John Mage wrote:
>
>
> But the whole point is that claiming that the wording of Article V
> "prohibits" this or that is an example of the fetishism and sterile
> wordchopping that one hopes Lazare is committed to demolishing. That
> fetishism is real, and is the problem we need to address; Article V is
> words whose "meaning" depends entirely on the use to which they are put
> in specific historical circumstances. Hating the Constitution is I fear
> as much fetishism as revering it.
>
I picked the following formulation up from (I think) an MR Review of the Month 30 years or so ago. One can classify "reforms" in several categories, but one crucial category consists of those reforms of which it may be said, "If the working class was strong enough to achieve _that_ reform, it would be strong enough win an insurrection." It strikes me that most discussions of what the Constitution does or does not permit tend to drift into the area of "If we could do that, why should we bother? We can toss the whole damn thing, not just the election of Senators, but the very existence of a system of checks and balances, into the ashcan."
> john mage