Inventing the People

Download or read book Inventing the People written by Edmund Sears Morgan and published by New York : Norton. This book was released on 1988 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morgan argues, in effect, that representative democracy is a tool to bolster rule by the powerful few over the many; the majority are thus led to believe they control their own destiny. In this quietly subversive rereading of our history, American colonists perfected the fiction of popular rule by involving voters in extravagant electoral campaigns and by insisting that elected representatives derived their power from their constituents. Meanwhile, elitist colonial rulers who owned considerable property pulled strings to get their way. --from vendor description