Magazzino

Occasionally, however, the political class expresses itself
in unmistakable terms, unintentionally disclosing the true nature of our
political economy. In January, in Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission, the United States
Supreme Court held that restrictions on
independent corporate expenditures in political campaigns are
unconstitutional infringements on the freedom of speech. Much of the
judicial literature on the
subject, including Justice Anthony Kennedy’s
majority opinion in Citizens United, simply substitutes the words
“speech” and “speak” for the words “spend” and “buy.” Corporations,
according to the court’s majority faction, are speakers,
ersons who
have constitutional rights. When they spend, they speak. Kennedy admits
that favoritism and influence can result from campaign spending but he
asserts that far from being objectionable or avoidable, favoritism and
influ
nce are the essence of representative politics, that it is right
and natural that a representative should favor certain “voters and
contributors.” Indeed, he continues, “it is well understood that a
substantial and legitimate reason, if
not the only reason, to cast a
vote for, or to make a contribution to, one candidate over another is
that the candidate will respond by producing those political outcomes
the supporter favors. Democracy is premised on responsiveness.” W
th
admirable frankness if less than impeccable logic, Kennedy equates not
only the act of spending money with speech but also the act of making a
campaign contribution with voting. The idea of corruption resulting from
the quid pr
quo of contribution for legislation troubles him not at
all. “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore,” he repeats,
as if a lie may be converted into truth by mere reiteration, “will not
cause the electorate to lose faith in
our democracy.”

If there were any doubts about what sort of government we
live under, Kennedy’s opinion should lay them to rest. Indeed, civic
virtue has now completed its centuries-long metamorphosis from the
republic
n ideal of the free citizen-ruler to the degraded economic norm
of the consumer buying on credit; virtue for us is no more than a
spotless credit rating. Thus the terror of a credit crisis; it strikes
at the very foundation of public pe
sonality. The more abstract and
financialized our commercial expressions, the more virtuous they become;
corporations, fictional beings of pure commerce, predicated on our
collective fantasies, are now the highest expression of politica
art.
Corporations are evolving under judicial legislation into the perfect,
immortal citizen-rulers of our capitalist democracy, a virtual republic
in which all political speech is advertising and all real citizens are
commercial
fictions.

It is a curious metaphysical doctrine, is it not?
Corporations are artificial beings, theoretically immortal, which come
into existence by means of state charters and reproduce like amoebas by
splitting into
ubsidiaries; midwifed by lawyers, they combine in
bizarre mating rituals called mergers; they are owned, like slaves, by
shareholders who buy and sell their chattel daily; and they possess
constitutional rights. Oddly, however, our corp
rate citizens are denied
the right to vote. By what logic can a corporation be granted
personhood and the constitutional right to speak money, yet be denied
the constitutional right to vote? How can our system permit these
corpora
e persons to be enslaved through ownership? Does not the force
of all logic and morality require us either to deny the personhood of
corporations, or to grant them the right to vote and to free them from
slavery? If we insist on maintai
ing their status as persons, at least
let us give ourselves the power, if they commit serious crimes against
property, to put corporations to death.

Given the weird First Amendment metaphysics to which a
majority of ou
Supreme Court justices subscribe, it is obvious that
mere
campaign-finance reform is a dead letter, notwithstanding
President Obama’s pious noises following the Citizens United verdict. It
seems only a matter of time and litigation before all limits to
political expenditures are erased in the
ame of free speech; the
radical doctrines of the Roberts Court admit no foreseeable
limit. Even
so, the Republican Party and its ideological lawyers in the Federalist
Society may yet have reason to regret their determined advocacy on
behalf of the money-equals-speech heresy. Obama outspent McCain
two-to-one durin
the last election, and there is no reason to believe
that all or even most corporate spending will ultimately be channeled to
the party of Abraham Lincoln and Sarah Palin. On the contrary,
Democrats are likely to benefit as much or mor
than the G.O.P., even
after Kennedy, Scalia, et al. finally get their chance to liberate
flesh-and-blood persons, especially that wise and judicious 1 percent
who wish to make their money speak, from the fetters of financial
cens
rship and disenfranchisement. As Obama’s purported reforms, in
health care no less than in finance, have demonstrated, the Democrats
have made certain that their
contributors will secure enviable

returns on their political investments.

Citizens United is not the cause of our troubles; it merely
highlights the essential character of our system, and for that we should
be grateful. Nevertheless, given this judicial perversion of the First
Amendment, our only sure remedy is constitutional. The Democratic
Party’s lamentable DISCLOSE Act, which this summer failed to muster
sixty votes in the Senate, would do nothing, if passed, to curb the flow
of cash and the further disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the
citizenry. It is no great burden for large corporations and wealthy
individuals to hire more clerks to file additional disclosure forms, and
under current law we already know a great deal about who buys and sells
our commodified rulers and their derivative legislation. Far more
robust is the Fair Elections Now Act, which would establish a system of
public financing of elections, yet even if it survived a Supreme Court
review, such a law would fail to contain the disproportionate power of
the wealthy. In an ideal system of public campaign financing, in which
all political speech has been equalized by law, in which political
advertising is banned and persuasion stripped of its commercial
aspect—the corporate businessman and the millionaire (not to mention the
billionaire) would still stand taller than the common citizen. In fact,
as the political theorist John P. McCormick has argued, the wealthy are
likely to dominate any political regime that chooses its magistrates
and lawmakers solely by means of election.

Republican theorists have traditionally recognized the
centrality of economic class in politics and in the design of stable
republican institutions. Past republics, in antiquity and in the
Renaissance, were particularly concerned to contain the power of the
rich and prevent them from dominating the institutions of government.
Historically, it has been the insolence and dominating ambition of the
wealthy that has led to the decline of great republics, not the
revolutionary or leveling fervor of the lower classes, who mostly wish
to be left to their own devices. The Roman tribunes vigorously defended
the rights and privileges of the plebs against the depredations of the
rich, and the tribunate had the power to veto actions proposed by the
Senate and to accuse patricians of political crimes. Florentine
constitutional thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco
Guicciardini gave much thought to such questions, and a variety of
devices—including lotteries and class quotas, often in combination with
election—were considered and employed. No doubt these classical
republicans would consider our Constitution’s silence on the matter of
class a debilitating and perhaps fatal defect.

It is perfectly legitimate for the rich to pursue their own
interests; what is not legitimate is the current exclusion of all other
interests from the reason of state. A constitutional amendment
establishing public financing of elections would be an obvious and
reasonable first step toward correcting this imbalance, as would an
amendment stripping corporations of their rights as persons. Even better
would be a convention, in which we might attempt to introduce new
constitutional devices designed to more equitably distribute access to
political deliberation.

Admittedly, however, the prospects for a constitutional
remedy appear dim. Is it possible that the majority of Americans whose
interests are not being served have no political will? As James Madison
asked long ago: Are we utterly without civic virtue? If so, then we are
truly wretched. “To suppose that any form of government will secure
liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical
idea.”

Although we have always benefited from the activities of
public-spirited individuals, even men and women of great wealth who
recognize that greed as a principle of public conduct often leads to
perverse outcomes, the United States Constitution was emphatically not
founded on the assumption that either citizens or magistrates could be
trusted to act selflessly. If my argument can be taken as a call to
republican virtue, it is only so within the modern realist framework
devised by Madison and his colleagues in 1787, according to whom
government is a response to humanity’s inherent wickedness. Men are not
angels, Obama notwithstanding. A properly American call to republican
virtue is not a utopian exhortation that our citizens cast aside their
private and selfish interests and embark on a course of austere
political action, with their eyes fixed on some transcendent public good
apart from their own. No, what is required is that Americans take a
stand on behalf of their selfish material interests and against those of
the monopolies and transnational corporations that have captured our
institutions of government. The paradoxical character of our popular
corruption is that the people have become slothfully selfless, too
absorbed by their ephemeral entertainments and petty cultural disputes
to assert their self-interest against the plunderers who rule them.

Surely, however, the American people have not become so
servile that they will forever submit to the rule of 1 percent. Surely
we are capable of recognizing that the perverse corporate regime that
has arisen in our country is a usurpation of popular government. Our
Constitution unquestionably recognizes the right of a people to alter
its mode of government; we have done so twenty-seven times. We may do so
again. We may throw off these bonds and provide new guards for our
future security.