If there was ever a time when money did not define the motivations in Congress, I think it must have been in the very early days of the republic. When the founding fathers convened in Philadelphia to write the constitution, they were fresh from 10 years of ineffective decentralized government. They realized they needed a strong central government if the United States was going to work.
The constitutional convention wasn’t single-minded about their purpose. They agreed they needed a new form of national government, but some believed that states’ rights should prevail over national prerogatives. But it was states’ rights that weakened and undermined the original Articles of Confederation. To serve the common good, each state needed to sacrifice some of its rights.
That was the real purpose of the Constitution. It had to divert some sovereign rights from individual state governments, and assert those rights to the national government. The sovereign rights the states conceded include the right to establish their own currencies, to be responsible for their own defense, to form treaties with other sovereign nations, to declare war, to regulate commerce beyond their own borders, and to manage the channels of communication.
The Constitution bestowed upon the national government the first formal declaration of socialist powers. The most frequently cited example of socialism in the Constitution is the opening sentence: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Socialism is the very foundation of the Constitution of the United States. The USA was the very first modern socialist country.
The Need for Socialism Created Early Political Factions
When Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it’s said that a woman asked him, “Well, Doctor, what sort of government have you given us?” And Franklin is said to have retorted, “A republic – if you can keep it.”
But the Republic of the United States of America was different from previous republics. The USA kicked off its republicanism with a written constitution that bestowed specific powers upon the three branches of government. The Executive Branch was very modest and no one at the time thought it was the center of the government. The national court system was only empowered to interpret the laws passed by the Legislative and Executive Branches.
It was all supposed to be balanced and self-correcting. The people elected their Representatives to Congress. The states appointed their Senators. The two houses of the Congress were expected to share legislative responsibilities. They had to agree on new laws and constitutional amendments before any other step could be taken to enact new laws.
The original factions were the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The Fight for Power and Sovereign Rights Created New Factions
The new federal government inherited the debts of all the states. But there was almost no way for the government to pay those debts. All it could do was issue new debt to replace the old debts. And it minted new coins to serve as the national currency.
But there wasn’t much in the way of revenue for the federal budget. An income tax was still more than 100 years away. And the United States hadn’t yet acquired all the western lands beyond the Mississippi river. It could sell some lands, but the population of only a few million people didn’t need much land.
And that was why Alexander Hamilton proposed the creation of a national bank. This was a very unpopular idea with some conservative politicians. Hamilton was a radical who threatened the sovereignty of the states. But history shows us the states had already sacrificed their sovereignty.
Hamilton’s supporters in Congress (and President Washington himself, informally) began identifying themselves as Federalists. They were the first political party to embrace the socialist principles upon which the constitution was founded. And ironically, their political descendants – the modern Republican Party – now stir up fears of socialism in their voters.
Thomas Jefferson led the Democratic-Republicans, who wanted to preserve states’ independence. They recognized the need for a common national defense, and other common resources, but they wanted final decision-making about most matters to remain with the states.
Early Political Parties were Not Like Modern Political Parties
The Democratic-Republicans were not conservatives in the same way that Republicans claim to be conservatives. The Democratic-Republicans were expansionists. They wanted to push the frontiers of the new nation farther west – and that meant taking Native Americans’ lands. They also saw themselves as defending liberty and freedom against monarchism and aristocracy. They thought they were the party of the common people.
It’s ironic that many of their leaders were slave owners. Not all Democratic-Republicans supported slavery, but they were the party that defended it in the national dialog.
The Federalists wanted to promote commerce, shipping, and monetarism. They saw themselves as the defenders of liberty and the constitution. They were also opposed to interventions in foreign wars, and weren’t enthusiastic about expanding the nation.
It’s enough to say the first political parties had to deal with the issues of their day, and struggled to identify common principles. But both parties fought for economic principles (slavery and trade) that would contribute to the divisions between North and South.
The North’s economy settled on farming, manufacturing, and shipping. The wealthy northern mercantile families promoted trade and protectionism, viewing tariffs as necessary to protect their young industries.
The South’s economy settled on farming and exporting plantation-grown cotton. The wealthy southern families wanted to sell their cotton overseas, so they promoted trade – but they abhorred protectionism, which made the imported goods they wanted more expensive.
The Modern Republican Party Opposes Trade and Commerce
Many people see the Republicans as champions of business, but they’re not. The Republican Party are the champions of corporate stock buybacks. They did everything they could to weaken and eliminate the vital Import-Export Bank, which allows American exporters to compete in overseas markets.
When you study their history, you’ll see the Republican Party is the Party of Tariffs. Just like the Federalists before them, when times get tough for American industry, Republican leaders bring up tariffs. Donald Trump resurrected Republican tariff policies when he was president. Although many Republican politicians opposed his tariffs on Mexican imports, they supported his tariffs on Chinese imports.
The USA’s economy is no longer a powerful manufacturing economy. Decades of Republican “trickle-down economics” policy have undermined the trade unions that made American manufacturing powerful, profitable, and beneficial to millions of workers. Starting with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, U.S. corporations began shutting down their American factories, “shipping jobs overseas”.
The Republican Party always complains about how these companies trade American jobs for foreign profits, but when it comes to passing laws that would curtail these practices the Republican Party never finds the political will or courage to defy their corporate donors.
The reason American companies build factories overseas, or buy their parts from overseas manufacturers, is simple: foreign labor is cheap and less protected against abusive corporate management. Every publicly traded company in America only cares about boosting its stock price.
Republican Party Policy Hurts Millions of American Workers
The stock price is important to Republican politicians because the corporate executives who support them make billions of dollars through stock options and grants. After 1990 economists complained that executive pay was too high and should be disclosed publicly. The idea was that corporations would pay their executives less money and their employees more.
To comply with the expectation of paying their executives less – many CEOs now take only $1 salaries – corporations began issuing stock options that allow those executives to buy millions of shares at lower-than-market prices. They can then sell those shares for profits at market value.
To boost the price of their corporations’ shares, executives look for ways to cut costs. And they always start with the labor force. They lay off employees, eliminate jobs, and start new employees at low pay.
To boost production, a company that reduces its own workforce must turn to other workforces. That either means investing in offices and factories in countries with much lower costs of living and fewer labor protection laws, or hiring “gig” workers as contractors.
Contract employees are paid less than salaried employees, receive no benefits, and are responsible for their own taxes. Outsourcing companies act as middle men between the companies they service and the contractors they hire. Corporations who lay off their employees may negotiate job offers for them with outsourcing companies, but the outsourcing companies pay less than the former corporate jobs paid.
The Republican Party Only Cares about Money
If the Republican Party cared about the welfare of the nation and the people, they would adopt truly conservative policies. They would protect the national interest by requiring that corporations keep their factories in the United States, pay workers fair living wages, and stop manipulating the stock markets with massive share buyback plans.
History shows us that the Republicans are the worst possible caretakers of our national economy and welfare. When the 2020 pandemic struck the nation, the Republican Party opposed telling Americans the truth. Many Republican leaders cashed out their stock positions in companies they knew would be harmed by the pandemic.
They opposed a national mask mandate, fought hard to force companies to stay open, and refused to follow the CDC guidelines that were designed to save lives. More than 30 million Americans contracted the Covid-19 virus, and millions of them are now long-hauler Covid victims. Many of those people may never lead normal lives again.
More than half a million Americans died as a result of the Republicans’ refusal to do what was right and necessary.
And now in 2021 after hundreds of thousands of businesses have shut down forever, the Republican Party is depriving millions of laid off workers of vital economic aid. The idea is to force these people to accept low-paying jobs that won’t pay fair living wages. But in a recent survey by CNBC, nearly 9 out of 10 unemployed workers said they had received no job offers.
Republican state governors and politicians don’t care about the misery they create for the working class. They don’t care about the harm they do to the economy. They only care about inflating stock prices so they and their corporate donors can grow rich off stock buybacks.
This is exactly the kind of government the founding fathers feared would develop. Benjamin Franklin warned us that we must keep the republic, because it cannot keep itself. Patriotism founded this country. The love of money is tearing it apart.