James Madison and Fidel
James Madison and Fidel
The long march of history from Philadelphia to Havana
It may appear that James Madison and Fidel have little in common. But superficial appearances can be deceiving. In reality, both played leading roles, in political practice and in theoretical interpretation, in revolutions that defined their epochs, revolutions that are central to human progress.
The American Revolution declared its independence on a foundation of republican principles, and it launched an armed struggle to attain political independence in practice. When the original thirteen independent states experienced in political practice that the central government formed by the Articles of Confederation was too weak to defend and protect republican principles, they created a Constitutional Convention that debated and wrote a new Constitution, creating the institutions and structures necessary for protecting republican government as well as individual liberties.
The American Revolution was central to the transition from the age of monarchy to the age of modern constitutional republics. Although maligned by theoretically and politically immature critics for their tolerance of slavery and racial and gender inequality, the American founders established the concepts and institutions that would ensure the gradual abolition of slavery and the ultimate protection of the political and civil rights of all, regardless of race, gender, or class, thus demonstrating their enlightened projection toward the future from their particular historical context.
The Cuban Revolution was forged from the colonial situation, and it has played a leading role in the worldwide transition from the epoch of colonialism and imperialism, in which republican governments are dominant, to an epoch defined by the protection of the sovereign equality of nations and mutually beneficial trade among nations, in which people’s democracies protect not only the political and civil rights but also the social and economic rights of citizens. The characteristics of the revolution from the other world of the colonized are not well understood in the modern Western republics, because the republics are waging multidimensional war against the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist revolutions, just as the monarchs waged war against republican movements. But there is much disinterested empirical evidence indicating that the transition to a post-imperialist and post-republican world is well underway, with the people’s democracy of Cuba playing a leading role, just as the American Revolution played a leading role in the transition from monarchy to representative democracy and from colonialism to neocolonialism and imperialism.
Thus, the American and Cuban revolutions played leading roles in guiding humanity to more advanced stages in human history. As leaders in these processes, James Madison and Fidel held in common the obligation to reflect on the fundamental principles of political philosophy and modern political science, being forged in political practice by their respective revolutions.
The insights of the framers of the American Constitution are made evident in an on-line course on The Federalist Papers offered by Hillsdale College. The course demonstrates the importance of studying The Federalist Papers and arriving to appreciate the insight of the framers of the American Constitution, particularly important at a time in which humanity is undergoing a similar transition, one involving the transition from republican democracies to anti-imperialist people’s democracies.
“Federalist Principles: An important contribution by Hillsdale College,” 9/3/2024
The Federalist Papers make clear that the American founders felt the need to construct institutional checks on the behavior of politicians, because they believed that human beings are not by nature virtuous. Here the American Federalists departed from the ancient Greeks, who believed that human beings, if given a proper moral education, could rise above private concerns. On this point, the Cuban Revolution stands with the Greeks, with qualifications. The Cuban political system of people’s democracy maintains that, if there is equality of educational opportunity, and if a vanguard party formed by those who have most internalized their moral lessons is constantly present in the daily life of the various institutions, modeling and instructing, then a virtuous people can be formed.
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Delegated government checks majority factions and rule by passions
Madison’s Federalist 10 has become the most famous of the Federalist Papers, and it is described by the Hillsdale College professors as the most original work of American political theory. In Federalist 10, Madison introduces the important concept of faction. “By a faction,” he writes, “I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the right of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” He maintained that the tendency for the emergence of factions is sown in human nature, in that human beings have different and unequal faculties, including different and unequal faculties in the acquisition of property, a condition that gives rise to different sentiments, views, interests, and parties with respect to the governmental responsibility to protect property.
Madison identified different interests that form from the unequal distribution of property, including a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, and many lesser interests as well as a difference between creditors and debtors. These different interests, he noted, give rise to different social classes. The primary task of modern legislation is to regulate these various interests with the intention of ensuring that they have a just balance. The legislation must address such questions as: To what extent should domestic manufacturing be encouraged through restrictions of foreign manufacturing? Such questions are decided differently by the landed and manufacturing classes, and neither does so with sole regard for the public good or for justice.
Such are the causes of faction, Madison argued, and the causes of faction can never be removed. He therefore maintained that structures must be developed which will control the effects of factions, because whenever a faction consists of the majority of citizens, this majority faction will sacrifice the public good and the rights of the minority in defense of its interests. Some means must be developed that can prevent a majority faction from putting into effect schemes of oppression. We know from our knowledge of human nature, Madison argued, that moral and religious education cannot be relied upon as an effective check on ruling passions, and enlightened leaders will not always be present.
A pure democracy, which Madison defined as “a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person,” has no structure for the resolution of the problem of majority faction; such societies have shown themselves to be “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” Some political theories have advocated this type of government, believing that complete equality in political rights would produce complete equality in possessions, passions, and opinions, which Madison considered an idealist or utopian view. But independent of the question of whether or not pure democracies can constrain majority factions, Madison was dealing with real political possibilities, and the creation of small democratic societies with all persons directly participating in the administration of government was not a practical possibility in the commercially expanding English-speaking societies of North America in the late eighteenth century.
On the other hand, Madison believed, the checking of majority factions is possible in a republic that administers a large territory, where the administration of government is delegated to a small number of citizens who are elected by the people. These elected delegates will tend to refine and enlarge the views of the people, because the elected delegates are more likely to possess the patriotism, commitment to justice, and wisdom necessary to discern the true interest of the country. Under a scheme of delegated government, “the public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.”
Madison’s argument in defense of delegated government applies perfectly to the Cuban system of people’s democracy. In the Cuban election of delegates to the municipal, provincial, and national assemblies, the people are called to elect, not individuals who defend a particular party, interest, or passion, but delegates who are committed to the good of the nation and the people. And the high quality of the debates among the delegates and deputies in the people’s assemblies is empirically observable. In these debates, the refined and enlarged voice of the people can be heard, as the delegates and deputies seek consensus with respect to social justice and the good of the nation. Moreover, the example of the elected delegates and deputies of the people is infectious. When the people meet in direct assemblies of the people—in neighborhood nomination assemblies and in popular consultations—they often display the most virtuous side of themselves.
Thus, what James Madison envisioned for the people of the United States in 1787 has become a reality in revolutionary socialist Cuba today, in the practice of people’s democracy. The elected delegates and deputies of the people consider it their duty to speak not on behalf of factions, but in the name of the people themselves. And Madison was right. The key to its achievement is a stress not on direct democracy, even though the direct expression of the people is a dimension of the political process, but on delegated democracy, in which the will of the people is expressed in a mediated form, through enlightened and committed leaders elected directly and indirectly by the people.
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Checks and balances of constitutional governmental and people’s powers
In Federalist 39, Madison writes that
we may define a republic to be . . . a government which derives all its power directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited time, or during good behavior [in the case of justices with lifetime tenure]. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion or a favored class of it. . .. It is sufficient for such a government that the persons administering it be appointed, either directly or indirectly by the people. (Italics in original).
Nevertheless, the power of the people cannot be unchecked. Madison maintained that in a republic, the people are sovereign, but the people can become tyrannical.
In Federalist 49, Madison refers to “the danger of disturbing the public tranquility interesting too strongly the public passions.” This is a danger, because “it is the reason, alone, of the public that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.” Moreover, Madison argues, the legislative branch, whose members are distributed among the people and dwell among the people, is the most susceptible to be affected by the passions of the people. This often leads the legislature to aggrandizement of its power at the expense of the executive and judicial branches.
Before this threat, the proposed Constitution, Madison argues in Federalist 51, establishes an interior structure of government that enables each of the branches to keep the others in their proper places. This division of power establishes a structural obstacle to the rule of passions over the government. Madison sees this as a dialectical process, in which, on the one hand, the people, through the election of representatives, have control over the government; but on the other hand, the government itself, through the division of its powers, checks the unreasoned passions of the people.
The separation of governmental powers as a check on the passions of the people has special application in the legislative branch. In Madison’s view, legislative encroachment of the powers of the executive has been a central problem of the states under the Articles of Confederation. He maintained that legislative power in the states was extending the sphere of its activity, drawing all power to itself. He cites the case of Rhode Island, where a legislature controlled by debtors issued paper money, deliberately stimulating high levels of inflation, making it easier for debt-ridden farmers to pay off creditors.
Therefore, Madison explains, the proposed constitution divides the legislative power into the House and the Senate, with the representatives in the House elected directly by the people, and the Senators elected indirectly by the people, inasmuch as they are elected by state legislators, and they are expected to function in part as representatives of states in the federal government.
The Hillsdale College professors stress that the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution designed an elaborate constitutional machine, a system in which each department keeps the others in their proper place. The framers did not presume that the holders of high office would have virtue, so they designed the division of powers in such a manner to ensure that each will be a check on the other. Each would possess the necessary constitutional means to resist the encroachment of the others. This design reflected the serious doubts held by the framers with respect to the capacity of public officials to set aside passions and private interests in order to defend the common good.
On the other hand, the framers believed that elected public officials, although not virtuous, would be inclined to carry out their duties honorably, in order to ensure their reputations. The Constitution presumes the capacity for public spiritedness by some, and it opens up space for statesmanship for these few. It harnesses the pride of the most ambitious men in service of the public good.
Like the American system of representative democracy, the Cuban system of people’s democracy also is characterized by checks and balances, but it was created and has evolved in a fundamentally different context. In the founding of the United States, the framers of the Constitution were attempting to create the structures for viable republican government, in a context in which their initial attempts to create republican government, during the period of the Articles of Confederation, were characterized by problems so severe that the republican project itself was at risk of collapse. Especially important was the weakness of the federal government with respect to commercial regulation and national defense; and the tendency of the legislatures of the state government to be controlled by factions and passions.
The construction of the Cuban revolutionary government emerged from an experience of representative democracy that was far from happy, expressing itself in the context of U.S. neocolonial control. From the vantage point of the Cuban Revolution, the biggest threat to republican government and democracy came from the interests of the national estate bourgeoisie, the national industrial bourgeoisie, and U.S. corporations, which together had control of the Cuban government from 1902 to 1959, except for a brief period in 1933. This was the power that the Cuban Revolution had to check, and it did so by eliminating representative democracy and establishing people’s democracy, characterized by direct and indirect elections to municipal, provincial, and national assemblies. In people’s democracy, power at the national level is concentrated in the National Assembly of People’s Power, the highest political and constitutional authority in the nation, a unicameral body elected indirectly by the people, with the participation of delegates from various mass organizations. The executive branch, including the President and the Prime-Minister of the Republic, are elected by the legislative branch, and they must hold accounts before the National Assembly. The judiciary is independent in the sense that its rulings are final, but its highest members are selected by the National Assembly, to which it must render accounts.
In the Cuban system of people’s democracy, above and beyond the check on the political-economic power of the capitalist class and on the economic interests of foreign powers, there also is an interior system of checks and balances. There is, in the first place, a moral and educational force in Cuban society, emerging alongside the evolving structures of people’s power. This moral force was represented at first by the pedagogical leadership of Fidel, which was gradually replaced over the years with the pedagogical authority of the Communist Party of Cuba, which functions with moral authority to guide, but without the legal or political authority to decide. And in the second place, there is a parallel political and moral voice, formed by the mass organizations of workers, women, students, farmers, and neighborhoods, which constitute alternative discourses, and which play a central role in the election of the delegates and deputies of people’s power.
Therefore, in Cuba there are three powers in balance. The people, which constitute the alpha and the omega of Cuban revolutionary society, on whose participation and support everything depends, who are organized in mass organizations. The Party, which educates and exhorts both the people and the National Assembly, maintaining intimate ties with both, and providing theoretically advanced and politically mature explanations of the past, present, and future. And the National Assembly of People’s Power, the highest political, legal, and constitutional authority, which mediates and expands the voice of the people through delegates and deputies elected directly and indirectly by the people.
People’s Democracy in Cuba: A vanguard political-economic system
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The legacy of James Madison
Madison, it should be noted, was not expressing opposition to the implementation of majority political will; his goal was to check the power of majority factions, which by definition, negate the rights of the majority and subvert the common good. He was opposed to idealist government proposals based in naïve notions of human nature.
Madison has been presented by some as favoring republican government and being opposed to democratic government. But his writings in The Federalist Papers reveal a man who is opposed not to democracy, but to the capturing of governmental powers by interested sectors that are skilled at appealing to unreasonable passions, thus leading governmental policy in directions that are against the interests of the nation and the people. He fully embraced the democratic principles that the people have inalienable rights and the people are sovereign, but he believed that republican institutional checks and balances were the best guarantee that the sovereignty of the people and the rights of citizens would be protected. In addition, the new Constitution that he promoted and defended contained the structures to ensure the gradual abolition of slavery and the gradual protection of the full political and civil rights of all, regardless of race, gender, or class. Madison, along with Thomas Jefferson, was a strong champion of religious liberty and the elimination of state-established churches, which was a progressive cause of the era. During the presidential administration of George Washington, Madison and Jefferson were opposed to Hamilton’s proposals, as Secretary of the Treasury, to establish a national bank and to stimulate industrial manufacturing, maintaining that the proposals favored moneyed interests. Madison and Jefferson were also opposed to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the Adams Administration, believing that the natural rights of citizens were non-negotiable even in times of war, and that the act was a dangerous precedent, empowering the government to violate the rights of citizens in the name of national security.
Ultra-leftist critiques of Madison, rooted in idealist theory and political immaturity, combined with rightist and sometimes ultra-leftist critiques of Fidel as authoritarian, rooted in insufficient empirical observation, have had the result that the political culture of the United States is incapable of discerning the long march of history from monarchical empires to imperialist republics to anti-imperialist people’s democracies. Such a view of human evolution is in general terms what Marx discerned, although with an understandable nineteenth century ethnocentric twist. As the worldwide transition continues to unfold, we will increasingly arrive to appreciate the insights of Madison and Fidel, the historical importance of the cities of Philadelphia and Havana, and the fundamental historical fact that the one came from the other. It is of course one of the great ironies of human history that one of these exceptional men was the son of a Virginia planter of English descent and the other was the son of a Caribbean planter of Spanish descent, which ought to instruct us concerning the need to avoid superficial interpretations.
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