Slavery, Property & Elite Rule: Robert Ovetz on How the Constitution Protects the Ruling Class

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On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with author and educator Robert Ovetz about his new book, We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few, which offers up a historical analysis of the world and people who produced the Constitution and how it was designed to protect property, slavery, and colonial-ruling class domination, not help facilitate the ‘will of the people.’

First looking at the so-called “Founding Fathers” themselves, who like George Washington, were some of the richest men in the colonies, we map out the class interests of the original framers and how these interests were informed by the slave trade and systematic theft of Indigenous land through settler colonialism.

We then talk about how the Constitution was designed not to facilitate the democratic control and organization of society, but instead to keep power in the hands of an elite class. As one of the founding fathers John Jay stated, “The people that own the country ought to govern it.” Throughout this discussion, Ovetz argues that moreover, the Constitution was designed so that by and large it would be difficult for the majority to change it, thus preserving and protecting capital and property.

As the Constitution remains for many the yardstick of freedom across much of the political landscape, we hope that this conversation re-frames the discussion in ways which allow us to rethink how a different world might be constructed outside of the confines of the settler-colonial project and capitalist social relations.

More Info: We the Elites on Pluto Press, Robert Ovetz on Twitter and Robert Ovetz on It’s Going Down talking about insurrectionary working-class history.

photo: @ECWJAX on Twitter, Tattoo by Omar Cruz