This Interview with Professor Camila Vergara by Tom Bauer was published by Truthout on January 4, 2021. A virtual Q&A with Vergara is scheduled for February 3, 2021.
We are beginning a new year, yet the 2020 election is still raising questions about the future of democracy in the United States. Professor Camila Vergara is a postdoctoral research scholar and lecturer at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia Law School. She has written an important book, Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic, and says the U.S. is an “oligarchic democracy,” a system designed to serve some but not all. In this interview, Dr. Vergara discusses how we can implement real democracy, beginning at the local level.
Tom Bauer: Why does Joe Biden say U.S. democracy is the best system in the world?
Camila Vergara: The representative system that we call democracy was established for social hierarchies to be preserved and for elites who govern to be insulated from popular pressures. The founders had money and resources, and they wanted “the people” kept far away from power so they were not forced to redistribute. This was explicit in the design. The object of the liberal state was the preservation of private property. The working classes are always going to try and elect someone that will redistribute property. They needed a political system which would filter popular demands. They were afraid of the “tyranny of majority” when the real threat was the power of the wealthy. It was rotten from the beginning.
So, this is how the system is rigged.
Yes. Systemic corruption is a constitutional issue. I measure it by what the system is producing. The constitution organizes power, and power is paired with wealth. We can think of the level of inequality in a society as the degree of corruption that society has. If a big chunk of the GDP is being appropriated by the 1 percent, and the majority of the people are being relatively dispossessed, then the system is not working for the majority, but for the 1 percent.
The best way to preserve the system is to leave everything as it is. Corruption is not just an action; it is also negligence.
Does democracy work at all?
We are not a democracy, we are an oligarchic democracy, a system with free and fair elections, and free speech [within certain limits], but run by the powerful few for the benefit of the powerful few. This is not done in a direct manner. They might say they are preserving a system or fail to change the system to benefit the majority. They receive money from corporations to not do anything because the best way to preserve the system is to leave everything as it is. Corruption is not just an action; it is also negligence.
By negligence, do you mean the signs of systemic corruption are revealed by what isn’t done? By societal neglect like letting people die and environmental racism? And not protecting people from police violence? Not changing the laws?
Laws are never neutral. A law never benefits everyone the same. Here in the United States, police kill Black people in the streets on a daily basis. But I don’t feel fear, even if I’m not American, because I’m white. The right to life or to live free from fear is not equally distributed. Moreover, the idea that our legislators are these neutral people who will make the best law is just absurd. It doesn’t happen. There is always an agenda. We need to think about corruption more broadly, not merely as when a public official receives money in exchange for benefits, as it is currently understood. Corruption is built into the structure. It is how the system works. It is false that we are in a democracy and that the system works for the majority. The framers of the Constitution sold us an ideal that has never materialized. The ideal of formal equality is an illusion. We’re not equal in society, only on paper. We need to re-politicize inequality because inequality is not natural but a by-product of our constitutional frameworks.
The law serves the elites, in a system which was designed to serve elites, and this is why the system maintains inequality. So, are we going to be able to do anything about things like systemic racism and climate change before we solve this problem of systemic corruption?
I don’t think so. Think about the problem of the environment. It needs to be solved, people are all on board, but the governments are not doing enough, and they’re never going to do enough. In an oligarchic democracy, the oligarchs have the grip on power. The congress and the laws that are made, the judges and how they apply the law — everything works for the benefit of the few. Not because individual judges are bought, not only because special interests buy individual lawmakers; it’s because the laws are made and applied in an unequal manner. They come predetermined. It’s not about the specific judge being a racist, it’s because the law allows for inequality and discrimination.
A republic that does not give institutions to the common people to resist oppression ends up decaying into an oligarchy, a government of the few for the benefit of the few.
So, without solving the problem of how to make laws able to foster equality and control the power of oligarchs, who benefit from the current state of things, it will be difficult to achieve radical change.
If you want to tackle climate change, and you want to tackle it in a manner that is going to avert destruction, you need the people themselves making the judgement. The government cannot be trusted because the government is oligarchic. It is in the grip of oligarchy. It doesn’t matter who you elect because they are not independent. You would have to change the elite in all the institutions, and that is more difficult than organizing popular power.
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