Is Democracy Sustainable?

John Ikerd

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama was accused by his opponents of being a socialist. With his election, the accusations are reminiscent of the words of Karl Marx. He began his Communist Manifesto with the words, “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.” However, the specter that is haunting American today is not socialism or communism but instead is corporatism.

In a democracy, the political power ultimately must reside in the common people. Increasingly, the political power in the United States does not reside in the common people, or even real people, but in corporations. Corporations wield political power at least as great as their economic power. Corporate influence permeates all aspects of government – executive, legislative, and judicial. Our democracy is rapidly degenerating into a corpocracy.

Under a corpocracy there will be nothing to restraint corporations in their relentless pursuit of economic growth. All government restraints to extraction and exploitation of nature and society will have been systematically removed. This is not the irrational fears of some socialist; this is simply what we have seen happen. Environmental and social welfare laws have been dismantled or ignored and financial markets have been “freed” from government regulation – to facilitate economic growth.

Corporatists also seek to remove all economic boundaries among nations as national trade policies tend to restrain their exploitation of every corner of the earth. This is not the ranting of some nineteenth-century Marxist; this is simply an observation of what’s currently happening. American markets have been flooded with imports from low-wage countries. Furthermore, is there any real doubt that our so-called “strategic interests in the Middle East” are economic interests?

In a corpocracy there is no capacity for self-restraint. For-profit corporations are chartered for the purpose of accumulating capital; that is all they are capable of doing and shouldn’t be expected to do anything more. Corporations are not human, but legal entities that are distinct or separate from their human members. Nonprofit corporations, many with social and ecological purposes, also participate in political processes. However, once the members of a nonprofit corporation lose control of their leadership, as is the case with many large nonprofits today, they lose their individual human voice in the political process.

For a democracy to function effectively, each person must be afforded an equal voice in the political process. Admittedly, the United States government was designed to be a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy. The voices of individuals must be reflected in the decisions of their elected representatives. Some scholars contend that representatives have little responsibility to listen to their constituents but instead should do whatever is best for the state or nation as a whole. Regardless, representative democracy leaves the nation vulnerable to corpocracy. For a representative democracy to work effectively, the people must elect and support representatives who will act in the best interest of the nation. The less direct the connection between elected officials and their constituents, the greater the risk that government itself will become a corporation – an entity separate from its members. Such a government is not sustainable.

In the United States, we have the institutional structure in place to use our existing democracy to create a sustainable society and economy. However, we must respect the natural hierarchy of sustainability. Society is a part of nature and the economy is a part of society. Thus, the laws of nature must be respected by society and the laws of society must be respected by the economy. Nature’s laws can be violated by society and society’s laws can be violated by the economy, but not without suffering the eventual consequences. A sustainable economy must function for the overall good of society and society for the good of nature.

To sustain our democracy, our legal statutes must be rooted in the laws of nature, including the laws of human nature, and the economy must function within the bounds defined by those statues. In our democracy, our interpretations of the laws of nature and natural law are expressed as rights and responsibilities in the U.S. Constitution. They are the “self-evident truths” referred to in our Declaration of Independence, including the rights to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

The preamble to the Constitution gives government the responsibility to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” The Bill of Rights and later amendments identify the additional rights and responsibilities of all citizens.

To sustain our democracy, we must not only reaffirm our basic constitutional rights but also assert our rights to live in a sustainable society. Fortunately, our Constitution was meant be amended, as we become “more enlightened” – in the words of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine wrote, “The best constitution that could now be devises… may be far short of that excellence which a few years may afford.” Yet, only 17 amendments have been added since the original Bill of Rights, and no new amendments have been approved since 1971.

To sustain our democracy, all people must be afforded sufficient food, housing, health care, education – and a sufficiently clean and healthful environment – to meet their physical and mental needs. To ensure equality of opportunity, both within and across generations, both nature and society must be protected from economic exploitation and degradation.

Unfortunately, corporate influence in our political processes today would preclude any serious efforts of the American people to proclaim their right to a sustainable democracy. Therefore, the first new constitutional amendment for sustainability must be: Corporations, not being natural persons, have no right to participate in any way in the process of amending the Constitution. The privileges of corporations are distinct from the rights of natural persons.

A sustainable democracy would not be socialism or communism, although it would require an active role for government in establishing and enforcing the bounds within which the economy must function. Within such bounds, capitalism can function sustainably. Without such bounds, democracy is not sustainable.