The People Have Always Had The Power

By Mark Harris

The anatomy of a State is comprised of three major components that bleed into one another. People and Territory are the most obvious components of a State, but the third is a bit harder to describe. Sovereignty is basically the authority of the State, and the systems of authority comprise a critical aspect of the State. However, all three elements of the State make up a necessary piece of anatomy, as sovereignty is meaningless without territory or people.

From the beginning of civilization, the three elements of the State were in clear tension with one another, though the understanding of these tensions was not clear. The first element to gain clarity was labor and economic tensions. The advent of the State or civilization itself is debated by scholars in archaeology, sociology, and many other fields. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume that it was a way of solving the problem of the division of labor. So, it is no surprise that the tension between the people and the territory was the first tension to be understood clearly.

Who does what, so that all may reap the most reward? A literal tension between people and land. The ancient Mesopotamians had the earliest form of writing that we can decipher today. Most of the written documents that we have found from them have to do with labor, land, and crop yields. We have found plenty of other texts dealing with many other subjects, but since food production and storage are critical aspects of life that require careful management, it is no surprise that they used the relatively new technology of writing to aid in doing so. It is even debated by many that it was the origin of writing in their culture, and some even say agricultural management was the genesis for writing in general. However, the major reason we believe that so many grain ledgers survived is that they were written in wet clay, to be easily cleared and written over, but we find them as baked solid. Why is this? Because someone burned the storehouses around the storehouse ledgers made of wet clay.

The next most obvious tension, and therefore next best understood by people of the past, is how a State is to keep its territory secure: to keep others out, to keep the people in, to procure more land when needed, to resist takeover by others, and to maintain the system of sovereignty. The Romans understood security far better than any people who came before them. They were experts in creating buffer zones around their core territory and developing a theory of security through the conquest and management of their known world. Pax Romana, in their telling, brought peace, stability, and prosperity to wherever the Roman legions marched. However, the Roman decline can be attributed to a failure to solve the least well-understood tension within the anatomy of a State.

The last tension took longer to understand, as it posed far less of an issue if the other two tensions were addressed well, and would rapidly lead to a collapse of the State if it became an issue. The anatomy of the State is dependent on having a people, but the people do not need a State to exist on their own, the clear implication being that if a State is not beneficial to the people, they can do away with it. However, people must live somewhere. It is also usually advantageous to live under a system that guarantees a certain level of material stability and security. So,the tension doesn’t really exist anywhere but between the people and the system of sovereignty that guides the State. This tension exists in what is called the Social Contract. The Social Contract can be looked at on a macro or individual basis, but in this discussion, it will serve us best to keep to the macro level. That being said, the tensions of our contemporary time may stem far more from the individual level, so we ought not neglect the concept at theindividual level fully.

The concept of the Social Contract goes back as far as the ancient Greeks, as found in the words of Socrates and Plato. The roots of the concept likely go back even further, as even the leaders of tribal bands know that you are only a leader if the people follow. However, theproblem lies on the other side of the token and out of the hands of an individual or a particular institution. How can the people hold power over and give up power to the State? The answer may come easily to us on the other side of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution, but it was not clear to those of the times before.

Hobbes starts the modern discussion of the Social Contract very near where the medieval Divine Right of Kings leaves off. He argued that, instead of a right directly from God, the right of Kings to rule is given to them by the people who wish to live under a well-managed State.  Locke takes it a step further and argues that people don’t need to live under a State at all, but may choose to do so for the benefits such a State may provide. Locke argued that if the State no longer benefits the people, they may dissolve and replace it with a new one. Rousseau goes the final step, saying that a State is illegitimate if it is not founded on the general will of the people and does not embody their common good. The American founders were the ones to take this idea and combine it with the mechanics of a democratic republic to render monarchical rule unnecessary.

A Constitution is not something that sprang naturally into being with the advent of language, and sovereignty is exercised in the actions of human beings even today. Words written on a page of paper are not capable of restraining the actions of anyone, but instead the ideas contained on those pages and agreed to by the people act as a far better governor than a sole sovereign, though this was not fully borne out until the Great American experiment proved it true. Another important note is that, with the protection of the Atlantic Ocean and the wilderness of the American continent standing as natural barriers, security was a limited concern for the young nation. As the territory of the American continent was vast and fertile, and there was no power strong enough to stop expansion.  

The American Experiment not only enfranchised more people through a plethora of suffrage movements, but also through the rights it protected under the Constitution, and the expansion of those rights in legislation as well as by judicial decisions. The ability of the American people to more fully express their desires has led to greater strength for our states and the federal government. The structures of our nation have even become popular globally because, by enfranchising more of the people, you eliminate one of the major concerns for the continued existence of the State, the potential removal of the people’s support.

When the State becomes illegitimate in the eyes of enough of the people, it almost always  collapses violently. Locke’s view of replacing the State with another wasn’t born out of peaceable times, but from a civil war in England, and when Rousseau’s ideas took root amongst the French public, they eventually overthrew their absolute monarchy in a violent revolt. The Roman collapse, though often attributed to invasion, is actually more accurately seen as a slow collapse of legitimacy, capped by an invading force that the once powerful Roman state was incapable of repelling. 

Historically, when a State no longer served the people’s needs, they either violently overthrew it or let it collapse. However, with the modern understanding of social contract theory and the suffrage of the masses, a third way has opened. The people have always had power over the State, but now the State can be altered by the people piece by piece in real time to respond to and serve the people’s interests without having to be thrown out or abandoned.

Current Expressions of Power of the People in the United States of America

By Ruth McLatchie

In our preview this month, we raised four questions:

1. What is currently the main form of expression of the power of the American people in the matter of representation? 

Answer: The main form of expression of the power of the American people in the matter of representation has not changed since the founding.  The revolutionary slogan “No Taxation without Representation” is as valid today as it was then, expressing one of the primary grievances that resulted in the revolution, that nobody should be taxed without being able to vote on the taxation.  Now, we vote for our representatives, local, state, and national, on a wide range of issues, but how our money is used by our representatives always figures large in the decisions we make.  

2. How can the power of the American people lawfully effect change?

Answer: The most obvious way people can lawfully effect change is by voting for representatives that share their concerns.  But there are many other ways than voting, then sitting back and waiting (which can be frustrating if your elected officials don’t do what you elected them to do).  Change can also be effected by communicating with those representatives once they are in office in order to influence their legislative decisions, by participating in legal organizing activities such as political parties, labor unions, associations, or special interest groups, by publishing articles and opinions, by circulating petitions, by researching policy, and by participating in legal forms of protest.

3. How is the exercise of power by the American government limited by the authority granted to it by the people?  The government is only allowed to exercise the powers enumerated by the Constitution.  The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution explicitly states that the powers not granted to the federal government and not prohibited to the states are within the purview of the states and the people.  The Constitution also separates the government into three branches so as to prevent any one branch from accumulating excess power.  And finally, the Bill of Rights protects individual liberties with remedies against abuse of power to be sought in the courts.  

4. What forces are currently working for or against the supremacy of the power of the people? While answers to the previous three questions can probably be found in any decent Civics textbook, the answer to this question is more likely to be found in current headlines.  The forces most likely to work for the power of the people are civic engagement, robust democratic institutions (such as the judiciary and the press), access to information and education, and labor unions.  The forces most likely to work against the power of the people are political polarization, disinformation, extremist supremacist groups, extreme economic disparities, erosion of legal protections, and authoritarian attempts to consolidate the power of the few.  

So what can you personally do to protect the supremacy of the power of the people?  Seek information from a broad range of trusted sources.  Study the research and the math instead of falling for the slogan or the sound bite.  Vote and encourage other people to vote.  Listen to other viewpoints.  Speak up in a civil, respectful manner.  Get involved in healthy dialog.  Get involved in civic organizations.  Sign and circulate petitions.  Run for office yourself, or support someone else’s run.  Support initiatives that make voting fairer and more accessible.

Power in A State Always Rests in the Hands of the People

By Mark Harris

Power in a State always rests in the hands of its people. This is the basic lesson of the social contract. States that do not respect this find themselves losing legitimacy and then dealing with popular uprisings or at least terrorists with supporters all too willing to harbor them. Force can be applied to keep citizens in line, but autocracy in our post-postmodern world is difficult and expensive to maintain. The far cheaper option is to subvert the will of the public and make them think the State is working in their interest, or at least not against it.

The Soviet Union was not the first State to try to manipulate the minds of its people for the interests of the State, but it perhaps made the greatest strides in doing so. The Soviets picked up from where the Tsars left off, displacing people from their cultural homelands, destroying and disbanding religious practices, leaving their people with one identity, as subjects to the State.  This type of overt and totalitarian manipulation is easy to see, and during the Cold War, the West seized on it as an example of the evils of Communist regimes, while taking notes themselves.

The Nazis, perhaps, also inspired the West with their manner of manipulation: aggrandizing the German people, describing them as superior in culture and industrial capacity. Of course, the West decried and denounced the Nazi’s ethno-nationalist rhetoric but copied them nearly whole cloth in every other cultural manipulation technique. The West, and particularly the United States, has always used rhetoric to manipulate the public, but maintained a fair playing field with the freedoms guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. The dynamic has only really shifted in the new millennium.

After the passage of the Patriot Act, the American government could freely surveil its citizens. The NSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, or ICE may not be able to bring charges against you in courts of law without obtaining warrants before performing certain forms of surveillance, but they are always watching and collecting data. Add that these entities are the birthplace of the earliest forms of electronic profiling, have overt or covert backdoors into all social media platforms, and you begin to understand the scope of digital manipulation. Pair this with the manipulation of traditional media by way of traditional means of coercion, such as money, regulation, and corruption, that cuts both ways. Now you see just how isolated the truth can become in the sea of state and corporate media manipulation. How easy it is for the State or a corporate actor to bend the public’s mindset, or even just a relevant segment of the public’s mindset, or even just a segment of the mindset of a segment of the public. It happens all the time, every day. However, no matter how well you manipulate the public, you can’t manipulate reality, and when you separate the public from their ability to control their reality, or in this case, to even understand their reality, violence is bound to follow.

The other side of the social contract coin is the way the people can wield the power they have in maintaining the State. In the last 250 years or so, in the West and States influenced by the West, the trend has been towards giving people non-violent methods of expressing their will and desire for change. The way this has been achieved is through enfranchisement: being able to run for office, no matter your background; being able to vote, no matter what your background; and allowing the public to apply their knowledge of their interests to their civic efforts. This system allows the public to feel like their civic engagement and personal knowledge will lead to their interest, in the majority to be represented in the actions of the State. However, when their interests are isolated from themselves, when their civic actions bring about little to no material or political change, violence against the State and any emblem of the State becomes easier to rationalize.

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America from France in the 1830s and saw firsthand the differences between the post-revolution United States and “post-revolution” France. At first, he wasn’t sure how the results could be so different. Why had France devolved into violence, and America had prospered and grown? He eventually settled on the observation that Americans had a robust social tradition of civic and social associations that taught a cultural tolerance through shared engagement in public life. These associations came in all shapes and forms. Some were issue or goal-oriented, like guilds or committees for fundraising for civil engineering projects, like a bridge or hospital. Others were purely social, but they all reinforced, on a socio-cultural level, peaceful cooperation with the capability for tangible change. These associations persisted in American culture until the mid-20th century, falling off steadily and then disappearing nearly completely in the 21st century. This can be attributed in the most part to transitions in the economic lives of Americans. Dual earner households becoming the norm, depressed wages relative to inflation, offshoring of manufacturing, and a move towards multiple jobs to make ends meet have all but eliminated the ability for the American worker to find time for social organizations. This, paired with the rise of online social interactions, which rarely contain a shred of positive social interaction, social compromise, or materially beneficial outcome, and you see another peaceful outlet for the American people is closing.

All signs are pointing to violence, and the warning lights are flashing red. Political violence isn’t just a thing of the past or a potential future; it is here in the present. Political violence is already on the rise, with the murder of Charlie Kirk, the killing of Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the two assassination attempts on President Trump while campaigning last year. This is not to say that these are legitimate acts that directly align with popular public support, but instead they show a normalization of political violence in a system that has isolated members of the public from the feeling of power over the State and culture. If things do not change, America’s future is likely to be marred by more political violence.

What We’re Reading

Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria is eminently readable and quotable.  This book is closely tied to our theme this month, The Power of the People, in that revolutions are one of the clearest exemplifications of the power of the people.

Zakaria, a New York Times best-selling author and journalist, writes with empathy, openness, reasonableness, and due caution.  He acknowledges his own bias in favor of small l liberalism, which he views as having created better outcomes for most people over time.  Then he goes about proving his case in an engaging manner that makes historical sense of what seems like impossibly complex chaos.  

The book is divided into two main parts: Revolutions Past and Revolutions Present.  In Revolutions Past, Zakaria thoroughly covers the Netherlands revolution against a foreign monarchy (Spain’s Habsburg dynasty) in the 16th and 17th centuries, the more or less bloodless Glorious Revolution of 17th century England, the failed revolution of 18th century France, and the 18th and 19th century industrial revolutions of Britain and the United States.

In Revolutions Present, he addresses the main forces responsible for current upheaval, including economic globalization, information technology, tribal identity, and geopolitics.  All that he presents clearly shows both the cyclical nature and the progressive nature of the history of human behavior.    

In his conclusion, Zakaria writes that the tradeoff of the progress made during the age of revolutions is that “we may be richer and freer but also lonelier,”  leading people to look for someone or something other than their political and economic freedoms to satisfy their longings.  Zakaria ends on an encouraging note by reminding us that “we are heirs to the greatest tradition in history, one that liberated the human mind and spirit, that created the modern world, and whose greatest achievements are yet to come.”

Reviewed by Ruth McLatchie

This Day In History 

1. September 5, 1774 – First Continental Congress Convenes  – Delegates from 12 colonies gathered to coordinate resistance to British rule, declaring colonial unity. John Adams wrote: “The foundation of everything is laid…the People must take upon themselves the Conduct of their own Affairs.”
2. September 9, 1774 – Suffolk Resolves Adopted  – Local Massachusetts representatives declared the Coercive Acts null and void and urged civil disobedience—an early declaration of people’s right to resist unjust government.
3. September 17, 1787 – U.S. Constitution Signed – The framework for popular sovereignty was completed. The preamble begins: “We the People of the United States…” —a direct assertion that authority derives from citizens.
4. September 3, 1838 – Frederick Douglass Escapes Slavery – Douglass’s escape became a catalyst for expanding democratic power, as his later leadership gave enslaved people a voice in shaping the nation’s conscience and demanding liberty for all.
5. September 22, 1862 – Lincoln Issues Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation – By declaring freedom for the enslaved in rebelling states, Lincoln shifted the war toward liberation, expanding the power of the people by redefining who was included in America’s promise of freedom.
6. September 5, 1882 – First U.S. Labor Day Parade – Over 10,000 workers marched in New York City for fair wages, shorter hours, and dignity, demonstrating the growing power of organized labor and the voice of working-class people.
7. September 25, 1919 – Senate Rejects Treaty of Versailles (First Vote) – Popular skepticism about entangling alliances showed through grassroots pressure on Senators—an early “people versus elite foreign policy” moment. After months of debate, the treaty was ratified by the Senate in January 1920 under the condition that the U.S. would not be bound by other nations to enter a war without congressional approval. 
8. September 9, 1957 – Civil Rights Act of 1957 Signed – The first civil rights law since Reconstruction, it aimed to protect the voting rights of Black Americans, beginning to restore political power long denied and marking how grassroots organizing could expand democracy itself.

– Compiled by Elizabeth Frost and Staff

Coming Next Month:  The Outrage Machine

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