

Yes, American college grads are statistically more likely to have voted for Clinton. But that does not prove the affluent professional classes went Democrat while the poor working class went Republican.

In fact, Trump’s key voting base is among the enraged petty bourgeoisie – the small business folk in the Rust Belt states who serve local consumer markets or supply services to decaying domestic manufacturing. These people are less likely to have college degrees but usually they earn well above the median income, i.e. more than working class voters.

There is no doubt that this huge petty bourgeois layer is angry at the impact of globalisation and the penetration of the US market by foreign imports, chiefly Chinese. They are equally disaffected by the big American high-tech monopolies – Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and the like – who are the real winners from neoliberalism. The high-tech monopolies have generated humongous profits which – until Trump – they parked overseas. Mind you, they have only started repatriating these profits because Trump has slashed taxes for the big corporations.

Myth #3: The American working class is right wing.

AGAIN, this is historical nonsense. Repeatedly the US working class has risen in opposition to the ruling economic elite – just as they did in Shays’ Rebellion back in 1786.

But two factors have intervened to thwart any successful resistance to the American ruling class. First, the American working class has been fatally divided by the existence of a pervasive and monstrous racism deliberately constructed to protect the institution of slavery. But beyond that, American workers have been subject to the most systematic state violence over the decades, as the federal government (see Myth #1) acted on behalf of the owning class to crush trade unions and suppress workers’ rights.

For instance, in June 1917, Congress passed the infamous Espionage Act aimed at prosecuting anyone obstructing the war effort. This was used to mount a major state attack on the US Socialist Party for opposing American involvement in the Great War.

The federal government hired 250,000 volunteer vigilantes, organised in the so-called American Protective League, to gather information and interrogate anyone associated with the left or anti-war activities. Over three days in early September 1918, an estimated 25,000 of these official vigilantes stopped and interrogated up to 500,000 New Yorkers – some 60,000 individuals were arrested. So much for the land of the free!

After the Great War, came the so-called Red Scare. On January 21 1919, 35,000 shipyard workers in Seattle went on strike seeking wage increases. Some 1500 troops were deployed to Seattle by the federal government to put down this new Shays’ Rebellion.

The American ruling class believed the Seattle strike was the start of a major workers’ revolt inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution. In January 1920, the FBI arrested 4000 members of the newly-formed Communist Party.

A new Immigration Act gave the authorities the powers to deport suspected “subversives”. Hundreds were rounded up without trial, forced on to hired ships, and transported to Europe. Elected Socialist Party representatives in the New York Assembly were simply booted out of the chamber. America is not a democracy if you threaten its ruling class.

Myth #4: There is no left-wing resistance to Trump.

OH yes there is. In the run-up to Tuesday’s elections, 46 avowed socialist candidates have won Democratic primaries. They include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina, who beat 10-term incumbent Joseph Crowley, candidate of the Democratic machine in the Bronx.

Democratic Socialists of America, a wing of the official party, now boasts 50,000 members. In addition, there is Bernie Sanders, who ran for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton in 2016 on a socialist ticket. He may give it another go in two years. Socialism is no longer a dirty word in US politics.

The outcome of tomorrow’s elections will hinge on turn-out. In 2016, many working class voters stayed at home, unwilling to vote for Hillary Clinton and her Wall Street-inspired agenda. But the threat from Trump and his racist, misogynistic and right-wing programme has transformed the political landscape. Of course, the mis-named Democrats – currently the party of high tech billionaires and previously the defenders of Southern racism – are no real threat to the American ruling class. But a hope has been reborn of an independent, working class politics in America.

The ghost of Shays’ Rebellion is abroad again.