Constitutions aren’t purely idealist, any governing organization needs a set of meta rules to help structure itself. It’s a very practical technology, and the only structures that don’t have them tend to be personal dictatorships of some kind (absolute monarchs and small business owners and such). Of course the Constitution is always subordinate to the collective desires of the ruling class (who can choose to ignore or distort it as needed to maintain their class position), but it can be very effective in limiting the individual desires of particular rulers (though, as we’re seeing, this benefit can become ineffective over time)
I don’t disagree that constitutions in themselves are useful, I just believe that rewriting a constitution doesn’t change shit usually unless it comes with regime change, which is the important part.
Fully agree, and I would add that most of the examples of rewriting constitutions I can think of are usually a downgrade, since the ruling class is dominant in government more often than not. Like the most likely way the US Constitution is going to be rewritten in the near term is if the GOP passes their constitutional convention bullshit in 2/3 of states
Constitutions aren’t purely idealist, any governing organization needs a set of meta rules to help structure itself. It’s a very practical technology, and the only structures that don’t have them tend to be personal dictatorships of some kind (absolute monarchs and small business owners and such). Of course the Constitution is always subordinate to the collective desires of the ruling class (who can choose to ignore or distort it as needed to maintain their class position), but it can be very effective in limiting the individual desires of particular rulers (though, as we’re seeing, this benefit can become ineffective over time)
I don’t disagree that constitutions in themselves are useful, I just believe that rewriting a constitution doesn’t change shit usually unless it comes with regime change, which is the important part.
Fully agree, and I would add that most of the examples of rewriting constitutions I can think of are usually a downgrade, since the ruling class is dominant in government more often than not. Like the most likely way the US Constitution is going to be rewritten in the near term is if the GOP passes their constitutional convention bullshit in 2/3 of states