The United States has become a full-blown tyranny. This was built-in from the creation of the Constitution. When the battle for economic democracy was lost in the 1780s, the die was cast for a bourgeois oligarchy that has run the power structure ever since.
This bourgeois oligarchy (or, if you prefer, the merchant-banker class) existed before the American Revolution, as well, when their practices were known as the "Mercantile Code." Looting the public purse through various tax schemes that amounted to subsidies for imperial expansion (more looting elsewhere) was the heart of the bourgeois project. In this way, they could establish control over numerous wealth-producing projects. The Atlantic slave trade, for example -- both the trade in human livestock and the "staple crops" they produced were quite lucrative. Opulent neighborhoods were built up in many cities around the perimeter of the Atlantic Ocean by this trade. The wealth thus produced financed the Industrial Revolution, although imperial apologists remain largely in denial of this well-documented point.
Even after emancipation, bourgeois investments in Brazil, the legal slavery of prison labor in the U.S., and the wage slavery of textile mills, steel mills, railroad construction, and food processing -- all financed by the wealth originally produced by slaves -- meant a continuation of the ruling class's lock on power.
But back to the eighteenth century. Enter the young George Washington -- errand boy, surveyor, and land agent for the consortium known as the Ohio Land Company -- who saw an opportunity to fulfill his desires of becoming a Great Planter and Land Speculator Extraordinaire in the years after King George's War (one cannot resist mentioning the ironic twist in that name). When Washington hoofed it over the mountains in the employ of the Ohio Company with guide Christopher Gist, his path to "greatness" unfolded before him in the form of the Ohio Country -- the fertile land west of the Alleghenies that the French were in the process of claiming with their native trading partners in the "pays d'en haut," or "high country" above the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Valley. In short order, Washington was sent to the recently constructed Ft. LeBoeuf on the Allegheny River north of the forks of the Ohio River with a warning to the French to vacate that country being claimed by the Virginia consortium. The French laughed and sent him home with a counter warning. The end result was the outbreak of the French-Indian War, which was the culmination of a string of imperial wars dating to 1689 and the start of King William's War.
At this point, it is useful to recognize whose ends are served by war. One of the characteristics of the bourgeoisie is, of course, the accumulation of fluid wealth -- money and goods -- a process dating back to the twelfth century or so. This accumulation of money by this rising merchant-banker class allowed for the opportunity to sell loans and insurance to European aristocrats and monarchs who were perennially needed to finance their extravagant lifestyle. But the most pressing need, especially for monarchs, was financing for war. The bourgeoisie were happy to assist, and at low interest as well as the prospect of increased access to power. By the late seventeenth century in the English-speaking world, the bourgeoisie had grown frustrated at their lack of control over the London government. With the useful rationale provided by the unpopularity and religious preferences of King James II (a conservative Catholic king), a coup was fomented. The plan centered on bringing James's daughter Mary and her merchant-banker prince of a husband, William of Orange, to the throne. The new monarchs, however, would have to agree to sharing power with Parliament where the House of Commons was under the control of the bourgeoisie. Now, with control of the levers of power and access to the public purse, the military could be used to both run up the government's debt to the bourgeoisie, and to pursue their own ends: opening up new resources and markets. This was the essence of the "Glorious" Revolution of 1688, so named, and understandably so, by the bourgeoisie. The first in this series of imperial wars broke out the following year.
Meanwhile, back in Virginia some seventy years later, after several "wars of empire" involving primarily the English, French, and Spanish, the well-connected Ohio Company started a war with France and their Indian allies. Aided by messenger boy, agent, and emerging militia officer George Washington, this war would culminate in the French being ousted from North America in 1763.
How was this done? The answer is: war debt. Prime Minister William Pitt made the war so expensive for the French by opening up multiple fronts that the French government, still steeped in the ancien regime of absolute monarchy and not up to speed with bourgeois high finance, had to surrender its holdings in North America. The war was expensive for the British as well, and the bourgeois creditors demanded that the debt be "serviced." This would be done through taxes and tariffs that would fall heavily on the colonists who had fought much of this war. Basic American history tells us how that turned out. In an act that would lead to a protracted civil war, the thirteen colonies, led by now-General Washington and financed by the Master of the "Mercantile Code," Robert Morris of Philadelphia, started their own country.
After this successful revolution, a struggle for power ensued that goes on to this day: who will rule -- the people or the bourgeoisie? Until the Constitution emerged in 1787 and ratified the following year, this was a genuine question that remained undecided. But the Constitution was a cake baked by the bourgeoisie. Leave economic decisions beyond the reach of voters. Let the property-owning white males have the franchise, and don't disrupt the gravy train of slavery and the Mercantile Code -- the maintenance of permanent government debt, control of a standing army to be used for pursuing resources and markets funded by the "power of the purse," i.e., taxpayers. Tell them it's all on the side of the angels -- whisper sweet nothings about freedom and democracy into their ears -- they'll eat it up. And they did. Washington's project was so successful that upon his death he rose to his seat next to the Divine Throne itself, opposite his predecessor, Jesus. The bourgeois project in the New World was now beyond serious question, and so it more or less remains 230 years later. And yet, there are those who question the divinity of this project . . . it's almost as if they don't believe it. Their predecessors -- the true democrats (small "d") who envisioned a people's republic, weren't in the kitchen when the cake was baked -- they weren't invited.
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