“Disenfranchised” means deprived of rights or privileges, especially the right to vote or participate in political decisions. The “Disenfranchised” were typically poor farmers, laborers, debtors, and working-class individuals who lacked property and political power. Common factors included economic hardship, little or no property ownership, debt, and limited political influence. Beard is describing the working class (or lower economic class) — people who did not control wealth or productive property. Their class membership is clear because they owned property, businesses, investments, and financial assets, meaning they controlled wealth and the means of production rather than selling their labor for wages.
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So sorry for the confusion but OpenLab isn’t allowing me to post a response unless I’m responding to someone else. Anyways, when you dig into what Michael Parenti says in Democracy for the Few and what Charles Beard argues in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, the message jumps out, the Constitution wasn’t for everybody. It mostly came from this circle of wealthy white men: landowners, investors, merchants. They had property, bonds, businesses, factories, ships, etc. Since they already held so much, they built the government to keep all that safe.
I can’t just gloss over the fact that the founders barely spoke for most people living here then. The working class? Poor folks? Small farmers, laborers, tenants, women, and especially enslaved Black people? They were completely shut out. Black people actually weren’t just ignored, they were counted as property. The whole system, Constitution included, was designed to protect wealth and keep certain people in power, not to make things fair for everyone.
If you look at the class structure back then, it actually looks a lot like what we see now. Wealthy elites still pull plenty of strings in politics and business. But back then, the system was even tighter. Large groups weren’t just marginalized; they were outright banned from voting or holding any kind of power.
The people who wrote the Constitution didn’t trust regular citizens with real power. They worried that if poor people or the majority got too much say, they’d pass laws that threatened the rich. So, they built in layers of checks, indirect elections, all these barriers meant to keep control in the same old hands.
When I look at what’s happening in America now, it honestly feels like not much has changed. A lot of people still believe the wealthy and powerful are calling the shots. With all the wars, genocide, files and scandals tied to the rich, it’s tough not to think the system is rigged for those at the top. We call ourselves a democracy, but sometimes it just feels like an exclusive club for the elite. That’s really what Parenti and Beard are talking about, the power of money and wealthy interests have always shaped American politics, right from the beginning.