TraductionTools of totalitarianism : fight against the popular sovereignty
The rise of the masses in History was expressed by their claims for participation and involvement in political activity. But the fear of men of property was accompanied by the erection of barriers and sophisticated and legal hurdles aiming at depriving the masses of any political e against the popular sovereignty expression into the power arena. The strategy of fight initiated by the new ruling class in the United States and in France began early even though the ink of the Declaration of Rights was not yet dried. Albeit their “Declaration of rights”, the Americans revolutionaries and the French Third Estate tried to usurp the popular victory and they in fact did all their best so that to deprive the real actors who were at the origin of the success of the first two democratic revolutions of modern world. The American and French Declaration begins with the assertion that men are free and equal in rights. But when it was the matter of expressing into the political arena this equality of rights, the new usurpers had made a full volte face when they deprived the people of their rights to be source of all sovereignty which reside henceforth in this vague and lumber-room the so called the nation. This change in political ideals has been expressed in the clearest language on the eve of the elections in France to the States-General when Sieyès famous “qu’Est-ce que le Tiers-Etat” placed the source of the sovereignty not in that of the people but in that of the nation identified with the new privileged and propertied class, the Third Estate.
During the discussions about a nex cosntitution for the United States, the framers began their fight against democracy and popular participation in political activity when for example, Sherman opposed the election by teh epople who “should have as little to do with governement as possible” and for gerry for whom the “vils of the country flowed from an excess of democracy”
