@BookerBiro 's daily reflection for August 27, 2026 on Constitution and Class:
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The Constitution and the Question of Class
The Constitution: An Instrument of Class War and a Terrain of Popular Struggle
Today, as Kenya marks sixteen years since the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, we are compelled to pose a fundamental question:
In whose interests does the Supreme Law ultimately function?
A constitution is not a divine text dropped from the heavens, nor is it a neutral arbiter suspended above society. It is a product of society, and society is irreducibly divided into antagonistic classes.
The 2010 Constitution contains important and indispensable democratic gains, forged through decades of popular struggle, underground organisation, resistance against state repression, struggles over land and the sacrifices and spilled blood of the working masses. These gains must be defended with vigilance and determination.
Yet, as Marxist Leninists, we must also confront a fundamental dialectical truth: no constitutional decree can abolish the material relations of production upon which exploitation is founded.
Consider the contradictions.
Legal Equality versus Class Inequality
The law may proclaim formal equality before the courts, yet the nation’s wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a parasitic minority while the overwhelming majority of working people struggle for survival.
Abstract Rights versus Concrete Deprivation
The Constitution may guarantee socio economic rights on paper, while millions remain landless, jobless, homeless and systematically excluded from the material conditions necessary to live with dignity.
Formal Sovereignty versus Imperialist Domination
The Constitution may proclaim national independence and popular sovereignty, while our economy remains structurally shackled to foreign debt, international finance capital and the continuing domination of imperialist interests.
The decisive issue, therefore, is not merely what is inscribed in the constitutional text.
The decisive questions are material and foundational:
Who owns the land?
Who commands the means of production?
Who exercises effective control over state power?
So long as political and economic power remain concentrated in the hands of a ruling class, the Constitution cannot stand above the class struggle. It becomes an instrument through which class power is exercised, contested and transformed.
For the ruling class, the law is used to protect property, preserve privilege and maintain the existing relations of power.
For the oppressed classes, every democratic opening becomes a terrain of struggle.
Thus, the Constitution is not merely a book of rights. In a society divided into classes, it is also a terrain of class war.
Rights are never secured simply because they are codified in ink.
Rights are won through struggle.
Rights are defended through struggle.
Rights are realised only when the working masses are organised, conscious and mobilised for action.
We must therefore defend the democratic gains contained in the Constitution and use every available constitutional right as a weapon in the immediate struggles of the people. But we must do so without constitutional illusions.
The complete liberation of the working class, the poor peasantry and all oppressed masses demands more than progressive words and legal guarantees. It demands a radical and revolutionary transformation of the social and economic foundations upon which exploitation, inequality and neo colonial domination rest.
A Constitution can proclaim freedom.
Only the organised people can make freedom real.
The law may recognise a right.
Only the organised masses can defend it.
The Constitution may promise justice.
Only the struggle of the people can make justice a living reality.
As the African proverb reminds us, until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Likewise, until the working masses hold real political and economic power, the promises of democracy will remain constrained by the class that commands the wealth and the state.
The struggle, therefore, continues.
To defend democratic gains.
To organise the masses.
To deepen political consciousness.
To challenge exploitation.
And to advance towards the complete liberation of the Kenyan people.
A Constitution can proclaim freedom.
Only the organised people can make freedom real.
Aluta Continua!
Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole
General Secretary
Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK)