Is water a right?

Today the lawyers for the city of Flint and the state of Michigan will argue that a federal judge should dismiss a class action lawsuit on the grounds that there is no Constitutional right to potable water!

This may be literally true. The Constitution was ratified in 1788. The first water systems weren’t even built until 1796 (Boston) and 1800 (New York) but they were privately-owned, for-profit entities and they were inadequate from day one. New York’s Manhattan Company (today, Chase Bank) was mainly a legal cover for Aaron Burr to enter the banking business in competition with Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of New York (today, BNY Mellon).

Philadelphia was the first city to realize that private capital would not protect its people from cyclic cholera outbreaks. It established a municipal water system in 1801. New York didn’t begin construction on the Croton system, nor Boston on the Cochituate aqueduct until after the devastating cholera epidemic of 1842.

These facts tell me these things:
1) The US Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention things that didn’t exist when it was written
2) Private capital always takes care of itself, not the public good
3) Government has always been slow to respond to public need
But I already knew those things; didn’t you?

We live in a time when market ideologues and vampire capitalists (often the same people) are actively moving to privatize our schools, our roads, and our criminal justice system. They have made beginnings on all these things. In some states, private toll roads were built so people who could afford it could bypass rush-hour traffic. Well-to-do felons can pay to go to a better class of prison. Profiteers dream of a dystopian future in which firefighters will ask for your credit card before saving you and your home. 

The framers of our Constitution may not have imagined a society that had to provide clean water (or clean air, or fire service, or schools, or paved roads, or electricity, or health care, or WiFi) to its members. That doesn’t mean that we can’t imagine such things. Nor does it mean that we are incapable of seeing the horrors that await us without these things.

The vampires’ publicists threaten us about the “danger” of socialism. The vampires’ privately-owned politicians cut funding to public services and then, when they are - predictably - in disrepair, they shout: “Failing! Privatize!” That doesn’t mean that we are incapable of seeing their hustle. Nor does it mean that we are blind to how helping one another benefits all of us. It is worth noting here that their dreams of profits in private toll roads have ended in failure: bankruptcies and state takeovers. Chris Whittle's dream of for-profit schools also failed.

The vampire capitalists don’t recognize any “us.” They prefer a war of all against all. Right now they are in the ascendant. That doesn’t mean there is no “we.” That doesn’t mean that WE cannot prevail. Water bottlers say we have no right to clean water at all. The chairman of Nestle says water is a commodity, like any other food, and that we should pay for it. They profit from drought. They profit from climate change. We can say that we do have a right to water.

What is socialism? Socialism says that the people of Flint have a right to clean water, regardless of some politicians' desire to cut costs and ruin services. Socialism says that the people of West Virginia have a right to clean water, regardless of some private company's desire to save money and poison the rivers. Socialism says that the people of Fryeburg, Maine have a right to clean water, regardless of some bottler's desire to pump it out and sell it elsewhere.

The Constitution doesn't mention water. We do.