OVETZ: In order for us to understand why the economic majority
cannot get what it wants, we have to understand how the Constitution
was designed by the economic elites of the late 18th century to do what I call
‘constrain political democracy and prevent economic democracy’.
And as your listeners have heard you talk about for for many years,
is that we need economic democracy
in order to transform the way we govern ourselves.
But unfortunately, our constitutional system was designed
with numerous what I call ‘minority checks’
in order to provide the opportunity for the economic elite,
the ruling class, to be able to block any change that it opposes.
So to get back to your question, when Republicans and conservatives
talk about their interpretation of the Constitution, essentially
they're saying, well, the Constitution was designed to protect
the capitalist economic minority
and those changes that you want sorry,
but it's opposed by those who fund us and those who back us.
And so you can't have it. WOLFF: Why have
generations of American majorities
accepted a system
that works the way you just described it?
Give us your insights because you've studied it.
Why do we as a people
accept and perpetuate this arrangement?
OVETZ: That's an excellent question, Rick.
And I have to say, as somebody who's been involved in in numerous movements,
labor organizing for almost three decades,
we are constantly
dealing with hope and disappointment:
our hope that ultimately the system will respond
to the overwhelming demands of the majority and that it can be
changed, and over and over again, we're disappointed.
And our system is designed in such a way that it builds up
a new sense of hope every two, four and six years when elections occur.
People get excited.
They back candidates who they believe will make change.
And lo and behold, they either don't get elected
or they get elected and then suddenly they disappoint.
And we become disenchanted and alienated from the process.
And we turn away for a while until things get bad and even worse.
And then we look back at the system and the process starts all over again.
And so I think part of the reason why
we can't get the change that we need, except every few generations
when there is an immense uprising, an outpouring, a mass movement
that can't be ignored, is that we get locked into the political cycle
and we forget about the history
of every other attempt at bringing about change
and how it ends up getting swallowed up and compromised
through as a result of these numerous minority checks.
Now, there have been periods in American history where immense
changes come about, and you've talked about numerous examples of that.
For example, reconstruction after the Civil War.
But it takes massive disruption.
It takes civil wars and economic depressions
and mass strikes and mass protests to force those
inside the halls of government to respond to those demands.
But even then, we get small incremental changes and reforms that ultimately over
the years become rewritten and killed
by what I call death by a thousand cuts.
And so it's a very excellent question, and it's something
that anyone who's involved in political change has to confront, that our system
was designed to constrain political democracy and prevent economic democracy.
And until we confront that problem in our system of governance,
we're not going to be able to make the big changes we need to solve
the huge global crises that we face right now.