PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW

Translated from the Russian by Sergei Sossinsky Designed by Yevgeny Antonenkov

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CONTENTS

© Progress Publishers 1988 Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

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ISBN 5-01-000526-3

Foreword........................................... 5

Introduction......................................... 7

Chapter One.

Origins of the Two-Party System............... 26

Chapter Two.

The First Test: the Two-Party System at the Threshold

of the 19th Century .......................44

Chapter Three. In Search of the Optimal Pattern: the First Party Realignment (1816-1828) ..................... 66

Chapter Four. The Rise of New National Parties: the Democrats and

the Whigs .............................. 85

Chapter Five.

The Crisis of the Two-Party System in the 1850s .... 105

Chapter Six.

Political Parties During the Civil War (1861-1865) .... 128

Chapter Seven. Political Parties in the Reconstruction Period (1865-

1877).................................150

Chapter Eight. From Reconstruction to Big Business: Principal Trends in the Evolution of the Two-Party System in the Late 1870s and 1880s .........................155

Chapter Nine.

The Two-Party System Against the Antimonopoly

Movements of the 1890s ....................178

Chapter Ten.

The Two-Party System in the Progressive Era.......199

Chapter Eleven. The Two-Party System: from World War I to the Great

Depression .............................g21

Chapter Twelve. The Party Realignment in the Years of the New Deal:

Specifics and Consequences ..................239

Chapter Thirteen. On the Road to an Interparty Balance ...........264

Chapter Fourteen. In Search of a Political Image: Democrats in the

Opposition (1953-1960) ....................291

Chapter Fifteen. Consensus Questioned: the Two-Party System vs. Mass

Democratic Movements (1960-Early 1970s)........317

Chapter Sixteen. The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Democrats and Republicans in Conservative Times (Late 1970s and Early 1980s)................................345

Chapter Seventeen. A. Time of Political Disillusionment: the Two-Party

System and Voters in the 1970s-Early 1980s.......374

Conclusion..........................................398

A Short Bibliography of Works by Soviet Authors on the History of US Political Parties .......................................401

FOREWORD

American society has gone a long way in the two centuries of its existence.

These years have also seen a complex evolution of the two-party system, a major structural element in the US political system without which the mechanism of class domination by US ruling circles would be inconceivable. There is nothing remarkable in the fact, because this institution is part and parcel of the social and economic structure which has undergone major change in the 200 years the United States has existed. Being constantly in the focus of the political process, the two-party system has a tremendous impact on the course and nature of that process and is itself affected seriously by the underlying social, economic, ideological and political processes occurring in American society. It is self-evident that the role of this institution, crucial for the functioning of capitalist society, has notably changed. It is only natural that Soviet Americanists have closely followed the evolution of the two-party system.

In the past 10 to 15 years quite a few works on the history and current state of the US two-party system have been published in the Soviet Union. The authors of the present monograph proceed from the Marxist concept of the two-party system. They realize that its fundamental tenets differ from the notions of bourgeois scholars and the stereotypes of the institution prevailing among the American public, and have no intention of imposing their conclusions on anyone. Ideological struggle does not preclude, on the contrary it implies, academic debates, exchanges of opinion and polemic. The purpose of the present book is to give foreign readers an idea of how Soviet scholars today interpret issues, which they regard as fundamental, having to do with the role of the two-party system in

Name Index .

6 Foreword

US history, and of the results Soviet historiography has obtained in studying associated problems.

Acknowledging the achievements made by American scholars in studying the history of the two-party system, the authors would like at once to make several points of principle in the debate with them. First, Soviet analysts reject the idea that the US two-party system is unique. They view this system as one of the models of capitalist society's political structure. At the same time, they show that, apart from features common to all the other current political structures in capitalist countries, the US two-party system has specific features of its own. The most important is that no other party, except a bourgeois one, has managed to fit into the system. Second, differences between Soviet and American historians on matters of principle have been reflected in their views on the functions of the two-party system in the political process. As we see it, the basic mission of that institution consists in protecting bourgeois social relations and not abstract national interests. Third, Soviet historians differ cardinally from American analysts in their approach to factors which determine the evolution of the two-party system. The Soviet scholars maintain that development of the two-party system depends on social and economic factors and on the class struggle.

To corroborate these general assumptions the authors drew on materials having to do with the two-party system at key junctures in American history. This has determined the structure of the book. The introduction attempts to single out some of the most important methodological problems in studying the two-party system. Further, the authors consider the major periods in US history from the declaration of independence to our day. They provide instances from US history to show how the two-party system evolved, how its role changed in society, how this intricate political mechanism operates under different conditions, what principles underpin its functioning, what methods are used to protect the dominant position of the bourgeoisie in the political process and to keep within its orbit the social forces objectively hostile to the bourgeois system.

It is for the reader to judge to what extent these intentions have been realised. The authors are prepared both to listen to critical remarks, and to defend and develop their views on relevant problems of US political history.

INTRODUCTION

Parties are the basic support on which rests the political structure of any modern society, including US society. Most closely interacting with other components in the political system of American society, chiefly the state, bourgeois parties have protected and actively defended the interests of the US ruling class over two centuries. Therein lies their principal mission in the political process.

As capitalist society develops, the mechanism of the bourgeoisie's political domination becomes more sophisticated. The role and importance of non-governmental agencies and organisations, the parties above all, grow abruptly in that mechanism. Parties constitute the major leverage enabling the ruling class to secure its dominating role in all spheres of life in capitalist society and in all parts of the state machinery, while preserving the appearance of democracy.

Showing the main feature of bourgeois parties in the United States, Lenin said that they operated as a "bipartisan system.''^^1^^ The US two-party system is a complex body whose activity follows certain patterns. The concept of system is multifaceted and substantial, requiring special analysis. Let us note only a few of the most general features needed to describe the system. Parties form a system mechanism chiefly because they have a common mission in the political process---to protect and improve capitalist social relations. This, however, does not exhaust the meaning of the system concept. It includes an element of rivalry between parties involved in a single complex. This is a very important feature as it gives the bipartisan tandem the dynamics it needs to retain rank-and-file voters

^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Results and Significance of the US Presidential Elections", Collected Works, Vol. 18, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 403.

8 Introduction

Introduction 9

within its orbit and to solve specific social and economic problems with due account for the interests of the ruling class.

The US two-party system is one of the models of bourgeois society's political structure. The principles of bipartisanship were first laid down in'18th-century Britain subsequently exerting an influence on a number of other, chiefly English-speaking nations. They were most fully realised in the United States where as early as the beginning of the 19th century there were not just two political groups or factions but real parties with a relatively ramified organizational structures and a broad social base. It is important to point out that from the outset the US two-party system was conceived as "an integral political mechanism of the parties and the standards of behaviour and the basic principles of their interaction were developed.''^^1^^ In other words, an integral social mechanism with definite class functions was being built.

As distinct from West European models, including the British model, the US political system has been tightly closed for any other party, except for a bourgeois party. The crisis of capitalism associated with the victorious October Revolution in Russia, undermined the foundations of private property relations, led to the ruling circles in West Europe, Canada and Australia abandoning a purely bourgeois party system. From then on, the bourgeoisie in these countries was forced to rely on the assistance of social-reformist parties to safeguard its domination. The United States is now virtually the only country of state-monopoly capitalism where capital rules without resorting to the assistance of reformist working-class parties. The roots of this basic feature of the US political system should be sought in the fact that the basic element of capitalismprivate property---has functioned in the USA for a longer time, more effectively and in a purer form than in other countries.

Both Soviet and American literature contains different definitions of the two-party system. On our part we propose the following definition: the two-party system is a single political complex consisting of two bourgeois parties operating in close interaction and interdependence and linked together by fundamentally similar goals pursued, however, by different methods depending on how the goals are understood by the social groups whose interests are represented and expressed by each party. As any other structure, the

~^^1^^ M. O. Troyanovskaya, "Jeffersonian Republicans and the 1807 Embargo", in: Problems of Modern and Contemporary History, Moscow, 1982, p. 153 (in Russian).

party structure depends on the surrounding social environment and, at the same time, retains a certain autonomy in respect to it.

While laying emphasis on the autonomy of the two-party system, it is to be admitted that social and economic processes and the class struggle play a decisive part in that system's rise and evolution. Lenin paid particular attention to this: "In order to understand the real significance of parties, one must examine ... their class character and the historical conditions of each individual country.''^^1^^ A complicated combination of social and economic factors, and class, ideological and political struggles, on the one hand, the influence of other elements in society's political system, on the other, and finally, development patterns inherent in the two-party system itself--- all this determines standards and principles of the relationship between parties within the system mechanism.

Among the major principles of the relationship between parties in the mechanism of the two-party system priority is undoubtedly attached to the principle of consensus and alternative. Soviet scholar A.A. Mishin has good reasons to say: "Without consensus the two-party system would be unable to effectively defend the common interests of the ruling class. Without offering an alternative the parties would completely lose their individual character.''^^2^^ It would be appropriate, apparently, at this point, to explain what Soviet scholars mean by the terms ``consensus'' and ``alternative'', because there is a fundamental difference in how Soviet analysts and bourgeois political scientists interpret these terms.

The former believe that, despite the motley and amorphous mass base, both leading parties in the United States are purely bourgeois in nature. Hence the character and scope of the consensus. In the Soviet view, it is a consensus within one class, and not all American society, as advocates of the consensus school affirm. Marxist historians have always had a sharply negative attitude to the theory of US exclusiveness, a theory on which the concept of consensus rests. "As compared with Europe, political and economic conditions of the life of North America's free population were more favorable on the whole. Most of the population consisted of smalland medium-size farmers, wages of workers and artisans were 30 to 100 per cent higher than in the mother country. Nevertheless,

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "In Australia", Collected Works, Vol. 19, 1977, p. 216.

~^^2^^ A. A. Mishin, The Principle of Separation of Powers in the US Constitutional Mechanism, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1984, p. 153 (in Russian).

10 Introduction

Introduction 11

from the very outset American society was a class society, and social contradictions continually aggravated rather than healed,"¹ write the Soviet authors of a definitive work on US history. The interparty consensus we refer to does not in any way imply recognition of the concept of common interests of antagonistic classes. That consensus is clearly restricted by the bounds of the two-party system within which the two bourgeois parties operate on the basis of a common belief that private property relations are the only possible foundation for society's development. The parties try to impose this view on all American society. Bourgeois propaganda inculcates in public opinion the conclusion offered by American political scientists, that when a party wins the election it means the policy it publicized has been approved by the voters.

This, of course, is a case of wishful thinking. The consensus in ideology and politics has never been universal. In the course of development the American people have been developing an antimonopoly and anticapitalist tradition.^^2^^

The question arises: is it possible to speak of an alternative political course pursued by bourgeois parties strictly within the framework of the capitalist system? In this case it is not an alternative to the capitalist system and its institutions but simply a matter of selecting means to sustain and strengthen the capitalist order. Concerning the components of that institution Soviet historian V.P. Zolotukhin writes: "Both of them [the parties---Auth.] are political tools of monopoly capital... But within these bounds there are certain differences between them regarding the finer points of ideological and political platforms and their mass base.''^^3^^ It is to be noted that development of the alternative concept in respect to bourgeois parties has a long history. The thesis that they are capable of producing definite alternative political programs without transcending the bounds of the capitalist system or threatening to undermine its foundations, had been advanced by Lenin. The historical experience of both European and North American capitalism shows that the bourgeoisie's political leaders have worked out and implemented an

~^^1^^ A History of the USA, in four volumes, Vol. I, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1983, p. 659 (in Russian).

For further detail see: K. S. Gajiyev, USA: Evolution of Bourgeois Consciousness, Mysl Publishers, Moscow, 1981 (in Russian).

V. P. Zolotukhin, "The Results of US Elections", Mirovaya economica i mezhdunarodniye otnosheniya, No. 1, 1977, p. 108.

exceptionally wide range of the most varied methods of sustaining its class domination. These methods range from super-reactionary political programs of the Nazi type to bourgeois progressive platforms.^^1^^

The principle of consensus or alternative applies to some extent to all party-political systems in the capitalist countries. But it stands out in particularly bold relief in the two-party systems rather than the multiparty systems where the existence of several parties sharply complicates their relationships. The classical examples of that principle are provided by the two-party systems consisting of two purely bourgeois parties (Britain in the 19th century and, particularly, the United States). Introduction of social-reformist parties into the two-party system inevitably distorts the latter to a certain extent changing the meaning of consensus or alternative. Thus, these terms may be applied virtually to any bourgeois party-political system (except the fascist system), but their actual content is determined by specific historical development of a country, the objective needs of capitalist development, and the subjective understanding of these needs by party leaders. That content changed as the basic stages in the development of American capitalism replaced one another.

Under free-competition capitalism the consensus was based on the assumption that capitalism was the only possible way for society to develop and that the principles of the 1787 Constitution were the best form of political expression of this. America's entry upon the stage of monopoly capitalism at the threshold of the 20th century introduced certain changes into consensus relations leaving their foundations intact. Advocacy of free competition was relegated to the field of social folklore. In the actual policies of both parties it was forced to the background by the avowal that huge prospering corporations (monopolies) "constitute an important step in the direction of the better organisation of industry and commerce"^^2^^ and, therefore, make up the foundation of the American system. In the 1940s and 1950s the consensus was extended to include a number of postulates of state-monopoly regulation.

The sphere of action and scope of the .alternative have also

Concerning types of modern bourgeois parties see: N. V. Sivachev, "On Some Problems of State-Monopoly Capitalism", Novaya i noveishaya istoriya, No. 3, 1980.

Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1914, pp. 358-359.

12 Introduction

Introduction 13

changed in the course of historical development. At first, alternatives offered by the parties had to do with their orientation to different ways of capitalist development---commercial-industrial and agrarian. Since the late 19th century alternatives generally implied the dissimilar attitudes of the parties to the role of political institutions in economic development and the class struggle. Finally, at the contemporary stage the alternative essentially boils down to the following, as the prominent political scientist, James McGregor Burns, aptly put it: "Party platforms and presidential statements show that most Democrats stand for the increased use of government... They show that most Republicans would restrict government in order to give more scope to private initiative and investment.''^^1^^ In other words, the axis round which current partisan and political polemics revolve is the question of the nature and extent of state regulation of social and economic processes.

There are endless arguments in the USA on what the mutual relations between the components of the two-party system should be like. The liberal patriarch of historical studies, Henry Commager, maintained: "It is the virtue of the American party system that it does not present the American people with the necessity of fighting about principles.''^^2^^ He was echoed by an equally influential member of the conservative wing of the US historical community Clinton Rossiter who writes that the American two-party system "practically never, no matter which party wins and on what promises, produces a government willing and able to put through a program of thoroughgoing reform.''^^3^^ These statements clearly display the desire to present the consensus type of relations between parties as the optimal basis for the operation of the two-party tandem. This standpoint, however, has its influential opponents. A leader of the right-wing Republicans Senator Goldwater lectured his colleagues: "The Republican nominee cannot be a 'little Sir Echo of Democratic Ideology', since this would deny the American people the clear-cut choice they want.''^^4^^ Repeated statements to the same

~^^1^^ The Annals of America, Vol. 17, 1950-1960. Cold War in the Nuclear Age, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1968, p. 312. ^^2^^₃Ibid.,p. 11.

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1955, p. 78.

Republican Politics. The 1964 Campaign and Its Aftermath for the Party, edited by Bernard Cosman and Robert J. Huckshorn, Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, New York 1968, p. 6.

effect were made by another pillar of conservatism Senator Robert Taft. "The only parties that have died are those that have forgotten or abandoned the principles on which they were founded,"^^1^^ he pointed out. In this case the emphasis is on the alternative as the principle underlying relations between parties.

Obviously, both approaches exaggerate certain elements in the intricate mechanism of the two-party system. Experience shows that the system is most effective (from the standpoint of the ruling class) when there is a balanced combination of elements of consensus and alternative in the ideology and politics of the leading parties. Tipping the balance in favor of one or another has an immediate impact on the effectiveness of the whole political mechanism. In the usual situation, rivalry between parties is built in the USA on acknowledgement of a quite definite set of social, economic and political values. It may be said that an interparty consensus stabilizes ideological and political processes in the two-party system, reinforces the existing distribution of forces, while a constructive alternative secures the required dynamics of the system.

The continual transformation of the consensus-alternative elements in party stands serves as the most important means for the two-party institution to oppose the movement for independent political action. In principle, the following scheme may be drawn: the ruling circles controlling the two-party system seek to implement a political course such as would answer their interests as much as possible. But that line inevitably leads to dissatisfaction among the masses which begin a struggle to make the parties take into account their needs as well. They seek their own radical alternative to the platforms of the leading parties, which gives a boost to the movement for independent political action. There is a conflict. Adoption by the leading parties of the more moderate demands made by the protest movements, while disturbing the consensus, abates the heat of the crisis and pumps fresh blood into the two-party system. But as soon as the crisis has blown over, the ruling circles once again seek to restore the interparty consensus, albeit on another basis. The conflict is settled each time depending on the actual balance of class forces. The extent to which the party leaders are prepared to modernise the ideological and political platforms of their parties is

~^^1^^ The Annals of America, Vol. 16, 1940-1949. The Second World War and After, p. 565.

14 Introduction

Introduction 15

directly proportionate to the pressure applied on them by the rankand-file voters.

The above scheme is easily confirmed by numerous examples from the most different periods in American history. Perhaps the clearest illustration is provided by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Soviet analyst V.L. Malkov writes: "Roosevelt turned out to be slightly to the left of the line of behavior he himself thought rational only under the impact of the popular forces. In other words, the social reforms of the New Deal themselves and their depth depended solely on 'pressure from outside.' "' As soon as the pressure abated, the desire of the Democrat leadership to engage in social experiments significantly declined and, by contrast, the tendency to seek a consensus with the Republicans grew stronger, this time the consensus was on a statist basis however.

A similar situation emerged in the 1960s, when there was a new upsurge in mass protest movements. Perhaps the most trying problem was to integrate the black movement into the system. The ruling Democratic Party, however, by making some concessions, compelled "black Americans, hedged in by the two-party system, to follow the tactic of the lesser evil and vote for Hubert Humphrey."² Subsequently, when it became clear that the wave of the black population's protest had receded, the Democrats were less inclined to make concessions to the black voters. As a result, in the mid-1970s the stands of the two parties on racial matters converged significantly-

Thus, the two-party system quite firmly neutralizes popular attempts to break free of the ruling class' political control. No wonder Lenin called it "one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party.''^^3^^ It is important to point out that the forces and movements capable of providing a viable alternative are forced out of political life onto the sidelines by the efforts of both bourgeois parties. It is undoubtable, however, that much of the credit in the fight against

the movements for independent action goes to the Democratic Party which, since the late 19th century, has performed immense services for the US Establishment by integrating within its structure social forces seeking to break free of the control of the two-party tandem. It is the basic tool for involving the working people in the legitimate political process controlled by the monopoly bourgeoisie.

The above scheme of the functioning of the two-party system may give rise to the illusion among readers that the entire political process in the US appears to be extremely primitive, resembling a monotonously swinging pendulum with an amplitude strictly determined by cycles of consensus and alternative regularly replacing one another. In actual fact, the situation is much more complicated. The alternation of the ``consensus'' and ``alternative'' periods is influenced not only by laws governing the operation of the party system itself but also by factors outside the system. Government activities, various dimensions of the class struggle, and finally (since the USA has become a leading imperialist power) international developments---all this has had a significant impact on the recurrence and length of the consensus-alternative cycle. As a result of intricate interaction between factors within and outside the system, the consensus-alternative cycle becomes notably distorted. That cycle should not be traced as a regular sine curve. But the fact that such a cycle does exist seems undoubtable to us---the nearly 200-year-long history of the two-party system confirms its existence.

Thus, it has been stated that the consensus-alternative principle opens up wide scope for maneuver by the components of the twoparty system in order to hold class contradictions in check and helps them retain their dominating position in the political process. Of course, it would be wrong in terms of methodology to explain the relatively high (as compared with West European countries) social stability of American society by the fact that the country has a unique party system serving "to structure political conflict out to soften the nature of that struggle.''^^1^^ The principal role here was undoubtedly played by the specific features in the social and economic development of the USA. As regards the 19th century, it is necessary by all means to mention such factors as the existence of enormous areas of ``unoccupied'' land, immigration from Europe on

V. L. Malkov, "Slightly to the Left of the Centre: the General and the Specific in Franklin D. Roosevelt's Social Policies", in American Yearbook, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1983, pp. 45-46 (in Russian).

I. A. Geyevsky, USA: The Black Problem. Washington's Policies on the Black Question (1945-1972), Nauka Publishers, 1973, p. 258 (in Russian).

V. I. Lenin, "The Results and Significance of the US Presidential Elections", Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 403.

~^^1^^ David H. Everson, American Political Parties. New Viewpoints, New York, 1980,

p. 30.

16 Introduction

a mass scale, and underdevelopment of the class structure. In his day Karl Marx attached major importance to the latter circumstance. He wrote that in the USA "classes already exist, they have not yet become fixed, but continually change and interchange their component elements in constant flux.''^^1^^ The 20th century has added to this such a factor as the enormous economic resources of US monopolies which enable them to carry out extensive social and political maneuvering. However, an impressive contribution was made by political institutions, above all the two-party system which demonstrated on many occasions its extensive possibilities in manipulating public opinion and integrating the most varied protest movements.

What are the limits of the possibilities of bourgeois parties in solving major problems facing American society? In answering the question, one should keep in mind that the parties seek solutions to the problems they face proceeding not from abstract public interests. Lenin wrote: "To see what is what in the fight betwen the parties, one must not take words at their face value but must study the actual history of the parties, must study not so much what they say about themselves as their deeds, the way in which they go about solving various political problems, and their behaviour in matters affecting the vital interests of the various classes of society---landlords, capitalists, peasants, workers, etc.''^^2^^ The overall interests of the ruling class underlie the activities of the leading political parties in the USA. Hence the quite definite limits to their possibilities. However flexible a two-party system may be, whatever the margin of safety it may possess, its potentialities are far from unlimited, because there objectively exist, in capitalist society, a number of antagonistic contradictions which cannot be eliminated by means of reforms.

The history of the US two-party system has clearly confirmed this on quite a few occasions. The classical example illustrating the limits of this institution is the slavery issue. Up until the mid-1840s the leading parties of those years---the Democrats and the Whigs--- quite successfully sidestepped the problem. At the time the twoparty system and its parties were "living symbols of national political unity as well as powerful instruments for the reconciliation of

Introduction 17

sectional differences.''^^1^^ Subsequently, for another fifteen years while the slavery issue was in the focus of the political struggle between parties, the two-party system used different means in a bid to find a palliative solution to the problem. In the final count, the combination of two parties failed to absorb the interests of those sections of the population which demanded restriction of slavery, and as a result suffered a complete fiasco. Only a bourgeois revolution was capable of cutting the knot. As the Soviet historian R.F. Ivanov aptly remarked, those events "are convincing evidence that cardinal problems having to do with the struggle for power between classes could not be effectively solved by means of compromise".^^2^^

The transition of the two-party system to a state-monopoly basis in the 1930s and 1940s undoubtedly helped the monopoly bourgeoisie at least partially to solve a number of important problems: to begin with, it managed to put in some order the economic mechanism of capitalist society. Abandoning the traditional principle of the Federal government's non-interference in social and economic processes, the new ideologists of the monopoly bourgeoisie began to regard government regulation as a panacea of sorts capable of ridding America of all troubles. However, the "built-in stabilizers" had already shown that they were helpless under the impact of the snowballing general crisis of capitalism. Today it is quite obvious that stepped-up comprehensive regulation of American society's vital activities by the federal government fails to create an image of the USA as a model state for the rest of the world, the image the US ruling elite needs so much. On the contrary, objective statist processes have bred a whole complex of intricate problems and have augmented dissatisfaction with the operation of the state-monopoly system. A far from complete list of problems the two-party system has to deal with daily includes the search for an optimal combination of government regulation with market competition, for a balance between the authority of the federal and state governments; development of the most efficient model of regulating collective

~^^1^^ Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred H. Harbison, The American Constitution. Its Origin and Develofment, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1955, p. 329.

~^^2^^ A History of the USA, Vol. I, p. 457 (in Russian). For more detail on the interpretation of the Civil War by Soviet historians see: R. F. Ivanov, A braham Lincoln and the Civil War in the USA, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1964; G. P. Kuropyatnik, The Second American Revolution, Uchpedgiz Publishers, Moscow, 1961 (both in Russian).

2-749

Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 11, Progress Publishers,Moscow, 1979, p. 111. V. I. Lenin, "Political Parties in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 45.

18 Introduction

Introduction 19

bargaining; elaboration of crisis-prevention measures capable of securing steady growth rates for the American economy, and the place of small business in an economic system founded on the domination of the giant corporations; development of methods to integrate racial and ethnic minorities into the political system, and ways to eliminate disproportions brought about by the unprecedented militarization of the economy; neutralization of the destructive effect of inflation on the capitalist world's financial system; elaboration of measures against growing voter absenteeism, and the widening of the credibility gap, etc. It is important to indicate the scope of these problems. More often than not, they transcend national borders and involve the whole capitalist system. No wonder, then, that the two-party system is permanently unstable. Although the statist approach to the solution of the key social and economic problems has enabled the ruling circles to slightly localize critical trends and prevent the party and political mechanism from backfiring the way it did in the early 1930s, the contemporary state of affairs in the two-party system can hardly be judged unequivocally. It is no accident that many US political scientists view the future of that institution pessimistically. They single out "several trends [which] indicate that the established parties decayed", and are worried most of all by the fact that, in their view, "not only have parties lost the loyalty of the masses; they have also lost control over the selection of candidates.''^^1^^ The rather hysterical cries about the "decayed parties", "the approaching antipartisan age", reflect the unfortunate state of affairs in the contemporary two-party mechanism. Soviet analyst V.O. Pechatnov, who studies the latest trends in the two-party system, quite legitimately states: "There is a serious weakening of the role played by the two-party system in shaping voter behavior---it lias been transformed from its basic regulator into one of the factors influencing election results.''^^2^^

The two-party system fulfills a number of quite definite functions in the political process. These may be tentatively divided into two categories---general and special functions. The general ones are those that the parties carry out jointly with other elements of the

~^^1^^ Thomas R. Dye, L. Harmon Zeigler, The Irony of Democracy. An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics, Duxbury Press, Monterey, California, 1981, pp. 243, 237.

~^^2^^ V. O. Pechatnov, "Certain New Trends in the Functioning of the Two-Party System in the 1970s-early 1980s, in: Problems of Americanistics, The Moscow University Press, Moscow, 1983, p. 79 (in Russian).

bourgeois political system, with the federal government above all, i.e. maintaining law and order based on the rule of private property. The special functions are the responsibility of the two-party system alone. They include ideological and organisational support of the election campaigns, preliminary testing of new political doctrines, and selection and training of personnel for the machinery of government. The following should also be included in that category: integration of the protest movements, securing the uninterrupted operation of the mechanism for the smooth transition of power from one faction of the ruling circles to another, rallying different groups of the electorate in support of certain political programs, and setting up reliable channels for ideological indoctrination of the voters. Finally, in the USA it is very important to create firm links between various echelons of power (federal, state and local). This is also a responsibility of the national parties.

It is impossible to understand the specifics of the two-party system without taking into account that each of its components has to perform quite definite functions which took shape as a result of US historical development, and the different position each component occupies in the structure of the bourgeois class domination. The mission of the ruling party is to secure reliable channels of communication between the government machinery and the other elements of the political system. "The ruling class of a capitalist country has a broad arsenal of means for ideological influence, but the chief role is played by bourgeois political parties,"^^1^^ Soviet scholars point out. We would add that the role of the ruling party is particularly great in this sphere. The ruling party shoulders the main burden in solving a problem of cardinal importance for the ruling circles---that of fostering in the masses the illusion that the entire party and political structure in capitalist society is supraclass and inculcating in the working people an ideology which is alien to them. Finally, the ruling party has the chief responsibility for running the machinery of government.

The opposition party is not directly linked to that machinery and is not immediately responsible for the state of affairs in the country. But its part in the political system and the mechanism of the American bourgeoisie's class domination is no less important

~^^1^^ I. P. Ilyinsky, A. A. Mishin, L. M. Entin, The Political System of Modem Capitalism, Mezhdunarodniye Otnosheniya Publishers, Moscow, 1983, p. 108 (in Russian).

20 Introduction

Introduction 21

than that of the ruling party. Possessing much more leeway for political maneuvering than the ruling party, it is used by the ruling circles as a safety valve to lessen social tensions in the country. The element of rivalry between the two bourgeois parties creates among the electorate the illusion of a truly democratic political process and the possibility of a real choice which would bring about fundamental changes in the lives of people. Since the bourgeoisie, including the monopoly bourgeoisie, is far from uniform in terms of specific interests, an equally important function of the opposition party consists in defending the interests of the ruling class minority in the political process. The opposition party is a kind of balance in mutual relations between different factions of the powers that be. Since the ruling and the opposition parties perform different functions in the political system, the former tends to adhere to a political course with prevailing consensus trends which hold together the system, while the latter is more prone to elaborating the constructive alternative which provides the entire complex with required dynamics.

Of course, it would be wrong to explain the relatively high effectiveness and stability of the two-party system only by referring to the nature of relations between parties. Other parameters of this institution must also be taken into account: its specific organizational structure, for instance. Herein lies the peculiarity of American parties as compared with the parties of other developed capitalist countries. Parties in America are marked by a high degree of decentralization, weak party discipline, absence of a political body that would play the part of the organization's real political headquarters on the national scale. It is important to note that all the legislative acts are based on the assumption that the two-party principle is unshakable, and are aimed at strengthening it in all ways.¹ Works by many Soviet authors lay emphasis on the national scope of the American parties' activities. Thus, I.M. Vail writes: " Whatever the level of legal regulation of parties in the United States, they have always played the principal role in the country's political mechanism and in the forming and functioning of its institutions.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ For further detail see: M. N. Marchenko, "Regulation of the Activities of Bourgeois Parties in the Political System", in.Political Parties in the USA in Contemporary Times, Moscow, 1982 (in Russian).

Election Systems and Parties in the Bourgeois State, The USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of State and Law, Moscow, 1979, p. 5 (in Russian).

Acknowledgement of the fact that national parties exist in the USA in no way contradicts the conclusion that they are based on the principle of decentralization. The latter is merely a specific form in which the US bourgeois parties adapt to fulfilling their functions at a federal level. "The decentralized nature of the parties should not be regarded as a weakness, on the contrary, it has a number of incontestable advantages from the standpoint of securing the domination of the US bourgeoisie,"^^1^^ writes V.A. Nikonov. It provides flexibility, opportunity for extensive maneuvering and taking account of sectional particularities in the process of policy-making. That structure makes it possible to combine organically the tactical interests of the ruling circles' various factions without any particular detriment to achieving the strategic objective---strengthening private property relations. Finally, and this is particularly important, that structure largely helps consolidate the party's social base and makes it possible for the most diverse social groups to ``coexist'' within one organization. Such coexistence is possible in principle, because the grass roots of the party mechanism may in a certain situation pursue a political course which is at odds with the standpoint of the national leadership, without breaking with the federal structure.

Here we come to another important feature of American parties---the multilayered nature (social heterogeneity) of their mass base. At the end of the 19th century Engels wrote: "The divergence of interests even in the same class stratum is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different strata and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and to a very large extent each of the two parties contains representatives of nearly every particular section of the possessing class.''^^2^^ In their theoretical and practical work American politicians attach exceptional importance to sustaining that norm in the system of party activities. An eminent analyst of partisan problems Seymour Lipset wrote: "A system' in which the support of different parties corresponds too closely to basic sociological divisions cannot continue on a democratic basis, for such a development would reflect a state of conflict among groups so intense and clear-cut as to rule out all pos-

V. A. Nikonov, From Eisenhower to Nixon. A Page in the History of the Republican Party, Moscow, 1984, pp. 14-15 (in Russian).

``Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken, London, January 6, 1892", in: Marx/Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 416.

22 Introduction

Introduction 23

sibility of compromise.''^^1^^ The desire to retain the multilayered nature of the parties' mass base at any cost is not accidental. That feature plays a no small role in sustaining the illusion that parties are supraclass, and in implementing such an important function of the party system as being the principal link between the ruling circles and social forces. Of course, to insist that parties are supraclass because their electoral base is heterogeneous would be not serious to say the least. Lenin pointed out: "The class division is, of course, the ultimate basis of the political grouping; in the final analysis, of course, it always determines that grouping.''^^2^^ However, the influence of this aspect of the two-party system on subjective perception of that institution by the voters is undoubtedly great. Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey once said: "The worst political disaster that could happen to us would be a sharply defined division of our parties along economic and class lines. Such a division would solve no problems. It would bring us in sight of the day when the losers in an election would begin throwing up barricades in the streets. The reason why the American people, winners and losers alike accept the results of an election is that they all know the successful party represents no threat to the vital interests of any of them.''^^3^^

The multilayered mass base, coupled with the decentralized organizational structure of the parties and their desire to fulfill one common mission in the political process, has a discernible influence on the transition from one phase in the development of the partypolitical system to another. In the USA the process occurs in the form of party realignments---transition periods of a kind linking together the elements of change, continuity and constancy in the functioning of the two-party system.

The term party realignment is widely used by both bourgeois and Marxist scholars. However, the causes and meaning of the phenomena are interpreted in far from similar ways. As a rule, the former propose shifts in the voters' behavior as the motive force behind that process rather than the sequence of stages in the development of the capitalist formation. The problem is thus reduced to bringing out "critical elections" abruptly changing earlier models of

~^^1^^ Sociology Today. Problems and Prospects, edited by Robert K. Merton, Leonard Boom, Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr., Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1959, p. 93.

V. I. Lenin, "The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth", Collected Works, Vol. 7, 1961 p. 46.

Editorial Research Reports, September 5, 1951, p. 583.

partisan support. Actually, the critical elections are a result of crises or turning points in the development of US capitalism. However, the relationship is far from always revealed in such a straightforward form in real life. Quantitative and qualitative changes in the social and economic sphere do not necessarily immediately cause relevant changes in the two-party system. But a sufficiently close connection between the two does exist. It is these turning points in social and economic development that "determine the party alignment of the social forces of the country concerned for many years or even decades ahead.''^^1^^ But that is precisely what the Western political scientists refuse to see. "A purely functional approach to the problem of development of the US party-political system prevented the advocates of the critical elections theory to discover the fundamental factors of the process,"^^2^^ Soviet analysts remark. The shortcomings of the critical elections theory are increasingly being seen by American researchers^^3^^ currently seeking new approaches to that major problem.

In the history of the US two-party system it is possible to single out three quite finished (the Era of Good Feelings; the Civil War and Reconstruction; and the New Deal) and one uncompleted party realignment (late 19th-early 20th century). The three major periods of party realignment were directly linked to turning points in capitalist development in the US: the transition from cottage industries to large-scale industrial production, the replacement of free competition capitalism by monopoly capitalism, and finally, the rise of state-monopoly capitalism. Following the 1980 elections the opinion was widespread among part of the American experts that the US two-party system had entered a phase of party realignment.^^4^^ As we see it, the conclusion is somewhat premature. Of course, the last 15 years have seen certain changes in the two-party system as compared with the model formed in the years of the New Deal. But for the changes to become irreversible, it is necessary for

' V. I. Lenin, "Political Parties in Russia", Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 45.

K. S. Gajiyev, N. V. Sivachev, "The Problem of the Inter-Disciplinary Approach to 'New Scientific' History in Contemporary American Historiography", in: Questions of Methodology and History of Historical Sciences, Moscow, 1978, p. 139 (in Russian).

See, for example, Jerome M. dubb, William H. Flanigan, Nancy H. Zingale, Partisan Realignment. Voters, Parties, and Government in American History, Sage Publications, Beverly Hflls, 1980.

``America's 6th Major Vote Shift", by Robert Kelley, The New York Times, November 11, 1980.

24 Introduction

Introduction 25

the social and economic trends which gave rise to them to be adequately reflected in the political course of the two leading parties.

Both of them, however, are still encountering serious difficulties in searching for new political recipes corresponding to the realities of state-monopoly capitalism of the 1980s.

The two-party system, its mechanism, norms and principles of its activities, did not emerge overnight. The system passed through several phases in its development. Tentatively, one may single out two major stages in the two-century long evolution which approximately coincide with the period of free competition capitalism and its monopoly stage. The first can be described in short as a time when the norms and principles of relations between parties in the political system emerged. The major feature of that process was its spontaneous nature. Initially many of the contemporary norms of activity of the party-political mechanism were subjectively rejected by the leaders of the emergent parties. The element of system was exceptionally weak, which continually led to the two-party mechanism going askew. That, in turn, resulted in the instability of the entire party-political system, frequent regroupings, the disappearance of old parties and emergence of new ones. Only gradually, in the process of a cruel struggle, as society's class structure was crystalized, did the parties become firmly institutionalized as an important component of capitalist political system and turn, just like the state itself, into reliable defenders of the interests of the US bourgeoisie.

The second stage, coinciding with the stage of monopoly capitalism, is marked by the final institutionalization of the two-party system in the structure of American monopoly, and subsequently state-monopoly, capitalism. Every passing year makes more and more obvious a trend toward greater juridical regulation of the parties' activities and legislative support and protection of the two-- party system. Since the late 19th century the idea that parties have a vested interest in the presence of a politically healthy rival has become axiomatic in US political thinking. As a result the party system has acquired the qualities of a much more stable, institutionalized entity. It is less frequently subject to realignments. With the adoption of the statist platform by the two-party system, its political spectrum has become more homogeneous, which has had an impact on the functioning of the system mechanism. Finally, as imperialism has sunk roots in the United States, the general role of this

institution has changed in the country's political life. In the early stages of capitalist development, the parties protected the domination of the bourgeois-planter bloc but at the same time contributed to a number of progressive (for the time) social and economic reforms, democratization of public and political life, enhancing the political participation of rank-and-file voters. Now the two-party sytem has become a basically conservative force and a serious obstacle in the way of social progress. This circumstance was specially emphasised in the New Programme of the Communist Party USA: "The present two-party system is a vise within which the state-monopoly power seeks to confine class conflicts and social pressures, thus ensuring its own rule.''^^1^^

Of course, these general observations hardly exhaust the subject of the two-party system. In the chapters below it will be shown how the principles typical of this institution operated in specific historical reality in the highlight periods of US history.

New Programme of the Communist Party USA. The People Versus Corporate Power, New Outlook Publishers & Distributors, New York, p. 47.

Origins of the Two-Party System 27

ORIGINS OF

THE TWO-PARTY

SYSTEM

The historical significance of the American Revolution consisted in removing obstacles in the way to the establishment of the capitalist social and economic system in North America. The obstacles included British colonial oppression in the first place, feudal survivals in North America's social order in the second place, and slavery for the blacks in the third. Establishing a bourgeois society in North America, the US War of Independence was a social and political revolution. The major social transformation it carried out included the laying of the bourgeois-democratic political and legal foundations of the United States. The revolutionary bourgeois-- democratic transformations, in their turn, created favorable conditions for the founding of political parties. It was only in the revolutionary period in North America that there appeared factions, political groupings and blocs engaged in acute ideological rivalry and seeking contacts with rank-and-iile voters and a wide mass support.

The change in the nature of political factions after 1776 was largely due to the increase in the size and social cross-section of the electorate: in many states property qualifications were reduced, in Pennsylvania the right to vote extended to all adult male taxpayers, and on the territory of Vermont to all free men.

The fact that all government bodies were now elected was very important in strengthening the political role of ordinary Americans. In addition, the revolution introduced frequent replacement of government body members. In all the states the chief executive, the governor, was reelected every year, as well as the members of the lower, and in most states of the upper, chambers of the legislatures. Democratization of political power in the USA and its stronger dependence on rank-and-file voters had an inevitable impact on the activities of individual representatives and political factions.

The sharp increase in the representation of the Western counties in many states also resulted in serious changes in North America's political mechanism enhancing the role of petty bourgeois votersfarmers and shopkeepers---and a corresponding drop in the influence of Eastern voters from the upper and middle bourgeois strata. The change in representation led to the appearance in the legislatures of radical political factions which had not, and could not have, existed there before 1776.

The emergence of various political factions after 1776 was also made possible by the bills and acts legalizing the activity of political opposition in the states. In the colonial period criticism of the

The genesis of political parties in the United States dates back to the revolutionary period of 1776-1783. However, political divisions which at first glance did not differ from the divisions of the American Revolution had existed earlier as well. The political groupings of the colonial age and the revolution period were frequently even called by the same name---factions. But a comparative analysis of factions in the colonial age, on the one hand, and those in the revolutionary period, on the other, reveals fundamental differences between them enabling us to regard the latter as the predecessors of the first American political parties.

The first distinguising feature of the political factions of the colonial period is that, as a rule, they were narrow elitist and often focussed round a clan. Irrespective of whether they were in power or in the opposition, factions of this type grouped around one influential family whose members fought for the right to distribute both top and lower administrative posts.

The de facto inheriting of assembly seats by influential clans freed legislators in the colonies from dependence on voters. In actual life not the assembly members were humble servants of the voters, but on the contrary, voters obligingly elected the economic rulers. Dissent was excluded. Let us point out, finally, that the jurisdiction of the elected assemblies in the political system of the colonies was severely restricted---they were overshadowed by governors and councils appointed by the crown and combining supreme executive, legislative and judiciary powers. On the whole the political order in the colonies did not even have a semblance of bourgeois democracy. That was why the struggle for the latter was a highlight of the American Revolution.

28 Chapter One

Origins of the Two-Party System 29

government was regarded by the courts as an offence under common law, which extremely restricted opportunities for action, and even more so the establishment, of opposition factions. Immediately after the declaration of independence, most states adopted bills of rights proclaiming, in addition to other democratic rights, freedom of speech, of the press, assembly and worship. The bills of rights were part of the constitutions, and, therefore, legal opportunities for criticising the authorities and establishing opposition factions were defended by the states' fundamental laws.

The political divisions of the revolutionary period were most clearly seen in Pennsylvania where acute debates on the state's constitution led to the rise, in Jackson Main's words, of "the first party system" in North America.^^1^^ Democrats favoring the most progressive state constitution of the revolution period approved in 1776 came to be called Constitutionalists and the moderates were called Republicans. The leaders of Constitutionalists supported an egalitarian social and economic program providing for the elimination of extreme inequality by means of government measures. The principle of equality was to be implemented not only in the political but also in the social and economic sphere.

Clinton's grouping in New York was a politically distinct pettybourgeois faction. Its platform and activities reflected the contradictory nature of the petty bourgeoisie, their capacity, on one fine day, to turn from enemies of wealth to the fervent worshippers of the Golden Calf. A leader of the true Whigs, as members of the patriots' left wing in New York called themselves, George Clinton has been traditionally regarded in American historiography as a radical, a leveller or in any case a democrat. And it was only relatively recently in a fundamental study about the rise of the Democratic Republicans in New York that Alfred Young^^2^^ showed their leader Clinton and his surrounding to be American nouveaux riches, those members of the middle and lower strata of white Americans who succeeded in thriving on the difficulties of the revolution rising from nobodies to the economic elite, after which they began to vie for the leading place in the system of political power with the dominating families---the Schuylers, the Livingstons and the Pendletons.

Jackson Turner Main, Political Parties before the Constitution, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1973, p. 174.

Alfred Fabian Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York, The Origins, 1763-1797, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1967.

Despite the existence of petty-bourgeois factions during the revolution and their strong positions in some states, they were never able to establish themselves as national political parties. When in the 1790s the two bourgeois parties---the Federalists and the Republicans---were established in the USA, the petty-bourgeois blocs and groupings did not even attempt to form an opposition but, on the contrary, joined them, chiefly as a left wing of the Republicans. The inability of the petty-bourgeois groupings in various states to develop into national political parties, as, say, the Populists did at the end of the 19th century, was due chiefly to the weak development of the mass democratic movements at the time. Even the largest mass popular movement of the time, the Daniel Shays Rebellion practically did not go beyond the bounds of one state. The social and political conditions necessary for the rise of a national radical party were absent in the USA in the latter part of the 18th century.

Although petty-bourgeois political factions in the USA during the revolution were unable to unite on a national level, they undoubtedly influenced the genesis of national political parties. The American bourgeois-planter elite played the chief role in erecting the framework of the two-party system. They could not ignore the successes of the petty-bourgeois factions in the revolutionary period and, in order to secure their support, were forced to include some of their demands in their platforms. In addition, the spirit and traditions of the petty-bourgeois party opposition which arose in the period of the revolution had influenced the entire subsequent American history and were revived occasionally in different states, and in periods when the condition of the petty bourgeois deteriorated, even on a national level.

The age of the American Revolution ended in a political division which was a prologue to the emergence of national political parties in the 1790s. The significance of the Federalist and the Antifederalist movements in the 1780s lies in the fact that they were the first nationwide political groupings and aimed at winning a political victory at the federal level.

In our view, it is necessary to single out two stages in the genesis and evolution of the Federalist movement which was crowned

30 Chapter One

Origins of the Two-Party System 31

by the adoption of the US Constitution in 1787.

During the first stage---from the late 1770s to 1783-the Federalists pursued the aim of assigning extensive economic powers to the Continental Congress which was nationwide political body. Their platform included planks on extensive domestic (on terms favorable to large creditors) and foreign loans, the setting up of a national bank to finance war expenditures and to secure optimal use of national capital, providing the Continental Congress with the right to turn free lands into government property, and also measures intended to set up the Congress' own funds. The Federalists' economic platform alone proved incompatible with the principle of state sovereignty laid down in the 1781 Articles of Confederation and required their radical revision or even repeal.

It is not difficult to see that the Federalist economic program corresponded chiefly to the interests of the Northeastern commercial and financial bourgeoisie. No wonder its members played a leading part among the Federalists. At the same time their ranks were also open to those politicians of the South who realised that rejection of the "national approach," as the Federalists often dubbed their approach to solving economic problems, could lead to the downfall of the Union of thirteen states and, as a result, to defeat in the war. The Federalist refrain was to grant the Continental Congress the "power of purse" including the right to force bonds on the states shirking their financial obligations.^^1^^ In its finished form the idea of expanding the Federal government's financial and economic prerogatives was presented by Alexander Hamilton in The Continentalist articles in 1781.^^2^^

The Federalists' social motives---use of central power for control over and repressions against the mass movements---took shape during the second stage of their movement, in the period from 1783 to 1789, when class contradictions sharply aggravated within the country and it became clear that without being subordinated to a single higher will the states would be unable to cope not only with the financial and economic chaos but also with social cataclysms. The

Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, edited by Edmund Cody Burnett, in 8 volumes, P. Smith, Gloucester, Mass., 1963, Vol. V, pp. 305, 478, 504, 536 547- Vol. VI, pp. 41-42,58.;

~^^2^^ The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Volume II, 1779-1781, Editor: Harold C. Syrett, Columbia University Press, New York 1961, pp. 400, 402-404, 408, 651, 654, 661- 665, 670, 671; Vol. Ill, New York, 1962, p. 114.

fact that the Federalists first advanced the economic demands and then the social ones does not mean, however, that the authorities obtained economic functions first and social functions later. Both functions were established simultaneously, but at the beginning of the revolution were in the hands of the state governments, because the federal government was not particularly important.

At the second stage in the Federalist movement, there was an abrupt increase in the share of top plantation owners who, it was quite obvious, to a no lesser extent than the Northeastern bourgeoisie were interested in defending large-scale property from mass radical movements. Their ideological leader James Madison became known as the "philosopher of the American Constitution" of 1787. The Constitution itself was a collection of political, government and legal principles preached by the moderately conservative wing of the revolution.

The experience of the Federalist movement was tremendously important for the future national political parties in the sense that in that movement, for the first time, leaders of political groupings of various hues and colors, people holding different social and political views, acquired and displayed the ability to reduce their principles to a common denominator and bring them together in a common platform of the political union. The program and ideology of the Federalist movement were most fully expressed in articles under the heading The Federalist published in 1787-1788 and written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (the role of the latter in writing the articles was a minor one). The two main authors, Hamilton and Madison, as well as the groups of the movement they represented---the Northeastern bourgeoisie and the Southern plantation owners---had considerable differences in their social beliefs. But these differences were skilfully overcome in The Federalist. Thus, the leaders of the Northerners and the Southerners achieved a consensus in the sensitive issue of slavery (a cynical betrayal by the Northerners of the 1776 tenets: the authors of The Federalist proclaimed the black slave "as divested of two fifths of the man").^^1^^

The Federalist movement managed to secure the support of prominent members of the patriotic camp's left wing. This is explained not only by skilfull Federalist propaganda but also by the goals of the Federalists. Centralization of political power in the

~^^1^^ The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Vol. IV, 1962, pp. 510-512.

32 Chapter One

Origins of the Two-Party System 33

USA corresponded not only to the class purposes of the propertied elite, although it was aimed primarily at promoting their interests. It objectively contributed to strengthening the national sovereignty of the USA, being condition for retaining and developing the country's economic independence and prestige on the international scene dominated by the European monarchs. This meaning and purpose of federal centralization were deeply felt by many Democrats, above all Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush who joined the Federalists.

Containing the demand to protect national industry and trade from foreign competition, the Federalist platform was widely supported by the urban lower strata---artisans, wage-earners and craftsmen. In New York and Pennsylvania, for instance, the urban lower strata refused to continue following the Clinton faction and the Constitutionalists, when they adopted Antifederalist positions, and gave their votes to Hamilton's party.

The opposition to the Federalists inherited not only the principle of state sovereignty but also the democratic ideas of the American Revolution. On the whole, however, the Antifederalists were not identical to the left wing of the patriotic camp, they were a complex and motley movement in class terms. As in the case with the Federalists, the Antifederalists were headed by members of the bourgeois-planter elite expressing the interests of the social strata for various reasons not interested in extending the prerogatives of the federal government (for example, many Southern plantation owners supporting the Antifederalists regarded the strengthening of the central government only as the way to the economic rise of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie). The social base of the Antifederalist movement consisted of rural petty bourgeois, owners of unprofitable or low-profit farms situated mostly in the Western areas. As opposed to the owners of commercial farms in the settled Eastern areas who associated the rise of the federal government with hopes for better opportunities to export agricultural produce to the other states, the owners of small and noncommercial farms perceived a different aspect in centralization of federal power---the inevitable growth of bureaucracy, taxes, etc.

In the economic field the Antifederalists' relationship with the petty-bourgeois political blocs and spontaneous actions of the popular masses in the revolutionary period was reflected in a negative attitude to excessive taxes, defense of paper money, and advocacy

of measures aimed at easing the debt burden of the rural bourgeoisie. Among the Antifederalist leadership these measures were supported by those Southern plantation owners who were heavily indebted to domestic and foreign creditors. As the rank-and-file members of the movement, the Southern Antifederalists opposed Federalist attempts to make the issuing of money the monopoly of the federal government, give it the right to levy both direct and indirect taxes, and refund the Confederation's debts at nominal value.

In politics the Antifederalists' ties with the democratic groupings of the revolutionary period were reflected in favoring supremacy of legislative power in respect to executive power, frequent reelection of government organs and so on. The Antifederalists were particularly distressed by the absence of the Bill of Rights in the proposed federal Constitution. They protested against the principle that all executive power be vested in the President (as the authors of the Constitution suggested) and put forward the idea of a collective executive body.^^1^^

The Antifederalists, however, failed to follow the left-wing principles of the revolutionary camp in a number of issues and made serious concessions to the authors of the 1787 Constitution. Most of them agreed with the Federalist demand to considerably extend the term of office of the head of Executive power. They consented to a bicameral legislature, a Supreme Court and other innovations going against the Articles of Confederation. Finally, they adopted a frankly defensive position in the fight against the Federalists. Having failed to propose a positive alternative to the federal Constitution, their captains only demanded to introduce amendments. In terms of original ideas, independence, radical measures aimed at solving the economic and political problems of the USA, the Antifederalist platform trailed behind the Federalist program. No wonder then, that, having ceded to their opponents on one, albeit most important, issue---inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution---the Federalists in effect deprived them of weighty arguments in the ideological struggle.

The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, edited by James Curtis Baliagh, in 2 volumes, Da Capo Press, New York, 1970, Vol. II, pp. 433, 438, 442-443; The Papers of George Mason, edited by Robert A. Rutland, in 3 volumes, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, Vol. in, 1970, pp. 880-881, 916, 972, 981, 989, 1050.

3-749

34 Chapter One

Origins of the Two-Party System 35

The victory of the Federalists over their opponents and ratification of the 1787 Constitution prepared a new stage in the genesis of US political parties. Now intrastate contradictions were inevitably revealed at a national level, in the Congress and government. The formerly autonomous and isolated socio-economic and political interests now clashed within the united national state.

The first US national government formed in 1789 was founded on a nonpartisan basis. But soon after George Washington took the oath of office and the House of Representatives and the Senate went into session political factions began to emerge. By an ironic twist of fate Washington, a staunch opponent of factional strife, appointed the founders of the future rival political parties---- Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson---to two key posts in the government (secretary of the treasury and secretary of state). As early as 1790-1791, discussions of Hamilton's bills led to Congress splitting into Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

The rise of the first national parties laid the foundations of their mutual relations typical of the history of the US two-party systemconsensus and alternative. The Hamiltonian Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans overcame the hostility marking the attitude of their predeccessors---the Federalists and the Antifederalists---to the Federal Constitution and federal government and reached a consensus on this basic issue. The basis of the consensus---loyalty of both parties to federal government, the 1787 Constitution, and on the whole to the social and political principles that had triumphed in the final stages of the American Revolution---was reflected in both the ideology and the political practice of the rival parties. The names of the newspapers, the mouthpieces of the two parties, the Jeffersonian National Gazette and the Hamiltonian Gazette of the United States, as well as the similarly sounding names of the editors---Fenno and Freneau, seemed to symbolize their unity regarding the bourgeois foundations of the USA. From the very outset the Jeffersonian Republicans unequivocally stated their intention to act as a legal opposition and resist the Hamiltonian Federalists exclusively within the framework of the existing political system. The form of political opposition chosen by Jefferson and his party laid the cornerstone of the US two-party system---a consensus in supporting and strengthening the bourgeois foundations of the United States.

The differences between the two parties in determining prospects for US development took shape in the 1790s. They featured prominently in all the principal issues of domestic, economic and foreign policy. The sharpness of the debates between the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians even gave ground to historians to consider them the most highly ideologized parties in American history.

In the political field Hamilton and his followers favored strengthening the institutions and laws which promoted narrow class interests of the bourgeois-planter elite, and restricting and holding in check the bourgeois-democratic transformations of the American Revolution. The Federalist Party, that came to power in the 1790s, showed itself, among other things, to be a party supporting law and order.

By contrast, the Jeffersonian Republicans came out as advocates of developing and multiplying the revolution's bourgeois-- democratic innovations and extending bourgeois-democratic rights and liberties to new sections of the population. The Republicans' political strategy to a larger extent corresponded to the objective requirements of consolidating the bourgeois social and economic system in the United States, because the 1776 Revolution did not close but opened the age of bourgeois revolutions in the USA which was completed only after the Civil War and Reconstruction in 1861-1877. The Jeffersonians' political strategy secured a broader mass base for them and was a major factor contributing to the ousting of the Federalists by the Republicans from the commanding positions in the country's political system in the early 19th century.

It was no accident that the Jeffersonians called themselves Democrats and Republicans (both names are to be found in historical literature). It was under the banners of democracy and republicanism that they launched their first attacks against Hamilton and the Federalists proclaiming them to be the sworn enemies of the American Republic who were conspiring to overthrow it. One after another articles began to appear in the Republican press accusing the secretary of the treasury of monarchal sympathies and the desire to alter the US system of government according to the British model. They claimed that Hamilton repeatedly offered a sceptre and crown to George Washington and attempted to introduce customs and habits prevailing in British Parliament.

Apart from fair observations Republican propaganda contained obvious exaggerations. Monarchic inclinations were alien to the Fe-

36 Chapter One

Origins of the Two-Party System 37

deralists including their moderate leaders Alexander Hamilton and John Adams: they believed that the very conditions for non-- republican governmental political forms had been uprooted in the USA. At the same time the Federalists seriously differed from the Jeffersonians in defining republicanism, the basis of the US government system. Their model of the ideal republic rejected the principle of political democracy as an inessential ingredient of republicanism. Democracy, as they saw it, implied such political forms and developments as direct expression of the popular will (direct election of representatives, legislative referendums and voter initiatives, mandates to representatives), supremacy of legislative power over the executive, the extension of suffrage to the unpropertied strata and so forth.

The most sophisticated argument in the Federalist criticism of political democracy consisted in asserting that precisely that form, rather than oligarchic principles was the true enemy of the republican system and contained the roots of any despotism including monarchy. This postulate was intended to make the Federalists out as the real defenders of republican system and the Democrats as the worst enemies of republicanism.

The Federalists referred to examples from the history of ancient republics showing how certain political demagogic leaders used the popularity they gained among the people to demolish republican liberties. But most often the Federalist leaders appealed to the experience of the French Revolution. The unexpected metamorphoses of that revolution, its sweeping changes from broad participation of the popular masses in political activity to the rise of despotic rule by the Directory, the consuls and then the Bonapartist regime were to serve, in the Americans' eyes, as a vivid illustration of the postulate that dictatorship develops from democracy, being the latter's other side.

The Brumaire 18, 1799 coup and the proclaiming of Bonaparte First Consul, virtually the dictator, from the standpoint of Federalist propaganda, meant the end of the natural degeneration of the democratic republic into a tyranny, a process whose beginning was invariably associated with the coming to power of the Jacobin party and Robespierre.

The idea that political democracy was incompatible with any long-term existence of the republican system served as a pretext for the Federalists to demand restriction of various liberties won by the

people in the course of the American Revolution. Such demands were heard particularly frequently in the 1790s, marked by the mass democratic upheavals under the impact of the French Revolution, farmer actions, including the famous 1794 rebellion in Pennsylvania.^^1^^

The 1787 US Constitution which was, according to its authors, to become a reliable sword and shield of bourgeois-planter rule, in the view of the Federalists was not fully up to the task in the new historical conditions (the reason for this was, primarily, the incorporation of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, something which was not envisaged by its founders but approved by the American legislators under the pressure of the masses in 1789).

The most impressive contribution to the criticism of the US Constitution's democratic articles was made by the Federalists during discussions in 1798 of the notorious Alien and Sedition acts. These acts regarded as a criminal offence any opposition to the government's domestic or foreign policy actions and reduced to naught the importance of the first article of the Bill of Rights proclaiming freedom of speech, of the press, and assembly. Most Federalists urged to crack down toughly, without consideration for the Bill of Rights, on anyone who, in printed word or orally, would question the loyalty of a legislator or government member to the Constitution, liberty and the happiness of the people. Another, truly Jesuitic way of backing reactionary bills was shown by Robert Harper.

Harper was among the first to show that the Constitution may be interpreted in any, even extremely reactionary, spirit, if that corresponded to the interests of the powers that be. Yes, he agreed, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and the press. But does freedom of speech and the press, Harper inquired, include the right

For examples of criticism by Federalist leaders of political democracy see: Annals of the Congress of the United States. 1st Congress. The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, with an Appendix, Volume I: March 3, 1789 to March 3, 1791, Gales and Seaton, Washington, 1834, pp. 733-734; Seventh Congress, 1st Session (December 7, 1801 to March 3, 1803), Gales and Seaton, Washington, 1851, p. 41; Circular Letters of Congressmen to Their Constituents, 1789-1829, in 3 volumes, edited by Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., Vol. 1, the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1978, pp. 191-192; Documents Relating to New England Federalism. 1800-1815, edited by Henry Adams, Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1877, pp. 347, 363; Works of Fisher Ames. With a Selection From His Speeches and Correspondence, ed. by Seth Ames, Vol. II, Da Capo Press, New York, 1969, p. 4.

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goals to the interests of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie.

The chief plank in Hamilton's economic platform---to pay all US debts, both of states and of the federal government, at nominal value---was fully in line with the interests of the financial bourgeoisie in the Northeast holding a lion's share of government bonds and other debt securities. Most of the latter were soldiers' certificates which had passed from the hands of the original owners, who had lost faith in them, to the hands of the financial magnates. Since the magnates bought the certificates at a price not higher than 10 to 12 per cent of their nominal value, it was easy to calculate that, if Hamilton's plan was implemented, their profit would be up to 1,000 per cent. The Jeffersonian Republicans opposed Hamilton's project with another proposal widely supported by the taxpayers at whose expense it was intended to pay the government debt, namely, to pay at nominal value only those certificates that were in the hands of the original owners, and refund the other securities at their actual value or annul them altogether.

Hamilton's counterarguments presented in a report to Congress boiled down to the assertion that his plan for redeeming the government debt was the only way to provide a stable and long-term basis for public credit. The need for credit, he maintained, was one of the most important ones in any country. But to obtain credit, one has to learn to pay back one's debts regularly. On the whole, Hamilton's concept of the government debt was quite an ingenious way of ideologically backing the close ties between America's bourgeois government and the Northeast financial tycoons and moneylenders, constituting the backbone of the Federalist Party. If Hamilton's project were approved, 80 per cent of annual government expenditures would go to pay the creditors holding government bonds and securities.

The setting up of a national bank by the US government also conformed to the interests of the financial-usurious bourgeoisie. Measures of the Federalist Party aimed at encouraging national industry were in line with the interests of manufacture owners. As to middle and small property owners, including owners of scattered manufactures, they lacked government patronage. The latter circumstance was skilfully taken advantage of by the Jeffersonian Republicans who included in their program a whole series of measures aimed at protecting the interests of artisans, small industrialists and

to resort to slander and sedition? In this way he quite easily showed the limits of freedom, the right to determine which, i.e. to qualify the printed or oral word as slander and sedition, belonged naturally to the government.^^1^^

According to the Federalist doctrine the ideal political system was to be completely free of passions and conform, as George Cabot pointed out, to the once established legal standards and laws.² The idea of the "power of laws" underlying the Federalist ideology confirms that they were a party of law and order wishing to be free of the whims of the crowd. This may raise doubts at first glance, because the principle of power of laws, popular in the 18th century, originally had a progressive ring to it, aimed as it was by the revolutionary bourgeoisie and its intellectual leaders against the arbitrary rule of the monarchs. But the thing is that, having come to power (and the experience of the American Federalists confirms this), the bourgeoisie began to use it for conservative ends, namely, to support the existing order. The power of laws was applied in the USA in 1790s and 1800s not against the arbitrary rule of the English monarch, as has been the case before 1776, but against any spontaneous expression of the popular will.

The class bias of the Federalist Party was most fully revealed in its economic program. Both contemporaries and historians acknowledge that the Federalist economic program set forth by Hamilton in 1790-1791 and approved by Congress was the initial cause of the split of American politicians into conflicting parties. Moreover, Hamilton's economic program signified a serious transformation of Federalist goals of the 1787 vintage and led to serious disturbances in the bourgeois-planter bloc.

The bourgeois-planter bloc arose in the years of the revolutionary war and reached its greatest strength in the year the Federal Constitution was adopted, which marked the establishment of the political rule of the Northeastern bourgeoisie and the Southern plantation owners in the country. But unity of the two classes with different interests had no historical prospects. The first fissures appeared in the early 1790s. Federalism of the 1787 vintage began to crumble when Hamilton openly subordinated Federalist

Annals of the Congress of the United States. 5th Congress, May 15,1797 to March 3, 1799^.2161.

``George Cabot to Timothy Pickering, 14 February, 1804", in: Documents Relating to New England Federalism, p. 347.

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some commercial groups.^^1^^

Although the Jeffersonian Republicans in the 1790s included in their program demands consonant with the interests of commercial and industrial capitalism, they were chiefly advocates of America's agrarian development. The advocacy of agrarian development by the Jeffersonian Republicans caused many historians to accuse them of Utopian thinking. It must be kept in mind, however, that, in the time Hamilton and Jefferson lived, development of the nation along the lines of agrarian rather than industrial capitalism seemed a more realistic road. North America was a profoundly agricultural country, and the availability of enormous unsettled lands led many enlightened thinkers to believe that farms and rural districts, rather than manufactures and cities, would develop in the country.

Jefferson himself favored development not simply along agrarian lines but along the agrarian-farmer road which meant the prevalence of small-commodity farms. However, as early as the 1790s that ideological line taken by Jefferson came into sharp contradiction with historical reality. Although Jefferson and other Republican leaders propagated the idea of "government of the fanners, by the farmers and for the farmers", it was slaveholding plantation owners who seized the leading position in the party. The existence of a growing faction of slaveholding plantation owners in the Jeffersonian Republican Party constituted a mortal threat to the democratic agrarian dream of its leader.

Was Jefferson himself aware of the dangers inherent in the cohabitation of such contradictory social and political elements in his party? In replying to this question it is to be kept in mind that in his forecast of the future of plantation slavery Jefferson relied on the economic situation of the 1770s and 1780s. Specialized in producing expensive tobacco, plantation slavery was suffering from a long-term crisis. Jefferson believed that the effect of that crisis together with the ban on import of slaves into the USA (effective from 1808 and provided for in the Federal Constitution) would result in the natural death of the shameful phenomenon.

Jefferson could not foresee the unexpected, and extremely favorable for plantation slavery, zigzag in the latter's development at

See: V. A. Ushakov, America Under George Washington (Political and Social Problems of the USA in 1789-1797), Nauka Publishers, Leningrad, 1983, pp. 193-196 (in Russian).

the end of the 18th century. A sharp increase in demand for cotton and the invention in 1793 of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney gave a kind of second wind to slavery in the United States. The slaveholding plantation owners began to adapt very rapidly to the cotton boom; they gained glowing hopes as to the economic future of their plantations which they actively switched to cotton-growing. The industrial revolution and capitalism were a sort of midwife for plantation slavery. Jefferson foresaw many social troubles accompanying the development of industrial capitalism, but neither he nor anyone else of the American Democrats had expected such a surprise. History had given the role of leader in the agrarian coalition set up by the Jeffersonian Republicans to the plantation owners and not the farmers. The dramatic clashes in the agrarian coalition, however, were still far ahead. Jefferson could not foresee them, energetically founding what he thought would be a party of the democratic agrarian future of the USA.

Since 1792-1793 differences between the Federalists and the Republicans had come to embrace US foreign policy. They even began to be known as the British and the French parties due to their openly avowed foreign-policy preferences. The Federalist leitmotif was that expanding economic and political relations with Britain was a tactical move, because it was the surest way ultimately to secure stable political independence and economic self-sufficiency for America. They insisted that the USA would become a strong power only provided there was lasting peace, and in order to sustain that peace it was necessary to make certain concessions to Britain. The economic arguments put forward by the Federalists were founded on the fact that, on the one hand, American exports to British dominions constituted the principal source of income of American merchants, and on the other, duties on British goods imported into the USA were dozens of times larger than those on French imports and were the main source for the replenishment of the country's treasury.

The Federalists' political argument aimed against France went as follows: in laying down the American government's strategic line it was necessary to keep in mind that the former US ally could no longer be regarded as a stable, and therefore strong and reliable, political system due to the revolution that had broken out in it, and that an alliance with a destabilized power involved dangers and unpredictable consequences. The Federalist position was quite cyni-

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ists and the Republicans to the utmost. In 1798-1799 the Republican Party began to prepare for the 1800 elections which, as its leaders saw it, were to seal the fate of the American Republic. The Kentucky and the Virginia resolutions compiled by Jefferson and Madison were to constitute the party platform in the coming political clash. In a terse and expressive style Republican propaganda pointed out the negative and unpopular results of the Federalist rule: British influence, a regular army, direct taxes, the government debt, a costly navy and the aristocratic spirit. The Jeffersonian Republicans pledged to do away with these.

cal: they were prepared to unilaterally denounce the 1778 Treaty and leave republican France face to face with the counterrevolutionary conspiracy of European monarchs.

Jefferson and his surrounding approached the question of choosing the United States allies from different positions. The presenting of the fallen Bastille's keys to George Washington by France in 1789 was not a token gesture in the eyes of the secretary of state, but marked the beginning of the highest stage in the political alliance between France and North America. Now it was an alliance between two political communities which were founded, as distinct from all other states of the world, on popular consent! Jefferson firmly rejected Hamilton's reasoning which proclaimed Franco-American treaties annuled. The Jeffersonians took a more careful approach to the issue of military obligations to France. Lacking a navy and regular army, America, as Jefferson saw it, should refrain from taking part in hostilities.

The Federalist foreign policy triumphed in 1795 when the Jay Treaty was concluded and ratified. That treaty secured exceptionally favorable conditions, as compared with other countries, for Britain's access to the American market, and confirmed all the prewar debts of the former colonies to the mother country. The struggle around Jay's treaty was attended by an episode clearly showing the organizational state of US political parties. During debates on the financing of the treaty in the House of Representatives, the Republicans gathered for their first caucus. This, however, failed to rally the party followers and some of them voted together with the Federalists. The Federalists won by a three-vote margin.

The victory of the Federalist candidate John Adams in the 1796 election led to the formation of the most conservative government since the United States had been founded. The Federalists' antipopular domestic and foreign policy culminated in the adoption in 1798 of the Alien and Sedition acts and the launching of a hysterical anti-French campaign. The Congressmen passed 20 acts aimed at preparing for war. The administration set up a Navy Department, decided to build 25 frigates and arm merchantmen, and sanctioned the seizure of French vessels on the high seas. The Congress annulled all treaties with France and decided to enlist 10,000 volunteers in the army for three years. A real estate tax was introduced to cover war expenditures.

John Adams's policies aggravated tensions between the Federal-

Two-Party System at the Threshold of the 19th c. 45

THE FIRST TEST:

THE TWO-PARTY

SYSTEM

AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE 19TH CENTURY

fects" of party spirit. These antipartisan views may be traced back to the 18th-century British tradition. In the works of Edmund Burke, Lord Bolingbroke, and David Hume it was asserted that the division of people into parties or factions was harmful to society as a whole, because it promoted the interests only of a narrow minority to the detriment of society as a whole.

The matter was that neither the Federalists nor the Republicans regarded each other as parts of the two-party mechanism at the turn of the 19th century. On the contrary, each side sought to destroy its opponents as a party, not physically as in France, but winning over the rank and file. In practice the Federalists attempted to achieve this by accusing their opponents of backing the interests of France at the end of the 1790s. This, in particular, resulted in the Alien and Sedition acts of 1798. In his Inaugural Address the Republican President preferred to gloss over the party differences of the 1790s, ascribing them---as the Federalists had done in their timelargely to foreign political influence: "During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the organizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore.''^^1^^ But this public address by Jefferson contained a new thought, a hint that a legal opposition to the ruling party had the right to exist: "All too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.''^^2^^ As subsequent events showed, the Republicans never made use of their rights and opportunities as a ruling party to suppress the opposition, as the Federalists had attempted to do in 1798.

By contrast, immediately after the Republicans came to power, they tried to smooth over the contradictions between the two parties, thus seeking to set up a modus Vivendi with their political opponents. That was why it was the Jeffersonian Republicans who managed to establish interaction with political opponents in the first two-party system in US history. In addition, in his Inaugural Address the new President publicly voiced his desire to observe de-

The Portable Thomas Jefferson, edited by Merrile D. Peterson, The Viking Press, New York, 1976, p. 291. ~^^2^^ Ibid.

For the first time in the short history of the USA, on March 4, 1801, power passed from one political party to another. The victory of the Republicans ousting the Federalists from office as a result of the 1800 elections was preceded by nearly a decade of partisan rivalry accompanied by the parties' organisational establishment and final formulation of political creeds. The foundations of interaction between the bourgeois parties were laid in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The Jeffersonian. Republicans made a major contribution to shaping the principles of coexistence with their opponents, the Federalists. The ideological commitments of the Republican Party were based on the aspirations of the planters of the South, the farmers and part of the bourgeoisie. Having come to power, the Republicans were forced to largely modify the principles they had advanced while being in the opposition. The new trends in their policies had to do with realities of American economic life, rapid development of capitalism and also the .need to coexist with their political opponents. The fate of the very institution of US political parties largely depended on the extent to which the Republican leadership managed to establish relations with the defeated Federalists.

The existence of two opposing parties in American political life was obvious as early as the 1796 election. Nevertheless, the desire to rid society of party divisions was characteristic, paradoxically, of the leaders of both parties---the Federalists Hamilton, Adams, Fisher Ames and the Republicans Jefferson, Madison, James Monroe, John Taylor and others. It was no accident that the Farewell Address of the first US President who witnessed the early differences in Congress contained an appeal to rid the country of the "baneful ef-

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mocratic principles of government. Among the latter he listed freedom of political and religious beliefs, freedom of the press and freedom of the individual, a peaceful attitude to all countries, an honest payment of debts, encouragement of agriculture and commerce, rejection of political alliances with European powers, "a well disciplined militia---our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war", rigid economy in government and so on. Jefferson specifically pointed out that his was a chosen country with "room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation". The President expressed the hope that national unity would be achieved, for "every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We are all republicans---we are all federalists.''^^1^^

``We are all republicans---we are all federalists," that much quoted phrase largely determined the tone of the new administration. This line suited many Republican leaders not interested in cardinal reforms. It also quelled the anxieties of the Federalists who feared repressions and persecutions.

The Republican Administration's desire to improve relations with the Federalists was reflected in a moderate patronage policy, i.e. in replacing Federalist officeholders by Republican colleagues. Jefferson was to solve this problem during his first months in office. Both Republicans and their political opponents watched most attentively how Jefferson would behave.

In January 1802 the National Intelligencer published a preliminary list of persons removed from their posts with an analysis of the reasons for their dismissal. Of the 90 cases reported, 21 were known as President Adams' midnight appointments which he made in the last days and hours in office. All these appointments without exception were annuled by Jefferson. In another issue the same paper, drawing on a source close to the administration, listed the five most frequent reasons for removal of Federalists: "1. Defalcation in the paiement of monies actually received, or which ought to have been received, or a failure to account to the Treasury. 2. Gross immorality of character. 3. Incompetency to discharge official duties. 4. Negligent attention to the discharge of duties. 5. Settled hostility and active enmity to republican principles.''^^2^^ Apparently, membership in the Federalist Party as such was not among the immediate pretexts for dismissals.

^^1^^ The Portable Thomas Jefferson, pp. 291-294. National Intelligencer, August 14, 1801.

In view of the fact that some Republicans were displeased with the excessively moderate patronage policy, Jefferson was forced to undertake a more resolute attack against the Federalists. He wrote in a letter to William Duane, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, in summer 1803: "Of 316 offices in all the United States subject to appointment and removal by me, 130 only are Federalists.''^^1^^ Regardless of how precisely Jefferson estimated his achievements in the field of patronage policy, it is clear that there was a sufficient number of Republicans in government office in 1801-1802 to pursue the course charted by the new administration.

In choosing candidates for his own administration Jefferson enjoyed greater freedom than in the patronage policy. It went without saying that all the Federalist cabinet members would retire and the President's associates---the major figures of the Republican movement in the 1790s---would be appointed instead of them. In appointing the heads of the six executive departments the new President did not only take into account their professional and personal merits but also sought to consolidate the Republican Party, i.e. he wanted his cabinet members to represent different sections of the country. James Madison (Virginia) was appointed Secretary of State, while New Englanders Henry Dearborn and Levi Lincoln (both from Massachusetts) were made Secretary of War and Attorney General of the United States, respectively. A Northeasterner, Gideon Granger from Connecticut, was appointed Postmaster General. After Robert Livingston (New York) and Samuel Smith had refused the office of Secretary of the Navy, it went to Robert Smith from Maryland. The most difficult problem was Albert Gallatin's appointment as Secretary of the Treasury. This was partly due to the fact that Gallatin was of Swiss origin; but Gallatin's appointment was particularly important, because the Federalists' finance policy was the main object of Republican criticism in the 1790s, while Gallatin was well known for his attacks, first as Senator and then as Representative, against Hamilton.

The transfer of power from one party to the other was completed by the time the first session of the 7th Congress convened on December 7, 1801, in the new US capital-Washington. The Republicans had a majority in both branches of the legislature: 18 Republicans against 14 Federalists in the Senate and 68 Republicans

~^^1^^ Quoted from: Raymond Walters, Jr., Albert Gallatin, Jeffersonian Financier and Diplomat, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1957, p. 161.

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against 39 Federalists in the House of Representatives. As compared with the previous House of Representatives with 42 Republicans and 58 Federalists, this was a major victory for the Republican Party which could secure successful implementation of the course envisaged by the Jeffersonians.

Jefferson wrote in 1819, i.e. seven years before his death, in a private letter about the "revolution of 1800" affirming that his party's coming to power was "as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.''^^1^^ This not an unsubstantiated opinion of one of the Founding Fathers after whom a whole early period of American history (Jeffersonian democracy) has been named, nevertheless, requires a critical approach.

The first social and political measures implemented by the Republicans showed not only a desire to fulfill the promises made during the 1800 election campaign but also an urge to compromise with their political opponents. This resulted in a certain evolution of the Jeffersonian party's ideological and political commitments. The element of the alternative was reduced in the programs of the Republicans and the Federalists at the beginning of the 19th century as compared with those at the end of the 18th century, which reflected the consolidation of the two-party system as a political mechanism.

This was confirmed, for example, by the Republican Administration's attitude to banks. It is known that the issue of setting up a national US bank was the initial point and catalyst of contradictions which surfaced in Congress at the beginning of the 1790s. Yet bank institutions, in particular the Bank of the United States, were not mentioned either in the President's Inaugural Address, or his message to Congress, or in the debates in both houses. On the one hand, the passivity of the Republican Administration may be explained by the fact that the Bank charter was to expire only in 1811 and the existence of banks had become an incontestable reality of American life. On the other hand, many party leaders such as the Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin regarded bank activities as a substantial backing for implementing the Republicans' fiscal policy. By 1800, 29 banks had operated in the country, an impressive figure in comparison with the four opened before 1791. Besides, by the beginning of the 19th century banking had spread beyond the main

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, in 10 volumes, edited by Paul L. Ford, Vol. 10, New York, 1899, p. 140.

commercial centers. This was apparently a result of the rapid growth of US trade, particularly foreign trade, and also the objective interest of the agrarians in banking.

A certain democratization of public life and new opportunities for agrarian strata brought about by Jefferson's Administration resulted in business losing its exclusively aristocratic, elitist nature. In addition, banking policies were a means to expand the Republican Party's social base by attracting commercial and financial circles of society to the administration's side.

Certain differences on the issue of banks arose between Jefferson and Gallatin when the Secretary of the Treasury proposed to set up a New Orleans Bank after the Louisiana purchase in 1803. The President took a negative stand and explained that, first, it would further increase the influence of the banks in general and, second, would provoke opposition in the country which had already been strong enough in view of the Louisiana purchase. Gallatin, on the other hand, kept in mind only the convenience of the Treasury and ignored the political consequences of the action, explaining to the President that the new bank would be very convenient for transferring money (no need to transport them in the literal sense) and also for collecting taxes. As a result, the President was compelled to agree with Gallatin's reasoning.

Thus, the Republican attitude to banks had changed significantly since the 1790s. The Treasury's dependence on successful operation and further extension of banks resulted in the early 19th century in a situation where the Republicans sought not to eliminate banks but to strengthen their influence in them.

In a bid to weaken the inter-party struggle, the Republicans also implemented a very limited reform of the judiciary system. As no other issue, the struggle around the functioning of the courts most visibly reflected an open Republican-Federalist conflict.

When Jefferson's party came to power not a single Republican occupied an office in any federal court, and for that reason it was obvious to Jefferson that it was necessary to modernize the judiciary system, particularly the 1801 Act adopted a month before Adams retired (when it was already known that the Federalists had lost the 1800 elections). Jefferson mentioned this in his first annual message to Congress in December 1801: "The judiciary system of the United States, and especially that portion of it recently erected, will of

4-749

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course present itself to the contemplation of Congress.''^^1^^

The new President said nothing about revision of the Constitution, about additional explanations to existing texts of certain articles, the need for Congress to elect members of the Supreme Court, and reducing the term in office of the Supreme Court Justices.

The repeal of the Federalist 1801 judiciary act on July 1, 1802, provoked the profound disappointment of the Federalists. The National Intelligencer had the following comment to make: "Some of the federal prints have gone into mourning for the judiciary act... And well may they mourn. They have lost a friend in need; the only friend left them amidst their misfortunes.''^^2^^

However, when in 1804 the future leader of the Old Republicans faction in Congress, John Randolph, attempted to impeach a Federalist Supreme Court justice, Samuel Chase, the initiative failed to gain the support of the administration and was defeated.

There are no indications that in 1803-1804 the administration was preparing any further attempts to attack the country's judiciary system which remained, as formerly, under Federalist control. In addition to the unsuccessful impeachment of Chase, the Marbury v. Madison, and Stuart v. Laird cases considered in 1803-1804 laid the ground for a modus vivendi between the Republican Administration and the Federalist Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice John Marshall. Chase remained in office until his death in 1811, but he no longer played a significant role in the country's political life.

Chase's acquittal was an example of the reluctance of Jefferson and the moderate Republicans behind him to aggravate relations with the Federalists. The example of Chase's abortive impeachment shows how and under what circumstances the Republicans and Federalists would arrive at a consensus.

Seeking to strengthen his positions in the Northeastern areas of the USA by attracting merchants and land speculators of New England to his side, President Jefferson tended to support what was known as the Yazoo compromise in 1805.

The Republicans were also forced to some extent abandon the principles of reducing the prerogatives of executive power and strict interpretation of the Constitution they advocated in the 1790s

A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, Ed. James D. Richardson, Vol. I, GPO, Washington, 1896, p. 331. ~^^1^^ National Intelligencer, July 14, 1802.

when it came to purchasing Louisiana, proclaiming US foreign trade embargo in 1807 and also a program of internal improvements.

On the other hand, the Republican Party managed to retain the element of alternative in domestic and foreign policies in respect to the Federalist course. This involved, above all, the repealing of all internal taxes in 1801-1802. It is obvious that the pro-Republican sections of society (farmers, plantation owners, part of the bourgeoisie operating on the domestic market, and lower strata in towns) had a vital interest in the repeal of internal taxes which they regarded as apolitical, inquisitorial and immoral. At the same time the commercial bourgeoisie of the Northeast backing the Federalists was the chief payer of foreign taxes. That was why they favored retaining internal taxes and reducing external ones. When in January 1802 the Federalists submitted a bill to the House of Representatives calling for a repeal of import duties, it was rejected by the Republican majority of the House: 45 voted for the bill (37 Federalists and 8 Republicans) and 49 voted against it (all Republicans).^^1^^

When the bill to repeal the internal taxes was submitted, the Republicans in both the House and the Senate voted unanimously for it.^^2^^ (In the House the majority was joined by the North Carolina Federalist, John Stanley.) As a result, in April 1802 the President signed the act to repeal all internal taxes except the tax on the sale of public lands^^3^^ and post taxes.

Another major trend in US fiscal policy, as the leaders of the Republican Party saw it, was to sharply reduce federal defense expenditures and also the machinery of government as a whole. This could only be done provided there was peace between the USA and other countries. In Jefferson's opinion, it was quite sufficient to insulate the country from European cataclysms, and this would enable America to trade freely with all the countries of the world. On many occasions, including his Inaugural Address, the President spoke of the need to abstain from joining any political alliances, believing that such a policy would offer America excellent opportunities to remain outside military conflicts. The country's geographical re-

Annals of the Congress of the United States. Seventh Congress. The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States. Seventh Congress, 1st Session, December 7, 1801, to March 3, 1803, Gales and Seaton, Washington, 1851, p. 444. ^^2^^₃ Ibid., pp. 250, 1074.

It concerned only the sale of land, and not the land tax that had been repealed. Ibid., p. 1323-1326.

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moteness contributed to this possibility as well. There is nothing remarkable, therefore, in the fact that the President began his annual message to Congress with the news that peace would soon be restored in Europe and hence the political situation in the world was shaping up quite favorably for the US. Thereby the Republicans were able to save money by reducing federal expenditures on the Army and the Navy. The President wrote to the Republican governor of New Jersey Joseph Bloomfield on December 5, 1801: "We can now proceed without risk in demolishing useless structures of expense, lightening the burthens of our constituents, and fortifying the principles of free government.''^^1^^

The voting in the House and the Senate on the bill fixing the US defense budget for peace time proceeded according to party affiliation: 39 for the bill and 24 against it in the House, and 15 for it and 10 against in the Senate.^^2^^ The President noted with satisfaction the results of voting on reduction of expenditures on the army and the navy in a letter to Gallatin on December 31,1802. Referring to economy on military spending the President emphasized the need for using financial resources exclusively for maintaining existing naval vessels. In the future he proposed to build only small, defensive vessels, expressing the belief that the US would never be an aggressor in any war.

Besides the Republicans' successes in Congress where they pushed forward the administration's fiscal policy, they were credited with achievements in democratizing public life. This concerned, primarily, the repeal of the Alien Act adopted by the Federalists in 1798, according to which immigrants could become US citizens only after 14 years of residence. The second antidemocratic law adopted by the Federalists, the Sedition Act, expired in 1801 and was not debated despite desperate attempts by the Federalists to revive it at the 6th Congress. It is noteworthy that Jefferson publicly pardoned all those convicted under the Sedition Act and dropped the charges against the editor of the Republican Aurora William Duane whose case was still pending under a resolution of the Senate.

In March 1802 a proposal was submitted to the House of Re-

presentatives to revise the acts concerning naturalization and return to the 1795 act requiring only 5 years to obtain US citizenship. On the next day, March 11, a similar bill was put to the vote in the Senate where it was approved on April 3 as the law on revising and amending the acts concerning naturalization. On April 14 the President signed the act to establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and to repeal the acts heretofore passed on the matter.

The solution of the agrarian problem took a special place in Republican policy. The agrarian dimension was the most important one in the Republican Party's economic program, because all the other Republican constructions were based on and around it---the attitude to foreign trade, development of manufactures, etc. Being largely a party of agrarians and putting problems of the country's agricultural development to the fore, the Republicans advanced a clear alternative to the Federalist plans and policies of the 1790s. It is necessary to note that, having solved the agrarian problem by purchasing Louisiana and securing democratic access to the free lands, the political opponents of the Federalists managed to retain a highly alternative domestic policy. As a result, in the early 19th century US capitalism began to develop in the most progressive manner for its time.

Jefferson specifically singled out the development of agriculture, regarding it as the basis for the country's economic progress as a whole. However, not only economic but also social and political considerations underlay the Jeffersonian preference for the agrarian development of US capitalism. As early as 1785-1786 Jefferson shared with Madison his views on the undesirability of intensive industrial development in the USA to the detriment of agriculture. Noting the disastrous plight of landless poor people in Europe, the future President sought to prevent the appearance of a similar class in his country. "Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.''^^1^^

Both Jefferson and Madison believed that it was necessary to continually renew the reserve of free land by expanding to the West, and with a fortunate turn of events, in the Southern direction (Florida), too. It is in the above context that the purchase of the

~^^1^^ The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8, 25 February to 31 October 1785, Julian P. Boyd, Editor, Princeton University Press, 1953, p. 682.

Quoted from: Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time, Volume Four, Jefferson the President. First Term, 1801-1805, Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1970, p. 95. Annals of Congress, 7th Congress, 1st Session, p. 1202, 195.

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territory of Louisiana by the United States should be considered.

On the other hand, the Louisiana purchase was also necessary from the viewpoint of US commercial interests---both for Western farmers and Northeastern merchants. Under the Jay Treaty and a treaty concluded by Thomas Pinckney with Spain in 1795, both the former and the latter used the Mississippi as a trade artery. That is why when Spain decided to transfer the territory of Louisiana to the French government, Jefferson and Madison, as most Americans, perceived this as a serious threat to the further advance to the West, particularly in areas west of Kentucky and Tennessee.

After Spain banned American trade with New Orleans via the Mississippi in October 1802, many senators and among them quite a few Federalists were horrified by the catastrophic consequences of that ban for the American economy. They said that the American settlers in the West had conquered and settled in the wilderness introducing the ways of civilized society where only a few years before the roaring of wild animals was heard. Now the position of these farmers was threatened. In addition, it was regarded as undesirable for the United States to have such a powerful neighbor as France was in those years. The Republicans saw the immediate purchase of the territory of Louisiana from Napoleon as the most favorable way out of the prevailing situation.

The signing in 1803 of the treaty by Napoleon and American delegates in France on the purchase for 15 million dollars of the territory of Louisiana which was 140 per cent larger than the area of the US at the time, posed a number of complicated constitutional problems for the Republican Administration. The President wrote on that score: "Every eye in the US is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the revolutionary war has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation.''^^1^^

The need for territorial expansion by the young republic as such was not questioned by the Republican leaders. In a letter to a future US President Andrew Jackson, Jefferson wrote that the interests of the nation required that the country be expanded.

The Republican press enthusiastically hailed the news of the Louisiana purchase. The Philadelphia Aurora rejoiced "that the objects for which a war was so violently advocated have been obtained without bloodshed or the creation of an enemy. That the free and

perpetual sovereignty of all the Mississippi has been obtained to us.''^^1^^ National Intelligencer wrote: "By the cession of Louisiana, we shall preserve peace, and acquire a territory of great extent, fertility, and local importance... A nation, whose population is doubled in twenty-four years ... only requires peace.''^^2^^ Discussing the financial aspect of the purchase and criticizing the Federalists who regarded 15 million dollars as too expensive for such an acquisition, National Intelligencer in August 1803 mentioned Federalist editions which only recently maintained that purchasing New Orleans was worth any sum of money, while one paper wrote that to purchase Louisiana for 50 million dollars would have been a very profitable deal indeed.^^3^^ In January 1804 National Intelligencer was in raptures over the moral implications of the purchase: "They had extended the blessings of liberty to a hundred thousand beings who were added to the population of their country, ... they had acquired a new world, and had laid the foundation for the happiness of millions yet unborn! "^^4^^ It follows from the above excerpts that the two principal Republican papers saw no negative aspects in the Louisiana purchase, focussing on praising their President and the party. Federalist John Rutledge noted in a letter to his correspondent that popular rejoicing over the Louisiana purchase was such, it was not to be overcome by the strength of reason.

Indeed, Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana was exceptionally important for the country's economic growth. To begin with, the Republicans solved the problem of land for many years to come, providing for the unimpeded development of agriculture. Simultaneously with talks on the purchase of Louisiana and treaty ratification, i.e. in 1803, Congress appointed a committee to investigate the question of sale of public lands. The committee included members from five states (Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia). In January 1804 it proposed a bill according to which the size of land tracts was reduced four-fold as compared with the 1796 act, and the price fell to 1 dollar 64 cents per acre (as compared with 2 dollars).^^5^^ On March 26 the bill acquired the force of law.

~^^1^^ Philadelphia Aurora, July 8, 1803.

~^^2^^ National Intelligencer, July 8, 1803.

~^^3^^ National Intelligencer, August 17, 1803.

~^^4^^ National Intelligencer, January 30, 1804.

See: Annals of the Congress of the United States. Eighth Congress. October 17, 1803 to March 3, 1805, Gales and Seaton, Washington, 1852, pp. 950, 1294.

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8, p. 145.

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Thus, by solving the land problem and securing the most democratic access to free land for the time being, the Jeffersonian Republicans managed to implement a basic plank of their platform in spite of the Federalist Party which supported the development of commerce and manufactures.

Besides, having purchased Louisiana, the Republicans secured free navigation along the Mississippi. They often referred to the circumstance as providing new opportunities for merchants in general and those in the Northeast in particular. For the Republicans, encouragement of trade had always been part and parcel of the country's agricultural development.

The Louisiana purchase enabled the Republicans to largely satisfy the economic interests of different groups of the US population: of farmers by providing them with fertile land and easing the terms of buying it by the 1804 act; of planters in the Southwestern states by encouraging their territorial expansion in the Western direction and allowing slaves to be brought to new territories; of merchants interested in developing the domestic market; and of those in the Northeast engaged in import-export trade.

Republican successes brought about an abrupt weakening of the Federalist Party, which was made clear by the outcome of the 1804 elections: Jefferson won 162 elector votes, while his opponent Charles Pinckney had only 14 (9 from Connecticut, 3 from Delaware and 2 from Maryland). A certain realignment was observed in the country's public life: the focus of the political struggle shifted from the Republican-Federalist conflict to rivalry between factions within the Republican Party.

During his first term in office Jefferson managed to retain the party's unity in Congress. In the end of 1804, however, contradictions emerged between the Republicans leading to the rise of what was known as the Randolph group in the House of Representatives. Members of the group were mostly planters from the country's Southeast, who supported the views of the Old Republicans. What they did not like was that an important element of Hamilton's fiscal system---the Bank of the United States---had been preserved, that executive powers had grown and so on. They demanded that the country's political system be significantly revised, thereby accusing the President and moderate Republicans who supported him of having lapsed into Federalism.

The Republican Party's motley social base largely accounted for

the sharpening of contradictions within its ranks. The rise of John Randolph as head of the opposition faction occurred gradually and was finally completed only in 1806 when he publicly acknowledged his oppositional stand in respect to the administration: "If we belong to the third party, be it so.''^^1^^ The underlying cause of these moods was the dissatisfaction of a certain part of the Republican planters with Jefferson's policy. Former Antifederalists, these planters surfaced in the Republican Party in the 1790s (particularly after the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions were proclaimed) because of their adherence to the principles of purely agrarian elitist society and the doctrine of states rights. From the platform they stood on they could not grasp the new political situation which took shape in the country following the advent to power of the Republican Party. Defending the interests of planters living on the Southeastern seaboard and lacking opportunities to move West, the Old Republicans had hoped to see more fundamental changes introduced by the moderate Republican Administration. They sought in-depth reforms of political institutions, and wanted the administration to ignore completely the country's commercial and manufacturing interests and particularly those of the Northeast.

An ideological leader of the Old Republicans, John Taylor, explained the group's dissatisfaction in a letter to James Monroe in the following way: "There were a number of people who soon thought and said to one another that Mr. Jefferson did many good things, but neglected some better things, who came to view his policy as very like a compromise with Mr. Hamilton's.''^^2^^ Indeed, after Federalism was defeated, it acquired a new life in partnership with Republicanism. As a result, principles of the Republican Party became nominal rather than true.

In the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions the Old Republicans, and their leader in Congress John Randolph above all, saw the essential meaning of their program. The states rights doctrine advanced in these documents provided for a weakening of the federal Government. But in his actual policy Jefferson hardly intended to blindly follow the concept. Only naturally, therefore, many of his actions such as the Louisiana purchase and setting up a Territorial

~^^1^^ Annals of the Congress of the United States. Ninth Congress, December 2, 1805, to March 3, 1807, Gales and Seaton, Washington, 1852, p. 775.

~^^2^^ Quoted from: Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion. Evolution of a Party Ideology, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1978, p. 282.

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government there, retaining the Bank of the United States, a moderate patronage policy, leaving the Federalists in their offices in the Supreme Court, and also the Yazoo compromise were regarded by Randolph and his followers as revision of the basic principles of the Republican Party.

The struggle between the Old and the moderate Republicans unfolded when Congress debated such important issues as the Territorial government of Louisiana, the Yazoo compromise, impeachment of Supreme Court justice Chase, the embargo on US foreign trade, adoption of the program of internal improvements, measures in preparation for the Anglo-American war of 1812, entry into the war and so forth. To a certain extent the Old Republicans continued the traditions laid by the Antifederalists in the 1780s: both had a negative attitude to the strengthening of the federal government and championed states rights. However, while the opponents of the Constitution were often motivated by democratic purposes, democratization of public life was hardly a goal of the Old Republicans. Opposing the Yazoo compromise, advocating Chase's impeachment and resenting protection of US foreign trade interests by the federal government, Randolph and his followers primarily sought to weaken the position of the commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie. The desire to impeach Chase and carry through a judiciary reform basically pursued the aim of excluding Federalists from political life.

It is not easy to estimate the exact number of votes in the House of Representatives permanently controlled by Randolph. In April 1806 Jefferson told Wilson Nicholas that Randolph had "only 5 or 6 followers" in Congress. In May of the same year the President estimated the number as "4 to 6 or 8".^^1^^ Keeping in mind that during the discussion of the Yazoo compromise and the resolution on Chase's impeachment Randolph had been supported by a larger number of congressmen that subsequently made up the Randolph group in the House, there were only seven permanent members in the group. They were James Garnett, Abram Trigg and Philip Thompson from Virginia, Richard Stanford and David Williams from South Carolina, Thomas Thompson from New Hampshire and one representative from the West, Thomas Stanford. Frequently Randolph was supported by five Southerners: William Bibb and

Thomas Spalding from Georgia, Christopher Clark from Virginia, Edward Lloyd and John Archer from Maryland. The invariably southern origin of the group's members (excluding Standford) points to the underlying economic reason for the opposition of Randolph and the Old Republicans to the policy of the party's moderate wing, including the administration.

It should be noted once again that, despite the apparent democratic bias of some of the Old Republicans' demands (opposition to the Territorial government of Louisiana and the desire to reform the country's political institutions), their real purpose was to strengthen the elitist position of the Southeastern planters at the expense of the remaining sections in American society, including the farmers.

In the early 19th century the US capitalist farmers did not have their own program of goals and actions running counter to the interests and strivings of the majority of planters who, just like a considerable part of the bourgeoisie, supported the domestic policy of the Jeffersonian Republicans. The farmers's main demands at the turn of the 19th century were the repeal of the internal taxes, democratization of access to the land and advance to the West. Having satisfied these demands, the Jeffersonian Republicans not only secured free development of agriculture along the capitalist road but also prevented the rise of independent farmer movements. By their domestic and foreign policies the Republicans on the whole managed to keep plantation owners, farmers and a considerable part of the bourgeoisie in the Northeast within their sphere of influence. Such is the essence of the socio-political phenomenon known as Jeffersonian Democracy. The party aspect of the phenomenon boils down to the ability of one party to embrace and satisfy different sections in society by the measures adopted.

The scope of social sections whose interests the Jeffersonian Republicans took into account in their policy-making grew wider when the war between England and France was resumed in Europe, which had considerable consequences for American trade. England and France began to seize vessels belonging to neutral countries and sailing for the ports of the belligerents. In 1805 the American ship Essex carrying goods to the French West Indies was captured by the British. By 1806 more than 120 American merchantmen had been detained.

In America these events had the most serious impact on the in-

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, op. cit., Vol. 9, p. 447.

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terests of the commercial bourgeoisie of New England which made up the backbone of the Federalist Party. In the tense situation the dissatisfaction of the Northeastern bourgeoisie acquired a political thrust. On May 9, 1806, National Intelligencer wrote that an end had come to the time of "harmony and brotherly love.''^^1^^ The prestige of the Jeffersonian Administration fell: the Federalists believed that the President had failed to show the required firmness and resolution in defending America's national interests.

The international situation had become more complicated by the end of 1807, particularly after the British government had decreed a ban on neutral ships trading with France and other European countries Now, America's foreign trade was indeed in the balance.

After Pinckney's unsuccessful attempt to conclude an acceptable treaty with Great Britain, Jefferson made a speech in Congress on December 18, 1807, on the need to introduce an embargo. Export of American goods to all foreign ports was to be discontinued, and special vessels were to be provided to verify fulfilment. All sea trade was put under the direct control of the President. Foreign ships were to leave American ports.

Under the circumstances the embargo was an attempt to find an alternative, on the one hand, to war, and on the other, to subordination of American interests to England, and to some extent, to France. The embargo was a continuation of the tradition going back to the prerevolutionary years of banning import of foreign and export of American goods. Since the cessation of foreign trade inflicted considerable harm on the American bourgeoisie, the Republican Administration presented it as an unpleasant but necessary step. The embargo, however, had far-reaching economic and political consequences which it was difficult for the legislators to foresee. As a result of foreign trade stoppage the whole American economy suffered considerably, and this concerned not only merchants and traders but also the broadest sections of the population. This was the main reason for dissatisfaction with the administration's policy, which, on the one hand, led to a certain strengthening of Federalism and, on the other, to growing differences within the Republican Party.

Discontent among the groups of the bourgeoisie interested in

National Intelligencer, May 9, 1806.

foreign trade led in practice to frequent violations of the embargo. Despite the additional acts of January 8, February 25 and March 12, 1808, and of January 9, 1809, which gave greater powers to the President and extended the punitive functions of the customs officials, it became clear in early 1809 that violations of the embargo were continuing.

Paradoxically, the Federalists resorted to the same tactic in 1808 as the Republicans did in 1798 in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts: they turned to the state legislatures aiming to repeal the laws approved by the federal government and the Supreme Court. Resolutions were adopted in Massachusetts and Connecticut according to which the state legislatures could determine whether government acts were constitutional or unconstitutional, and the acts banning foreign trade were declared null and void. Thus, by 1808 the Republicans and the Federalists had changed places in their theoretical constructions as compared with the end of the 18th century. The latter became advocates of states rights, while Jefferson, who in his time (during the rebellion of Pennsylvania farmers in 1794) had sharply condemned government use of the army and navy to suppress internal disorders, acquired that right under the 1808 act and made use of it. He regarded violation of the embargo by New Englanders as treason.

Indeed, it is known that in 1808 Federalist leaders were engaged in friendly correspondence with the English. The latter promised commercial advantages to New England in exchange for its neutrality in case of war. Many believed that the coming Anglo-American war would lead to New England's secession. Subsequently, in 1814, the Hartford Convention further strengthened these apprehensions.

The timespan from the 1806 elections to the 1808 presidential elections was very important in this respect. While between 1800 and 1807 the influence of the Republican Party had been growing throughout the country, in late 1807 the situation changed. On the one hand, the unpopular embargo strengthened the Federalists' positions. The following facts are significant in this regard. Up till 1807 the governors of all the New England states, except for Connecticut, had been Republicans. A year later all New England governors without exception were Federalists. In New York and Massachusetts, for example, the Federalists won a majority in 1808 and seized commanding heights in the state legislatures. Historian Marshall Smelser wrote: "The elections of 1800-1806 might have de-

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stroyed Federalism, if it had not had the stimulus of the embargo issue to revive it in 1808.'^ On the other hand, the differences, which had taken shape within the Republican Party by 1806, resulted in a final split in Congress between the moderate Republicans supporting the administration and the Randolph group. Therefore, the Republican Party approached the 1808 elections not at all as united as it used to be in 1800 or 1804. There is no doubt that Jefferson's foreign trade policy, the embargo and the issue of relations with Britain played a significant part in this.

Attention should be drawn to the fact that the embargo was a kind of protectionist tariff which, in turn, led to a rapid growth of manufactures in the US after 1807. As the conflict with England developed from 1807 to 1814, more large-scale, machine enterprises became widespread on a par with small-scale domestic manufactures. Jefferson later openly admitted that the factory system was inevitable. In 1816 he wrote to Benjamin Austin: "We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist... He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture, must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these; experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.''^^2^^

A positive attitude to manufactures was even more clearly apparent in the activity of Jefferson's successor, Madison. In his annual messages to Congress in 1809, 1810 and 1811 the new President emphasized the importance of domestic manufactures, noting the growth of professional occupations. Madison also insisted that manufactures played a major role in securing primary wants and US defense. The Report on Manufactures presented to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin in April 1811 remarked with satisfaction that nearly two-thirds of the apparel and cloth consumed in the US were made at American manufactures.^^3^^

Thus, on the question of manufactures the Republicans, during

~^^1^^ Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic. 1801-1815. Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, 1968, p. 176.

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Eds. Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. XIV, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States Washington, 1905, p. 391, 392.

Annals of the Congress of the United States. Eleventh Congress. First and Second Sessions. May 22, 1809, to May 1, 1810, Gales and Seaton. Washington, 1853, pp. 2223- 2239.

Madison's first term, largely adopted the original arguments advanced by the Federalists at the end of the 18th century. The internal improvements program proposed by the Republican Administration in 1808 also represented a major stage in the evolution of Republican theory and practice.

In his second Inaugural Address Jefferson spoke about the time when the treasury would be free of debt and the surplus would go to building bridges, canals, roads and other major enterprises within each state. The President specified that such a system of internal improvements would be carried through only in peacetime. A few weeks later Jefferson received a report from Gallatin that the revenues of the treasury were larger than expected. The President replied that this situation drew closer the time when Americans would undertake a program of building "canals, roads, college, etc."¹ Thus, as early as 1805 Jefferson was ready to abandon one of the cornerstones of Republican ideology---reducing government functions to the minimum---and proposed a whole system aimed at enhancing the prerogatives of the federal government. The President's viewpoint was backed by members of the administration.

In the early 19th century, when the American frontier was raised beyond the Alleghenies and particularly after the Louisiana purchase, the American agrarians---both planters and farmers---were largely cut off, due to the absence of transport arteries, from the ports on the Eastern seaboard through which trade in agricultural produce was carried on with the countries of Europe. That was why the program of internal improvements advanced by the Republican Administration was not in the interests of businessmen in the Northeast but rather of agrarians in the West. Successful development of American manufactures, which revived the trade turnover and expanded the domestic market, also required better operating means of communication and transportation in the country.

This was the subject of a report to Congress made by the Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin on April 6, 1808. He proposed an extensive and well thought out plan for internal improvements furnished with calculations. Gallatin's report is also interesting because it marked a new turn in Republican theory and practice: the Republicans undertook to implement one of the basic Federalist principles---federal government intervention in the country's economic life.

~^^1^^ The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Paul L. Ford, Vol. 8, p. 357.

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Gallatin's report specified what internal improvements were to be carried through, where and how. Intended for ten years, Gallatin's program envisaged projects beyond the financial reach of individual states and also outside the possibilities of private entrepreneurs. In the Secretary's words the system of internal improvements was in the interests of the entire Union and was to establish economic links between the country's most remote parts.

Since the embargo policy had failed and relations between the US and Great Britain continued to worsen in 1809-1812, the Congress in the period under consideration was unable to resume debates concerning the Gallatin plan. However, relevant petitions by the advocates of the internal improvements policy continued to be sent to the country's highest legislature in 1810, 1811 and 1812.

Deteriorating relations with England produced new problems having to do with preparations for the impending war. The struggle between and within the parties intensified. The now traditional differences between the Old Republicans and the administration paved the way for the emergence of the Young Republicans faction representing the interests of the Southwestern areas of the country. The administration's positions were weakened by the anti-Madison group of ``invisibles'' in the Senate and also by the Richmond junta which grew stronger after the 1808 elections and tended to support various factions on different issues of the prewar agenda. At the same time the Federalists considerably strengthened their positions before the war taking advantage of the unfortunate embargo policy and the discontent on this account of different groups of the population interested in resuming US foreign trade at all costs: the Federalists regained the upper hand in New England and also in some parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The appearance on the political scene of the Young Republicans who acted as a united front at the first session of the 12th Congress in support of hostilities against Great Britain, was not only associated with expansionist moods in the South and the West, but also reflected a major realignment of forces in the country's political life. The Young Republicans or War Hawks occupied prominent posts in the government in mid-1811: Henry Clay from Kentucky bacame the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Calhoun from South Carolina and Felix Grundy from Tennessee were members of the House Committee on Foreign Relations headed by Peter Porter from New York. The Young Republicans movement was far from

homogeneous: no wonder soon after the end of the War of 1812 it fell apart prompting the emergence of two contradictory trends, Clay's nationalist American System and Calhoun's states rights doctrine. However, before the war the Young Republicans were cemented by expansionism, which, as well as the desire to return to the United States the right to trade freely with all countries, served as the basis for the alliance between Southern and Western interests within one faction.

On the other hand, military preparations and the declaration of war were opposed in Congress by the Old Republicans and the Federalists. When on May 30, 1812, President Madison presented a war message saying that the US was at war with Great Britain, all the Federalists without exception and 15 Republicans supporting Randolph voted against.

The War of 1812 began in a complicated domestic political situation. All the government's attempts to rally the country in the face of the coming crisis fell through. Differences between the Republicans and the Federalists, and also splits within the Republican Party, resulted in a pre-crisis situation in American political life on the eve of the war and after the end of the war in the downfall of the Republican-Federalist two-party system.

S'irsi Party

( 1 8 1 ft-

IN SEARCH OF THE

OPTIMAL PATTERN:

THE FIRST

PARTY REALIGNMENT

(1816-1828)

clearly advance its demands, to say nothing of implementing them. There still existed influential groups of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie in the Northeast oriented primarily to developing foreign trade, although their influence decreased as the time went on. The cotton boom had abruptly changed the situation in the South: the demand for that raw material in the textile industry rose steeply. The chief consumers of cotton at the time were the English textile mills. Young American industry was obviously unable to consume such a large amount of raw cotton which, as a result, went to the external market. Frontier development continued in the West where the picture was made even more varied by the semi-subsistence farms of the pioneers who developed new lands. This variety of economic structures resulted in an acute struggle between individual groups of the ruling class on questions of protectionism, internal improvements and finances. On the other hand, there was an equally inevitable variety of purely local demands and problems.

The realignment of forces was primarily caused by the struggle around the entire set of issues concerning capitalist development in the United States and by the need to adjust the party-political structure to changes in the social and economic field. The simultaneous existence of several modes of production and their uneven development even within the bounds of one and the same section promised the appearance of a very large number of political groups.

The end of the war gave rise to many problems. The chief one among them was British competition. The embargo put on trade with England had served as a strong protectionist tariff. Now the situation had changed. A stream of British goods inundated the American market, Britain sought "to stifle in the craddle those rising manufactures in the United States.''^^1^^ Americans worried whether their industry would hold its own in the unequal struggle: in late 1815 and early 1816 petitions poured into Congress demanding measures to protect American industry. The finance problem was equally important: finances were in a nearly chaotic state. At the end of 1815 President Madison addressed Congress with the direct statement that the critical situation with government finances required restoration of the National Bank of the United States to put them in some order.

~^^1^^ Mies' Weekly Register, January 4, 1817, p. 280.

The end of the Anglo-American War of 1812 marked the beginning of a major party realignment initially associated with the Era of Good Feelings. At the time the former political associations fell into disarray and then broke up, and larger blocs began to form on the splinters of numerous small groupings. These larger blocs subsequently gave rise to new parties. The Era of Good Feelings, which created the illusion of universal reconciliation and the disappearance of conflict between parties, ended in an acute strife heralding the advent of Jacksonian democracy.

Major changes in the country's social and economic development were the chief cause of the coming realignment. Serious changes had occurred in the world economy by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Taking advantage of its industrial supremacy in 1815, Britain came in fact to possess a monopoly of world trade in all the most important industries. The Peace of Ghent had already marked Great Britain's disavowal of the former policy of mercantilism and its transition to the principles of free trade. For the United States this meant that former differences in trade policy engendered by such measures as the Jay Treaty objectively lost any significance. One might say that the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which had sharply worsened conditions for the development of American trade, largely contributed to the final reorientation of the American economy. A decisive turn to the development of the domestic market was being made. The existence of several modes of production developing parallel to each other highlighted the American economy at the time. The industrial revolution in the Northeast was only in its early stage, although its very first steps were quite impressive. The industrial bourgeoisie was unable to

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federal government, to rally the entire population to support the administration, and to amalgamate parties in the administration.¹ However, although there already were differences among the Federalists due to the separatist behavior by some of them, such amalgamation was rejected by the Republican leadership. The Republicans still thought it necessary to fight against the Federalists until the 1816 presidential elections. They scored a landslide victory at the elections. James Monroe received 183 electoral votes, while the Federalist candidate Rufus King had only 34 ( Connecticut, Delaware and Massachusetts). King even lost the elections in his own state, New York. The Federalist Party was rapidly declining as a national political force. It was following the victory in the elections, during the 1817 tour of New England, that Monroe began to make conciliatory passes to the Federalists, attempting to win them over to his side. The Federalists were only too eager to meet him halfway. It was then that the Era of Good Feelings was mentioned for the first time.

The Federalists were losing influence not only as a result of their incorrect line during the war years. The chief reason was that in the first postwar years the Republicans managed to solve most of the problems over which they had argued with the Federalists. The ground was virtually cut from under the feet of the Federalists as a result of the policies pursued by the Republican Administration. This brought in a short period of time when only the Republican Party operated at the national level. The Federalists also suffered heavy losses in the states. If in 1814-1820 they held ground in 11 states out of 18, and were uncontested in 5 states (New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware), in 1818-1820 their influence existed only in 7 out of 21 states.^^2^^ Even in Delaware, where the Federalists had prevailed until the late 1820s due to specific circumstances, they were forced to yield to the Republicans for some time.^^3^^ In effect, the first phase of the

``Letters of James Monroe to George Hay", Bulletin of New York Public Library, Volume VI, January to December 1902, New York, 1902, p. 228.

Derived from Stanley B. Parsons, William W. Beach, Dan Hermann, United States Congressional Districts 1788-1841, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1978, pp. 146-207.

See Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System. Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1966, pp. 147-154.

Most of the issues determining the political situation in the first postwar years (up to 1819) were brought to the fore by the war which showed the glaring weakness of the American armed forces, industry and finances, and also a virtually total absence of internal transportation routes. Therefore a number of measures--- the rechartering of the National Bank of the United States, adoption of the first protectionist (still moderate) tariff, implementation of internal improvements by Congress in 1816-1819---made the Republicans relinquish their former agrarian Utopias still further. At the same time, these measures were necessary to solve the most urgent problems and strengthen the foundations on which the American economy was to develop in the future. Thus, the bill to set up the second National Bank was submitted to Congress by John Calhoun; it passed the House by 80 votes against 71, with 39 Federalists and at least 26 Republicans voting against (the party affiliation of 6 others is unknown), while in the Senate 7 out of 12 Federalists voted against the bill. The picture was roughly the same when the bill on the tariff was adopted in April 1816: among the 54 congressmen who voted against the bill, the Federalists and the Republicans had an equal number (23 each) with 8 others of unknown party membership. In the Senate 4 Federalists out of 10 and 3 Republicans out of 21 voted against the tariff.^^1^^ New England's Federalists now feared that adoption of the tariff would harm this area's commerce. By contrast, Republicans regarded industry and commerce as a useful supplement to agriculture also strengthening the republic. Such an evolution of the Republican Party led to a large broadening of its political platform. The Republicans now tended to identify the party's interests with the interests of American society as a whole. The Republican Administration at the time sought to become a symbol of nationwide concord. It is to be noted once again that many measures implemented by the Republicans had caused acute clashes between the parties in the recent past. Now they were regarded as necessary in order to stabilize the situation in the country.

In the political sphere the Republicans saw their chief aim in strengthening national unity. During the War of 1812 proposals had been made to unite all parties on a platform of support for the

Albert Castel, Scott L. Gibson, The Yeas and Nays. Key Congressional Decisions 1774-1945, New Issues Press, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1975, p. 32.

70 Chapter Three

!• irst Party Realignment

(1816-1828) 71

realignment had been completed by 1820---one of the parties in the former party system had ceased to exist as a national force.

The subsequent struggle was waged within the Republican Party. Identifying itself with society as a whole and seeking to cater to the interests of as many different sections and groups as possible, the Republican Party turned into a loose conglomerate destined to fall apart at the first serious worsening of the social, economic and political situation. There were additional factors which hastened the process. The first among them was the territorial extension of the parties' sphere of operation as a result of new states joining the Union. Following the War of 1812, this happened every year (Indiana became a state in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, Missouri in 1821). The Federalists did not represent a real political force in any of these states. From the very outset only one party existed there, the Republicans; in Mississippi, the party system began with the Democratic Party^^1^^, and the political struggle went on exclusively between the rival factions of that party.

The 1819 economic crisis and the debates on admitting Missouri into the Union dealt the final blow to the Republican Party. A specific feature of US development at the time was that the industrial revolution had not finally won out in the country. Despite high growth rates American industry could hardly satisfy even the needs of the domestic market and secure reliable links within the economy, to say nothing of relations with the world market. For a certain time, the plantation business of the South, which was living through a cotton boom and high cotton prices, with most of the cotton being exported to Britain, became the most developed sector of the US economy. Karl Marx wrote: "Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country.''^^2^^ Close links with the world market no doubt helped the Southern planters realize their social and economic interests and advance clear demands at an early date, chief among which was the unconditional preservation of slavery as the foundation of the entire Southern economy. Another consequence of the cotton boom was that the planters

2 Stanely B. Parsons, William W. Beach, Dan Hermann, op. cit. p. 242.

Karl Marx, "The Poverty of Philosophy", in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, 1976, p. 167.

expanded areas where cotton was grown and got into debts hoping that prices would continue to rise.

The same is true of the farmers. The outcome of the war had significantly changed the situation west of the Alleghenies. The Indian tribes had been forced back, and the treaties with Spain had left the lands acquired in 1803 to the United States. The colonization of Western lands had acquired unheard-of proportions. This, in turn, led to a land boom giving rise to numerous companies speculating in land. The speculator became a commonplace, although denounced, figure. Speculation and the desire to acquire land as quickly as possible and extend sown areas resulted in debts that were enormous for their time. The debt to the federal government for the land sold was 3 million dollars in 1815, 7 million in 1818, and 22 million in 1819.' The whole system founded on mutual obligations which were not soundly backed up and operated in extremely chaotic financial situation, was bound to collapse at the first serious shock. Such a shock was the 1819 crisis which put the new landowners in dire straits. Unable to meet their obligations in good time, many farmers and planters turned into insolvent debtors. The country was seized by a general feeling of disaster about which the editor of a popular and influential Republican weekly wrote. Making common cause with the Southerners from the Kentucky Reporter, he saw the reason for the country's misfortunes in public lands speculation by both real and self-styled financiers. He wrote: "The banks have conspired with the government to promote it---the former by lending money to the speculators, and the latter by the wretched system of selling the lands on credit.''^^2^^ The New York Republicans supported their counterparts in Richmond who protested against the ruling of the Supreme Court which found unconstitutional the state laws on bankruptcy and the right of the states to tax the stock of the National Bank branches.^^3^^ The 1819 crisis marked the beginning of the end of the Era of Good Feelings and simultaneously prepared the ground for the unity of Southern and Western interests.

The situation in the South and in the West, which took shape

~^^1^^ American State Papers. Class VIII, Public Lands. Vol. Ill, Washington, 1834,

p. 460.

*

Mies' Weekly Register, September 4, 1819, p. 10. ' Albany Argus, October 29, 1819, p. 2.

72 Chapter Three

First Party Realignment

(1816-1828) 73

that "those who fasten upon the public lands with one moment's encouragement, can never afterwards be loosened from their

hold.''^^1^^

Thus, many people in the West and in the South were dissatisfied with what the federal government was doing. In the existing oneparty system the West and the Southwest served as a catalyst for the rise of trends within the Republican Party which held undivided sway at the national level. It is noteworthy that, given the emergence of trends within the Republican Party, the West could be a reserve for "political infantry" and give it support in Congress and during elections. In addition to the common interests of South and West displayed during the crisis years, the South, a traditional participant in the party-political struggle, could provide the political leadership in the emerging coalition.

The Missouri crisis was another factor hastening the falling apart of the Republican Party. Originally the proposal by New York representative James Tallmadge to admit Missouri to the Union as a free state, provided there was the relevant provision in its constitution, was regarded as another Federalist intrigue aimed at splitting the Republican Party. The opinion was even widespread in the Republican Party that the crisis itself stemmed from the desire of De Witt Clinton's followers from New York to unite with the Federalists and split the Republicans.^^2^^ Indeed, the New York Federalists had seen in the emerging conflict an opportunity to bury differences and join the Republican Party on equal terms. The issue of slavery---a new one for the country---took the Republican Party by surprise. The motley opposition to Missouri's admission to the Union as a slave state encountered stubborn resistance by the Southerners who clearly realized that it was a matter of life and death for them. No wonder that during the Missouri debates they clearly indicated that, if the outcome of the argument was unfavorable, the Southern states might secede from the Union and set up their own, separate confederation^^3^^.

Of course, not all Southerners were prepared to be consistent to the end, at least openly. However, the South was still strong

~^^1^^ American State Papers. Vol. 4, p. 468.

~^^2^^ See: Shaw Livermore, Jr., The Twilight of Federalism. The Disintegration of the Federalist Party, 1815-1830, Gordian Press, New York, 1972, p. 94.

~^^3^^ "Letter of Spencer Roane to James Monroe, February 16th, 1820", Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. X, March 1906, No. 3, pp. 174-175.

as a result of the crisis, increasingly pushed the local Republicans toward conflict with the Federal Government. Both the farmers and the planters naturally demanded lower prices at public land sales and, after the crisis began, a change in terms of sale. These appeals evoked a weak response on the part of the Republican powers that be. For a long time the Republicans had regarded the western lands as an inexhaustible sorce for replenishing the federal treasury. It was repeated many times that the revenues were earmarked to finance all internal improvements, strengthen the army and navy, and pay the federal debt. Almost all postwar projects to build roads, canals, ports and make other internal improvements were based on the assumption. Proposals to revise land legislation were rejected, and the Congress Committee for Public Lands refused all requests from settlers to extend credit repayment deadlines. The committee submitted to Congress a report underlying the 1820 act only when the situation produced by the crisis was aggravated to an extent that it could no longer be ignored. The report had proposed to abolish the sale of lands on credit, reduce minimal size of the plots sold and cut the price of land. The adoption of the act somewhat relaxed the situation, but in 1822 and 1823 it proved necessary to extend the operation of the 1821 Law for the Relief to Purchases of Public Lands to help people pay their debts. In early 1824 the Committee on Public Lands advised the Congress not to renew the act. That did not mean, however, that the situation had improved. In January 1826 petitions were forwarded from Alabama and Indiana to ameliorate the lot of people who had bought public land and were still in debt. The committee refused to take action on these petitions. On the whole the situation in the West changed very slowly during the entire period. Acute differences remained between the federal government and state legislatures which, like the Illinois assembly, urged "some quat and radical change" in the mode of selling public lands.^^1^^ The administration's attitude to the activity of the squatters remained intolerant. The Committee for Public Lands not only dismissed the petitions to take into account squatters' rights, granting them only in exceptional cases, but also denounced the practice every way it could. Yet in the West squatters' rights were regarded as a guarantee that the land would really end up in the hands of the actual settlers. The committee believed

~^^1^^ American State Papers, Vol. 4, 1834, p. 871.

74 Chapter Three

Party Realignment ( 1816-182S)

enough at the time thanks to its exceptional economic condition and traditional political influence. Moreover, a member of the "Virginia dynasty" was still in Washington. The voting in the House of Representatives was no longer partisan but rather openly sectional. A united Southern bloc cast votes against Tallmadge's proposal in the House in February 1819. The same picture was observed in the Senate during voting on the proposal to withdraw the Tallmadge amendment to the bill to admit Missouri to the Union. A year later, in voting to admit Missouri as a slave state to the Union, the Southerners were practically unanimous during the entire course of discussions.

The Missouri crisis definitively undermined the traditional basis of the former Republican Party---the bloc between the planters of the South and the bourgeoisie of the North. This was reflected in the overall crisis of the Republican Party. Arguing for Missouri's right to join the Union without any restrictions, the Southerners referred to the "genius of '76." Their opponents quite reasonably retorted that the matter did not concern abstract rights of the people but "a desire to hold slaves" and the urge to "give an almost boundless expanse to the anti-republican principles.''^^1^^ On a par with Christian arguments and all sorts of good intentions, they advanced a quite clear proposal to limit the territory to which slavery would be extended and ban slavery to the west of the Mississippi. The Republicans now not only ostracized each other from republican principles but also occupied directly opposite positions on a number of questions. Another dimension of the emergent crisis of the Republican Party was the struggle around the caucus. Having flared up after the 1820 elections, the struggle reflected the antagonism between participants in the Missouri Compromise who officially still remained members of one party.

Finally, the Missouri crisis largely shaped the emerging party system. One of the most important conditions for its existence and successful functioning was the need to answer the question on the attitude to slavery. The answer was found: the problem should be hushed up in every way and its aggravation avoided. Moreover, the political parties managed successfully to ignore and sidestep the issue, thereby preventing an acute domestic political crisis. This was facilitated by the fact that the southern and the northern co-

~^^1^^ Niles' Weekly Register, October 2, 1819, p. 71.

lonization flows to the West did not actually meet anywhere and the industrial bourgeoisie of the North was still in the making. Of course, this was only a stopgap measure. Furthermore, the Missouri Compromise in the final count contradicted the interests of the country's development. Extension of the Union was blocked for a long time. The next state, Arkansas, was admitted to the Union only in 1836.

For the Republican Party the Missouri crisis was practically the final blow which led to its collapse. According to the local press as early as 1819, differences between the Federalists and individual rival factions of Republicans had virtually disappeared in New York.^^1^^ Organizations operating under the name of the Republican Party occupied directly opposite positions on the same issues. For instance, the Central Corresponding Committee in New York on behalf of the Republican Party gave credit to De Witt Clinton for his stubborn opposition to the spread of slavery and consistent implementation of the internal improvements course.^^2^^ At the same time a meeting of Republican members of the state legislative assembly headed by Martin Van Buren accused Clinton of betraying the interests of the Republican Party and indulging Federalists who had not repented and not abandoned their views. Similar accusations were made in early 1821 by delegates at a New York Western District Republican Convention.^^4^^

That the party had split became fully apparent at the 1820 presidential elections when the Republican nominee James Monroe was elected virtually unanimously. Monroe became the only President in US history to be reelected for a second term after an economic crisis. The elections might have seemed to be a total victory for the Republicans. Actually the party's influence was very small. Only a small share of those eligible to vote took part in the elections. At the national level the Republican Party ceased being a force effectively controlling the electorate. This made its position particularly vulnerable since the country was entering a phase of

~^^1^^ Albany Argus, February 26;April 16;May 7;September 10, 1819.

The Voice of the People. General Republican Address to the Free and Independent Electors of the State of New York, E.A.E. Mosford, Printers, Albany, 1820, pp. 2-3.

Republican Nomination for Governor and Lt. Governor. With an Address to the Electors of the State of New York, Albany, 1820, p. 8.

Western District Republican Senatorial Nomination at a General Convention of the Republican Delegates, Geneva, 1821, pp. 15, 17.

76 Chapter Three

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(1816-1828) 77

rapid development at which major political decisions had to be worked out and implemented.

The early 1820s saw the end of the period of "putting into order" the United States economy seriously disorganized by the foreign-policy crisis of the early 19th century, the war, and a change in the conditions of economic development. The conflict between two trends in capitalist development was the substance of the struggle waged by numerous factions in the subsequent period.

``Extensive" development included opening up new lands in the West, passing from semi-subsistence farming to an economy producing for the market, involving new sections of the population in capitalist economic relations and setting up new industrial, commercial and financial enterprises. All this implied an appropriate policy that would consist of measures securing sufficient money in circulation, ameliorating the position of indebted agrarians, and providing relatively easy access to Western lands when they were not regarded as a source of federal income; and implementing internal improvements that would make it easier to move West. Protectionism should, on the one hand, safeguard American industry and, on the other, not hamper the appearance of cheap goods on the domestic market.

The other way---``in-depth'' development---involved honing the economic system that had shaped in the United States by the first half of the 1820s so as to improve its operation. The sections of the bourgeoisie and, to a lesser extent, planters who had already found a stable place in the existing structure were the advocates of the latter way. They pinned hopes not so much on new opportunities provided by the opening up of the West and the industrial revolution, but rather on further strengthening and developing what had been achieved. Such development was contingent on an orderly financial system of which the National Bank was the center, and the existence of a federal debt which would be covered by the federal government. The bank itself and its depositors closely associated with their European counterparts were to enjoy certain privileges guaranteed by the government. The advance to the West became unnecessary and even dangerous, since representation of the numerous Western states in Congress could threaten the existing order. Internal improvements were considered only to the extent they contributed to the stable functioning of the existing system rather than its expansion. Western lands were to be sold at the highest prices. It

is obvious that the highway of capitalist development securing the most leeway was associated with the former trend. Under the circumstances, the latter trend could play a conservative role and lead to a premature narrowing of the basis for capitalist development. However, it was a widest basis for capitalist development, the basis which was only being laid at the time and which could provide for the highest growth rates in the future.

Finally, there existed a tremendous territorial difference in conditions of capitalist development. Many of the problems which were a daily reality of life in the cities of the Atlantic seaboard and factory towns in New England were simply incomprehensible to the farmer stubbing a piece of land he had just purchased or occupied as a squatter. Besides, both trends were present to some extent in all three main structures developing in the economy of the United States: in the North where the industrial revolution-was only beginning, in the slaveholding South, and in the colonized West. Together with the fluid class structure typical of the early stage in the industrial revolution, all this led to the emergence of numerous factions defending social and economic interests of various sections and groups. The cleavages between the numerous groups resulted in the disappearance of the objective basis for the existence of the Republican Party. A new stage in the realignment began in 1820-1822: the splitting up of the former political entities at the state level.

The new stage in the realignment was marked by the appearance, on a par with the old candidates speaking on behalf of the Republicans and occasionally the Federalists, of many candidates without a clear-cut partisan identity. Such was the case, for example, in Massachusetts, New York and South Carolina, three states in three different areas where the party system consisted of Federalists and Republicans. In many states---New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Ohio---new groups appeared: the National Republicans. Republicans advocating states rights were active in the elections in Virginia and South Carolina. The process acquired a clearer nature in 1822-1824: the disintegration intensified. Out of 24 states only seven---Rhode Island, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri---retained the party groupings existing in 1820 without change, and the four latter states preserved their one-party system which had emerged when they were admitted to the Union. By 1824, states with a more complex social and economic structure---Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North

78 Chapter Three

Carolina---had four or five party-political groups sufficiently strong to get into federal Congress.^^1^^

Thus, new, largely intermediate, groupings reflecting the altered balance of social, economic and political forces, sprang up on the ashes of the former party system. This situation gave rise to one of the most important features in the new party system. As distinct from the former system which emerged at the congressional level as a result of differences between factions, the incipient party system was taking shape on the basis of unity of groupings and factions which emerged at the state level and only subsequently grew larger.

The enhanced role of the states and local politics in this period was due not only to the variety in conditions of social and economic development but also to the altered conditions in which the country's political system as a whole was functioning. A significant democratization of the state political system began in the 1820s: to begin with, the electorate was greatly broadened by the elimination of various property qualifications. Another aspect in the democratization of the political process was that more voters took part in choosing the electors. All this meant that the former methods by which only a relatively narrow section of the electorate could be controlled had become increasingly less suitable.

This process had to do with a major trend in the political struggle in 1820-1824---the polemics concerning the system for nominating the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. Under the one-party system which emerged in the Era of Good Feelings, nomination by the Republican caucus almost automatically meant election to the presidential office. But it was this method that drew the criticism of many Republicans some of whom already called themselves Democratic Republicans or occasionally Democrats. The former nomination system when voting was in the hands of the members of the congressional faction had come into acute contradiction with democratization of political life in the country. The congressmen themselves spoke very cautiously on the subject in 1823-1824, mostly referring to the need for unity in the Republican Party and the glorious traditions of the past, or even asserted that they visited the meeting of caucus members as private per-

sons.^^1^^ Moreover, during debates concerning the caucus problem the question arose whether in caucus voting account should be taken of the "three-fifths rule", i.e. of the black population of the Southern states, giving these states additional mandates.^^2^^ The South had ceded its leading position by that time: the North had left it behind in terms of population size and it now held the balance in the House of Representatives. Seeking to retain the former system the Southerners attempted to preserve their influence and domination in the Republican Party at the national level. However, this proved impossible after the Missouri crisis. As an organizational embodiment of the bloc between the planters of the South and the big (mostly financial) bourgeoisie of the North formed during the Revolution and War of Independence, the caucus was doomed to perish. The question of caucus activity introduced considerable dissention into the ranks of the Republicans or what was left of the Republican Party. Some of them denounced the very idea of a caucus,^^3^^ others wavered now rejecting the practice altogether and then trying to revive the political cadaver referring to the need for party unity embodied in the caucus.^^4^^ It is to be recalled that the first conventions held at the county level in 1822-1823 were gaining increasing popularity. The transition to the convention system was the next step toward broader political associations consonant with the new conditions.

The fall of the caucus system had another important aspect. Rejection of the practice meant a further separation of the machinery of government and the legislature from the incipient party machine. If at the early stages in the development of American society the Congress faction successfully combined these aims, now legislative power was to be separated from the machinery of political parties which had not been envisaged in the Constitution but had become necessary for the operation of the entire political system. The more complicated tasks facing the political parties made it imperative for them to be more rigorously organized.

The nominating of presidential candidates on the eve of the

See: Circular Letters of Congressmen to Their Constituents 1789-1829, Chapel Hill, 1978. Vol. 3.

~^^2^^ Miles' Weekly Register, November 1, 1823, p. 129.

^^3^^ Miles' Weekly Register, January 17, 1824, pp. 305-308, February 14, 1824, pp.369-37Q;Albany Argus, May 20, 1823.

~^^4^^ Albany Argus, May 9, May 20, 1823.

Calculated from: S. Parsons, op. cit., pp. 210-285.

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(1 816-1828) 81

1824 elections showed that major political groupings were emerging at full blast in individual states and some of them had already started to form blocs with each other. The nomination of Henry Clay was most revealing in this respect. A Southerner by origin, he was a "man of the West", an advocate of the interests of that part of the country.^^1^^ His "American System" in effect envisaged a fundamental restructuring of the entire foreign and domestic trade of the United States, and wide-scale internal improvements capable of uniting the country into a single whole. The principal component holding the entire system together would be industry which would process what was produced by the West and the South. Industry should be safeguarded from foreign competition by a system of protective tariffs.

This project undoubtedly reflected the interests of the growing industrial bourgeoisie. However, despite the impressive growth rates of industry, Clay's project lacked a real basis. American industry was still unable to consume all the cotton produced by the South (most of it still went to Britain) or fully satisfy the rising needs of the West. The American System reflected not the real possibilities but rather the appetites of the growing American bourgeoisie. In the actual circumstances of 1824, Clay's followers were forced to form blocs with those whose platform was at least outwardly similar to their own views---the traditional circles of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie also favoring stronger federal government and retention of the National Bank. The measures Clay proposed at the time were in line with the needs of bourgeois development but in the final count conformed to the `` indepth'' development trend. However, on their basis it was possible not only to rally advocates of such measures on a national scale but also reach broad sections of voters in different parts of the country---from Pennsylvania to Ohio---with the appeal to " protect our farmers and mechanics against the destructive influence of foreign competition.''^^2^^

Presidential candidate John Quincy Adams was equally class biased but even more conservative, representing the interests of New England's financial bourgeoisie. The weakest candidate was

~^^1^^ Argus of Western America, October 10, 1822.

To the People of Ohio, Cincinnati, October 8, 1824, Phila Committee of Correspondence, Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, 1824, p. 1.

William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury in Monroe's Administration, representing the interests of the Southern banking houses. He had been nominated by the Republican causus. But only 66 of the 216 Republicans then in Congress took part in the caucus. Nomination by such a strongly criticized institution contributed to Crawford's weakness.

Finally, quite a special position was occupied by Andrew Jackson. A major planter, he was also known as a fighter against the Indians and was, therefore, popular in the West. The victory at New Orleans made him a figure of national prominence. His candidacy was favored by the Democratic Republicans of Pennsylvania and Jackson's nomination was accompanied by an acute criticism of the government's economic policy, occupation of the White House by the "Virginia Dynasty", and the caucus system.^^1^^ Characteristically, the Pennsylvanians' appeal was supported by Jackson's followers in Tennessee, the initiative, moreover, coming from the latter. The authority of the new institution for nominating the presidential candidate---the convention---was on Jackson's side. In this respect only Adams could be compared to him. Clay's men tried by all means to organize equally impressive measures in his support, but their efforts only resulted in county and electoral district conventions.

If nominating a presidential candidate provoked sharp quarrels, the candidacy for Vice-President went without particular disagreement to John C. Calhoun. All candidates unanimously agreed that the Southerners had to be appeased.

The 1824 elections also marked the turning point in the rise of the new party-political system: of 24 states 18 chose electors by a direct vote. That was why taking the vote to the Congress was in the final analysis in contradiction with the new trend reflecting the general democratization of political life, on the one hand, and the separation of the government machinery from the party machine, on the other. None of the four candidates received a majority, and all of them together had much less votes compared to the total number of those eligible to vote at the time. The results of the elections clearly showed that nomination of too many candidates at

Address of the Democratic Republican Committee of Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, friendly to the election of Gen. Andrew Jackson, to the office of President of the United States, 1824, pp. 6, 8, 15.

6-749

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First Party Realignment

(1816 1828) 83

Following the outdated line of identifying the interests of his administration with those of the nation as a whole, Adams rejected any measures aimed at strengthening the positions of his own party as unnecessary and even harmful. The appointment to high offices of severed former Federalists the President regarded as fit for these offices provoked further accusations. The Vice-President from the South deliberately contributed to opposition activity.

At the same time, on the eve of the next election, the leader of the National Republicans enjoyed extensive support outside New England, and his followers not only firmly supported his economic policy^^1^^ but also cast well-founded doubt on Jackson's ability to govern the country.^^2^^ On the other hand, a very broad but amorphous coalition began to emerge on the eve of the elections, bringing together farmers of the West and the South, Southern planters, the rising industrial bourgeoisie, the petty and middle bourgeoisie of the towns---merchants, craftsmen, small and medium financiers and the emerging working class. The rise of this coalition marked the end of the period which began with the Era of Good Feelings.

Jackson's victory in the 1828 presidential elections did not mean an end to the struggle over the ways of capitalist development or the rise of a new party system. The problem of ``in-depth'' or ``extensive'' development would be solved in the course of an acute struggle to implement the government's measures. The erection of the framework of the party system had not been completed: there was actually only one party which had not passed the test of being in power, while the opposition was yet to get itself constituted in respect to this party's activity. At the same time, many of the spontaneously established standards in the operation of the party system had already been tested in the course of the realignment which was nearing its completion. Multistratal parties became the rule: the importance of this principle was confirmed by the 1824 elections. Another major principle of the operation of the US party system---its decentralization---was established in the course of the struggle around the caucus problem. The emerging convention

the national level inevitably led to dispersal of forces resulting in the electorate getting out of control. It became equally clear that a decisive victory in the elections could be won only by a candidate from a broad inter-sectional coalition. A big role in the rise of such a coalition was played by the opposition against the activities of the Adams Administration. It was after the 1824 elections that two opposing groupings were definitively formed: the National Republicans and the Democrats (divided at the state level into Democrats and Jacksonian Democrats).

There was an extraordinary variety of groups in individual states following the 1824 elections. Groups of National Republicans, Jacksonian Republicans, Jacksonian Democrats, Republicans, Federalists, States Rights Republicans, and Republican followers of Adams operated in Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina. Each of these factions was sufficiently strong to send its followers to federal Congress, but none of them was capable of proposing a sufficiently broad program of its own answering the needs of the country as a whole, to say nothing of implementing such a program. The outcome of the 1824 elections did nothing to clear up the question of directing government policy along the highway of capitalist development in the United States.

Adams' economic policy was essentially a continuation of the line followed by all American governments after the War of 1812: he favored strengthening federal government, extensive internal improvements, coordinated measures to develop industry and introduce order into the monetary system. However, these aims were now obviously insufficient. Rapid development of capitalism required the utmost freedom of competition. Retention of any privileged institutions and the framework of all kinds of systems hindered that development rather than assisted it. The peculiar nature of the National Republicans as an intermediate grouping consisted in the fact that its program was aimed not at future objectives but rather at consolidating and developing what had already been achieved. It was for this reason that the program Adams set forth encountered strong opposition despite the fact that it was sufficiently corroborated and answered the actual needs of the country better than any other similar program previously. Some additional factors contributed to the President's failures.

Proceedings of the Administration Convention, Held at Frankfort, Kentucky. December 17, 1827. An Address to the Freemen of Kentucky, from a convention of delegates friendly to the re-election of John Qfiincy Adams, 1827, pp. 5-9.

Address of the Administrative Convention, Held in the Capitol at Raleigh, December 20, 1827, p. 5.

Derived from: S. Parsons, op. cit., p. 210-285.

84 Chapter Three

system not only successfully combined a wide range of local interests and organizational decentralization with national objectives but also made it possible to control the mass base of the political parties to a much greater degree than formerly. A more mature party-political structure involving much broader sections of the population than the former semi-patriarchal system, the rapid growth of the economy attended by an equally rapid emergence of contradictions---all this was bound to make the era of Jacksonian Democracy a period of acute political strife.

THE RISE OF NEW

NATIONAL PARTIES:

THE DEMOCRATS

AND THE WHIGS

The events of 1824-1828 quite obviously showed that the transition from a peculiar multiparty or factional period in the party alignment to political rivalry between two national parties was imminent. The appearance of a whole set of new contradictions within American society was a specific reason for channeling the chaotic political process mostly concentrated at the state level into the avenue of rivalry between major alignments---the administration and the opposition (National Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats respectively, prototypes of the Whigs and Democrats). The 1830s were marked by deep-going changes in the social and economic sphere associated with American capitalism entering the stage of free enterprise and the rise of the basic classes in capitalist society---the industrial bourgeoisie and the proletariat. New phenomena in the economy and public life, as well as the new contradictions, were the result of the industrial revolution, developing at the time chiefly in the Northeast of the US, the farmer colonization of the West, and the adaptation of plantation system in the South to new conditions. The expanding territory, population growth, changes in its structure, migration and immigration, involvement of new strata in the capitalist economy---all this markedly altered the social and political context in which contradictions between classes and groups in society developed, provoked a change in the political system as a whole, and contributed to the appearance of new parties of the American bourgeoisie.

Changes in the balance of power between the US geographical sections showed that contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the planters were gradually growing. This made it urgent for politicians from the free and slave states to unite in national group-

86 Chapter Four

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ings. The politicians aware of the need to change the outdated party structures emphasized that national parties could prevent the conflict between North and South. The thought was classically set down in 1827 by Martin Van Buren, senator from New York at the time. He wrote that by combining "the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North, they would prevent conflict between the slave and free states.''^^1^^ Although Van Buren put forward the Utopian idea of reviving the old Republican Party, the fact that he and also quite a broad range of followers in New York, Illinois and some other states recognized the parties' positive role, was undoubtedly of major importance.

An unprecedented "electoral machine" operated successfully in the 1828 presidential campaign, but the results of the elections showed that the objectives formulated by the leader of the Jacksonians, Van Buren, in 1827 had hardly been attained. The results of the voting in the Electoral College, and the popular vote demonstrated the sectional split which had already been characteristic of the first parties in the 1790s. Jackson won by a large margin (practically the largest possible) in the planter (particularly cotton) South, while in the North (New England) Adams scored an impressive victory.

The election results, particularly a comparison of 178 electoral votes for Jackson with Adams' 83, to a certain extent concealed the important fact that the National Republicans offered stiff competition to the Jacksonians in a number of states. In addition, Jackson's opponents were elected governors of eight states in 1828-1829.^^2^^

As to the Jacksonians, only the test of power and responsibility for the country's political course could show how strong the coalition, which had emerged during the elections, was in reality. Both new political associations---the Jacksonians and the National Republicans---faced an objective dilemma: either to evolve into stable national parties or to leave the political scene after the presidential elections.

The vigorous political course proclaimed by Jackson in his

Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1984, p. 151.

American Governors and Gubernatorial Elections, 1775-1978, Compiled by Roy R. Glashan, Meckler Books, West port, 1979, pp. 50-51, 108-109, 116-117, 142-143, 200- 203,244-245,316-317.

very first presidential message provoked a further differentiation of political forces. The message contained many newly defined points, although the appeal to return to the ideals of Jeffersonian times was the dominant theme. The proposal to reduce the navy and land forces, appeals to pay off the public debt at an early date, to cut down, albeit cautiously, the protective tariff, and a suggestion to simplify the government machinery---all this appeared to be in the spirit of the Old Republican school of thought and seemed to be quite neutral were it not in such a sharp contrast to the course pursued by the previous administrations. The apparently traditional phrases included some dictated by the spirit of the times---for example, the proposal to adopt an amendment to the Constitution doing away with the Electoral College and introducing direct elections of the President and Vice-President.

The deepest political consequences resulted from the phrase in the message which declared that the Bank of the United States "has failed in ... establishing a uniform and sound currency" and questioned "the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank.''^^1^^

However, certain serious events contributing to the consolidation of parties occurred before the main points of Jackson's message concerning the bank materialized into specific political actions. Frequently, particularly in the first years, the measures of the Jackson Administration were contradictory in nature giving rise simultaneously to centripetal and centrifugal trends within the rival groupings. For example, the presidential veto on the bill for federal financing of the National Cumberland Road from Maysville to Lexington (Kentucky) was positively viewed by the Jacksonians in the South but at the same time provoked a wave of dissension, albeit shortlived, in the West and in mid-Atlantic states. At the same time, during the Nullification crisis of 1831- 1833 Jackson took an ultranationalist stand in respect to the South Carolinians who intended to nullify the protective tariffs of 1828 and 1832.^^2^^ This led to John C. Calhoun's group temporarily leaving the Democratic Party, on the one hand, and created possibilities

J. D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, Vol. II, Washington, 1898, reprint 1968, pp. 442-462.

The President's position was set forth in a proclamation of December 10, 1832 in which the behavior of the South Carolinians was qualified as ``treason'' (J. D. Richardson, op. cit.,p. 654).

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for an alliance between nationalist Daniel Webster, a foremost leader of the opposition, and the President, on the other.

The needs of the political struggle drew attention to the problem of party organization. Thanks to the mobilization of potential accumulated in the previous period, Jackson's followers managed to close their ranks. This had an impact on the situation within the federal government: the number of members supporting the administration increased in the 21st and 22nd Congresses. The Jacksonians scored a number of victories at the gubernatorial elections in 1829-1830, as a result of which they controlled the executive in 17 out of 24 states.

The National Republicans were aware that their chief weakness dating back to the Adams Administration was the absence of a strong party organization. Now they attempted to turn the tables by drawing simultaneously on old devices and the latest experience.

The forming of opposition organizations at the state level proceeded more actively and by means of newer methods. National Republicans gained opportunities there to conclude an alliance with other opposition forces. Jackson's opponents united with Antimasonic organizations in some states in the course of the struggle for power. The Antimasonic movement was based, in the final count, on the desire of members of the petty bourgeoisie occupying an intermediary position between the poles of capitalist society---the big bourgeoisie and the proletariat---to bring into agreement the political rights proclaimed in the federal and state constitutions and the real possibilities to enjoy these rights. Hence the antielitist and egalitarian moods of the Antimasonic literature in which, however, the religious, moral and ethical element was also strong. Of major importance was the fact that this broad, although purely ``Northern'', movement of an egalitarian inclination assumed the form of a political party in the years of Jackson's rule, and that these Antimasonic parties were mostly in the opposition to Jackson. It points to the limited nature of the Jacksonians' democratism, as well as of the entire period of Jacksonian democracy, which was nothing else but the class limitedness of bourgeois democracy initially `` programmed'' to safeguard, although in new conditions and by new methods, the domination of the big bourgeoisie and the planters.^^1^^

In Soviet literature the term "Jacksonian democracy" is usually applied to the period when Jackson's Democratic Party was in power. The class nature of Jacksonian democracy was dealt with by N. N. Bolkhovitinov, see: N. N. Bolkhovitinov, USA: Problems

Antimasonic parties had been active in New York and Pennsylvania since 1826. Relying on the programs objectively aimed against the privileged classes, they (particularly in New York) initially sought to separate from the parties operating in the state, submitting their own tickets at the elections.^^1^^ However, the need to rely on a strong candidate inevitably prompted the Antimasons to support other groups of Anti-Jacksonians. Thus, at the New York gubernatorial elections in 1832 the National Republicans and the Antimasons united to support Francis Granger.^^2^^ However, things did not go any further than local alliances.

On the eve of the 1832 presidential elections the Antimasons assembled to their national nominating convention (the first in American history). It was attended by 115 delegates from 13 states. The leaders of the Antimasons clearly realized that victory was impossible without an alliance of opposition forces, and proposed to several prominent opposition members to be a presidential candidate from their party. But due to differences among the Anti-Jacksonians a common candidate was not found.^^3^^

Clay's and Webster's entourage for a long time refused to accept the idea of a national convention strongly urged by the AntiJacksonians locally. When the convention finally gathered in Baltimore in December 1831 and officially announced Clay's nomination, no clear policy-making statements were made. On the whole, the National Republicans attempted to rely on traditional issues such as internal improvements at federal expense and protectionism, or became absorbed in constitutional debates concerning the prerogatives of the branches of power. All of this, in effect, repeated the American System that had been rejected by the Southerners in the years of the Adams Administration. No wonder Clay's followers were unable at this stage to secure support of their natural allies, the Southerners, advocates of states rights, who had split away from the Jacksonians.

The cohesion of the opposition members at the national level depended directly on the vigorous action of the Anti-Jacksonians at

of History and Contemporary Historiography, Moscow, Nauka Publishers, 1980, pp. 253- 281 (in Russian).

Jabez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York, Vol. II, Syracuse, 1852, pp. 386-391. ^^2^^ Ibid., p. 396.

Autobiography of Thurlow Weed. Edited by his daughter Harriet A. Weed, Mifflin and Company, Boston, Houghton, 1883, pp. 389-391.

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the local level. In the years of Jackson's first administration, however, the state opposition ``parties'' were unequal in political weight and acted separately. Numerous and different groups of Jackson's opponents---they got their candidates elected to the House of Representatives of the 21st Congress (1831-1833) in 19 out of 24 states---reacted to the administration's individual steps and the appeals of the opposition leaders in different ways. It became obvious that a special logic of the political struggle existed at the federal and the state levels where the leaders were to communicate with the rank-and-file voters. Critical speeches against the administration from the Senate or House rostrum could bring the opposition members the applause of the Washington public, but the same words frequently had quite a different ring in the states. In the opinion of an early historian of the Whig Party, Richard McKinley Ormsby, the National Republicans relied chiefly on that the people, together with them, would denounce Jackson for his rejection of the experience of past administrations. But, the author wrote, "correct principles do not always secure the triumph of a party... To suppose that the mass of American voters had deliberately examined and pronounced upon the great questions so carefully weighed and setted by such Democrats as Clay, Calhoun ... would be ridiculous.''^^1^^

In order to rally the forces of the opposition in the prevailing situation it was necessary for the national leadership to actively pursue an extremely pragmatic course supported by party rhetoric. The opposition lacked such leadership. The polemic over the Bank of the United States exacerbated the social and political situation which, in its turn, accelerated the process of party formation.

In the 1832 presidential elections, however, the issue of the Bank of the United States was in the focus of attention and in effect the struggle was waged not between Jackson and Clay but between the President and the bank. Yet, the results of the elections did not differ significantly from those obtained in 1828. The consequences of the differentiation of political forces became apparent later.

Nevertheless, the balance of power had changed: thejacksonians were gaining political weight. Jackson's electorate gradually as-

~^^1^^ R. McKinley Ormsby, A History of the Whig Party, Crosby, Nichols & Co., Boston, 1859, pp. 190-191.

sumed a truly national scope. This occurred because thejacksonians managed to push back the opposition in New England, the states which were the mainstays of the National Republicans. On the whole, however, as in 1828, the alignment was sectional and unbalanced: in the South and the Southwest the rivalry between major groups was even less than in 1828, thejacksonians prevailed there; New England remained loyal to the opposition.

With the defeat of the supporters of the bank in the elections, the struggle round the largest financial institution of the country became even more acute.

The Democrats' intention to do away with the bank reflected a phenomenon of major importance for America at the time: the transition was under way to a new stage in capitalist development, the stage of free competition. The bank was the focus of the forces of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie and the part of the industrialists who had only recently passed from commercial operations to running factories. The bank was a powerful privileged corporation regulating, and inevitalby restricting, the scope of credit operations and holding back the issue of ``cheap'' paper money. At the same time, the rapidly developing economy badly needed easily available money. Modern historians carry on endless arguments on the role of the Bank of the United States in the country's development, on the consequences of its elimination, and Jackson's motives in his war against the bank.

At the same time it was undoubtable for historians and contemporaries alike that a major part was played here by purely political motives. The bank carried immense political weight. It was well known that its leadership had supported President Adams in 1828, to say nothing of financing Clay's campaign in 1832 and of the bank president Nicholas Biddle's relations with the opposition leaders. Senator Thomas Hart Benton (Democrat, Missouri) remarked in the course of the congressional debates in 1834: the bank "was born a political institution, and was the first measure of the Government to develop the line which so long and so distinctly marked the political parties of this country... The political grammar was now strangely confused. Many men have got into wrong places. They wear the name of one party, and act on the principle of the other ... but this bank question ... would set all right.''^^1^^

The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of

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Subsequent events showed that the 1832 campaign affected the rise of the opposition party in a fashion similar to the compression of a spring: the onslaught by the Jacksonians pushed back the disunited opposition, but soon it received powerful impulses enabling it to recover.

The Anti-Jacksonians were assisted not only by the stepped-up differentiation of social forces, which led to a large group of bank supporters leaving the Democrats. In the course of congressional debates concerning the bill to extend the bank charter in 1831 the opposition supporting the bank accused Jackson of " executive usurpation." The accusation was theoretically elaborated and emotionally colored. From that time on the opposition reporters called Jackson King Andrew and cartoonists depicted the President wearing a crown and with a scepter in his hand. Finally, opposition propaganda interpreted events occurring at the state and the national level in the same vein.

Withdrawal of the federal deposits from the Bank of the United States in September 1833 and their transfer to state banks meant that the Democrats had taken a resolute step in solving the financial problem which was very important for the country. The Democratic Party had, on the whole, mapped out its political course by that time. The course consisted of measures which, unlike the opposition's program, in particular the American System, provided for greater freedom of enterprise (unrestricted and unregulated by a paternalistic government) including a more active colonization of the West.^^1^^ In addition, the Jacksonians acted on the bank issue as opponents of privileged corporations.^^2^^

The party differentiation, which became more intense after the withdrawal of the federal deposits, was not, however, straightforward and did not lead to a split of social forces within the parties as depicted by the American historians of the Progressive School and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The relationship between the socio-

the Twenty-Third Congress, Two Volumes in One, First Session, The Globe Office for the Editors, Washington, 1835, pp. 285, 286.

Preemption Acts providing Legal Titles to the settled land, which were important for farmers and particularly for squatters, were adopted by Congress on the initiative of the Democrats in 1830-1834.

See: N. K. Romanova, "The Reasons for the Jackson Government's Fight Against the Bank of the United States", in: American Yearbook 1977, Nauka Publishers, 1977, Moscow, pp. 86-108.

economic sphere and the political sphere was not, and could not be, straightforward. The actions of participants in the political process, including party leaders, were determined primarily by considerations stemming from the struggle for power. Of course, these actions were undertaken in and influenced by the specific social and economic situation. In selecting the issues on which they could effectively fight their opponents, politicians had at their disposal a set of problems pushed to the forefront by the objective course of the country's economic development. However, the subjective choice could have an impact on the outcome of many processes which were independent of the actors on the political stage. The bank issue, for instance, linked closely together the short-term considerations of Jackson, Biddle and Clay, and the new phenomena underway in the country's economy.

In the case we are concerned with, the Anti-Jacksonians, on the whole, did not represent the conservatives who championed the privileges of the old commercial and financial bourgeoisie and the upper stratum of the planters linked to it. On the other hand, submitting the bank issue to "popular consideration," as President Jackson's messages claimed, the Jacksonian leaders were, in effect, least of all concerned with whether the country's population would benefit from the elimination of the Bank of the United States. Both the Democrats and their opponents wanted to win the elections in the prevailing political setting, and to do this they had to secure the support of the largest number of voters. Hence the motley social composition of the electorate supporting the Democrats and the opposition.

Considering the reasons for the defeat in 1832, the opposition leaders correctly pointed to the dispersal of forces. Union with the Southerners became an urgent problem. The way to that union lay through the Compromise of 1833 when Clay officially denounced one of the cornerstones of his American System, protectionism, submitting and pushing through a bill reducing import tariffs.^^1^^ It was a deliberate effort to piece together an opposition bloc. To dissociate themselves from the defeat they suffered under the name of National Republicans, and also to elaborate on the

~^^1^^ Thomas H. Benton, Thirty Years' View; or A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850, in two volumes, Vol. I, D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1854, pp. 342-344.

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``executive usurpation" charge and criticism of King Andrew and Tory Democrats, the opposition party soon came to be called the Whig Party.

The measures the bank president, Nicholas Biddle undertook in response to Jackson's decision to withdraw federal deposits partially coincided with an objective deterioration of the economic situation, which created the basis for a sharp growth of opposition parties locally. This was particularly typical of the Middle Atlantic states. The year 1834 brought the Whigs their first successes. They gained control over the municipality in New York. Their candidate to the office of mayor Gulian Verplanck received only 213 less votes than the Democrat Cornelius Lawrence. The margin between the candidates of these parties had been 5,000 votes at the previous elections. The Whig state convention nominated William H. Seward candidate for the office of governor. However, Democrat William L. Marcy was reelected with a close margin (he received 51.8 per cent of the votes). In 1834 Whig candidates stood for election in gubernatorial elections of nine states and won in four (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Louisiana and Indiana). All in all, 52 Whigs from 16 states were elected to the House of Representatives of the 23rd Congress (1833-1835).^^1^^

According to contemporaries, in 1834 the Whig Party consisted of former National Republicans---supporters of Adams, Clay and his American System; a group of Southerners who expounded the states rights doctrine, or nullificators; and also those who were previously in the Antimasonic Party. The Whigs were also joined by those Democrats who were dissatisfied by Jackson's tough behavior during the "bank war," in short, all those who were affected by the Whigs'words about Jackson's "executive usurpation" and the resultant vulnerability of freedom and national prosperity.^^2^^

The fragmented nature of the opposition party affected the preparations for the 1836 campaign. Appeals to give up all personal feelings for the sake of the party's success did not lead to cohesion. Without holding a national convention the Whigs nominated three candidates through the system of state conventions and legislature caucuses; it was expected that each of the candi-

J. D. Hammond, op. cit., pp. 439-443; derived from: S. B. Parsons et al, United States^ Congressional Districts, 1788-1841. Westport (Connecticut), 1978, pp. 288-373.

The Whig Almanac of 1838, quoted from W. Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots 1836-1896, Arno Press, A New York Times Company, 1976, p. 1.

dates would rely on the support of his section.

The tactic failed and the Democratic candidate Van Buren won the election. Thereby the Democrats showed that their party was quite a stable organization capable of surviving the departure from the political scene of its national leader, Jackson who had united it for many years.

The 1836 campaign was remarkable not only because the Democrats showed the strength of their party machine. In the course of that compaign party rivalry became more intense: the gap in votes received by the candidates of both parties was closing.

The latter development occurred as a result of a reduction of Democrat influence in the South. Northerner Van Buren in the eyes of the slaveholders could not be compared to planter Jackson. John Quincy Adams wrote in his memoirs that the abolitionists' activity roused "in the heart of the slave-holder the terror of his slave, and it will be a motive with him paramount to all other never to vote for any man not a slave-holder like himself.''^^1^^ The average gap in votes received in 1836 was only 11 per cent (in 1828 and 1832 it was 36 and 34.10, respectively). The Antimasons no longer took part in this campaign as a third party. The influence of that group dwindled in the states too. Everything pointed to the progressive simplification of the party structure at the local level. The number of groups was reduced: three or four ``parties'' were operating in half of the states in 1832-1834, and there were more than two ``parties'' in only a quarter of the states in 1834-1836.^^2^^

The 1836 elections heralded difficult times for the Democratic Party. A new problem began to emerge among the difficulties involved in regulating relations between the Democrats, conservative on the financial question, and the left wing of the party represented by the Locofocos, a petty-bourgeois radical movement favoring hard currency. For the first time since the Missouri Compromise leaders of both parties began to speak aloud about slavery. The growing popularity of abolitionism in the North resulted in a stream of petitions to Congress denouncing slavery. According to the congressional procedure the petitions were to be considered in

~^^1^^ Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, edited by Charles Francis Adams, Vol. IX, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1876 p. 252.

Derived from: S. Parsons, op. cit., pp. 288-373.

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one of the chambers. This meant that the slavery issue, deliberately hushed up for such a long time, would be inevitably discussed. The way out was found by the Southern Democrats who proposed the "gag rule" according to which the abolitionist petitions were simply shelved.

Debates concerning the "gag rule" showed that the Whigs and the Democrats solved the problem of the Southern and Northern wings in different ways. In the voting on the petition problem the Northerners and the Southerners from the Whig Party were invariably on different sides of the barricade. The Democrats displayed an enviable unanimity with a minimal number of "renegade Northerners". The Democrats even attempted to use this for their own ends by making the slavery issue a partisan one. When in January 1838 Calhoun submitted a number of resolutions aimed at testing the Senate's attitude to the slavery issue only two Northern Democrats voted against them. Calhoun made some interesting remarks on the subject: "Whatever positions the parties may take, in the event of such division, one or the other would be considered more or less favorable to the abolition cause... I hold that the only possible hope of arresting the progress of the abolitionists in that quarter is to keep the great parties there united against them, which would be impossible if they divide here.''^^1^^ On the whole, this was formally the case, the Northern Whigs rejecting the gag rule were not defending the abolitionists but the constitutional right of petition. The Whig leader, Henry Clay, delivered a special speech in the Senate denouncing the enemies of slavery and rejecting the accusation made by the Democrats that the party was linked to the abolitionists.^^2^^ The slavery issue, however, had not come to the forefront of political life. This enabled the parties to retain unity albeit to varying degrees.

The period from 1836 to 1840 was decisive for the Whigs in terms of consolidating their organization and electoral support. Whig organizations were created in the South and West. The worst economic crisis in the country's history which broke out in 1837 contributed to an energetic mustering of Whig forces. On the one

~^^1^^ The Congressional Globe Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Congress, First Session---Volume III, The Globe Office for the Editors, Washington, 1836, p. 226.

Congressional Globe..., Third Session, Volume 7, Washington, 1839, Appendix, Febr. 7, 1839, pp. 354-359.

hand, this automatically put the Democratic Administration in a difficult position, and on the other, made the Whig idea on the government's active part in the country's economic life attractive to some extent.

The processes occurring within the party also contributed to the strengthening of the Whigs. The leader group changed, an increasing influence being enjoyed by ``professionals'' with extensive experience in the party struggle at the local level. This involved a certain reappraisal of values. The opposition scored a series of successes at the elections to the assembly in New York and other cities. In 1836 the Whigs controlled the executive in 11 states and in 1837, in 14 states. This undoubtedly bred optimism and, with it, an interest in the methods of political infighting which until then remained a monopoly of the Democrats. The Whigs' new approach also completed the reorganization of party structures in the states in 1840. This made it possible to knock together an immense Whig bloc at the presidential elections. As analysts indicate, by 1840 the parties in the states had already shown the ability to control the extent of voter participation in elections of different levels.¹ Besides, the spectrum of parties had become much simpler. If in the 24th Congress (1835-1837) three or four parties were represented in delegations of seven states, in the 26th Congress (1839- 1841) only three congressional delegations were multiparty.^^2^^ The variety of party labels was replaced by uniformity---the terms Democrats and Whigs came into general use.

These changes were summed up by the presidential campaign of 1840. Even the parties' national conventions were symptomatic: the Whigs held theirs in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) in February and the Democrats in Baltimore in May 1840. For the first time in American practice the Democrats adopted a party platform. The text of the platform reflected the growing influence in the party of the slaveholding wing. States rights were proclaimed to be inviolable and abolitionism was denounced.^^3^^

The Whig convention showed that, having analyzed their deSee: William G. Shade, "Political Pluralism and Party Development: The Creation of a Modern Party System: 1815-1852", in: The Evolution of American Electoral System, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1981, pp. 85-87. Derived from: S. Parsons, op. cit., pp. 288-373.

National Party Platforms, in two volumes, compiled by Donald Bruce Johnson, University of Illinois Press, Vol. I, 1840-1956, Urbana, 1978, pp. 1-2.

7-749

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movements aimed against the growing social inequality inherent in developing capitalism. Objectively such a situation was fraught with serious political conflict and the undermining of the power of traditional ruling elites. The fact that the Democratic and Whig parties gained control over the electoral process and managed to rally the broad national electorate to support their candidates indicated that members of the ruling circles had adapted to the new conditions and worked out effective tools to fight for power.

The events of 1836-1840 put politicians before an important fact: the division into two parties had become a permanent feature of American reality. The subsequent alternation of Whig and Democratic administrations (Democrat James K. Polk won in 1844 and Whig Zachary Taylor in 1848) stimulated an inquiry into the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. A long-lived antipartisan tradition suggested rejection of the very idea of a legal opposition party. During the long years the Democrats prevailed (from 1828 to 1840) they denounced the Whigs as aristocrats and, in their rhetoric, refused to admit the thought that the people might support the opposition.^^1^^ Until then the priority in advancing arguments in defense of the opposition's rights belonged to the National Republicans and the Whigs. In 1840, a prominent Whig pamphleteer Calvin Colton wrote: "The two great parties of this country will always remain nearly equal to watch each other, and every few years there must be a change. This is essential to the preservation of our liberties.''^^2^^ Defeat prompted the Democrats to alter their approach to the subject and immediately after the elections of 1840 the leading Democratic organ Democratic Review remarked that following three presidential terms there was every reason to permit the opposition constituting half the nation to take its turn at the helm of power.^^3^^

Parties were no longer regarded as temporary associations of bad guys seeking to seize power. On the contrary, parties came to be seen as permanently operating organizations.

Characteristically, contemporaries recognized the expediency of the two-party system in particular. A state with strong traditions

See: M. Wallace, Ideology of Party in the Antebellum Republic, University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1973, pp. 363-383.

Quoted from: William R. Brock, Parties and Political Conscience: American Dilemmas 1840-1850, KTO Press, Millwood, New York, 1979, p. 22.

See: M. Wallace, op, cit., p. 70.

feats, the party's leaders had finally realized that success in elections depended on careful organizational and propaganda preparations. As a result the Whigs left their teachers, the Democrats, behind and conducted a campaign which, in the view of William N. Chambers, was run by an unprecedentedly developed party machine. Richard J.Jensen aptly compared the Whigs' level of organization to that of the militia of the time. The Whig party personnel was just as well trained and directed to recruiting and mobilizing forces. The party also held parades with banners flying and torch marches. The real test of the strength of the Whig organization came when it was decided to rely on the candidacy of another war hero, William Henry Harrison, who was not a dark horse in the full sense of the word but still was far behind other potential Whig candidates in experience of political activity. Harrison became a popular hero only thanks to the exceptionally active propaganda campaign launched by the Whigs.

The election results showed that both parties managed to secure voter participation in the presidential campaign unprecedented in the country's previous history: 2,412,000 voters or 80.2 per cent of the adult white males eligible to vote took part. Harrison gained the upper hand in many states which had regularly (since 1828) given preference to the Democrats. The change in the voting of the Southern states (Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia) was particularly impressive.

The 1840 presidential elections played a major role in the development of the American two-party system. This was not only because for the first time two equally strong parties operated on the national scene with sophisticated organization capable of rallying an overwhelming majority of the electorate. The participation in voting at the presidential elections of an unprecedented number of voters had profound class implications. The consolidation of US bourgeois parties was accompanied by the growing political activity of new broad sections of the population, a marked democratization of public life, and, as a result of extension of voting rights, the appearance of potential opportunities for broad masses of the population to take part in the electoral process. However, as the experience of working-class parties operating in some states of the Northeast at the turn of the 1830s, as well as that of Antimasonic organizations, showed, democratization of political life also involved more vigorous action by various kinds of spontaneous protest

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of party struggle, New York legally formalized the need to support rivalry between the two parties in 1841 when a special rule was adopted providing for the appointment of election inspectors from each of the two parties. Similar rules were adopted in New Jersey in 1868 and in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in 1873.'

Censure of any third parties accompanied recognition of the two-party system in the country's political life. The rise of the Democrats and the Whigs, particularly on the state level, involved the leading parties absorbing a whole number of third parties frequently advocating radical solutions to certain social and economic or moral and ethical problems. This clearly showed the class implications of the two-party system.

The history of American political parties confirms Lenin's idea that "the ruling party in a bourgeois democracy extends the protection of the minority only to another bourgeois party.''^^2^^

Defence of the bipartisan principle acquired particular importance in the 1840s. Another third party, the Liberty Party, appeared on the national scene as early as 1840: its role in the subsequent development of the party system, however, was far from ordinary.^^3^^ The forming of the Liberty Party on the basis of the abolitionist movement, and also the aggravation of the factional struggle between supporters and opponents of slaveholders in both leading parties, showed that contradictions were growing within the political system founded on a compromise between the planter South and the industrial North. Under the circumstances it was doubtful that the Democrats and the Whigs would be able to retain the specific consensus on the slavery issue, a consensus which was based on a common desire to sidestep the problem that involved serious difficulties for the major parties.

The country's recovery from the protracted depression which had started in 1842 contributed to many social and economic questions which used to be in the focus of parties' attention in the late 1830s---the economic role of the federal government, finances,

J. J. King, The Concept of the 2-Party System, Phd University of Pennsylvania, 1950^. 70.

V. I. Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", Collected Works, Vol. 28, 1977, p. 245.

In 1840 the candidate of the Liberty Party, James G. Birney, received only 7,000 votes. But the very fact that in the year the two-party Democrat-Whig system flourished, the monopoly of the leading parties in the electorate was not absolute is quite symbolic.

etc.---losing their top-priority importance. The first symptom of the changed situation was the debate on the annexation of Texas. The debate centered on the question of slavery and its spreading to new territories. The very fact that a subject so carefully avoided in the recent past became the main issue in the struggle between parties and, moreover, was instrumental in the election campaigns (e.g. the 1848 presidential campaign) pointed to cardinal changes in the objective content of the political process.

The election platforms adopted by the Democrats and the Whigs in 1844 reflected the balance of power between the parties' main factions. The leaders of both parties---Clay and Van Buren--- regarded as the front running presidential candidates spoke against the annexation. Their motives in this case were complex. On the one hand, they were obviously guided by the desire to preserve the unity of the ranks of the Democrats and the Whigs which could be undermined if the question of slavery arose. On the other, the position occupied by both candidates reflected the moods of broad circles in the Northeast, West and even South who saw in the annexation the threat of serious international complications (war with Mexico above all), disturbance of normal commercial and business relations, and also the probable strengthening of the position of the slaveholders if several slave states were to be created on the territory of Texas.^^1^^

However, influential groups existed in both parties whose aim was the ratification of the annexation treaty. True, the annexation supporters among the Whigs did not have enough influence. The Southern wing of the party, led by Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs, was united by the desire to preserve the compromise in the party, which was possible only provided the question of slavery and, therefore annexation, would not be widely discussed. The Whig national convention nominated Clay as the candidate for the presidency. Slavery and Texas were not mentioned at all in the adopted platform, and all attention was focused on advertizing Clay's candidacy. So, the temporary party unity was artificial as the Whigs in effect attempted to ignore the most acute issue

Clay and Van Buren set forth their positions in official messages published in April 1844 immediately after it became known that the treaty on the annexation of Texas had been signed on April 12, 1844. For the text of the messages, see History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1868, Volume I, Editor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1971, pp. 814-817, 822-828.

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Now National Parties: Democrats and Whigs 103

extensive influence in the South. They represented the sections of Southerners with an interest in preserving a firm alliance with the Northern bourgeoisie founded on the compromise providing for the unconditional retention of slavery. The majority at the 1844 Democratic national convention belonged to the Southerners. The convention nominated the Southerners' compromise candidate---the governor of Tennessee, James K. Polk. Nomination of a Southerner predetermined the Democratic Party's platform: it included the Southerners' main demand---an early annexation of Texas.^^1^^

The convention of the Liberty Party was also held before the 1844 elections: once again it nominated James G. Birney. The adopted platform openly denounced the Southerners' expansionism and demanded an early end to slavery on the entire territory of the US. Actually the first antislavery political document, the platform, as well as Birney's candidacy, proved to be unrealistic for most of the electorate brought up in the traditions of compromise between North and South. The candidate of the Liberty Party did receive 62,000 votes or ten times more than in 1840, but this was only 2.3 per cent of the total.^^2^^

As a result, Polk won the elections, but he was not far ahead of Clay who altered his position on the annexation of Texas at the last moment. The adoption of the annexation idea, even with certain reservations, cost Clay votes of the abolitionists who preferred Birney.

In subsequent years American reality continued to produce new acute problems to solve which both the Democrats and the Whigs did not have the necessary ideological and political tools. At the same time the parties had exhausted the supply of positive measures they were called upon to implement in the years of their rise. They had solved to better or worse the key political problems of the 1830s on which the different sections of the bourgeoisie and the planters held different views and which stimulated the polarization into the Democrats and the Whigs.

The US expansionist war against Mexico launched by the Polk

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Volume I, 1840-1956, pp. 3-4.

~^^2^^ Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1957, U.S. Department of Commerce, Frederick H. Mueller, Secretary, Bureau of the Census, Roger W. Burgess, Director, Washington, 1960, p. 683.

facing the country. From the purely partisan viewpoint, however, this course could be called pragmatic, because it enabled members of factions with virtually opposite views to remain within one organization: if the followers of Alexander H. Stephens hardly differing from the Southern Democrats stood on the southern wing of the Whigs, the northern wing included, for example, the New York state Whigs Thurlow Weed and W. H. Seward who favored the idea of gradually doing away with slavery, and also the Conscience Whigs led by John G. Palfrey and Charles Francis Adams who energetically protested against the spreading of slavery.

Unlike the Whigs who based their policy on a compromise between the opponents and advocates of slavery, the Democrats witnessed after 1840 the ongoing process of the strengthening of the slaveholding wing. In addition to purely political reasons such as the defeat of Northerner Van Buren in the elections, there were objective causes underlying this development: the growing aggressiveness of the Southerners seeking by means of expansion to consolidate their position in the face of the maturing adversary---the industrialists of the North.

The formerly undercurrent processes in the party surfaced during the Democratic National Convention of 1844, when the slaveholders scored a final and complete victory. However, the alignment of forces among the Democrats was more complicated than simply a division into Northerners and Southerners. On the left wing of the party were Van Buren's followers, who had come to be called Barnburners, directing their efforts to social issues---- criticism of corruption, the banks and corporations. They proposed projects to lower the price of land and further democratize public life. The right wing included conservative Democrats contending with the Van Buren group for control over the party organizations in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio and Tennessee. They relied on the more prosperous sections of the population with an interest in intense industrial development, land speculation and a ramified banking system.

However, it was not the conservative Democrats but the Southerners who were the Barnburners' main rivals. The most militant were Calhoun's supporters, mostly the Old South planters inclined toward expansion. In addition to these "extremists," the Southwestern Democrats headed by the Senator from Mississippi Robert J.Walker, moderate when it came to expansion, also enjoyed

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Administration in May 1846 made the problem of the spread of slavery, long avoided by both leading parties, a reality. At the beginning of the war, in the course of debates in Congress concerning military expenditures, it became clear that party unity marking the congressional factions of Whigs and Democrats was a thing of the past. A rapprochement began between the Conscience Whigs and the abolitionist Whigs on the one hand, who, unlike the conservatives in their party, regarded the war as a planter conspiracy to spread slavery, and Van Buren's Northern Democrats demanding an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops from Mexico, on the other. The split in the congressional factions of both parties was aggravated by debates on the proviso submitted by Northern Democrat David Wilmot in August 1846 to the bill on expenditures for talks with Mexico (actually to purchase Texas), which would ban slavery on all lands bought from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso was adopted through the joint efforts of the Northern Democrats and the Northern Whigs, with Southerners from both parties voting against it. From that moment on the process of differentiation within both parties was stepped up, becoming the typical feature of the two-party system's development up to the Civil War.

THE CRISIS OF

THE TWO-PARTY

SYSTEM

IN THE 1850s

In the history of the US the decade before the Civil War of 1861-1865 was a period of intense social and economic development when the industrial revolution in the Northeastern free states entered the concluding phase.^^1^^ At the same time a serious obstacle existed on the way to the further establishment of capitalist relations---plantation slavery in the South. It became of critical importance to determine the prevailing direction in the evolution of American capitalism, to fundamentally rebuild the existing structure of social and economic relations, and implement an extensive set of bourgeois-democratic reforms capable of giving free rein to the growth of productive forces. The increasing incompatibility between the systems of free labor and slaveholding, which were opposite in nature, was becoming more and more obvious. The country's ongoing development demanded that slavery be done away with as soon as possible. The social composition of American society underwent significant change. The influence of the industrial bourgeoisie had grown considerably, the share of farmers and workers had increased in the electorate, and their economic interests prompted them to reject the policy of compromises and embark upon direct conflict with the slaveholders.

Acute contradictions were sapping the ruling bourgeois-planter bloc. Members of the industrial bourgeoisie in the Northern states and slaveholders of the South supported two fundamentally dif-

A. I. Blinov, "Concerning the Time and Specific Features of the Industrial Revolution's Completion", in: American Yearbook, 1971, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1971, pp. 29-43; A. V. Yefimov, USA: Options of Capitalist Development (Pre-lmperialist Age), Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 223-290 (in Russian).

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ferent ways of economic development: the former advocated stepped-up industrial development and, eventually, doing away with slavery; the latter preferred the agrarian road requiring unconditional retention of slavery in the states where it had become firmly established and its spreading to the new lands of the American West. A powerful wave of the increasingly radical popular movement against the expansion of slavery was rising in the country. A revolutionary situation was shaping up in the US during this historical timespan, class and political forces were regrouping at a fast pace.

The 1850s became a turning point in the activity of American political parties. As has been noted previously the ideological principles of the Democrat-Whig two-party system were laid in the 1830s when relatively slower rates of production growth and the existence of broad spheres for capital investment made it possible to avoid sharp conflicts and find ground for compromises between the needs of the free-labor and slaveholding systems. All the components of the political machinery were subordinated to the task of preserving the prevailing social and economic structure intact and strengthening the alliance between the bourgeoisie of the North and the planters of the South on the basis of mutual concessions. The party leadership of the Democrats and the Whigs saw a threat to the existing political balance in the exacerbation of the slavery problem and for that reason aimed all efforts at neutralizing that problem and excluding it from the sphere of the interparty struggle. However, the principles unde'rlying the operation of the entire bipartisan mechanism obviously contradicted the objective course of US social, economic and political development which required immediate solution of the slavery problem.

During a sufficiently long period of time, virtually from the declaration of independence, the American two-party system had been a tool with the help of which the ruling classes managed to keep intersectional conflicts within the Constitutional framework. The adding of new territories to the Union as a result of the annexation of Texas (December 1845) and the Mexican War (1846- 1848) brought the question of slavery in these lands to the forefront of the country's political life, led to the exacerbation of contradictions in the ruling bourgeois-planter bloc and stepped up the polarization of class and political forces. The two-party mechanism backfired during the 1848 election campaign when a third, anti-

slavery Free Soil Party^^1^^ appeared on the political stage of the Northern states and focussed the election platform on the demand to restrict slavery to the existing boundaries. The new party brought together the most consistent opponents of the expansion of slavery as well as advocates of bourgeois-democratic reforms who had left the traditional parties due to sharp differences with their leaderships. The Free Soil presidential candidate Martin Van Buren received 10.12 per cent of the popular vote, delivering a heavy blow

to the Democrats and the Whigs in the Northwest and some states of New England.^^2^^

The Federal Union was rocked by another political crisis in 1849-1850 with the epicenter this time in the slaveholding states of the South. The prologue to the crisis was the address of congressmen from Southern states published in January 1849. The author of the address was Senator John Calhoun (Democrat, South Carolina) who at the time remained the leading figure among the most rabid defenders of slavery. This document called upon all Southerners regardless of party affiliation to unite efforts to preserve the institutions of slaveholding society.^^3^^ To support their words the Southerners, both Democrats and Whigs, held a nonpartisan convention in Nashville (Tennessee) on June 3-12, 1850. The cornerstone of the resolutions it adopted was the idea of the unhampered spread of slavery to Western territories. The Nashville convention showed the growing influence among the slaveholders of extreme expansionist circles favoring the secession of the Southern states from the Union. The extremists raising their heads in the South, on the one hand, and the growing antislavery movement in the Northern states, on the other, were threatening the very existence of the twoparty system.

Under the circumstances the conservative leaderships of the Democrats and the Whigs worked out a plan to settle the conflict. A specially set up Senate committee chaired by the politically experienced Whig Henry Clay of Kentucky, submitted to Congress a series of legislative measures which became known as Clay's

The name of the party came from a key principle of its political platform Free Soil \vhich meant turning the American West into a section free of slavery.

Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U. S. Elections, Editor: Robert A. Diamond, Congressional Quarterly Inc., Washington, 1975, p. 268.

~^^3^^ The Works of John C. Calhoun, Vol. VI, Report and Public Letters of John C. Calhoun, edited by Richard K. Cralle, Russell & Russell, New York, 1968, pp. 311-312.

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in rl.e \K50s 109

Compromise of 1850. California was admitted to the Union as a state with a constitution banning slavery. The slave-trade was abolished in the District of Columbia. The status of new territories---Utah and New Mexico---was to be determined by their population. A more effective Fugitive Slave Law was enacted in the interests of the Southern planters.

The implementing of the principles of the 1850 compromise did not lead to stabilization of the political situation in the country. Broad sections of the population in the Northern states were outraged at the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law and resisted it in practice. The supporters of the compromise had failed to contain the wave of extremist movements in the South either. The compromise resulted in a split in both political parties in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The old parties fell apart in these states, and the Democrat-Whig two-party system ceased to exist in its traditional form for some time. The most rabid advocates of slaveholding, mostly Democrats, denounced the ban on slave trade in the District of Columbia and California's admission to the Union as a free state as tipping the former political balance between North and South, and united in the States Rights Party. The Whigs and the Democrats who supported the 1850 compromise and believed that the Union could be saved only through mutual concessions by both sides and an end to agitation over the slavery issue, rallied into the Union Party. And although at the cost of immense efforts the Unionists managed to stamp out the flames of secession and complete the organizational rout of their opponents in the 1851 elections to the Senate and state government agencies, the threat of a new flareup of extremism in the South remained. The crisis of the US political system caused by the inability of the American twoparty mechanism to solve the explosive slavery problem continued to aggravate.

With the slavery issue coming into the focus of US political life, the evolution of both leading parties proceeded at faster rates. Considerable changes had occurred in the political mechanism of the Democratic Party by the early 1850s. After the once powerful group of supporters of former President Andrew Jackson was removed from leadership, leading positions were occupied by a coalition of conservatives and members of the proslavery wing. Inclined to mutual compromises, this coalition began to play the chief role in determining the party's political strategy, and firmly

controlled the party machinery. The leaders of the conservative group (James Buchanan, Stephen Douglas, Lewis Cass) urged the preservation of slavery in the South, recognized the planters' right to develop new Western areas, insisted that the Southerners' property was inviolable, and denounced in the sharpest terms any attacks against institutions of slaveholding society. They regarded the slavery problem as the principal factor destabilizing the political situation in the country and, for that reason, sought by all means to remove it from the sphere of inter-party struggle.^^1^^

As the crisis of the slave-holding system was coming to a head, the extremely expansionist trend in the Southern wing of the Democratic Party managed to broaden its social base through redoubled efforts; the exponents of that trend (Jefferson Davis, Robert Rhett, William Yancey) loudly voiced their claims during the political upheavals in 1849-1850. The extremist moods were whipped up by the big, cotton-exporting planters, and also by the average slave-holders with their typical craving for more and more territories where unrestrained slavery would open up new opportunities for them to strengthen their economic position and to rise to the more prosperous circles. The idea of ultra-expansionism also found a response among the poor whites of the South whose condition Karl Marx, who actively wrote for the progressive American paper New York Daily Tribune from 1851 to 1862 and paid the closest attention to the political situation in the USA, compared "with that of the Roman plebeians in the period of Rome's extreme decline. Only by acquisition and the prospect of acquisition of new Territories, as well as by filibustering expeditions, is it possible to square the interests of these *poor whites' with those of the slaveholders, to give their restless thirst for action a harmless direction and to tame them with the prospect of one day becoming slaveholders themselves.''^^2^^

The most rabid advocates of slaveholding sought to establish the planters' complete political hegemony over the Federal Union and favored the most extreme methods of struggle and even secession. Their expansionism knew practically no bounds. They sought

The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, edited by Robert W. Johannsen, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1961, pp. 341, 452.

~^^2^^ Karl Marx, "The North American Civil War", in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 19, 1984, pp. 40-41.

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in the 1850s 111

up development of capitalist relations in the country with active participation by the federal government and involved setting up a national bank, introducing protectionist tariffs and implementing a set of internal improvements. From its inception the party's political image was determined by a group of conservatives including the Whig "old guard" (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Millard Fillmore). The policy of the party leadership was directed to stabilizing the political system, overcoming sectional trends, strengthening the alliance between the Northern bourgeoisie and the planters in the Southern states and settling differences between them by means of compromises.

In order to retain unity in the ruling quarters the conservatives simply attempted to hush up the dangerous subject of slavery, switch interparty polemics into the channel of old arguments concerning economic issues and foreign policy and revive discussions of local questions. The conservatives did not mind the spread of slavery to the Western lands within the bounds established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (not beyond latitude 36°30' North).

In a situation when the slavery issue was pushed to the forefront of political life in the country, the strategic line of the conservative Whig leadership aimed at neutralizing that issue was at odds with the objective course of the country's development and led the party into a dead end. The Whig Party suffered a shattering defeat in the elections of 1852 when the Democratic candidate Franklin Pierce, in the past a Senator, was elected President. Despite the wish of its leadership, the Whig Party virtually split along the NorthSouth line in the course of debates on slavery in Western territories. The Whig camp began to disintegrate. During the election campaign, a proslavery group emerged, opposing itself to the rest of the party. A group of influential members of the Southern wing of the party headed by Senator Robert Toombs and Representative Alexander Stephens (both from Georgia) published a manifesto in which it refused to support the candidacy of General Winfield Scott, a Mexican War hero, accusing him of failing to officially express his support for the Fugitive Slave Law. The Northern wing of the party, in its turn, was seized by strong antislavery feelings. Links within the Whig Party were growing weaker, while some groups, factions and state organizations displayed the desire for greater autonomy and independence from party leadership.

to spread slavery not only to the Western lands of the USA but also to the territory of certain Central American countries. The problem of finding and opening up new lands for slavery became even more acute for the slaveholders in the 1850s: the drive to expansion is inherent in the plantation economy. The gradual impoverishment of the soil in the Southeast and the Southern border states provided an additional incentive for slaveholders to expand areas where southern agricultural crops were grown. The expansion to the West was of exceptional political importance to them. Admission of new slave states would further strengthen the positions of the planter oligarchy in the country's political life.

The bounds of the Democratic Party and the entire two-party system were becoming increasingly narrow for superextremists of the Yancey and Rhett type; they had turned into an obstacle on the way to realization of their plans. The extreme advocates of slave states rights openly challenged the leadership of the Democrats at the national party convention in May 1848 when part of the Southerners led by Yancey submitted for the draft election platform a resolution setting down the principle of spreading slavery to the Western lands. The convention rejected the resolution by a majority of votes. The extremists undertook another attempt to consolidate the forces of the slaveholders and knock together a Southern States Rights Party in place of the Democrats and the Whigs at the convention in Nashville in June 1850, but their plans also failed.

The Western and the Southern states continued to be the bastion of the Democratic Party in the early 1850s. The Democrats were influential among the bulk of the Southern slaveholders, commercial and financial circles, the petty bourgeoisie, workers, immigrants in the Northeastern states and farmers in the West. The dominant ideological concept of the Democrats was the narrow interpretation of the Constitution restricting the authority of the federal government and, as a result, expanding states rights. Opposition to strong federal government, preference to the country's agrarian development, the demand for stepped-up colonization of Western lands, support for the principle of free trade, and opposition to the setting up of a national bank---all combined to form the foundation on which the classes and social sections in the Democratic Party's electoral body came together.

The political program of the Whig Party was aimed at stepped-

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Crisis of the Two-Party System

in the "i850s 113

The American two-party system entered a period of acute political crisis in the second half of the 1840s and early 1850s. The Democrat-Whig mechanism had functioned smoothly only until the subject of slavery was placed on the agenda. The failure of both political parties was obvious. The Democrat-Whig combination was losing support among the masses and backfired more and more often. Throughout the 1840s and early 1850s, third antislavery parties in the Northern states---the Liberty Party, Free Soilers, Free Democrats---on the one hand, and extreme slaveholder organizations, on the other, had become a permanent factor of US political life. Attempting to sidestep the slavery question the Democratic and Whig parties were increasingly losing ground. As the conflict between the two ways of capitalist development grew deeper, the economic problems involving tariff policy, railway construction, and development of the West came to be more closely linked to the solution of the slavery problem, adding new dimensions to the confrontation between North and South.

In January 1854 a bill was introduced to Congress on the entry into the Union of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska situated north of the 36° 30'parallel, the limit of slavery expansion established by the Missouri Compromise. The Democratic Party initiated the bill, while Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was its actual author. The bill was founded on the Squatter (Popular) Sovereignty doctrine according to which the population of the new states was to decide whether there would be slavery there or not. This concept appeared in the political arsenal of the Democrats in the second half of the 1840s in the course of debates concerning slavery on the lands annexed from Mexico as an alternative to the Wilmot Proviso. Its main idea was defined in December 1847 by Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan. Initially, implementation of the Squatter Sovereignty principle was to take the edge off the intersectional conflict but in the long term it might result in predominant development of the system of free labor, while unconditionally observing the right of slaveholders to expand beyond old territory. As the slavery issue grew more urgent the Democratic Party leadership was frantically looking for a new, more solid compromise-between North and South than that of 1850, capable of stabilizing the foundations of the US party and political system and putting an end once and for all to polemics on the dangerous subject of slavery. Members of the conservative group believed that

the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill would blunt the debates at the national level and transfer the problem of slavery to the local level where it would be discussed by the innabitants of the territories. Senator Douglas hoped that implementation of the Squatter Sovereignty doctrine would return peace to the country and cement the foundations of the Union.

The Democrats and the Whigs of the Southern states viewed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in a different light. Under their pressure the conservatives agreed to include into the bill an amendment of Whig Senator Archibald Dixon (Kentucky) repealing the provision of the Missouri Compromise on the division between the free and slave territories, and thereby removing the geographical barrier to the spread of slavery, which made it possible, in principle, for slavery to further expand to the Western lands north of the 36°30 parallel. The latter circumstance prompted the Southerners to unanimously support the bill. Thus the slaveholders laid claim to undivided hegemony on the scale of the whole country. The unprecedentedly tense struggle in Congress over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill from January to May 1854 finally ended with the bill being approved. President Pierce signed the bill on May 30.

Debates on the Kansas-Nebraska Act showed the total untenability of the political course pursued by the leadership of the Democratic and Whig parties. The attempts of the party leaders to withdraw the slavery issue from the sphere of the political struggle proved futile. The repealing of the provision of the Missouri Compromise and the threat that slavery would spread to the areas of the West brought into motion the most varied sections of the population in the free states. A strong wave of the antislavery movement rose in the North in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Actions by the broad popular masses against expansion of slavery acquired an unprecedented scope and a rather radical ring. The events in Kansas following the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act crossed out all hopes held by the conservative wing of the Democrats that a new compromise could be achieved on the slavery issue and peace and order restored in the country. Increasingly frequent clashes between the supporters and opponents of slavery in that state in spring 1855 developed into organized hostilities. The situation was extremely tense. The struggle between North and South for western territories entered the decisive phase. The country in effect split into two hostile camps.

8-749

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The political course pursued by the leadership of the Democratic Party which, under pressure from the Southerners, had taken the road of supporting slaveholder expansion was firmly denounced by members of the antislavery wing and part of the Jacksonian Democrats. Both the leaders and the rank and file of the Democratic Party were dissatisfied with the policies of the Pierce Administration. The contradictions on the slavery issue that had been piling up in the party for many years resulted in a serious split of its ranks. The first to leave the Democratic Party immediately after the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act were those who favored territorial restriction of slavery. They were headed by Senator Preston King (New York) and Representative David Wilmot (Pennsylvania). Their example was followed at the beginning of the 1856 election campaign by certain Jacksonian Democrats led by Francis Blair who blamed the party leadership for fanning the flames of intersectional conflict and had lost all hope of overcoming the Southern bias in the party's ideology and practical activities. "It is the Southern politician and the Northern traitor who have done the mischief, and whom we wish to restrain," wrote the New York Democrats opponents of the expansion of slavery in an address to voters at a convention in July 1856 where they had assembled to announce their break with the Democratic Party. "That party of glorious memory, which once spoke and acted for freedom, has fallen into the hands of office holders and political adventurers, serving as the tools of a slaveholding oligarchy.''^^1^^

In a context of abrupt aggravation of the slavery problem the political course of the Whig conservative leadership aimed at sidestepping that problem doomed the party to collapse. A final split in the Whig Party occurred in the course of debates on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. The alliance between its Northern and Southern elements broke down. The Whig leaders were unable to propose a constructive way out of the catastrophic situation the party was in and were increasingly losing ground. Ex-President Millard Fillmore sadly concluded that his political principles were not viable: "I am constantly misrepresented both in North and South. In the North I am charged with being a Pro-Slavery man, seeking to

extend slavery over free territory, and in the South, I am accused of being an abolitionist.''^^1^^ After the death of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in 1852, the Whigs were left without experienced political leaders. Lacking centralized leadership the Whig Party had split into numerous small rival groups, and in mid-1854 least of all resembled a national political organization.

The party ceased to exist in one state after another. By the fall of 1854, the Whigs had totally disappeared from the political scene in the Northwestern states where the question of Western territories' status was particularly acute due to geographical factors. The inhabitants of that area, primarily the farmers, had a vested interest in banning slavery on the new lands. The last pillars of the Whigs in the Southeastern and Southwestern states crumbled in 1854. Dissatisfaction with the moderate political course of the Whig Party was smoldering among the planters: unrestrained expansion of slaveholding to the West was held back by the party's inability to provide an answer to the slavery question. Under the circumstances, many Southern Whigs had defected to those who favored unrestricted extension of slavery to the Western lands, which became obvious in the course of debates on the KansasNebraska Bill, and declared that they were joining the Democratic Party. The civil war in Kansas and a new upsurge in the antislavery movement marked the final decline of the Whig Party. The 1856 elections wrote the last page in its history. Having suffered a shattering defeat the last groups of Whigs ceased to exist in the Northeastern and the Southern border states.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act shook the very foundations of the institutions of political power. An acute political crisis broke out in the country demonstrating that the Democrat-Whig combination had exhausted its possibilities and its political forms, ideology and politics no longer corresponded to the changed conditions. The two-party system proved unable to solve the entire set of problems facing the country in the 1850s and closely associated with the slavery issue. Moreover, it turned into an obstacle in the way of America's social and economic progress and suffered a complete failure. The old parties lost control over broad sections of American society. The regrouping of class and political forces was proceeding at a

~^^1^^ Millard Fillmore Papers, edited by Frank H. Severance, Kraus Reprint Co., Volume II, New York, 1970, p. 365.

~^^1^^ Proceedings of the Democratic Republican State Convention. At Syracuse, July 24, 1856. The Address and Resolutions, printed by order of the Convention, Albany, 1856, p. 6.

8«

116 Chapter Five

rapid pace in the country. The bloc of the commercial-financial bourgeoisie, slaveholders and farmers was crumbling, which was reflected in the downfall of the Whig Party and the crisis of the Democrats.

The Democrat-Whig party system was swept away by an unprecedented antislavery movement of the broad sections of the population in the free states who were unable to express their interests within the framework of the old two-party system. At the same time, the political principles of the Democratic and Whig parties did not withstand the onslaught of the expansionist circles of slaveholders who sought to gain the commanding heights in the Union and saw the extension of the plantation economy to the territories of the West as the only condition to strengthen their economic and political positions.

The collapse of the two-party system was due to complicated social, economic and political processes occurring in American society in the mid-19th century. The inability of the Democrats and the Whigs to find the key to the problem of slavery prevented them from grasping a whole range of major developments which had occurred as a result of American capitalism passing over to the concluding stage in the industrial revolution under the impact of an abrupt acceleration of economic growth rates. The problem of further opening up of the American West acquired major importance because both systems---free and slave labor---due to the internal patterns of their development needed continuous expansion beyond the old territory. This problem proved in the final count to be an insurmountable obstacle for the two-party mechanism. The old parties, the Whigs above all, still relied on the long-established social and economic processes and relations between the country's sections and held on to a political structure formed in the first 25 years of the 19th century. Development of the West, demanding above all an immediate solution to the problem of the status of new territories, undermined the traditional status quo and went beyond the political principles preached by the Democratic and Whig leaders.

The Northwest was traditionally the sore spot of the twoparty system. The policy of compromise with the slaveholders pursued by the Democrats and the Whigs did not find support among the population of this section. It was in the Northwestern states that the two-party tandem repeatedly suffered serious failures. Third, antislavery parties---the Liberty Party in 1844, the Free Soilers in 1848, the Free Democrats in 1852---played

havoc with the Democrats and the Whigs there. Since the mid18408, the period of particularly heated debates on the slavery issue, the Northwest had come to feel ill at ease within the traditional framework of the US two-party system. Karl Marx regarded the Northwest as "a power that was not inclined either by tradition, temperament or mode of life to let itself be dragged from compromise to compromise in the manner of the old Northeastern states.''^^1^^

At the turn of the 1850s the economic problems traditionally focussed on by Democrats and Whigs were blunted to some extent by the industrial boom, an influx of foreign capital into the American economy, the development of the country's Western areas, and the Gold Rush in California. Questions of tariffs, the banking system, internal improvements for some time lost the urgency they had had in the 1830s and 1840s.

The 1850s saw an unprecedentedly acute crisis of the twoparty system as a political institution of the ruling bloc of the bourgeoisie and plantation owners. The obvious inability of the Democratic and Whig leadership to settle the question of slavery shook the faith of the ruling classes in political parties as a mechanism for preventing critical situations. A number of politicians questioned the feasibility of the further existence of two parties.^^2^^ During his presidency (1849-1850), General Zachary Taylor favored the idea of creating one conservative party capable of localizing intersectional conflicts in place of Democrats and Whigs.^^3^^

The process of the realignment in the two-party system, which began in the mid-1850s and continued right up to the end of Reconstruction in the South, was the most important result of the fall of the Democrat-Whig combination and a consequence of deep-going social, economic and ideological changes in American society. With the collapse of the old party mechanism, the political forces of the advocates and opponents of slavery formerly confined to that mechanism, came out into the open. The period of party realignment was essentially marked by confrontation and open

Karl Marx, "The North American Civil War", op. cit., p. 42.

The Papers of Andrew Johnson, Editors: Leroy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins, University of Tennessee Press, Vol. II, Knoxville, 1970, pp. 69, 161.

~^^3^^ Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1978, p. 76.

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clashes between them in the various spheres of public life.

The Republican Party became the chief motive force of the party-political regrouping in America in the middle of the last century. The rise of the Republican organization occurred under the direct impact of the outburst of popular protest against the approval of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was a logical outcome of a long struggle waged by the population in the Northern states against slavery. The Republicans entered the political arena with a program aimed at eventually abolishing slavery, fundamentally changing the prevailing social and economic structure and clearing the way for unfettered development of American capitalism.

A coalition of farmers, workers and intellectuals led by the progressive industrial bourgeoisie arose within the framework of the Republican Party on the basis of the movement against the expansion of slavery and political omnipotence of the slaveholder oligarchy and for an effective program of measures to stimulate the national economy and provide for democratic use of national lands. The American industrial bourgeoisie was stating with increasing firmness its intention to take political power over the Union into its hands by constitutional means, that is, by winning a majority of votes in the elections. The first Republican organization appeared in Ripon (Wisconsin) in March 1854. The Republican Party came into being in virtually all the free states in the summer and fall of 1854. Usually, the founders of the party were the most consistent opponents of slavery, including many abolitionists who favored effective action against plantation owners' expansionism.

The hostilities in Kansas at the end of 1855 and in the first half of 1856 had immense repercussions, aggravating the political situation in the country and involving different sections of the Northern states' population in the struggle against slavery. The Republican Party's prestige rose immensely, making it the true focus of attraction for all antislavery forces. In 1855-1856 the Republicans managed to considerably extend the ranks of the party coalition by bringing under its banners opponents of further expansion of slave holding territories from among the Democrats and also members of the antislavery wing and some of the conservatives from the Whig camp.

The laying of the basis for the Republican Party's political course on the slavery issue occurred in a continuous struggle between three groups---radicals, conservatives and moderates. The pro-

gram of the radical wing (Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase, Henry Wilson and Joshua Giddings) envisaged not extending slavery to the free lands of the American West, repealing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, banning slave trade between states and outlawing slavery in the District of Columbia. "A strict confinement of slavery within its old terrain, therefore, was bound according to economic law to lead to its gradual extinction, in the political sphere to annihilate the hegemony that the slave states exercised through the Senate," wrote Karl Marx. "In accordance with the principle that any further extension of slave territories was to be prohibited by law, the Republicans therefore attacked the rule of the slaveholders at its root.''^^1^^ Denouncing slaveholding in the 1850s, the radical Republicans did not, however, call for its abolition in the Southern states and for freedom to black slaves, believing that this would contradict the Constitution.

The line of the conservatives (Edward Bates, Francis Blair, Thomas Corvin, and Simon Cameron) simply repeated the political principles held by the leadership of the defunct Whig Party. Their demands were limited to restoring the Missouri Compromise. Members of the conservative wing admitted the possibility of slaveholding extending to the Western lands south of the line set down in the compromise of 1820 and were prepared to agree to the admission of new slave states to the Union. The conservatives realized that the conflict between the free and slave states had gone very far and sought a new deal with the planters in order to achieve political stability in the country. Thus, the conservative faction of the Republican Party clearly bore the imprint of the old parties' ideology and politics.

The moderate opponents of the expansion of slavery were gradually coming to play first fiddle in the party. Headed by William Seward,.William Fessenden, Lyman Trumbull, and Abraham Lincoln, they sought to prevent the Republicans from resorting to extreme forms in attacking the institutions of slaveholding society. In the 1850s the logic of the political struggle forced moderate Republicans to seek a rapprochement with the radicals on the basic issues of domestic policy. They saw the key to the solution of the slavery problem in a course aimed at territorial restriction of the sphere where slaveholding prevailed, but disapproved of the

^^1^^ Karl Marx, "The North American Civil War", op. cit., p. 41.

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radicals' demand to ban slave trade between states and repeal the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Gradually they succeeded in turning the party toward a more moderate line in respect to the slavery problem and largely neutralizing radical moods typical of the Republicans in the early period of their activity.

The collapse of the Democrat-Whig two-party mechanism in the mid-1850s led to a disruption of the entire political system in the USA and became one of the reasons for invigorated action by different movements whose growth had been quite successfully contained by that mechanism in the past. An extremely chauvinistic organization, the Know-Nothing Party^^1^^ appeared on the political horizon in summer 1854. The Nativists (as the Know-Nothing Party members were occasionally called) declared that their main aim was to fight for the political rights and economic privileges of citizens born in the USA. They insisted that only native-born Americans could make use of the Western lands. The Know-- Nothings demanded that the political influence of immigrants be restricted and they be excluded from officeholding in all federal, state, and municipal bodies. They sought to reduce the flow of immigrants from overseas, revise the immigration laws and establish twenty-one years residence for naturalization. The ideology of the Nativists was imbued with religious prejudice against the Catholics and the Catholic Church. Consolidation within a single national organization of all those who wanted to restrict immigration occurred at a national constituent convention held in New York on July 17, 1854. In political terms, the Know-Nothings differed significantly from parties in the traditional sense of the word. They called themselves an order, and the organization's activities were wrapped in a veil of secrecy. The names of its leaders were also unknown. Annual meetings of the national council, the central body of the order, were held behind closed doors. Only native-born, Protestant Americans could become members of the Know-Nothing Party.

Political Nativism brought together members of different trends who often had directly opposite ideas of how to solve the slavery problem. Contadictions between the Northern and Southern wings of the Know-Nothing Party finally resulted in a serious split of their ranks at the national convention in February 1856. The oppo-

According to the rules members of the secret party would answer any questions concerning his involvement in its activities with the words "I know nothing.''

nents of the expansion of slavery left the Know-Nothings and began to look for closer contacts with the Republican Party.

The middle of 1855 was a landmark in the political evolution of the Nativists who entered upon a new phase in their activity. The American Party (as the Know-Nothings came to be called since June 1855) had made a zigzag in its development and turned into a conservative force which worked to stabilize the foundations of the political system by taking the edge off the slavery problem. Now the party was headed by a galaxy of new leaders who had defected to the advocates of restricted immigration from the defunct Whig Party (Millard Fillmore, John Bell and John Crittenden). Founded on a non-party basis, the order of Nativists was increasingly evolving into a political party with the appropriate organizational structure. The Know-Nothings discarded the shroud of secrecy. Having become a frankly conservative organization, the American Party had lost the appeal it once held for voters and drove away the masses of farmers, workers and the petty bourgeoisie who sought to put an end to the extension of slavery to the Western territories of the USA. The party's influence tended to wane with every passing day.

The election campaign of 1856 took place in an extremely tense situation caused by further polarization of political and class forces, and was marked by an unprecedented and dramatic struggle. The situation was particularly tense because of the events in Kansas. The presidential elections ended in victory for the candidate from the Democratic Party, former Secretary of State, James Buchanan. The decisive part in his election was played by the fact that he won not only in the South, a traditional domain of the Democrats, but also secured the support of voters in a number of free statesCalifornia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois and Indiana---who were persuaded that a Republican Administration would inevitably break up the Union. The Republican candidate John L. Fremont was ahead in all the other Northern states. The overall results of the 1856 elections---Democratic victory in most free states---enabled the opponents of the expansion of slavery to look optimistically to the future. An editorial in theNew York Weekly Tribune exclaimed: "We have lost a battle... A party of yesterday, without organization, without official power, without prestige, and latterly almost without hope, has not overborne the oldest party in the country, with ... its million and half of voters, trained by the habits

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of a lifetime to vote without question or hesitation whatever bears its label... The Bunker Hill of the new struggle for Freedom is past; the Saratoga and Yorktown are yet to be achieved.''^^1^^ A shattering defeat in the presidential election was suffered by the candidate from the American Party Millard Fillmore. The influence of the Nativists fell abruptly. Their last organizations in the states had ceased to exist by fall 1859.

The second half of the 1850s was a period of acute struggle for political power between the Northern industrial bourgeoisie and the slaveholders of the South. A strong impact on the partypolitical processes in this timespan was made by the economic and financial crisis of 1857 as a result of which industrial output was reduced, cotton consumption decreased and cotton prices fell notably. Economic troubles strengthened the intention of the Southern planters to open up new territories for slavery in the West. The extreme expansionists managed to considerably increase their influence and gain control over organizations of the Democratic Party in most Southern states. The American South was seized by a fit of hysterics in October 1859 when John Brown raided Virginia at Harpers Ferry. The ideological arsenal of the supporters of slavery was supplemented by a new doctrine according to which slaveholders' property was to be protected by the federal government in the territories. The concept of Southern Democrats underlay the ruling of the Supreme Court on the case of the slave Dred Scott in 1857, which in effect legalized slaveholding in all territories.

The political struggle in the country on the admission of Kansas to the Union entered the decisive phase in 1857-1858. Elections to the legislative assembly of that territory were held on December 21, 1857, and were attended by a new wave of violence by the Missouri slaveholders. Seizing most precincts, hired bands of Southerners demanded of the settlers that they support only the candidates favoring admission of Kansas into the Union as a slave state. Under the circumstances most free colonists refused to take part in the elections. Receiving a majority of seats in the legislature, the supporters of slavery approved, a constitution which legalized slavery at the session opened in January 1858 in Lecompton and submitted it to the Federal Congress as a bill. On February 2, on the insistence of the Southern Democrats, President Buchanan urged in a special

~^^1^^ New York Weekly Tribune, November 8, 1856, p. 4.

message to Congress that the constitution be approved.

However, the discussion that flared up around the Lecompton Bill dashed the hopes of its supporters. The attempt by the Southerners to violate the squatter sovereignty principle by pushing through the bill on the admission of Kansas into the Union as a slave state contrary to the will of the bulk of its population, encountered the stubborn resistance of Northern Democrats---- followers of Senator Stephen Douglas---who, in a coalition with the Republican faction, managed to have the bill rejected in the House of Representatives. The debates on the Lecompton Constitution ended in a split among the Northern Democrats. An internal quarrel flared up in the Democratic camp. Members of the presidential faction in the conservative group hoped to settle the Kansas issue once and for all and urged that Kansas be immediately admitted to the Union as a slave state. The ``insurgent'' Democrats led by Douglas denounced the Lecompton Constitution and demanded that new elections be held to the legislative assembly of Kansas. The supporters of the squatter sovereignty doctrine were not in the least enchanted with the idea of the Southern Democrats to legalize slavery on all the territories of the West. The split among the Democrats showed that the coalition of the Northern commercial-financial bourgeoisie and Southern planters serving as the backbone of the party had developed a serious fracture.

The presidential elections of 1860 were held at a time when contradictions in the ruling bourgeois-planter bloc on the slavery issue had come to a head and the polarisation of social and political forces in the country had been generally completed. Political power in the Federal Union was the chief issue in the election campaign. It was up to the Americans to decide who would stand at the head of the nation: the industrial bourgeoisie relying on the support of broad sections of the population in the Northern states or the compromise-inclined alliance of the Southern slaveholders and the commercial-financial circles of the North. "There never has been a more critical period in the history of the United States than the present,"^^1^^ wrote the New York Herald. The Democratic national convention in Charleston (South Carolina) on April 23- May 3, 1860, ended in another split between the conservatives and the proslavery group. The Southerners demanded that slavery be

~^^1^^ New York Herald, February 1, 1860, p. 28.

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permitted on all territories of the USA without any restrictions on the part of the federal government.^^1^^ They were no longer satisfied with the squatter sovereignty principle which placed the systems of free labor and slavery in equal conditions and was the cornerstone of the conservative political philosophy. The Democratic Party entered the decisive phase in the 1860 election campaign in a state of profound crisis. The slaveholders held a convention in June in Richmond (Virginia) where they nominated John Breckinridge as their presidential candidate. Members of the Democratic conservative wing nominated Senator Stephen Douglas at a convention in Baltimore (Maryland) on June 18-23. The division of Democrats into supporters of Douglas and Breckinridge spread like a chain reaction from state to state.

The presidential elections of 1860 ended in victory for Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican Party. With his inauguration on March 4, 1861, the principle of territorial restriction of the sphere where slavery prevailed became official policy of the federal government. The advent to power of the Republican Administration meant an overthrow of the hegemony of the slaveholding aristocracy over the Union by peaceful, constitutional means. Clearly realizing that their political domination had suffered a shattering blow, the extremist plantation owners appealed to the population of the Southern states to secede from the federation and form an independent slaveholding entity. This is what Karl Marx had to say on the subject: "The Union was still of value to the South only so far as it handed over Federal power to it as a means of carrying out the slave policy. If not, then it was better to make the break now than to look on at the development of the Republican Party and the upsurge of the Northwest for another four years and begin to struggle under more unfavourable conditions. The slaveholders' party therefore played va banquel When the Democrats of the North declined to go on playing the part of the 'poor whites' of the South, the South secured Lincoln's victory by splitting the vote, and then took this victory as a pretext for drawing the sword from the scabbard.''^^2^^ The focus of the secession movement was in the states of the Southeast and Southwest which

Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention Convened at Charleston, S. C., April 2.3, 1860, Thomas McGill, Printer, Washington, 1860, pp. 19, 35-40. ~^^2^^ Karl Marx, "The North American Civil War", op. cit., p. 42.

seceded from the Union in December 1860 and January-February 1861. Their example was followed in April-June 1861 by some border states of the South (Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee) and Arkansas. On February 4, 1861, the rebels assembled at a convention in Montgomery (Alabama), proclaimed a Confederation of Southern States, adopted its Constitution and elected Senator Jefferson Davis as its President.

The American parties had gained extensive experience by 1860- 1861 in settling critical situations caused by acute contradictions on the slavery issue. The entire range of crisis-settling means was applied to prevent the country from being divided. The economic basis of conservatism was the established structure of commercial relations between the Northern areas and the states of the slaveholding South. In social terms the conservatives chiefly represented the interests of the commercial and financial circles in the Northeast which maintained business contacts with the planters that were profitable for both sides: they granted large subsidies to the latter and invested considerable capital into the economy of the slave states. The first attempt to draw up a plan of a political compromise and prevent secession was undertaken in Congress when two special committees were formed (on December 4 in the House and on December 6, 1860, in the Senate) to consider the prevailing critical situation and determine measures to localize the conflict. A conference, convened on the initiative of the Virginia legislature, opened in Washington on February 4, 1861 to draft an agreement between the free and slave states so as to prevent the Federal Union from falling apart. It was attended by delegations from 21 Northern and Southern border states. It was a very representative assembly. The delegates included prominent politicians---Republicans, Democrats, and former Whigs. Business circles were also widely represented. The three extraordinary bodies recommended virtually identical proposals. These included a series of amendments to the American Constitution which would ban slavery in Western territories north of the 36°30'parallel. Slavery would remain legal in the Western lands south of the line and could be developed. The Federal Congress would no longer have the right to interfere in questions of slavery in all Southern states and the District of Columbia, to outlaw import and export of slaves from one state or territory to another, and raise taxes on slaveholding. It would be the duty of the US government to observe strictly the Fugitive Slave Law and reimburse

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the cost of the slave to the owner if the former was not found and returned to his master.^^1^^

The submitted draft proposals resembled claims in the form of an ultimatum which, if accepted, would enable the slave states to remain in the Union rather than a compromise intended to reconcile the conflicting sides. Their proslavery bias was clearly apparent to the Republicans who managed to shelf the resolutions of the conciliators during the congressional voting. Finding no response in the highest legislative body of the country, the proposals of the conservatives were left high and dry. It became patently obvious that under the circumstances peaceful settlement of the fundamental differences by means of a compromise was impossible, and the positions of the opposing sides on the key problems of domestic policy remained irreconcilable.

Meanwhile, the Southern separatists grew more aggressive with every day. They hastily made open military preparations and sought to provoke clashes with troops loyal to the federal government. On April 12, 1861, armed units of the slaveholders attacked and after a brief siege forced to surrender the garrison of Fort Sumter which defended the sea approaches to Charleston. In response, on April 15, President Lincoln decreed mobilization of the militia in the states loyal to the government and ordered the Confederates to end the rebellion in 20 days. As Republican Congressman George Julian wrote, "To the very last the old medicine of compromise and conciliation seemed to be the sovereign hope of the people of free States... They clung to it, till the guns of Fort Sumter roused them from their perilous dream.''^^2^^

The political crisis of 1860-1861 ended in the country's division and the beginning of the Civil War. The blame for the war lay exclusively with the slaveholders of the South who refused to solve the problem of slavery in a constitutional way and resorted to secession. Unable to settle the conflict between the free and the slave states, prevent the breaking up of the Union and the ensuing Civil War with all its bloodshed, the American parties displayed

A Report of the Debates & Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention, for Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, held at Washington, D.C. in February, A. D. 1861, by L.E. Chittenden, D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1864, pp. 440-444.

~^^2^^ Political Recollections of G. Julian, 1840 to 1872, Jansen and McClurg Co., Chicago, 1884, p. 186.

their complete bankruptcy. The institution intended to strengthen and stabilize the domination of the ruling classes proved unable to fulfill the functions assigned to it. The two-party system clearly demonstrated its limited possibilities and the inability to deal with the crucial problem of slavery. The entire political system lost its balance. The slavery issue paralyzed the activities of all the branches of government---executive, legislative and judiciary. The authority of presidential power fell to an unprecedented low. In the course of election campaigns from 1844 to 1860 not a single US president was even nominated by the convention of his own party to run for another term. The political downfall of the parties signified that a profound crisis had gripped the ruling US elite whose course aimed at achieving compromises between the Northern bourgeoisie and the slaveholders in the Southern states had definitely become outdated. The crisis was the result of pressure on the part of the broad popular masses refusing to put up with the further existence of slavery and demanding that the slavery issue be immediately settled on a democratic basis.

Political Parties During the Civil War (186 1-1865) 129

POLITICAL

PARTIES DURING

THE CIVIL WAR

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members of both parties were frequently on the verge of antagonistic conflict.

The provocative attack by the Southerners on Fort Sumter (South Carolina) triggered off the Civil War and led to the spreading in the North of profound and universal feeling of patriotism. Resolutions adopted at meetings and assemblies and public appeals made by prominent intellectuals of the North demanded an immediate suppression of the rebellion and punishment of its perpetrators---the Southern slaveholders.^^1^^ However, despite the belief bred by patriotic moods that the rebels would soon be defeated, the North found itself in an extremely unfavorable situation from the military standpoint in spring 1861. The small and poorly trained army of the North could not resist the Southern Confederation's military power. Lack of resolution and hesitation in taking important decisions, and incompetence in the highest echelons of military command and government^^2^^ were typical of the first period in the war. They stemmed from the alignment of political forces in the North and the class interests of the Northern big bourgeoisie. Fear of revolutionary change in the country, which was inevitable if the war against the rebels were to become a popular war against slavery, held the bourgeoisie back in its struggle against the Confederation.

The first period of the Civil War, a period when in Marx's words the war was waged constitutionally, became instrumental in the political realignment that was gaining momentum. During that stage the historical conditions determining the dynamics of each party's internal development were finally formed and the forms and basic lines along which the entire political mechanism would further develop in wartime were outlined. They were determined by the specifics of class struggle in the North which in this period did not go beyond bourgeois parliamentarism. The peaceful constitutional

The Civil War of 1861-1865, a peculiar form taken on by the second American bourgeois-democratic revolution, inflicted the final blow against the entire former political structure of society. In terms of political history this period was unique because during the war the class struggle assumed the form of a large-scale armed conflict in the course of which all the cardinal problems were solved on the battlefield for the first time since the American nation had been founded. The bourgeois revolution helped American society to get out of the dead end it was in and determined the ways of its further development. It also showed the untenability of traditional doctrines on the evolutionary nature of US social and political institutions allegedly not subject to revolutionary change. The collapse of the two-party system thereby proved that apologetic concepts of "American exclusiveness" were false.

Destruction of the two-party system by the explosive potential inherent in the slavery issue did not mean elimination of the institution of political parties in the North of the USA. Parties continued to operate despite the absence in their relations of the main element of a system---elastic balance between trends toward interparty agreement (consensus), on the one hand, and the tendency toward political rivalry (alternative), on the other. In the period of the coming revolution the usually balanced state of these two invariable attributes of the two-party mechanism was abruptly distorted due to disappearance of consensus and a change in the very nature of the alternative. So, parties in the North united by a common purpose of saving the Union still remained as if at different poles during the Civil War. The Republican and the Democratic systems of values differed radically, and mutual relations between

See, for example: Henry W. Bellows, How We Are to Fulfil Our Lord's Commandment, 'Love Your Enemies,' in a Time of War. A Sermon Preached in All Souls's Church. New York. June 2, 1861, Baker & Godwin, Printers, New York, 1861, pp. 5-6.

~^^2^^ The nature of social and political processes in the US at different stages in the war has been closely analyzed by Soviet historians in the following works: R. F. Ivanov, The Civil War in the USA (1861-1865), the USSR Academy of Sciences Publishers, Moscow, 1960; Idem., Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War in the USA, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1961; G. P. Kuropyatnik, The Second American Revolution (all in Russian).

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means of political struggle which the supporters and opponents of slavery resorted to in settling interparty conflicts had a special impact on the first period of the Civil War.

The ruling Republican Party was to play the decisive part in the rise of interparty relations. But the party continued to be torn apart by the confrontation between conservatives and radicals. "It is anxious regard for the wishes, advantages and interests of the spokesmen of the border slave states," shown by the leadership of the Republican Party headed by Lincoln, "that has so far broken off the Civil War's point of principle.''^^1^^ This course could have resulted in political debacle for the party and a military catastrophe for the North.

The existence in the North of considerable forces sympathizing with the Democratic Party made it particularly important for the Republican Party to decide to what extent political opposition was permissible in wartime. Realizing the need to neutralize the opposition for the time of the war, the party leaders suggested that the Republicans "throw off the old and assume a new designation---the Union party" to unite under one roof all the patriots of the North regardless of their political convictions and party affiliation.^^2^^ Plans to set up a Union coalition envisaged restricting oppositional activities by loyalty to the administration's military course. The Republicans warned the opposition that "no man ought to be allowed to mask his enmity to the government behind the name of the democratic party.''^^3^^

Having contributed a great deal to the setting up of the Union coalition, members of the Republican Party's conservative wing saw in it an opportunity to establish relations with the Democrats of the Northern and border states. At the same time an obvious aim of the conservatives was also to neutralize the radical Republicans as much as possible. The uncompromising stand of the radicals clearly demonstrated during the secession period was regarded by the conservatives as a direct threat to their own plans for waging the war. That was why the conservatives attempted to dissolve the

Republican Party in the Union coalition by their interpretation of its aims and deprive the party of its strong antislavery thrust. They urged President Lincoln abandon antislavery rhetoric and "change the question before the Public from one upon Slavery, or about Slavery for a question upon Union or Disunion.''^^1^^

The Union coalition became the touchstone in the establishment of relations between parties during the war. The stand the conservative Republicans took on the slavery issue provided a possibility of reviving the initial elements of a consensus between parties. They believed "that any attempt to make this war subservient to the sweeping abolition of Slavery, will revolt the border States, divide the North and West, invigorate and make triumphant the opposition party, and thus defeat itself as well as destroy the Union." The idea of consensus was also promoted by a moderate group whose leader, President Lincoln, said: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.''^^3^^

Ascendency in the party ideology of the Republicans of the old Whig imperatives with their deliberate hushing up of the slavery issue would mean a step back for the party as compared with its position in the 1860 election. In a situation when the conservatives were relentlessly drawing the Republican Party into the pitfall of the amorphous and apolitical Union coalition, only vigorous action by the radical Republicans could save it from destruction. The radical policy largely prevented the party from compromising on matters of principle and kept it on antislavery positions.

The desire to consolidate and radicalize the party soon compelled the radicals to interfere actively in affairs having to do with waging the war. The radicalization of the Republican Party was significantly stepped up with the setting up of a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War in which the radicals prevailed from the outset. The committee's sphere of action was extremely broad: virtually any aspect in government policy from 1861 to 1865 in some way had to do with the war. Military strategy and tactics, whether or not the professional skills of an officer conformed to

Karl Marx, "A Criticism of American Affairs", in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 227.

~^^2^^ Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, edited by John Bigelow, Vol. I, Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1908, p. 156.

~^^3^^ Springfield Republican, August 10, 1861.

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Easier, Editor, Rutgers University Press, Vol. IV, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1953, p. 317.

~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. V., p. 545.

~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 388.

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the initiatives of the moderate and conservative Republicans. If awareness of the need to destroy the institution of slavery at an early date compelled the radicals to vote as one man for all antislavery measures without exception, in discussing various aspects of economic policy they were relatively rarely unanimous in appraising the bills.^^1^^ A clash of class interests, complicated intermeshing and mingling of old party imperatives inevitably accompanied the uniting of different social forces on a radical antislavery platform. It is to be added that the narrow local interests of one or several states bearing on particular issues of Republican economic policy only multiplied and deepened differences between radicals. The inability of the radicals to propose their own program of economic change gave other groups in the party a chance to find a common language with the opposition on questions having to do with tariff policy, finances, public works and distribution of public land. However, the proportion of economic measures in the overall government policy was relatively small, and their political importance as compared with major questions of the war comparatively insignificant. Yet the very fact that the advocates of compromise gained the first opportunities to conclude a compromise was revealing.

Relations between the leading parties of the North largely depended also on the situation in the Democratic Party. Considerable changes occurred in the ideological principles held by the Democrats as a consequence of the war. The former factional division into advocates of squatter sovereignty and opponents of any modernization of the institution of slavery was replaced by a new principle in the alignment of forces in the party. The attitude to the war and the slaveholding Confederation pushed former differences to the background becoming the chief criterion in the political tendency of different groups. Two leading political slogans appeared in party rhetoric, one of which urged that the war

An example is participation by the radicals in discussing such important economic measures as the Homestead Bill, Merrill's bill on distributing public lands, a bill on the Pacific Railroad, and the 1862 bill on a high protectionist tariff. See: The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the First Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, The Congressional Globe Office, Washington, 1861, pp. 132-140; The Congressional Globe, The Thirty-Seventh Congress. The Second Session, Part I, Washington, 1862, pp. 132-139, 140, 909-910; The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Second Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, Part 3, Washington, The Congressional Globe Office, 1862, pp. 2114, 2160, 2432, 2625-2634, 2840.

the post he held in the armed forces, logistics, organization of military operations, federal military expenditures and military contracts---all these important questions were examined by the Joint Committee. A major achievement of the radical Republicans was an extensive campaign they waged to remove generals who were known for their defeatist attitudes---John F. Potter, Charles P. Stone, and also Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Armies George B. McClellan.

The propaganda activities carried on by the Joint Committee played a major part in rallying and activating broad popular masses in the North opposed to slavery. The New York Times wrote about "thousands and tens of thousands throughout the country ... who insist that the Government ought immediately to raise the standard of liberation.''^^1^^ As Karl Marx put it, in December 1861 "the United States has evidently entered a critical stage with regard to the slavery question.''^^2^^ With the upsurge in the mass antislavery movement in the North, the radicals stepped up their action even more. In the course of the second session of the 37th Congress they undertook a number of actions aimed at decisively uprooting slavery in the country. The radicals in the Congress managed to rally the Republican Party in support of the bills to free the slaves in the District of Columbia and on US territories. Legalization of drafting freed blacks into the armies of the North was another of their important achievements. Finally, with the second bill on confiscation adopted (it provided for liberation of fugitive slaves and slaves confiscated from the rebels, and the possibility of drafting blacks into special black units), the radicals compelled the administration to resort to more resolute methods of waging the war. Prodded by the radical Republicans in September 1862 President Lincoln agreed to issue a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation as a measure prompted by military exigencies.

The radicals' firm stand on the slavery issue drew the line beyond which the ruling party could not make concessions to the opposition without violating its platform. As to the possibility of compromising with the Democrats on issues not related to slavery or the conduct of the war, the radicals practically did not resist

~^^1^^ The New York Times, August 6, 1861.

Karl Marx, "The Crisis over the Slavery Issue", in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 115.

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be denounced and peace restored with the Southern states, while the other unconditionally supported all military measures by the Federal Government.

The new alignment of forces in the Democratic Party had certain similarities with the antebellum division into factions. To a certain extent the divisions into supporters of Douglas and Breckinridge and into advocates of war and peace coincided, which was due to objective causes. Rejection by the Southerners of Douglas' squatter sovereignty placed most Northern Democrats in opposition to the Confederation and the border-state Democrats sympathetic to the Confederation. On the other hand, Breckinridge's followers who had remained in the Union after the war broke out advocated peace with the Confederation, since that was in tune with the interests of the political elite in the border states. It is undoubtable, however, that in a context of the rising bourgeois revolution the coinciding of these political groups had many exceptions.

Prominent advocates of peace with the Confederation, Representatives Clement L. Vallandigham (Ohio), John A. Logan ( Illinois), Senators Breckinridge (Kentucky) and James A. Bayard ( Delaware) said that they preferred "to see a peaceful separation of these States, than to see endless, aimless, devastating war.''^^1^^ The true intentions of the Peace Democrats became obvious after their spokesmen publicly declared that they feared radical changes in the country: "In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection, I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.''^^2^^ The term "revolutionary struggle" referred to any attempts to interfere in the affairs of the institution of slavery. It was fear of the rising bourgeois revolution that underlay the ideology of the peace group of the Democratic Party aiming all its efforts at preventing a 'Violent and remorseless" struggle.

A considerable part of the Democrats opposed the peace advocates in the party and separated themselves firmly from the

Southerners rejecting the legitimacy of secession. The group of War Democrats was much larger than the ``peace'' faction, since it was the Breckinridge faction which lost the largest number of followers in the North as a result of secession. In formulating their action program the War Democrats encountered quite a few objective difficulties. Members of this group faced the dilemma of either being loyal to the government or remaining true to their own partisan principles. The difficulty of their position lay in the fact that many of them were unable to draw the line between support for the idea of restoring the Union and support for the Republican Party. Quite justly they feared that the Democratic Party line would melt away in the powerful propaganda campaign launched by the Republicans in support of the Union. On the other hand, they would not accept the course of the Peace Democrats who directly urged the members of this faction to take a firm stand against government measures. Under the circumstances the group leaders---Congressman John A. McClernand (Illinois), Senators James A. McDougall (California), Andrew Johnson (Tennessee) as well as Douglas himself---found it necessary to emphasize all the time that they stood in "equal, irreconcilable, and undying opposition both to the Republicans and Secessionists.''^^1^^

An acute conflict between supporters of the political ideas of Douglas and those of Breckinridge on the attitude to the Civil War and the Union coalition marked both the situation in the Democratic faction in Congress and the overall situation in the party during preparations for the 1861 elections. Very soon major differences on the extent of supporting government war measures emerged between various members of the group of War Democrats. The part of the War Democrats who had feared during the first months of the war that the party would lose its face were its principles identified completely with the principles of the Republican platform formed a new faction---moderate War Democrats. Since the 1861 elections this faction was headed by Governor of the State of New York Horatio Seymour. The ideological basis for their separation from the rest of Douglas' followers was the refusal of the moderates to support government measures if certain conditions were met. The most important of these was to retain slavery

Quoted from: Robert W. Johannsen, "The Douglas Democracy and the Crisis of Disunion", in: Civil War History, Vol. 9, September 1963, pp. 245-246.

The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the First Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, The Congressional Globe Office, Washington, 1861, p. 379.

^^2^^ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. V, pp. 48-49.

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in some states^^1^^ and showed that consolidation of the opposition was basically completed. They also indicated that the party had recovered from the crisis of 1860 and significantly raised its competitiveness on the national scene. The establishment of the opposition by the end of 1862 had a major impact on the state of interparty relations. With consolidation of oppositional forces the ruling party now had a real rival in politics whom it had to reckon with. The appearance of rival signalled that the plans of the Republican leadership to involve all the Democrats in the Union coalition had fallen through. The course toward politically neutralizing the opposition proved to be more or less fruitful only in respect to one of the three factions in the Democratic Party---the War Democrats.

The emergence of the opposition bloc under the Peace Democrats was due to a specific alignment of class forces at the first, ``constitutional'' stage in the Civil War. The principal class antagonism between the bourgeoisie of the North and the slaveholders of the South in this period took the form of the armed struggle between the opposing sides. In the North of the US the class struggle between supporters and opponents of slavery was not so clear-cut. The fact that from the outset of the war many Democrats professed sincere loyalty to the idea of saving the Union largely contributed to their acceptance as partners and not enemies of the Lincoln Administration. Mutual acknowledgement by the parties of constitutional principles of government in the North underpinned interparty relations. This, in turn, led most leaders of both parties to realize the need for their coexistence on the national political scene. The adherence of the Republican and the Democratic leadership to traditions of bourgeois political culture implying legal opposition to the ruling party's course prevented the leading parties from turning into totally antagonistic organizations. However, the irreconcilable conflict on the slavery issue between opposing forces in the revolution in the North---radical Republicans and Peace Democrats---still involved the danger of political destabi-

^^1^^ The Democrats won the gubernatorial elections in New York and New Jersey and state elections in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois. In six states the Democrats won elections to the US Congress taking 35 seats in both chambers away from the Republicans. In Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin and New Jersey the Peace Democrats, the main candidates from the party in the elections, proved stronger than the candidates of the Union coalition combining the War Democrats and mostly conservative Republicans.

after the end of the war both in the loyal and the rebel states. The existence of certain common elements in the views of the Peace and the moderate War Democrats---above all their joint interest in preventing the Civil War from turning into an antislavery war-made it possible for a strong opposition bloc to emerge. The opposition slogan laid down in the Address of Democratic Members of the House of Representatives of the United States, to the Democracy of the United States went as follows: "The first step towards a restoration of the Union as it was is to maintain the Constitution as it is.''^^1^^ The stream of antislavery initiatives the radical Republicans hurled at the opposition in the Congress stepped up consolidation of the bloc of the moderate and Peace Democrats.

Democratic participation in discussing the administration's economic policies was a special aspect in the opposition's activity in Congress. If in debating antislavery initiatives Democrats were in opposition to Republicans in most cases, in the given instance members of the Democratic Party made a complete about-face. Some of the Republican bills submitted to Congress were supported by more Democrats than Republicans.^^2^^ That was due to a number of objective economic and political reasons. A most important reason undoubtedly was the similarity of economic interests shared by members of the Northern bourgeoisie belonging to different political parties. Another reason was that all Democratic factions without exception had to be constantly concerned with strengthening their mass base in order to operate more or less successfully at the federal level. Laying emphasis on resistance to antislavery measures, the Democrats at the same time could not afford opposing most of the administration's economic measures. Fear of being accused of obstructionism, which could lead to the forced elimination of the opposition from political life in wartime, kept the Democrats from totally resisting the Republican administration's course.

The 1862 elections brought victory to Democrat candidates

Clement L. Vallandigham, Speeches, Arguments, Addresses and Letters, published by J. Walter & Co., New York, 1864, p. 365.

^^2^^ See: Leonard P. Curry, Congressional Democrats: 1861-1863, in: Civil War History, Vol. 12, September 1966, pp. 218-219.

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most of the Democrats and conservative Republicans and would be closed only to traitors and Republican abolitionists.^^1^^ Despite the fact that Weed's movement failed to yield the expected results, the threat of a split in the ruling party did exist. It was clear that the most conservative members of the Republicans could go very far in resisting radical trends---even to completely breaking with their own party. It was also revealing that in their struggle against radicalism the conservative Republicans regarded Democrats as their allies.

Fertile soil for the development of conservative trends in Republican policies was provided by the need to solve the problem of the Union's reconstruction. Opponents of a radical course attempted to make reconstruction policy the chief means in the struggle against the deepening of the revolution by asserting their monopoly on working out government programs in this field. Having secured a firm party line on the slavery issue during the second stage in the war, the radical Republicans proved unable to resist forces interested in achieving an interparty compromise when reconstruction problems were being decided. United by a single desire to make emancipation an imperative of reconstruction, the radicals, nevertheless, lacked any clear-cut single program of specific reconstruction measures. Individual members of the party's radical wing differed in their views on the status of the former rebel states, methods of setting up loyal governments in these states, and also the legal rights of loyal citizens in the South.^^2^^

Lack of detail in the radical reconstruction plan and absence of unity in radical views on many reconstruction-policy problems sharply reduced the effectiveness of the radicals' participation in the political struggle. It was largely due to this circumstance that Lincoln, concerned with the possible danger of a split in the party, managed to make his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction the basis of government reconstruction policy. The vague and ambiguous wording of many provisions in the President's Proclamation, due to which the political meaning of the document could be

lization. That danger could be eliminated only provided the parties managed to achieve a compromise in solving major social and political problems on the agenda---tougher methods of fighting the war or problems of reconstruction.

The Northerners' military defeats in the summer and fall of 1862 made the threat of Washington's capture by the rebel forces very real and enhanced the political activeness of the masses. The situation in the country strained to the limit by the widespread antislavery mood demanded that the Lincoln Administration take resolute steps and resort to tougher methods of waging the war. The irresistible logic of historical development finally forced the Republican leadership to make an about-face in the war policy^^1^^ and embark upon a revolutionary war against the rebels. Although the leadership of the ruling party had agreed to wage the war by revolutionary methods under pressure from the popular masses, it had no interest in deepening the revolution and sought, in Lincoln's words, to prevent the military conflict from degenerating "into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.''

The desire to restrict the radicals' activities was common to both the conservative Republicans and their political opponents, the Democrats. The leaders of the Democratic Party in the North by all means resisting any further revolutionary change in the country proved to be the potential allies of the moderate and conservative Republicans during the new stage in the war. The class interests shared by members of the Northern bourgeoisie belonging to different political parties underlay their resistance to revolutionary trends and in the final count constituted a most important reason for the rise of a sufficiently stable interparty consensus---an inevitable attribute of the political structure taking shape in wartime.

The steady growth of the antislavery movement led to a radicalization of the Republican Party's course and a considerable toughening of the government's war policies. That provoked a wide response among the conservative circles. The New York conservative Republicans headed by Thurlow Weed proposed to set up a new coalition party which, as its would-be founders saw it, would unite

~^^1^^ Springfield Republican, January 21, February 15, 1863.

~^^2^^ See, for example: Charles Sumner, His Complete Works. With Introduction by George Frishie Hoar, in 20 volumes, Vol. X, Negro University Press, New York, 1969, pp. 166-290 -Jnside Lincoln's Cabinet. The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, edited by David Donald, Longmans, Green and Co., New York, 1954, p. 264.

See: Karl Marx, "American Affairs", in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 180.

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Political Parties During the Civil War (1861-1865) 141

interpreted in different ways, proved instrumental in its being supported by both conservative and moderate Republicans as well as Democrats.^^1^^ The attitude of members of the war and moderate factions in the Democratic Party to the administration's reconstruction policy, revealed new reserves for the forming of elements of interparty agreement. The support, even if indirect, of the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction by a considerable number of the Democrats became an important phase in the development of relations between both parties. It indicated the scope of change in the Democrats' ideological views and their readiness to compromise with the conservative and moderate Republicans in solving fundamentally important war issues.

The ideological restructuring of the Republican Party along radical lines, externally manifested during the second stage of the war in the administration's tougher war policy, could not but tell on the attitude of different Republican factions to the opposition. On the one hand, Republican awareness of the need to change the nature of the war in connection with solution of the slavery issue objectively widened differences between the ruling and opposition parties and strengthened alternative aspects in relations between extreme poles 'of the political spectrum in the North---radical Republicans and Copperhead Democrats. On the other hand, the conservatives' resistance to further deepening the revolution forced the Republicans to approach opposition demands with greater caution. Since, moreover, members of different factions held fundamentally different views of the opposition, it was even more difficult to work out a single political line on the issue.

The 1862 elections had clearly shown that the opposition was gaining strength. The tendency continued to develop in 1863. An important distinguishing feature of opposition growth at the beginning of the second stage in the Civil War was the wide spread in the North of secret counterrevolutionary clubs and associations led by Copperhead Democrats.^^2^^ Knights of the Golden Circle, Or-

~^^1^^ See, for example: The New York Times, December 10, 1863; The Political Status of the Rebellious States, and the Action of the President in Respect Thereto, Albany, 1864, p. 3; The Real Motives of the Rebellion. The Slaveholders'Conspiracy, Depicted by Southern Loyalists in Its Treason Against Democratic Principles, as well as Against the National Union: Showing a Contest of Slavery and Nobility Versus Free Government, New York, 1864, pp. 12-14.

According to expert estimates there were 50,000 members of such organizations in

der of American Knights and Sons of Liberty were underground paramilitary organizations which carried on their activities under the strictest secrecy and had a ramified network of branches in many states of the Midwest. The chief purpose of the Copperhead clandestine organizations was to undermine the military, economic and political efforts of the Union government. The most reactionary part of the Democratic Party's peace faction led by Clement L. Vallandigham maintained direct contact with underground counterrevolutionary organizations and supported their activities.

The rise of extremist trends in the activities of the Copperhead opposition which more and more frequently resorted to nonparliamentary means of struggle against the administration, made it imperative for the Republican leadership to intervene urgently. The former Republican policy of involving all three Democratic factions as partners in the Union coalition proved absolutely ineffective at the given stage. The Republicans fully realized that each of the groups in the Democratic Party required a differentiated approach by the administration. In view of this the general political line of the Republican leadership in respect to the Democrats changed cardinally: from actions aimed at preventing antigovernment actions by the opposition on the whole the Republicans were forced to pass to restraining its most extremist elements. Joint participation by all three Republican factions in working out a common strategy to resist the opposition resulted in the emergence of two interrelated trends in the party. One of these was aimed at restraining oppositional moods among the loyal Democrats, and chiefly among members of the moderate war faction, so as to break them away from the nucleus of the Copperhead opposition. The chief proponents of this trend---the conservative Republicansproclaimed the opposition lawful, but, in the new context, intended to allow it only "reasonable freedom of discussion and criticism."¹ The second trend called for tougher measures of public and political control over the activities of the extremist Copperheads including censorship and the arrest of disloyal persons. The initiators of this line---the radical Republicans---believed the Democrats' "jeal-

Indiana alone and 85,000 in Illinois. (J. M. Hofer, "Development of the Peace Movement in Illinois During the Civil War", in: Journal of Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, p. 123.)

~^^1^^ Springfield Republican, March 10, 1863.

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ousies and antipathies" in respect to Republicans "are now more than ever irrational" and their "clamors of opposition are now more than ever unpatriotic.''^^1^^

The first trend in anti-opposition policy, to implement which the moderates and conservatives had attempted to use the means (proven futile in practice) of the nonpartisan Union coalition,² showed its ineffectiveness from the very outset. The moderate Democrats replied rather evasively to the administration's appeals referring to the negative example of the War Democrats who had broken off all relations with their party in order to join the Union coalition. In their words, the moderate Democrats "have learned by experience how futile it is to abandon their own party, in any hope of gain to the country or of advantage to themselves by going into any new-fangled organization.''^^3^^ Due to the above circumstances it was the resolute measures in respect to the opposition advocated by the radicals that gradually became the basis for government policy in this field.

The policy of active resistance to the extremist opposition received its first powerful impulse at the end of September 1862 with the issue of a presidential proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus for the time of the war. Under the proclamation "all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice ... shall be subject to martial law and liable to trial and punishment by Courts Martial or Military Commission.''^^4^^ Lacking a clear legal definition of disloyal practice, the proclamation became a major weapon in the hands of the leaders of the Republican Party to fight the political opposition during the new stage in the war. Suffice it to say that in Illinois alone between June and October 1863 more than 200 Democrats were arrested for treason and 800 for desertion.^^5^^

The chief aim of the new Republican tough line---to fight the

~^^1^^ The Works of Charles Sumner, Vol. IX, p. 198.

The New York Times, October 21, 1862; Springfield Republican, November 1, 1862; Springfield Republican, March 10, 1863.

~^^3^^ Atlas & Argus, February 16, 1863.

~^^4^^ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. V, pp. 436-437.

Stephen L. Hansen, The Making of the Third Party System. Voters and Parties in Illinois, 1850-1876, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, 1980, p. 139.

peace faction of the Democratic Party---was most clearly apparent in early May 1863 when the leader of the Peace Democrats Vallandigham was arrested on orders from General Burnside on accusations of treason and spying for the Confederation. On September 15, 1863 the above proclamation was supplemented by another in which loyalty and disloyalty to the government were defined in even more general terms.^^1^^ As early as the beginning of 1863 government policy in respect to the opposition included censorship of the Democrats' extremist press. The Postmaster General ordered that disloyal papers be dropped from the list of periodicals distributed by the mail service, and sale of these papers was banned.

In a public address to the Democrats of the state of New York President Lincoln insisted that the administration's tough line in regard to the abettors of the rebels was justified. Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the campaign of arrests of disloyal persons were described by Lincoln as necessary preventive security measures.^^2^^ Lincoln's position was the best of evidence that the radical course toward a tougher policy in respect to the opposition was accepted by the Republican leadership as an underlying party doctrine.

The measures undertaken by the Republicans in the course of their crackdown on the opposition showed that in the new stage of the war the political struggle was increasingly going beyond the generally accepted parliamentary framework. The switch from passive to active resistance to extremist opposition elements required new, major forms of struggle waged on a mass scale. The Republican Party found such forms in the activities of numerous patriotic leagues, parties and clubs arising to deal with rebel actions in the rear of Union troops. As the participants in the club movement put it, the main aim was "to discountenance and rebuke by moral and social influence all disloyalty to the Federal Government."³ The radical Republicans practically everywhere played an active part in setting up and leading patriotic leagues and associations. Union leagues were progressive and democratic organizations. It

~^^1^^ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VI, pp. 451-452.

Correspondence in Relation to the Public Meeting in Albany, Albany, N.Y., 1863, pp. 5-6.

~^^3^^ Henry W. Bellows, Historical Sketch of the Union League Club of New York. Its Origin, Organization, and Work, 1863-1879, Club House, New York, 1879, p. 37.

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Political Parties During the Civil War (186 1-1865) 145

was their purpose to "foster a spirit of Patriotism and Loyalty; ... use all proper means for exposing and suppressing treason and punishing traitors.''^^1^^

The leagues concentrated primarily on propaganda aimed at splitting the opposition. Coordination of propaganda work in the Union movement was carried out by the Loyal Publication Society and the Philadelphia Board of Publications. Founded on February 14, 1863, the Loyal Publication Society by the end of the year had as recipients of the publications 649 Union leagues and associations; 474 Ladies' Associations; 21,160 private individuals; 744 editors; and the soldiers in the Army. The following figures speak of the Society's publishing activity: in 1863 the Society put out 42 pamphlets in more than 400,000 copies and in 1864 approximately the same number in 515,000 copies.^^2^^ The Board of Publication was equally active: in 1863-1865 the Board published 104 pamphlets in a total of more than a million copies.^^3^^

The widespread popular pro-Union movement provided considerable support to the Republican Administration and its struggle against the opposition. In effect the party received a ready-made well organized and operating propaganda machine capable of successfully influencing voter behavior. The military structure and military discipline in force in many Union leagues enabled the Republican leadership to effectively fight the extremist forms of opposition. At the same time, participation of many War Democrats in league activities dovetailed with the intention of moderate and conservative Republicans to resort more widely to compromise measures to restrain the opposition.

The campaign to bridle the opposition had yielded real results as early as the end of 1863. The Republican policy aimed at splitting the bloc of opposition forces and isolating the peace faction of the Democrats conformed best of all to the imperatives of the time and the situation existing among the opposition forces. The growing role of ideology in the activities pursued by both parties,

an acute political struggle concerning methods of conducting the war, and also the need to adapt to the Republican Administration's new political line in respect to the opposition were the causes of growing ideological differences between groups in the Democratic Party. These differences were particularly clearly displayed during preparations for and the course of the 1863 elections. Dominating practically all the state party organizations the Peace Democrats openly said that the abolitionist line of the Republican Administration "was not merely a danger to the institute of slavery, but to our whole political system." They urged voters to overthrow "the Abolitionists at the pools" and re-establish "constitutional principles at the North." The moderate War Democrats who showed their negative attitude to antislavery measures of the administration but, nonetheless, possessing extensive freedom of action were regarded by the Copperheads as potential allies in elections.^^2^^ However, the moderate Democrats themselves showed no desire to draw closer to the Copperhead opposition. "Our Democracy do not, while condemning Vallandigham's arrest, approve of any thing but his right to utter his peace notions, not by any means endorsing his peace notions," wrote the prominent leader of the moderate Democrats Samuel S. Cox.^^3^^ Another leader of this faction, Samuel J. Tilden, urged all Democrats in an open letter entitled "The Perils of the Union---The Limits of a Constitutional Opposition" to distinguish between an opposition proposing constructive alternatives to the government course and a faction catering to purely partisan interests.^^4^^

As a result of the new realignment in the Democratic Party the Peace Democrats were unable to win in any of the gubernatorial elections, The fall in the percentage of votes for candidates from the Democratic Party was catastrophic in the states of the Midwest.^^5^^ The ousting of the rebels from the Mississippi valley contrib-

~^^1^^ Address of the Democratic State Central Committee, Printed at "The Age" Office, Philadelphia, 1863, pp. 5, 8

~^^2^^ "C. Vallandigham to M. Marble, May 15 and 21, 1863", M. Marble Papers, Cont. 4, Library of Congress.

~^^3^^ "S. Cox to M. Marble, June 1, 1863", M. Marble Papers, Cont. 4, Library of Congress.

~^^4^^ The Writings and Speeches of Samuel J. Tilden, edited by John Bigelow, in two volumes, Vol. I, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1885, p. 338.

Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority. The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1977, pp. 146-147.

10-749

See a copy of the Patriotic League Rules in: Gideon Welles Papers, Cont. 47, Library of Congress.

Frank Freidel, "The Loyal Publication Society: A Pro-Union Propaganda Agency", in: Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, December 1939, pp. 362-363.

~^^3^^ Union Pamphlets of the Civil War (1861-1865), edited by Frank Freidel, Vol. I, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, p. 8.

146 Chapter Six

Political Parties During the Civil \Var (186 1- lKf>5) 147

terparty relations largely depended on the situation in each of the parties during the concluding stage in the war. Although the idea of re-electing Lincoln undoubtedly prevailed in the party, a certain part of the radical Republicans held a different opinion. Dissatisfied by the President's reconstruction policy, these radicals harbored the idea of running their own candidate in the elections and founding a new party, Radical Democracy. The platform of the new party approved at the founding convention in Cleveland (Ohio) demanded a firm suppression of the rebellion and an early restoration of the Union; adopting an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery on the entire territory of the US; and providing exceptional rights to the Congress in implementing reconstruction. A major point of the platform was the confiscation of the rebels' lands and their distribution among the soldiers and actual settlers.¹ Fearing a split in the ruling party on the eve of the elections, Lincoln, at the same time, had no desire to make concessions to the radicals on the reconstruction issue being perfectly aware that the presidential reconstruction plan would secure the existing level of interparty relations. Having included in the platform of the Republican Party one of the most important demands made by the radicals---to adopt immediately an antislavery amendment to the Constitution^^2^^---and having provided certain concessions to the radical insurgents in the field of patronage policy, Lincoln still managed to reunite them with the Republicans leaving the moderately conservative reconstruction course untouched.

The absence of radical demands on reconstruction in the Republican platform implied that the party leaders were still interested in preserving and developing a consensus with Democrats on the issue. The Democrats, on their part, displayed a similar interest. With the passing of leadership into the hands of the moderate Democrats who managed not only to run their own candidate in the presidential elections but also to significantly change the party's general line on the question of the attitude to the war,^^3^^ the

~^^1^^ Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America during the Great Rebellion 1860-1865, Da Capo Press, New York, 1972, pp. 412-413.

~^^2^^ Proceedings of the First Free Republican National Conventions, 1856, 1860 and 1864, published by Charles W.Johnson, Minneapolis, 1893, pp. 225-226.

~^^3^^ At the National democratic Convention in Chicago the candidate of the moderate factions McClellan opposed the Copperhead candidate Horatio Seymour who had firmly linked himself by that time to the extreme right group in the party. Affirming their monop-

uted to a normalization of life in this section which had been regarded earlier as the chief bulwark of the Copperhead opposition due to the economic difficulties existing there. Activization of the popular movement in defense of the Union served as a barrier to spreading the extreme rightist views among the mass of Democrat voters. It is also to be noted that the Peace faction had lost credibility in the eyes of the voters by taking part in direct action against the government course in waging the war. Thus, the Peace Democrats of New York were behind the actions by workers of Irish origin against slave emancipation and the military draft, which enabled the Republicans and loyal Democrats to accuse them of abetting the rebels.^^1^^ The Democrats' defeat in the elections of 1863 virtually brought to nothing the tendency, which had arisen in 1862, for the Peace and moderate factions to draw closer. The moderate Democrats were fully justified in accusing their Peace colleagues of the failures which had befallen their party. One of the leaders of the moderate faction wrote: "Victory was in our grasp." But the "foolish peace principles of Mr. Vallandigham and his immediate followers afforded a plausible pretext for charging the Democratic Party with opposition to the war.''^^2^^

Elaboration of a new political line in respect to the opposition was a major contribution by the Republican Party to the laying of the foundations of interparty relations. If the political struggle between parties concerning the reconstruction issue prepared the ground for a compromise between them and contributed to an interparty consensus, then the Republican leadership's new approach to the opposition problem helped determine the ruling party's partners in the political structure of wartime. The War and moderate Democrats had now definitely become such partners. In effect a purposeful policy by the Republicans provoked a realignment of forces within the Democratic Party on whose results the future relations between parties depended. The concluding stage in this process took place during preparations by both parties for the 1864 presidential elections.

The elections were a test of the strength of the relations which arose between parties in the years of the war. The nature of in-

~^^1^^ Albon P. Man, Jr., Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863, in: Journal of Negro History, October 1951, p. 381.

~^^2^^ Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority, pp. 118-119.

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compromise aspects in relations between the parties in this period did not lead the Republican Party to depart from its firm antislavery position. On the contrary, it was the Democratic Party that was forced to make concessions to the Republicans on the slavery issue in order to pay for their part in the interparty bloc.

The wartime party political structure in the North of the US was the organizational expression of the party realignment which had occurred under the most severe circumstances. It proved impracticable to restore the two-party system during the war. A system of two leading parties whose basic task it is to defend the existing social and economic order, may exist provided parties agree on the solution of major questions facing society. During the Civil War when one of the parties intended, in opposition to the other, to significantly change the obsolete social system based on slavery and make it conform to the new, higher level of productive forces, there was no question of agreement between the parties' global interests. This led to a combination of leading bourgeois parties operating on the political scene which only outwardly resembled a two-party system, but actually lacked the backbone of the latter. The objective tasks of the wartime political structure were much more modest than those of the classical two-party system: it was to prevent the parties in the North from turning into antagonistic organizations, and remove . the threat of political destabilization which amounted to military catastrophe for the North. The party-- political structure was aimed at preventing bourgeois-democratic transformations from being extended in the country, and eliminating the possibility of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the radical Republicans in the war years. Essentially its establishment was a sort of test in the course of which the parties adapted to the changing social and economic conditions, grew used to each other, and determined their place and role in the future two-party system.

opposition party considerably expanded its possibilities for political maneuver. Although the Democratic candidate McClellan ceded victory in the presidential elections to the Republican leader Lincoln, the overall results of the elections seemed encouraging for the Democrats. McClellan received 45 percent of the popular vote (Lincoln had 2,330,552 votes and McClellan, 1,835,985). The large number of votes cast for candidates from the Democratic Party showed the growing strength of the Democrats and a certain extension of their mass base thanks to voters dissatisfied with the ruling party's policies, chiefly immigrants and the poorest classes of the population. The rising competitiveness of the Democratic Party was explained by changes in the party leadership and the new leaders' rejection of the unpopular peace program.

The realignment in the Democratic Party leading to a stronger position of the moderate war faction was the most important reason for the party program's reorientation in respect to the war and reconstruction. Joint resistance by the moderates and conservatives in the Republican and the Democratic parties to a new radical initiative in the field of reconstruction policy---the Ashley Bill---was a notable landmark in the strengthening of the positions of the interparty moderate-conservative bloc.^^1^^ Approval of the antislavery amendment to the Constitution by both parties during the concluding stage of the war considerably consolidated the achieved level of interparty relations, and extended prospects for further development of the interparty consensus.^^2^^ The moderate-- conservative consensus in the reconstruction issue stimulated the establishment of the wartime political structure which was completed after the presidential elections of 1864 with the ``compromise'' duties distributed between the parties. The rise in the proportion of

oly to nomination of the presidential candidate in the course of the struggle, the moderate Democrats concluded an agreement with the Copperheads granting them the exclusive right to draw up the party platform. The Democratic platform called for hostilities to be immediately ceased and peace signed with the Confederates. Only subsequently did McClellan repudiate the basic plank of the platform and speak out for war until victory. (James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield, in two volumes, Vol. I, The Henry Bill Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., 1884, pp. 527-530.)

The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Second Session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress: Special Session of the Senate. Part I, The Congressional Globe Office, Washington, 1865, pp. 120-124, 155-156, 174-175, 301; The Congressional Globe. Second Session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress: Special Session of the Senate, Part 2, pp. 967-971.

^^2^^ The Congressional Globe..., Part I, pp. 258-262, 523, 524, 525-526, 531.

POLITICAL

PARTIES IN THE

RECONSTRUCTION

PERIOD (1865-1877)

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developed in 1865-1869, i.e. the years of active implementation of the Reconstruction program.

The tragic death of President Lincoln in the last days of the war influenced the political situation in the country. On April 15, 1865, the post of chief executive went to War Democrat Andrew Johnson who was elected Vice President in 1864 from the Union coalition. During the Civil War Johnson-senator and subsequently military governor of Tennessee---became widely known for his advocacy of tough government measures in respect to the rebels and open hostility to the Southern slaveholding aristocracy. All of this, as well as his active role in the past as a leader of the Democratic Party, drew close attention of and gave rise to certain hopes among members of the opposing political groups.

After the end of the war the radical Republicans focussed efforts on a plan to provide suffrage to liberated blacks. In their opinion, only that measure could prevent the revival of the former Southern oligarchy and its return to power in the federal bodies. A considerable expansion of the number of Republican voters through the involvement of the liberated blacks would enable the ruling party to control the social, economic and political processes in the postbellum South. However heavy a loss it might have been for the Republican Party and the country as a whole, Lincoln's death did not deprive the members of the radical group of hopes for the future. The radicals believed that the new President held more radical ideas on reconstruction than Lincoln.^^1^^ They did all they could to protect the new President from the influence of his conservative advisers in the administration. In the course of numerous meetings with Johnson and also in many letters radical Republicans promised to support the President and assured him that they were his sincerest friends.^^2^^

The radicals' chief opponents---the moderate and Peace Democrats---however, also tended to view Johnson as their follower who, in addition, was sensitive to the slogans and appeals of the Demo-

~^^1^^ James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality. Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1964, p. 314.

~^^2^^ Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, edited by Frederic Bancroft, Vol. I, October 20, 1852-November 26, 1870, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1913, p. 258; James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield, Vol. II, The Henry Bill Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., 1886, p. 14.

The fall of plantation slavery and victory in the war against the rebel slaveholders highlighted the first phase in the bourgeois-- democratic revolution in the USA. A logical extension of the revolutionary course should have been confiscation of the planters' lands and their distribution among the blacks and landless whites; granting economic, political and civil rights to the liberated slaves on an equal footing with the whites; and depriving the counterrevolutionary planters of political power in the South.^^1^^ Only resolute implementation of these measures could radically step up the highly necessary transition from slave to hired labor, a process which, as some American scholars saw it, was the backbone of postbellum Reconstruction of the South.^^2^^ The acute political struggle to continue the revolutionary course yielded tangible results until the early 1870s after which the revolution started to decline.

Like the Civil War, Reconstruction played an important role in the history of American political parties. Although the popular masses were not so active and the forms and methods of political struggle were not so diverse as they had been during the Civil War, Reconstruction saw the end of a major realignment of class and political forces, which turned the wartime political structure into a new two-party system. The political tendencies of wartime were definitively materialized, the ideological foundations of the new party tandem were laid, and the principles of party interaction were

~^^1^^ A History of the USA, Vol. I, p. 461.

Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War, Oxford University Press, New York, 1980, p. 98.

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opponents to retain power in their hands for a long time. However, what they feared even more was extension and deepening of revolutionary change in the country inherent in radical Reconstruction plans. "Give the black man equal political rights in our country and you give him equal social rights," insisted the Democrats.^^1^^ The experience of the political struggle during the Civil War showed the Democrats that the means and methods, as well as the underlying ideology of the Union coalition, were quite sufficient to hold back the onslaught of the radical Republicans. That was why they viewed the head of the Union coalition, President Johnson with hope, expecting him and his conservative colleagues to take resolute action against radicalism. At the same time the Democrats had no desire to bind themselves by a political alliance with the conservatives from the Union coalition intending to direct their actions from the sidelines.

At the beginning of his career, the new President enjoyed a highly favorable attitude on the part of members of various political groups. But now he was in a difficult situation. The leader of the Union coalition realized that the major objective the coalition was set up to fulfill, to bring the war to a victorious end, had been attained. With the end of the war began the gradual disintegration of the coalition's electorate: the voters who had realized the futility of isolated actions to save the Union and had joined the coalition during the war, began to return to their former parties. Johnson was faced by the real threat of becoming a president without a party were he to prove unable to retain the different political forces within the Union coalition and direct them toward solution of new problems in the Reconstruction period. The President attempted to make his Reconstruction program sufficiently attractive to both conservative Republicans and a considerable part of the Democrats. Underlying the program was the concept of the fruits of victory. The concept was similar to the views of the Unionists from the border states and differed from the Republican Reconstruction doctrine. Giving no thought to the lot of the black population in the South, Johnson believed that the only terms under which the rebel states would return to the Union and have their political rights restored was a pledge of allegiance by former rebels (except

Negro Suffrage and Negro Equality, Address of State Central Committee, The Office of the ``Age'', Philadelphia, September, 1865, pp. 2-3, 4.

cratic Party. A series of defeats the Democrats suffered in election campaigns during the concluding stage of the war forced the party's ambitious leadership to take a closer look at the changing political situation. As many Democrats saw it, Lincoln's death and the end of the war promised a new heyday for the party seeking by all means to restore its former positions in national politics. The Democrats believed that the party would politically profit from the Democratic past of the new President, as well as the fact that quite a few conservative Republicans and Democrats were among Johnson's entourage due to the whims of the founders of the Union coalition. The Democrats were certain that in the nearest future Johnson would break off any relations with the radical Republicans in the government and, in implementing his Reconstruction program, would lead the conservative forces in their campaign against radicalism.

Despite the fact that the end of the war removed the original cause of differences between moderate War and Peace Democrats, friction between them continued. It was largely caused by the Peace Democrats' intentions to prevent the party from drawing closer to the War Democrats, those "who shrank away in our times of trouble"^^1^^ rather than issues of Reconstruction policy. Both moderates and Peace Democrats believed that the victorious North should show leniency to the former rebel states and restore the Southerners' former political rights as soon as possible. They hoped that that would help reunite Northern and Southern Democrats within the old party framework giving the opposition party more chances to compete successfully with the Republicans. The opposition leaders continued to accuse the Republican Party of being despotic, violating the Constitution and seeking to use wartime methods to fight their political opponents in the South. The Democrats sharply criticized radical Reconstruction plans, above all, the intention of the left-wing Republicans to grant equal political rights to blacks and whites using the authority of the federal government. In the opinion of the Democrats, this measure would "result in the degradation of the white race to the level of the black." The party leaders justly feared that political equality of the black and white Americans would enable their Republican

Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, edited by John Bigelow, Vol. I, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London, 1908, pp. 214-215.

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for the political and military elite of the Confederation), approval by the legislatures of these states of the antislavery amendment to the Constitution, cancelling of all debts of the Confederate government and nullification of the secession ordonnances adopted by the legislative assemblies of the rebel states on the eve of the war. Leaving the right to settle all future racial issues with the legislatures of the Southern states, Johnson firmly dissociated himself from the left-wing Republicans who cherished radical plans of transforming the South.

Hoping to implement most of the intended measures before the Congress began its work, Johnson, without losing any time, set about realizing his Reconstruction program. On May 30, 1865, he issued a proclamation on reconstruction of North Carolina; two weeks later an absolutely identical proclamation appeared on Reconstruction of Mississippi. By fall, presidential Reconstruction had gotten underway in practically all the Southern states. Strange as it may seem, however, its political results were directly opposite to what was expected. The Southerners everywhere subverted efforts to ratify the 13th amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery on the entire territory of the United States. They appointed people who could not even be granted amnesty under the presidential plan to posts in government bodies. Thus, the legislature of Georgia nominated Alexander H. Stephens, former vice-- president of the Confederacy, to the US Senate, while the legislative assemblies in Mississippi and South Carolina proposed to elect to Congress two high-ranking military who had commanded rebel troops during the war. The legislators in the Southern states drew up and discussed new civil codes known as black codes according to which the liberated blacks would at best receive the rights of ``second-rate'' citizens.

The inadequate results of presidential Reconstruction inevitably hastened the downfall of the Union coalition and helped consolidate the members of its main group---the Republicans---on the basis of nonacceptance of Reconstruction measures being undertaken. If an overwhelming majority of the Democrats expressed growing satisfaction with the President's policy, the Republicans increasingly often drew attention to radical versions of Reconstruction which seemed to be the only viable alternative to the presidential course. Like Senator John Sherman of Ohio, many moderate and conservative Republicans believed that support for radical plans of granting

suffrage to the blacks was the lesser of two evils as compared to approval of Johnson's Reconstruction program. Since the liberation of slaves in the South increased representation of the Southern states in the Congress,^^1^^ someone, either the Republicans or the Democrats, stood to gain. The Republicans could gain the advantage only by granting suffrage to the blacks.^^2^^

The radical Republicans did everything they could to make the disintegration of the Union coalition irreversible, because it answered their interests of strengthening the partisan spirit and consolidating the Republican Party on the basis of radical principles. As they saw it, if the presidential Reconstruction plan were adopted "the South will soon be again in the hands of the proslavery element"³ and urged that the process be stopped. When the 39th Congress convened in December 1865, the radicals focussed on waging their struggle against the President within the walls of the highest legislative body. They took advantage of the fact that there were three times more Republicans than Democrats in both chambers, and launched a broad offensive against Johnson's Reconstruction plan. They succeeded in keeping out of Congress the delegates elected in the former rebel states according to the presidential Reconstruction program. To achieve this, they managed to rally the forces of all the Republicans. The political struggle in the Congress grew even more acute after moderate Republican Lyman Trumbull submitted to the Senate two bills aimed at changing the status of the liberated blacks. One of the bills extended the term of operation of the Freedmen's Bureau set up in early 1865 to help the freed slaves, and gave it the right to distribute public land among blacks in the South. The other bill granted freed blacks the basic civil rights. Johnson vetoed both bills^^4^^ and found himself in isolation in his own party which accused him of helping his political opponents, the Democrats. The Republicans passed the bills by a

Before the war black slaves were also regarded as part of the population in the Southern states in determining representation in the Congress, but according to the adopted rules a slave was counted as three-fifths of a free citizen.

~^^2^^ George H. Mayer, The Republican Party. 1854-1964, Oxford University Press, New York 1964, p. 134.

~^^3^^ Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, Vol. I, pp. 259, 265. Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During

the Period of Reconstruction, (From April 15, 1865, to July 15, 1870), Negro Universities Press, New York, 1969, pp. 68-72.

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second unanimous vote overruling the presidential veto which infringed on congressional rights in implementing the Reconstruction program.

The collapse of the moderate-conservative interparty bloc which had emerged at the concluding stage of the war, was another major consequence of the political struggle around TrumbulPs bills. Johnson's Reconstruction policy proved to be the wedge which destroyed the consensus between the opponents of radical measures in both parties. Encouraged by the prospect of an early reunion with their Southern colleagues in the party, the Democrats refused to make concessions to the Republicans and sacrifice party principles in order to gain partners in the fight against radicalism. Support of the conservative program of presidential Reconstruction promised them much more than flirting with the leaders of the ruling party's right wing might have offered. At the same time moderate and conservative Republicans in the Congress finally abandoned their illusions regarding the intentions of the new President. Promising the Southerners a return of their former political influence in the country, the presidential Reconstruction program was too conservative even for moderate and conservative Republicans. Under the circumstances, the right-wing and moderate Republicans decided that since the radical plans of transforming the South were popular among voters in the North, they would do better if they support these plans, simultaneously blunting their revolutionary edge whenever possible.

The tendency toward political polarization and greater isolation of both parties' positions in the Congress was most clearly manifest in the 39th and 40th Congresses during debates on the 14th amendment to the Constitution which made blacks and whites equal before the law, and also the three acts on Reconstruction which set forth in great detail the terms under which the former rebel states would be readmitted to the Union.^^1^^ Although in the course of discussion all these measures acquired a more than moderate quality, they still included many points from the radical Reconstruction plan which secured both radical and conservative Republican

support for them. During congressional debates the Democrats acted as an equally united front, if not more so, rejecting all the Republican initiatives which were contrary to the presidential policy.¹ Differences between Republicans and Democrats came to a head during debates on the impeachment of President Johnson who was accused by the leaders of the ruling party of arbitrarily removing his political adversaries from government posts. If the Democrats unanimously favored acquitting the President on all points of the accusation, most of the Republicans came out against Johnson.² Seven conservative Republicans who voted together with the Democrats in favor of Johnson were severely criticized by their party colleagues.^^3^^

The election campaigns of the Reconstruction period once again displayed the tendency toward disintegration of former political alignments and enhancement of the partisan spirit. The Union Party, the Johnson Administration's chief political base, ceased to exist on the eve of the elections of 1866. The War Democrats were leaving it so as to reunite with the Democratic Party which they viewed as a reliable adversary of radical Reconstruction. And conservative and moderate Republicans left the Union coalition precisely because its activities and principles were associated with Johnson's policy which meant playing down the results of the war for the Republican Party. Consolidation of Republican ranks brought the radicals a major victory in the elections in 1866, because by that time their program had become the backbone of the ruling party's Reconstruction course.^^4^^ The 1866 elections undermined the Republican positions to some extent due to resistance by the voters in Kentucky, Maryland, Connecticut and Ohio to radical plans of granting political rights to the blacks.

The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the First Session, the Forty-Ninth Congress, Part 3, The Congressional Globe Office, Washington, 1866, pp. 2465-2466;Ibid., Part II, pp. 1361, 1374-1375; The Congressional Globe. First Session, Fortieth Congress; Special Session of the Senate, Washington, 1867, p. 157.

~^^2^^ The Congressional Globe. Fortieth Congress, Second Session, Supplement, Washington, 1868, pp. 411-414, 415.

~^^3^^ Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1973, pp. 181-182.

As a result of the elections radical Republicans gained control over all the legislatures in the Northern states and considerably strengthened their positions in the US Congress driving out not only many Democrats but also moderate and conservative Republicans.

The Congressional Globe. The Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, Part II, pp. 1182, 1213-1215, 1459-1467; Congressional Globe and Appendix. First Session. Fortieth Congress, The Congressional Globe Office, Washington, 1867, p. 215, 638.

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because they were afraid that new Reconstruction proposals would appear that would infringe on the Southerners' rights. After the end of the 1868 election campaign they showed more interest in searching for other questions not directly connected to Reconstruction problems. They believed that discussion of these questions would help them snatch the political initiative from the Republicans' hands.

Processes occurring in the economy had a decisive impact on the activities of the bourgeois parties in the 1870s. The abolishing of slavery in the course of the Civil War provided an impulse for the development of capitalism in breadth and in depth. The final stage of the industrial revolution involved stepped-up concentration and centralization of capital and America's development from an agrarian to an advanced industrial country. In the early 1890s the US came to occupy the first place in the world in output of industrial goods.

Quantitative changes in the sphere of production paved the way for the appearance of the first monopolies in the 1870s. The ``old'' free-competition capitalism was losing its positions to the ``new'', monopoly capitalism. The pools were the first form of capitalist associations. They were particularly actively set up in railroads after the beginning of the economic crisis of 1873-1878. Simultaneously other forms of monopolies developed in industry, e.g. the trusts which proved to be a more optimal form of big capitalist property. The first trust, the Standard Oil Company, was founded by John Rockefeller in 1879. It was soon followed by others: the cottonseed oil trust in 1884, the linseed oil trust in 1885, and alcohol, sugar, lead and other trusts in 1887. The domination of corporate capital gradually spread to an increasing number of industries, commerce and transport.

Having caused a fundamental change in the alignment of class forces, the rise of monopolies gave a peculiar shape to the party-- political mechanism. The gradual narrowing of the ruling class's social base and the concentration of power in the hands of the monopoly elite became the typical trends of the period when free-competition capitalism developed into monopoly capitalism. The fact that the bourgeois party machinery was subordinated to the interests of Big Business was evident in the latter's control of key posts in the government and other organs of power, the appearance of stock owning politicians, and the bribing of officials. For example, in the

However, even defeat in the elections in some states did not weaken the consolidation of the Republican Party.

Having brought victory to the Republican candidates for president and vice-president, Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax, the elections of 1868 firmly consolidated the balance of political forces prevailing in the country after the end of the war. The Republican Party's victory in 25 out of 33 states, including Southern ones, dispersed the fears of the moderate and conservative Republicans that the former rebels would be able to restore their political power. The leaders of these groups ascribed all the achievements of the radical stage in Reconstruction to themselves.^^1^^ At the same time, enjoying the political fruit of the radical course, moderates and conservatives believed that it should not be extended any further. Their intentions were quite clearly displayed when the demand for black suffrage already confirmed by the 14th amendment to the Constitution and the Reconstruction Acts was incorporated in the Republican election platform in the form of a strongly watered down compromise. This was explained by the fact that "if at the beginning of radical Reconstruction the bourgeoisie was forced to rely on the black popular masses in the struggle against the planters, it was no longer necessary as the bourgeoisie strengthened its positions in the South in the course of Reconstruction.' Successful actions by the blacks in the South as well as major social clashes between the proletariat and capitalists in the North frightened the party's right-wingers and prevented them from further supporting the radical course. Thus, the bourgeoisie of the North began to voice its intention to curtail Reconstruction measures already after the 1868 elections.

The tendency toward completing revolutionary transformations was welcomed in the Democratic Party for obvious reasons. Defeated in the 1868 elections, they were forced to put up with the irreversible social and economic changes in the South. Moreover, since the initiative in implementing Reconstruction measures remained in the hands of the Republicans for another four years, the Democrats gradually lost interest in debating these issues

Republican Congressional Committee, 1867-1869. Emancipation! Enfranchisement! Reconstruction! Legislative Record of the Republican Party During and Since the War, Published by the Union Republican Congressional Committee, Washington, 1868, pp. 1-8.

~^^2^^ A History of the USA, Vol. I, p. 497,

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US Senate, known in the 1880s as the millionaires' club, most senators were closely linked to industrial, financial and railroad corporations.

As spokesmen for Big Business gained political power, projects of radical Reconstruction, which underlay the activities of the Republican Party's left wing, were forgotten. Having defeated the insurgent South and restored the Union, the bourgeoisie of the North came out firmly against any further deepening of the revolution. The most conservative forces grew more active within the ruling class, seeking to shift the axis of political life to the right and launch an offensive against the working people's democratic gains. The change in the direction of the principal blow was due to the fact that social and political polarization in society put new tasks before the bourgeois parties which, above all, had 40 limit the scope of the class struggle and prevent the emergence of political organizations of workers and farmers. In view of this, peace in the Southern "rear area" and the assistance of former enemies could largely facilitate the task of resisting the new danger.

The fact that part of the bourgeoisie discontinued its support for the revolution was reflected in attempts by the Republican Administration of Ulysses Grant (1869-1877) to contribute to curtailing Reconstruction programs and blunting their democratic edge. The administration did not help the radical Republicans when the Democrats came to power in a number of Southern states relying on the terroristic Ku Klux Klan organizations and whipping up all sorts of chauvinistic moods among the white population. Not only did it fail to take any measures to suppress anti-black terror but, on the contrary, in 1872 it sanctioned an act on general amnesty restoring the rights of the former rebels on a national scale.^^1^^ The Grant Administration refused to apply the anti-Ku Klux Klan acts of 1870- 1871 against the growing forces of the counterrevolution. Reflecting the moods of big industrial capital, the ruling group was not interested in deepening the revolution and practically prevented its development. Its demagogic appeals on the importance of continuing Reconstruction, the tactic of waving the "bloody shirt" so as to remind the contemporaries of the party's achievements in the years of the Civil War were due to the need to retain control over the party

~^^1^^ R. F. Ivanov, The Blacks' Struggle for Land and Liberty in the South of the USA (1865-1877), Moscow, 1958, pp. 288-298 (in Russian).

machinery in the Southern states which supplied a large part of the voters. It is not surprising therefore that ten Southern states secured victory in the 1872 elections for the leader of that part of the Republican Party, Ulysses Grant.^^1^^ It is this circumstance which explains the remarkable persistence shown by this group in preserving the status quo in the section. The "Southern subject" was used as a sort of smokescreen to hide counterrevolutionary intentions.

The ruling circles' stand was supported by the leadership of the Republican Party's moderate faction expressing the interests of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie of the Northeast and the Midwest. The moderates launched an extensive campaign to brainwash the public into believing that traditional ways of dealing with the Southern states in the period of Reconstruction had not only become obsolete but had even turned into an obstacle to raising new issues in political life. Most members of the Grand Old Party soon realized that it was important to develop a new, liberal attitude to the South. The general opinion was expressed by future president Rutherford Hayes: "The wish is to restore harmony and good feeling between Sections and races. This can only be done by peaceful methods.''^^2^^

The achievement of greater intraclass unity within the ruling bloc was hastened by the transition of petty-bourgeois democrats to conservative positions, while in the first stage of the revolution they had acted in alliance with the popular masses. The reason for this development was that Reconstruction, as a specific stage in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, only indirectly affected the interests of workers and farmers whose chief demand (the Homestead Act) had been satisfied in the course of the Civil War. The insufficiently high level of class self-awareness possessed by the proletariat and the absence of mass organizations adhering to revolutionary positions played into the hands of the reactionary forces. Taking advantage of contradictions between various sections of the population, petty-bourgeois democrats openly favored a revision of relations with the Southern states.

~^^1^^ Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, Editor: Robert A. Diamond, W., Congresional Quarterly Inc., 1975, pp. 235, 274.

~^^2^^ Hayes. The Diary of a President. 1875-1881, edited by T. Harry Williams, David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1964, p. 85.

11-749

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growth in the political prestige of the Democratic Party was largely promoted by the fact that it managed to strengthen its positions in the Midwest where it supported mass popular demands (low tariffs, cheap money, and restriction of the power of the railroad corporations). The Democrats showed exceptional vigor in drawing immigrant workers into the orbit of their influence in the New England cities.

Structural changes in the Democratic Party's social base were accompanied by an evolution of its ideological and political orientation. The new line in the behavior of the Democrats was manifested in solving specific problems of social and economic development in the South and contributing to the growth of industry and enterprise. Major financial benefits for the bourgeoisie, subsidies for the railroad corporations, tax policy---such was a far from complete list of forms of patronage in respect to the new capitalists of the South. As the Reconstruction programs were toned down, relations between the bourgeois parties were increasingly marked by unity of interests in the economic sphere. Contradictions between the former adversaries were smoothed out giving place to a consensus on most issues facing the country. For the bourgeois parties to draw closer, however, another important condition was necessary---the Democrats had to accept the results of the war and the Republicans to abandon the policy of revolutionizing the South.

Most of the Democrats demonstrated their readiness to conclude a compromise with the Republicans during the election campaign of 1872 when they supported the candidacy of Horace Greelley and the platform of the Liberal-Republican Party securing the support of four Southern and two Western states. However, the restructuring of the Democratic Party had not been completed at the time yet. Some of the Democrats formed their own political organization voting for Charles O'Connor and John Quincy Adams in the elections. The platform they adopted denounced the treacherous behavior of the "false leadership" and quite clearly indicated the importance of carrying on the fight to repeal the amendments to the Constitution enacted during the years of the revolution. But supporters of this viewpoint were obviously a small minority. Slightly more than 18,000 people voted for them.^^1^^

The economic crisis of 1873-1878 sharply aggravated the class

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 41-42.

The leading part in shaping the new approach to the South belonged to politicians in the states bordering on it. In 1869 they managed to get an amnesty act passed in Missouri restoring the political rights of the former rebels. The reform movement organizationally formed during the election campaign of 1872. This led to the appearance in the Republican Party of a group which aimed to leave their own political organization. It included such prominent figures as Carl Schurz, Horace Greeley, Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull and others. The opposition founded the Liberal-Republican Party which believed that "universal amnesty will result in complete pacification in all sections of the country.''^^1^^ Thus, the new approach to the South made an absolute out of the policy of compromise with the former Confederates and refused to support the rights of the blacks, former allies in Reconstruction. From the viewpoint of American Marxist historians reformism of this kind meant " complete abandonment of the revolution in the South, and surrender of the Negro minority there to the organized violence of the arrogant planters.''^^2^^

At the same time, the world outlook of the Liberal-Republicans combined conservative ideas with some ideas of a positive nature. Their politicians launched a drive for democratization of the political system within the framework of the bourgeois country. Their calls for reform of the civil service and introduction of secret ballot in elections were aimed against such negative things widespread in the two-party system as corruption, bribery and bossism. It was this aspect in their activities which, following the defeat of the Liberal-- Republican Party in the elections of 1872, gave rise to the faction of ``independents'' who organizationally belonged to the Republican Party but retained the right to choose their own candidates to the highest organs of power.

The shift to the right by the Grand Old Party made it possible for it to draw closer to the Democrats for whom the postwar period had become a major stage in fundamental renewal in order to adapt to the new social and economic conditions. The Democrats had turned from a political organization of the slaveholder oligarchy into a party of the new bourgeoisie and big farmers of the South. The

^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 44.

^^2^^ William Z. Foster, The Negro People in American History, International Publishers, New York, 1954, p. 331.

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struggle in the North and largely hastened the shift to the right in politics and the drawing closer of bourgeois parties on a mutually acceptable basis. The initiative to reconciliation came from the ranks of the ruling party. Faced with serious domestic difficulties, the Republican leadership was increasingly less inclined to carry through the Reconstruction of the South. With the tacit acquiescence of the Grant Administration the military dictatorship established to keep all power in the hands of the Northern bourgeoisie collapsed. The change in the balance of power on the political scene became obvious during the congressional elections in 1874 when the Democrats managed to get a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. Prominent Confederates such as Alexander Stephens of Georgia, John Reagan of Texas, Roger Mills of Texas, George Harris of Virginia and others were elected. The absence of support from the federal government and mass denial of suffrage to the blacks contributed to a legal overthrow of the rule of radical Republicans in a number of Southern legislatures. The Democrats re-emerged as real rivals of the Republicans in the Midwest and the Northeast. They led the electorate of such disputable states as Indiana, New York, New Jersey and Ohio. Even states formerly in the Republican domain (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Nevada) gave preference to the Democrats. In 12 out of the 17 states where elections were held Democrats were elected to the post of governor.

In the 1876 election campaign the Democrats threatened the domination of the Republicans. Their presidential candidate, Samuel Tilden, received 254,235 more votes than the Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes.^^1^^ Only the Tilden-Hayes deal of 1876- 1877, on the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, enabled the GOP to remain in the White House. The Great Compromise united the formerly hostile parties into one mechanism and recreated the two-party system. The leading part in the political process was retained by the Republican Party which ruled the country for half a century (excluding the Cleveland Administration in 1885-1889 and 1893-1897 and the Wilson Administration in 1913-1921). The Democrats had to put up with the role of a junior partner.

FROM RECONSTRUCTION

TO BIG BUSINESS:

PRINCIPAL TRENDS IN

THE EVOLUTION OF THE

TWO-PARTY SYSTEM IN

THE LATE 1870s AND 1880s

The new two-party system was established during the concluding stage in Reconstruction. In the first fifteen years of its existence it was an extremely conservative political mechanism. Essentially it reflected the logical decline of the second American revolution of 1865-1877 and the desire of the ruling circles to suppress the social activity of the popular masses. The combined forces of the bourgeoisie and the former planters came out against the farmers in the North and the black Americans fighting for their rights in the South.

As the acute ideological debates of the time of Reconstruction receded into the past, the bourgeois parties were increasingly turning into servants of Big Business. The Gilden Age, as Mark Twain called the period of the country's postwar development, was unrivalled in frankly cynical subordination of the two-party system to the interests of the rising monopoly capital.

The set of relations between bourgeois parties on the national scene was marked by functional unity. The interparty consensus based on the idea that corporate prosperity meant the nation's prosperity involved creating optimal conditions for monopoly growth. The bourgeois parties helped transfer enormous expanses of public land to private hands and grant concessions and subsidies for construction of enterprises, awarding lucrative contracts and tax rebates. The protectionist policy intended to defend national industry from foreign competition favored the strengthening of corporate capital's positions on the domestic market. Extensive railroad construction contributed to stepped-up development of big industry. At the same time, a common social nature did not mean that the bourgeois parties used the same methods and means to achieve their final goal.

Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, p. 275.

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in the 1870s, when the interparty consensus was only emerging, the margin, as estimated by American analysts, ranged from 5 to 11.9 percent.^^1^^

The interparty consensus was founded on compromise, on avoiding the most pressing issues of the time. Ideological differences were reduced to a minimum. The party platforms of the Republicans and the Democrats virtually repeated each other.

The last thirty years of the 19th century were marked by a high degree of electorate mobilization by the parties. On an average, three-fourths (in some years up to 95 percent) of the eligible voters took part in elections. Since then the electorate has never given its votes to the bourgeois parties so actively. The main reason for the development was that the second American revolution of 1861-1877 involved hundreds of thousands of people in political life. The increase in the number of voters was also due to the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. With their enactment the entire male adult population (white and black) became eligible to vote. Support of the parties by the electorate was also promoted by the activities of the party machines in the cities. The rapid growth of these machines at the end of the 19th century was a consequence of a firm alliance between professional politicians and members of Big Business, which required a modification of all the parts of the party machinery. The party machines set themselves the goal of controlling voter behavior and fulfilled an important task in the eyes of the ruling class: channeling the social activity of the masses into the two-party system.

The bourgeois parties derived huge political dividends from skilfully manipulating ethnocultural values. Playing on the contra dictions between members of different nations who had emigrated to the United States from the European continent at various times, politicians sought to create the impression among voters that the Republican and Democratic parties differed on matters of principle and represented Protestant and Catholic ideas respectively. In terms of political struggle, however, differences in the bourgeois parties' approach to solving ethnocultural problems were as a rule displayed at the local level. Only one issue---temperance---assumed a national dimension and was the chief plank of the Prohibition

Morton Keller, Affairs of State. Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, p. 545.

Republicans and Democrats differed on questions of tactics.

Neither did they have the same social base. Republicans were regarded to a larger extent as a party of Big Business. Their positions were the strongest in New England, the section which was most developed in terms of industry. The Grand Old Party relied on the financiers of Wall Street and owners of industrial and railroad corporations. That business circles exerted major influence on the machinery of the Republican Party was seen in numerous appointments of their members to the highest party posts. At the same time the Republican leadership managed to secure the support of the urban petty and middle bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, workers and farmers in the Northeast and Midwest.

The Democratic Party's social base presented a more motley picture due to the greater difficulties it had in adapting to the social and economic realities of postwar development. It still relied on the former plantation owners who were rapidly turning into bourgeois. Gravitating toward them were the industrialists of the Northeastern states engaged in processing agricultural produce and also part of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie in the Midwest who had trade ties with the Southern sections. The Democratic leadership maintained contacts with the Morgan banking empire, the Hearst newspaper corporation and other leaders of the business world. The white farmers of the South, the Southwest and the Far West supported the Democratic Party. Mass support was provided by the urban lower strata, mostly the immigrants.

Changes in mass support were accompanied by the formation of new groups within the parties. In the Democratic Party the interests of industrial companies in the Northeast and South were expressed by conservative Democrats; the agrarian sections of the South, Southwest and Far West were represented by moderate Democrats. In the Republican Party the conservative faction relied on the rising monopoly capital of the Northeast and the Middle West, and the moderate group on the farmers of the Middle and Far West.

The specific feature in the functioning of the two-party system in the 1870s and 1880s consisted in maintaining a balance of power between its components. The era of party equilibrium (1876-1892) was a period of acute interparty rivalry when neither of the chief parties was able to win an absolute majority of the votes. The Republicans won three presidential elections and the Democrats two. But the margin in the popular vote was less than one percent. Yet,

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Party platform in the 1872 election.

Tradition and economic interests played an important part in forming stable groups of the electorate. Having received voting rights during the period of Reconstruction, black Americans, for example, supported the Republicans. Workers born in the United States feared competition from foreigners and approved the policy of the GOP to restrict the coming into the country of settlers from other continents. The immigrant workers supported the Democrats. Farmers in the Northeast and Midwest, who supplied the cities with food and raw materials, voted for the Republicans who protected the domestic market by high tariffs. The farmers of the Far West and the South produced agricultural produce for export and were thus interested in the policy of the Democrats who demanded low prices on industrial goods and liberalization of foreign trade. The interests of the working people were in direct contradiction to the policy of the ruling class; however, due to an undeveloped class awareness, the contingents of the antimonopoly movement---- workers and farmers---acted within the framework of the bourgeois parties controlled by monopoly capital.

At the same time, having exacerbated contradictions between labor and capital, unfettered development of capitalism contributed to a growth in the struggle waged by the working class and the farmers and the appearance of social protest movements which advanced antimonopoly slogans. Dissatisfaction with the ruling circles' policy resulted in alienation of some workers and farmers who set out to create independent political organizations. The Greenback Party was founded in 1875 becoming one of the first mass political organizations of farmers. The Working-Men's Party of the United States operating since 1876 was renamed the Socialist Labor Party a year after it was founded. The working people waged an active and militant struggle against growing capitalist exploitation. This resulted in bitter strikes which dispelled the myth of the United States being a society of social harmony. The class battles of the American workers such as the famous strike of May 1,1886, were among the major political actions of the international working-class movement. The American workers' actions inspired the proletarians in other countries to fight their exploiters, and served to strengthen international proletarian solidarity. This" was why, at the First Congress of the Second International (1889), it was decided to annually hold worker manifestations on May 1 so as to show international soli-

darity between workers in all countries.

The outflow of the working people from the GOP and the success of the Democrats in the elections of the 1870s forced the Republican leadership to search for new allies and bring into the orbit of Republican influence new social groups which could be relied on in the struggle for power. Politicians turned to the South. The motley social and ethnic base of the Democrats could, in their view, serve as a source for reviving Republican majority on new lines. In forming a stable coalition the main stake was not on the blacks, as it had been in the years of Reconstruction, but on white major property owners or, to use President Hayes' words, "good men of the South ---late rebels.''^^1^^ The purpose was served by the policy of patronage, allocations for internal improvements, and the appointment of David Key, former Confederate army general, as Postmaster General. A change in the party-political orientation was reflected in the Republican platform of 1876 which pledged to secure "the permanent pacification of the Southern section of the Union and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their rights.''^^2^^ Despite declarations on the need to observe the interests of both races, the platform contained no specific proposals on the fate of recent allies in Reconstruction. The problem of the blacks was hushed up.

The policy of pacification of the South required the Republicans to modernize their ideological principles to some extent. The ideas of consensus were extended to the sphere of bourgeois parties' political interests, and most fully this was manifested in respect to the black Americans. Following the Democrats the politicians of the GOP proclaimed that the black population was not completely ready for suffrage. The Republicans acknowledged their ``delusion'' in the years the main Reconstruction measures were adopted when they had hoped that the population of the South "so far behind in many of the attributes of enlightened improvement and civilization" could be "transformed into our model of Northern communities." Most of them agreed with the conclusion of William A.Wheeler, the Vice-President in the Hayes Administration, that that could "only come through a long course of patient waiting to

' Hayes. The Diary of a President. 1875-1881, p. 74. National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 53.

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which no one can now set certain bounds.''^^1^^ The idea even appeared among the Republicans on the possibility of a "middle ground" between slavery and equal citizenship where the black American would be regarded as formally free but would not have the right to vote. The fate of the former allies was put in the hands of the Democrats.

The Republicans hoped that the pacification policy would lead to the revival of Republicanism in the Southern states. However, the new strategic line failed during the midterm elections of 1878. The attempt to expand the party's electorate by relying chiefly on the well-to-do and conservative-minded white Southerners resulted in a sharp reduction in the proportion of traditional voter groups. The Republican parties in the South continued to decline. The congressional elections confirmed that the GOP was losing electoral support: 155 Democrats were elected to the House against 137 Republicans. Moreover, all Republican candidates for state governors were defeated. In the 1880 election the South voted solidly for the Democratic Party.

Despite the failure of Hayes' Southern strategy, the Republicans did not give up the idea of setting up a party coalition with the participation of the Southerners. Now the Republicans sought to restore their influence in the section by relying on other strata of the white population (the petty and middle bourgeoisie in town and countryside) whose class interests clashed with the policy of the Democratic ruling elite known as the Bourbons. At the turn of the 1880s these strata formed the bulk of the movement for independent political action. The Independent Democrats, for their part, mostly sought to reduce state debts remaining from the Civil War. But their platform had other planks as well: granting all citizens, including the blacks, the real right to vote, abolition of racial discrimination and the voting tax, setting up free public schools, etc.^^2^^

The Republican leadership decided that it was necessary to collaborate with the Independents. As a minimum it was planned, with their help, to gain a majority in the House of Representatives which had been in the Democratic hands since 1875. "If we lose the next House we can hardly hope to carry the presidential elections... We

~^^1^^ Official Proceedings of the National Republican Conventions 1868, 1872, 1876 and 1880, Minneapolis, 1903, p. 336.

~^^2^^ Autobiography of John Massey, edited by E. H. Hancock, The Neale Publishing Co., New York, 1909, pp. 185-189.

cannot save House without fostering the independent Democratic and coalition movements in the Southern States,"^^1^^ wrote one of the authors of the Southern strategy William Chandler to a prominent Republican James G. Blaine. To achieve this federal posts were generously distributed among loyal citizens. The Republicans actively supported election of Independents to state legislatures. Senator Simon Cameron initiated a campaign in the North to collect money to pay the voting tax for the poorest sections in a number of Southern states. The close contacts of the Garfield and the Arthur administrations with the Independents were seen not only in the latter's copying of the GOP platform but also in the fact that they were renamed Republicans.

The congressional elections of 1882 became a test of the effectiveness of the new coalition. Their results gave rise to profound disappointment among the leaders of the Republican Party, because they failed to win a majority of seats in the House to which only 16 Independents and Republicans were elected from the South. The hope to launch an opposition movement fell through. The problem of a ``united'' South became a political reality. Hence the Republicans were forced to rely on the electorate mostly in the Eastern and Western states.

However, the growing popularity of third parties in the Northeast and Midwest had a destabilizing effect on the Republicans' positions in these sections. The Republicans' traditional political appeals based on demagogic references to the war years came into increasing contradiction with the rapidly advancing class polarization of society. The need arose for the ruling Republican Party to work out a new strategic line aimed at neutralizing popular masses. At the turn of the 1880s power passed into the hands of those of its leaders who favored altering the ideological orientation by transferring the emphasis on problems closer to, and more easily understood by, the voters. The party leadership chose protectionism.

High tariffs had secured an independent position for American industry in the world by the early 1880s. Nevertheless, having used protectionist tariffs to occupy leading positions on the market of the goods they produced, the pools, and subsequently the

~^^1^^ "W. Chandler to J. Blaine, Oct. 2, 1882", William E. Chandler Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Container 56.

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trusts, refused to give up the monopoly exploitation of the country. They demanded that the government firmly close the doors of the domestic market to create the most favorable conditions for a growth of their production. Fulfilling the order, the Republican Party turned the policy of high tariffs into a major means of strengthening monopoly capital on the domestic market. As distinct from the classical model, the protectionism of the late 19th century was not aimed at shielding industry as a whole, but at safeguarding those of its sectors where the monopoly element was the strongest. In the words of Frederick Engels, tariffs protected "the producer not from the foreign importer but from the domestic consumer.''^^1^^

Attaching top priority to the tariff issue caused a split in the Democratic Party which was in the opposition. The faction of conservative Democrats representing the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie in the Northeast approved of protectionism. Lack of a coherent stand was typical of the moderate faction which relied on the agrarian sections in the Western and Southern states who demanded a cut in protective tariffs. High tariffs were opposed by both advocates of free trade and those who favored retaining part of the duties as a source of the federal budget. Members of the second trend made up the bulk of the Democratic Party. The demand that "a tariff for revenue only" was written down in party papers of the 1870s and the 1880 platform, although it was not specified how this was to be achieved. The Democratic leadership was displeased that the Republicans had put the tariff problem on the agenda. Seeking to smooth out differences between the various factions it decided not to draw attention to the dangerous issue. On the whole, the 1884 election platform of the Democratic Party approved the revision of tariffs, but at the same time it did not oppose protectionism in principle: "In making reduction in taxes, it is not proposed to injure any domestic industries, but rather to promote their healthy growth.'"

Factional strife in the bourgeois parties grew more acute in the course of the election campaign. The party lost control of the Independent Republicans. They refused to support the official candi-

~^^1^^ F. Engels, "Schutzzoll und Freihandel", in: Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 21, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1973, p. 373.

^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 66.

dates of their party (James Elaine and John Logan) who, in their eyes, epitomized the bribery and corruption of the party machines existing in the country. As opposed to the official protectionist course, the Independents supported the idea of free trade popular among the Democrats. As they saw it, the tariff reform was to become an important step on the way to ridding politics of corrupt officials following the adoption of the 1883 civil service law which prohibited the appointment of civil servants on the basis of partisan considerations and introduced a system of competitive tests to qualify for office. The protectionist Democrats had not gone so far as the Independent Republicans who had opted for separating from their own party and supported the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland. However, the adherence of the protectionist Democrats to the policy of high tariffs was regarded as betrayal of the Democratic Party's interests. Hence the emergence of organizations blocking their election to high offices.

In the 1884 elections the Democratic Party scored a victory over the Republicans for the first time after the Civil War. Apart from the Southern states, Cleveland managed to gain the support of a number of Northern states, which gave him 219 electoral votes against 182 received by Elaine. In the popular vote, however, Cleveland won by a margin of only 25,685 votes,^^1^^ with most of these votes belonging to the Independents who had strong positions in the Northeastern states.

The very first steps taken by the President showed the Democratic Party's complete loyalty to the Union and the interests of Big Business which they promoted as zealously as the Republicans. The traditional calls of the Democrats for decentralization, restricting government activities in the social and economic sphere, defense of states and individual rights contained more rhetoric and demagogy than desire to undermine the positions of Big Business. The Democratic leadership adopted a pro-monopoly stand during the debates imposed on them by the Republicans concerning high tariff rates. Yet, the fear of losing the votes of anti-protectionists made them to some extent dissociate themselves ideologically from the Republicans.

In December 1887 Cleveland delivered an annual message to Congress devoted entirely to the tariff reform. Referring to the fact

Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, p.

277.

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that considerable funds had accumulated in the treasury he urged to reduce tariffs on raw materials and put wool, sugar, cotton and other agricultural goods on the free list. Cleveland's proposals were a far cry from the radicalism of free trade advocates and actually quite moderate. Protectionist tariffs were to be continued "as the source of the Government's income.''^^1^^

Cleveland's message marked the start of the Great Debates---an acute ideological dispute between the bourgeois parties. That tariff problem acquired top priority was due to the growing conflict between numerous noncorporate sections of the bourgeoisie and its monopoly elite.

The bourgeois parties skilfully harped on the tariff issue, taking advantage of disagreement in the views of businessmen. In spring 1888, Roger Mills of Texas submitted to the House a bill which would put the President's ideas into practice. It was intended to reduce duties by seven percent and include some raw materials in the duty-free list. The proposed measures did not threaten protectionism, but the Republicans called the bill a free trade manifesto. The GOP took an uncompromising stand in defense of the high tariff. Thus, insignificant differences appearing in the bourgeois parties' approach to tariff rates were used by party strategists to create the impression among voters that their positions offered an alternative. The Democrats were proclaimed the free trade party, although there were no such planks in its platform, and the Republicans were passed off as guardians of protectionism. While the platforms of the Republicans and the Democrats were extremely similar, advocacy of or antipathy for high tariffs was a yardstick for determining party affiliation. As contemporaries put it, tariffs were successfully used "as a trap to catch votes.''^^2^^

The Republicans came to power in 1889. In fulfilment of the promises they had made, they hurried to adopt a new tariff which was a logical outcome of their program. To satisfy the New England capitalists the 1890 act introduced higher tariffs on some industrial goods competing with American products. The duties rose to an unprecedented level, on an average up to 50 percent on imported

~^^1^^ A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, Vol. 8, p. 585.

~^^2^^ "An Extract from a Letter of W. Endicott, enclosed in a Letter of J. Folger to W. Chandler, Oct. 27, 1882", William E. Chandler Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Container 64.

goods. An important development was the granting of preferential terms of trade to Latin American countries through bilateral reductions or even elimination of tariffs. While the overall line to continually raising the tariff barrier was retained, introduction into the act of provisions on duty-free import and export of certain goods solved tactically important problems: it disarmed the Democrats by snatching away from them their proposal on liberalization of import and neutralized the Republican advocates of lower protective duties who represented the interests of the Western states' agrarian sections.

The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, adopted by the Democrats in 1894, put an end to the demagogic assertions by the bourgeois parties on the existence of fundamental differences between them on the tariff issue. In effect, it hardly differed from the previous one. The average rate was 39.64 percent, i.e. the taxation of most of the goods was reduced insignificantly, while the rate on wood and sugar was even raised. "The commodities on the free list were changed, but the principle of protection was accepted by both great parties," wrote a participant in the debates Richard F. Pettigrew.^^1^^ Thus, the alternative in the policies of the bourgeois parties concerned only particular issues and not fundamental matters. The interparty consensus was not considerably disturbed. The tariffs adopted by the Republicans and the Democrats did not change the essential meaning of the customs duty system. The average tariff rate remained between 40 and 50 percent, and under the Dingley Tariff it reached 57 percent.

Active promotion of the interests of Big Business by the bourgeois parties led to a change in their methods of procuring finances. If in the 1870s their funds were largely made up of membership dues, in the 1880s the lion's share of their money came from donations by monopoly associations. As a rule, generous contributions by industrial tycoons had many strings attached. As is clear from the correspondence between the secretary of the American Iron and Steel Association, James M. Swank and William Allison, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who presided over preparation of the tariff bills in the 1880s, the donation of 80,000 dollars to the National Republican Committee was payment for the decision to

~^^1^^ Richard F. Pettigrew, The Triumphant Plutocracy. The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920, The Academy Press, New York City, 1922, p. 57.

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raise tariff rates on steel rails and so on.^^1^^

The bourgeois ideology of the late 19th century---social Darwinism---answered the interests of Big Business. It proclaimed individual freedom, unrestricted competition and the survival of the fittest to be laws of social development. In the pre-monopoly period social Darwinism served to justify free competition and with the transition to imperialism it turned into a defender of the monopolies' omnipotence.

At the same time the fact that the bourgeois parties ignored the most important social and economic problems provoked a growth of social dissatisfaction among the working people whose chief demand was to fight the arbitrary actions of the monopolies. The Republican and Democratic administrations alike refused to solve these problems, resorting only to propaganda and demagogic half-- measures adopted under the slogans of fighting big capital. Such was the case in 1887 when Congress passed Interstate Commerce Act formally prohibiting railroad pools. The reluctance of the bourgeois parties to resist the growth of the monopolies was even more strongly apparent in the course of debates on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 which ostensibly prohibited the trusts to take action restricting trade. Even the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which was adopted under pressure from broad sections of the population and which required the treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of the cheap metal every month, hardly infringed on the financial interests of Wall Street tycoons.

Yet the strong upsurge in the antimonopoly movement sweeping through America in the late 1880s and early 1890s made it imperative for the bourgeois politicians to make wider use of social maneuvering for the sake of preserving the domination of the ruling class. The importance of actively using reformist strategy was realized at an early date by a small group of bourgeois reformers who initiated the search for more flexible ways of fighting social protest movements. A liberal two-party bloc including part of the Democrats and Republicans of the South and West emerged in Congress at the end of the 1880s. Its appearance reflected the considerable differences in views held by the noncorporate bourgeoisie and by

~^^1^^ "J. Swank to W. Allison, Sept. 26, 1888", in: A. T. Volwiler, "Documents: Tariff Strategy and Propaganda in the United States, 1887-1888", The American Historical Review, October, 1930, pp. 95-96.

spokesmen for monopoly capital. It should be kept in mind that the position of the left wing in the Democratic Party was stronger than among the Republicans. This was due to the specific mass base of the Democrats and their closer relations with the agrarian strata in the Western and Southern states.

The two-party bloc first made itself felt during the 1887 debates on the interstate commerce bill when, relying on the support of broad sections of the population, the left-wing Democrats and Republicans managed to get a bill on government control of railroads adopted. And they submitted the most radical wording of the bill. Thus, Democrat John Reagan offered a plan to make it illegal to set up pools and associations of railroad companies to distribute joint profits according to agreed shares. An idea that was widespread among the masses to dissolve the monopolies and restore the traditional elements of free enterprise came to the forefront. It was only natural that for a number of politicians support of the popular demand was no more than a tactical step, a social maneuver. The fear of losing control over the electorate compelled many "chosen representatives of the people" to speak out against the monopolies. Popular demands were indirectly reflected in the left-wing proposal to fine the corporations, to ban watering down stock in railroad construction, to introduce rigorous legislation raising the responsibility of persons for dishonest competition, to work out a definition of corporation in order to effectively fight corporate capital and so on.

The rise of the bourgeois-reformist trend indicated that the internal conflict between noncorporate sections of the bourgeoisie and its monopoly elite had grown deeper. The differences between factions of the ruling class concerned the question on how to neutralize the scope of the class struggle with the least effort and determine the extent of possible concessions to the working people. The emergence of the two-party liberal bloc was one of the first symptoms showing the importance of restructuring bourgeois parties in order to adapt them to the social consequences of monopolization. The difficulty of blunting the acuteness of class conflict, on the one hand, and the requirements of the development of monopoly capitalism, on the other, persistently demanded a renewal of the facade of the political system so as to keep the ideological and political grip on the broad masses of the population.

12-749

THE TWO-PARTY

SYSTEM AGAINST

THE ANTIMONOPOLY

MOVEMENTS

OF THE 1890s

Two-Party System vs Antimonopoly Movements in 1890s 179

The situation only began to change in the second half of the 1880s. The famous May 1 manifestations of 1886 in Chicago, major strikes by miners in the West and steelworkers in Pennsylvania, armed clashes at the Pullman factories were of truly national scope. In 1893 a convention of the leading labor organization, the American Federation of Labor, adopted the well-known Political Program whose point 10 called for "the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution." Founded in 1876, the Socialist Labor Party failed to enter the national political scene, but the authority of socialist ideas in American social thinking increased significantly. By the time the most important works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels had been well known in the United States. Marx's Capital was among the most widely read books, and in 1889 several hundred thousand copies of the book were sold in the country.^^1^^ The brilliant pamphlets of Daniel De Leon and later Eugene Debs found a broad audience.

The concentration of economic power and the most important means of political domination in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie infringed not only upon the interests of the workers but also on those of the broadest social strata: farmers, small owners in the cities, and most of the intellectuals. Popular discontent developed into a broad democratic antimonopoly movement which swept the United States in the last twenty five years of the 19th century. The farmers were its chief social base. Capitalism was particularly hard on them. Oppression by the railroad, banking and wholesale corporations triggered off a desperate struggle against the Robber Barons.

The Populist Party founded in 1892 brought together the principal antimonopoly forces, becoming the first antimonopoly coalition in American history.^^2^^ Adopted by the Populist Party on July 4, 1892, the Omaha Platform summed up the ideological and political experience of the farmer movements: the Grangers, the first to wage a struggle against the railroad corporations; the Greenbackers with their idea of ``cheap'' money; and the fol-

The growing oppression by the monopolies at the end of the 19th century and the political course of the two leading parties which ignored acute social contradictions gave rise to increasing dissatisfaction in the country. This was reflected in an upsurge of mass social protest movements and the growing urge for independent political action. The chief demand was to fight the arbitrary rule of the trusts. The two-party system focussed on safeguarding the existing social system and channeling the class struggle into venues which were safe for the ruling circles.

Although it was not 100 percent crisis proof, the two-party system had had relatively firm control over the electorate until the beginning of the 1890s: the election battles were noisy and voter participation was high, even though the two leading bourgeois parties had little to divide them in terms of ideology. On the one hand, this was due to traditional party attachments, the cementing role of the party machines, and the low level of political culture of American voters; on the other, this stemmed from the fact that political movements for a national antimonopoly party were hardly developed until the mid-1880s. There also persisted a number of factors holding back the development of the working-class and socialist movements, and specific features in the rise of the American proletariat---availability of free lands, sectional, religious and intergroup divisions, national cleavages and the like. As Lenin put it: "For the last thirty years of the nineteenth century the proletariat displayed almost no political independence either in Britain or America." ^!

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Preface to the Russian Translation of Letters by Johannes Becker, Joseph Deitzgen, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to Friedrich Sorge and Others," Collected Works, Vol. 12, p. 373.

~^^1^^ Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes. The Story of Best Sellers in the United States, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1947, p. 323.

~^^2^^ For further detail see: G. P. Kuropyatnik, The Farmer Movement in the USA: from the Grangers to the People's Party 1867-1896, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1971 (in Russian).

12*

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lowers of Henry George who believed that all problems could best be solved by a single tax upon landholders. They were joined by the left-wing antimonopoly critics Henry D. Lloyd and Edward Bellamy who appealed chiefly to the urban petty-bourgeois strata.

The Omaha Platform and statements by the Populist leaders Ignatius Donnelly, Thomas Watson, Mary Lease, William Peffer, Jerry Simpson and others pointed out the link between Populist principles and the democratic tradition going back to Jefferson and his hostility to special privileges for and concentration of economic power in the hands of the few. Although the Populists appealed to the political rights and liberties set down in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, in effect they filled these concepts with new social meaning. "What is liberty worth to the man who is dying of hunger? Can you keep a room warm, next winter, with the thermometer 30° below zero, by reciting the Declaration of Independence?''^^1^^ wondered the principal author of the Omaha Platform Ignatius Donnelly.

Antimonopolism was the cornerstone of all the farmer movements becoming increasingly radical as it developed from the old semimedieval understanding of monopoly as a special privilege sought by owners of large fortunes to an uncompromising denunciation in a Populist manifesto of "the allied hosts of monopolies, the money power, great trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the enactment of laws to benefit them and impoverish the people.''^^2^^

The chief antimonopoly demands included: turning means of transportation, above all railroads, and also telephone, and telegraph communications into government property; a struggle against land monopoly, return to the public domain of all lands held by railroads and other corporations "in excess of their actual needs.''^^3^^ Significantly, the Populist Platform added that if these measures were to be ineffective "the power of government---in other words, of the people---should be expanded.''^^4^^ Two years later, at the 1893 antimonopoly rally in Chicago, Donnelly who

* St. Paule Representative, September 13, 1893.

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform. From Bryan to F.D.R., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1956, p. 64.

~^^3^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 91.

~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 90.

had proposed the measure suggested "the enactment of laws to confiscate the real and personal property of all trusts and combinations" should all other measures fail.^^1^^ The Populists called for a progressive income tax.

The Populists were also aware of the link between the government and Big Business. "It is no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but a government of Wall-Street, by Wall-Street and for Wall-Street,"^^2^^ exclaimed Mary Lease of Kansas. The Omaha Platform sharply criticized many elements in the American political system, exposing bribery and corruption in state legislatures, Congress and the courts. The Populists built their model of government responsible to the people. They advanced a program of direct democracy as an important correction of the political system existing in the country. The program included popular initiative and a referendum on the most important issues, secret ballot, and election of senators, the Vice-President and President by direct vote.

One of the most remarkable ideas put forward by the Populists was that of unity of interests and the alliance between rural and urban working people. The idea was derived from life itself, the common antimonopoly struggle. It found its expression in the rise of the Greenback Labor Party, in joint actions by the farmers and the Noble Order of Knights of Labor (the idea of government control over railroad companies, telegraphs and telephones up to and including their nationalization, set down in the Order's Declaration of Principles,^^3^^ was similar to the farmers' demands). At an early stage the AFL also supported the farmer movement.

The Populists proclaimed that their party was a "union of the labor forces of the United States" which "shall be permanent and perpetual," and that farmers and workers had the same interests and identical enemies; a grim warning was sounded: "Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. 'If any will not work, neither shall he eat'.' Of course, the radicalism of the Populist rhetoric should not be exaggerated. Profoundly sympathizing with the plight of the

~^^1^^ John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt. A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party, The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1931, p. 291.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 160.

T. V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859 to 1889, Excelsior Publishing House, Columbus, Ohio, 1889, pp. 389-391.

~^^4^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 91.

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vs Antimonopoly Movements in 1890s

workers the same Donnelly regarded a proletarian revolution as a kind of apocalypse, a destructive catastrophy for all human civilization. But there is no doubt that the Populists sought joint action with the workers. The Omaha Platform demanded an 8-hour work day at government enterprises and a ban on use of Pinkertons against striking workers.^^1^^ A major step forward in the popular movement was the setting up in Illinois in 1894 of a workerpopulist bloc which approved the 1893 AFL program of socialization of means of production.

The antimonopoly movement in the United States was complex and contradictory. Fighting monopoly oppression, its members, as a rule, still remained defenders of the capitalist system and regarded the program for restricting monopolies and implementing democratic reforms as a means to strengthen small private property, i.e. democratization of capitalism and, therefore, as a kind of alternative to revolutionary socialist transformation. But the very fact that they proposed to ban the activities of certain monopolies questioned the sacred principles of laissez-faire. Instead of the idea of weakening central power, popular during the times of Jefferson and Jackson, they advocated the idea of the government's responsibility for the people's overall well-being. The system of government antimonopoly measures proposed by the Populists actually meant a departure from principles of free competition, and the proclaiming of regulated competition went beyond the framework of classical bourgeois beliefs.

Despite all the sharp criticism, Populist action was marked by considerable weaknesses. Believing that relations of exploitation were established in the circulation and exchange of goods, the Populists proclaimed money to be the key to the mechanism of market relations. The theory of ``cheap'' money flowing from this view explained the plight of the farmers by the insufficient amount of money in circulation and promised to raise prices on agricultural produce and secure debt payment. The 1860s call for free circulation of paper greenbacks was replaced in the 1880s and 1890s by the demand for free coinage of silver. It was an erroneous but popular plank of the Populist platform.^^2^^

Such were the basic features of the Populist platform which,

~^^1^^ John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt, p. 444. National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 91.

no doubt, was a left-wing alternative to the two main parties on the basic social and political issues. The Populists were the first to produce a broad antimonopoly platform and propose an in-depth reform of American social structure which might have resulted in a certain weakening of the monopolies' position, in bringing their activities under bourgeois-democratic government regulation and in the democratization of the country's political life. All this was a real threat to the two-party system. The Populists did not conceal their intentions: a resolution was adopted at the convention in Omaha which sharply criticized the activities of the Republican and the Democratic parties and prohibited government officials from being members of the Populist Party.

It was no easy task to weaken the two-party system. Behind it was tradition. It had at its disposal the economic power of the ruling class, and thousands of public organizations were tuned to the leading parties, giving vent to the energy of the masses and leading them away from third parties which went in their demands beyond the narrow scope of the two-party system's alternative. Such a tried and tested device as bribery was used against the radical parties, and their activities were distorted in the press.^^1^^ One cannot help but agree with that brilliant scholar of the history of American parties Richard Hofstadter who remarked that the two-party system in the United States was closely linked to the "constitutional and legal system. Our entire electoral arrangements, the absence of proportional representation, the exorbitant cost of political campaigns, the legal difficulties in getting on and staying on the ballot in many states, even the quasi-official role of the majority parties as supervisors of elections---all these things work against the rise of minor parties... The method of electing a president with the winner-take-all system in the electoral college, the very leadership function of the Presidency itself, work to keep power in the hands of the two major parties.''^^2^^

The Populists were yet to experience the full impact of this press, but their first steps were successful. They won more than a million votes in the elections of 1892 and received 13 seats in the Congress (ten in the House and three in the Senate). In fulfilment

~^^1^^ See: A.S. Manykin and Y.E. Yazkov, "The Role of Third Parties in the Party-- Political System of the USA", in: Voprosy istorii, No.2, 1981, p. 56.

~^^2^^ The Comparative Approach to American History, edited by C. Vann Woodward, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1968, p. 210.

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of the conventions resolutions, the Populists worked energetically in Congress to pass the relevant bills. They demanded nationalization of the railroads, telegraphs and telephones;^^1^^ introduction of a graduated income tax;^^2^^ democratization of political life (election of the president, senators and the federal judiciary by direct vote, limiting the office of President to one term for each incumbent, women's suffrage and so on);^^3^^ they came out for workers' rights (an 8-hour work day at government enterprises, the right of workers to unionize, government assistance to the unemployed, banning of the Pinkerton Detective Agency and use of the federal army against striking workers);^^4^^ proposed to solve the monetary problem in the fanners' favor: free coinage of silver, government loans for farmers at low interest and a system of government banking.^^5^^

All the social contradictions the Populists were justly clamoring about aggravated in the 1890s. The economic crisis of 1893- 1896, the most profound crisis of the last century, displayed these contradictions particularly clearly. Thousands of factories and workshops were closed, the number of unemployed, according to different estimates, ranged from one to four million. The year 1894 saw the Pullman strike, left forces gaining control over the AFL, the first march of the unemployed in US history---the 10,000- strong Coxey's Army advance on Washington---and a new upsurge in the Populist movement. Even the cautious AFL Chairman, Samuel Gompers, said: "Those responsible for these conditions should take warning. They are sleeping in false security.''^^6^^

The powerful protest movement showed the leading parties

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Volume XXIII, Part IV, p. 3114; Volume XXVI, Part I, p. 11: Volume XXVI, Part X, Appendix, pp. 1413-1414; Volume XXVII, Part II, p. 979.

~^^4^^ Congressional Record, Volume XXIII, Part I, pp. 598-599; Volume XXVI, Part II, p. 1664, 1666; Part IX, Appendix, pp. 506-507, 610.

~^^3^^ Congressional Record, Volume XXIII, Part I, p. 598; Volume XXIV, Part I, pp. 592-593; Volume XXVII, Part II, p. 976; Volume XXVII, Part III, p. 2011; Volume XXVIII, Part IV, p. 3374.

~^^4^^ Congressional Record, Volume XXIII, Part I, p. 429; Part III, pp. 3001-3002; Part V, p. 4225; Part VI, p. 5731; Volume XXVI, Part I, pp. 385-388; Volume XXVI, Part IV, pp. 3842-3844; Part V, pp. 4059-4060; Part VII, pp. 7236-7237.

^s Congressional Record, Volume XXIII, Part I, pp. 598-599; Part II, p. 1578; Part V, p. 4211; Part VI, pp. 5241-5242, 5455-5456; Part VIII, Appendix, pp. 610-611,618, 620; Volume XXV, Part I, p. 1201; Part II, p. 1887, 1978; Volume XXVII, Part II, p. 1093; Volume XXVIII, Part IV, p. 3218.

Report of the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor Held at Chicago, III., December llth to 19th, 1893, p. 9.

that they could no longer avoid the urgent problems of the times without risking to lose control of the political process. The astute British political scholar James Bryce, describing the Republican and the Democratic parties at the end of the 1880s as lacking "any principles, any distinctive tenets" and only seeking to obtain lucrative government posts, predicted the downfall of the parties: "Probably it will happen in the long run in America also, unless the parties adapt themselves to the new issues, just as the Whig party fell in 1852-1857 because it failed to face the problem of slavery.''^^1^^

The Republican Party, the main party of Big Business, was hardly able to adapt in this period. The American business elite was flushed with the Grundyism of the Gilden Age and firmly believed in the ideas of classical individualism and social Darwinism. The Republican Party managed to retain the support of a broad range of voters. Referring to the Civil War, the Republicans reminded the farmers that Lincoln's party had given them the homestead and the blacks that the GOP had freed them from slavery. They sought to attract workers, not without success, by the slogan "High Tariffs Mean High Wages.''

The Democratic Party took a more flexible approach. By this time it had turned from a party defending slavery into a party of the new bourgeoisie in the South, with support coming also from the industrial and financial circles of the Northeastern states. Nevertheless, for a long time the Democrats remained the junior partner in the two-party system. The Democrats lacked the luster of Lincoln's party; on the contrary, they were haunted by the tarnished image of a lost cause (defenders of slavery), and in the course of 52 years, from 1860 to 1912, their candidate occupied the presidential seat only twice, and unsuccessfully at that. Cleveland's conservative policy (1893-1897) completely discredited the Democratic Party. Only a new reformist policy taking into account mass demands could save the party from total collapse. Steps in this direction were also prompted by the Democrats' specific electorate most of whom consisted of agrarians in the South and the West. As distinct from the Republican Party, where Protestants prevailed, the Democrats displayed a certain religious tolerance and could rely on the Catholics who made up the bulk of

James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, The Macmillan Company, New York, Vol.11, 1898, pp. 21,29.

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the immense flow of immigrants at the end of the 19th century.

However, even in this context it was difficult to change the party orientation. The government of President Cleveland, a creature of business circles in the Northeast, had come to power under the slogan of no government paternalism. Nothing was done to counter the economic crisis, but force was used against the participants in the hungry march to Washington and federal troops were sent to put down the Pullman strike. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was applied against the labor unions.

Under the economic crisis, the problem of cheap money acquired even greater popularity than before, and many began to regard it as a panacea to solve the country's major social and economic problems.^^1^^ Meanwhile, under pressure from the financial and industrial circles demanding the upholding of hard currency, the Cleveland Administration decided to repeal even the compromise act of 1890 which provided for coinage of not only gold but also silver (not more than 4.5 million ounces of silver a month). The President convened a special session of Congress. As a result the ``gold'' Democrats supported by the Republicans managed to repeal the act limiting silver coinage. The conservative circles and a considerable part of the press declared that the most important cause of the crisis had been removed. But the next year the crisis came to rage with renewed force.

The victory of the advocates of the gold standard revived acute factional differences within the Democratic Party which had been temporarily smoothed over during the presidential elections of 1892. The struggle in the party around the money issue divided the party not only in terms of organization. In a situation when the American people suffered from the results of the economic crisis and expected effective measures to be undertaken by the Administration and Congress, the policy of the ``gold'' Democrats deprived the party of popular slogans and impoverished the already scant election platform still further. The results were not long in coming. The Democrats suffered a shattering defeat in the 1894 elections losing 113 seats in the House. There were serious losses even in the party's traditional bastions---in the Far West and the South.

~^^1^^ On this subject, see: A.Y.Salamatin, "The Problem of Silver Money and the Crisis of the Democratic Party in the Mid-1890s", in: Problems of Modern and Contemporary History, Moscow University Press, Moscow, 1982, pp. 34-48 (in Russian).

Victory in the congressional elections went to the Republicans, but the Populist Party scored a major success too. It brought in a total of nearly 1,500,000 votes and sent seven of its members to the House and six to the Senate, not counting the several hundred candidates elected to various offices in the states. That the Populist Party's mass base swelled at the expense of the Democrats was seen in the fact that in 1896, 75 percent of all Populists in Indiana had previously been Democrats.^^1^^ On the other hand, it is significant that the largest increment in the number of votes cast for the Populist Party was achieved in the industrial states.^^2^^ The Arena journal noted: "So long as the two old parties cling to their present policy there will be a People's Party movement in Chicago---or a propaganda for the advancement of the principles of the People's Party under some other name.''^^3^^

Following the social clashes of 1894 a shift to the left also occurred in the Democratic Party. The silver panacea was now supported not only by farmers but also by many Democrat workers. The argument that inevitable inflation would raise prices on necessary goods no longer convinced the workers. They believed that free coinage of silver would rid society of the crisis and unemployment associated with it.^^4^^ The demand for cheap money was also widespread among the Republican electorate.^^5^^

The number of supporters of silver also grew in the Democratic Party: the moderate Democrats did not want to pay for the mistakes of Cleveland and the conservatives and hurried not only to dissociate themselves from their unpopular policy but also led a struggle to gain control over the party. Clubs of silver supporters began to be set up in spring 1895, and silver conventions were held in some states.^^6^^

~^^1^^ A.G. Bochkarev, "The Democratic Party at the Turn of the 20th Century", in: Political Parties of the USA in Modern Times, Moscow University Press, Moscow, 1981, p. 187 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. From the Founding of the American Federation of Labor to the Emergence of American Imperialism, International Publishers, New York, Vol. II, 1955, p. 326.

~^^3^^ Willis I. Abbot, "The Chicago Populist Campaign", in: The Arena, ed. by B.O. Flower, Vol. XI, No. LXIII, February, 1895, Published by Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass., 1895, p. 336.

~^^4^^ Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, p. 314.

^^5^^ A.Y. Salamatin, op. cit., p. 45. Ibid., p. 43.

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Immense popularity was enjoyed by William Harvey's pamphlet Coin's Financial School written in the form of a discussion between a supporter of silver, the boy Coin, and advocates of the gold standard, Chicago bankers. Finally, in February-March 1895 the manifesto by 31 Democratic congressmen was widely distributed; calling for free coinage of silver, its authors pointed out that they now held a majority in the Democratic Party and could take power into their hands.^^1^^ That an acute political situation was taking shape in the United States was noted, in particular, in dispatches from the Russian ambassador E. K. Kotsebu who reported to St Petersburg: "On the one hand, there are capitalists with enormous means to attract supporters; on the other, workingmen of all kinds, bitter and indebted to such an extent that it proves impossible to bribe them... It would seem to me that all the questions on mono- and bi-metalism here do not concern the monetary system at all, and the gold refers to the capitalist with his enormous social power, and the silver to the popular small fry seeking means to overthrow that power and hoping that in destroying it something would be coming their way. The extent of the stage on which the struggle is being waged among 70 million civilized people lends that struggle major importance.''^^2^^

Yet the participants in the movement for free coinage of silver pursued very different aims. For the Populists unlimited coinage of silver was a measure aimed at improving the condition of the farmers and a plank in the broad antimonopoly platform. The owners of silver mines, who set up the American Bimetallic League in 1889, hoped to profit from the rising prices of silver. For the leaders of moderate Democrats the demand for cheap money was not a panacea but rather a tactical move. Supporting the silver slogans, they not only met the farmers, who formed a considerable part of the Democratic electorate, halfway, but also focussed attention on a weak and rudimentary plank in the Populist platform and rejected its truly radical demands. The party officials attempted both to retain their old electorate and draw to their side the Populist voters, meanwhile destroying a dangerous radical rival.

The presidential election campaign confirmed this. The Sil-

~^^1^^ Ibid., pp. 44,42.

~^^2^^ Archives of the External Policy of Russia, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Chancellery, d. 173,1. 164 "Kotsebu to Lobanov-Rostovsky, July 2, 1896" (in Russian).

ver Democrats prevailed at the Democratic Party convention which opened on July 7, 1896, in Chicago (30 states favored free coinage of silver and 14 were for the gold standard). A majority rejected the resolution supporting the Cleveland Administration. The tone was set by a speech delivered by William Bryan, a young lawyer and journalist who represented the interests of agrarian America to some extent. Seeking to be nominated presidential candidate from the Democratic Party, he built his platform taking into account the farmers' dissatisfaction with the power of the railroad companies and banks and made his political capital by criticizing the trusts. When Bryan exclaimed: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,"^^1^^ he was merely rejecting the gold standard, but the sentence electrified listeners. For all of capitalist America gold was a symbol of prosperity, and millions of desperate, debt-burdened farmers believed their plight was due to shortcomings in money circulation. In any case, America's acute problems were reduced to the silver issue.

The same idea keynoted the platform adopted by the Democratic Party, and subsequently became the main theme of the election campaign. The tariff issue had been the principal subject of debate between Democrats and Republicans for decades. Presently, in the election platform it was pushed to the background, and prominence was given to the question of free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16:1 to the gold standard. The latter, the chief objective of the Cleveland Administration, was described as un-American.

At the same time a number of Populist demands were included in the Democratic Party platform, albeit in an utterly distorted form. While the Populists called for nationalization of railroads, telephones and telegraphs, the Democratic platform contained a vague reference to "stricter control by the Federal Government" of trusts and pools,^^2^^ and the Interstate Commerce Commission, which had already shown its inability, was pushed to the forefront of control over railroad companies.

Seeking to democratize political life, the Populists called for

~^^1^^ William J. Bryan, The First Battle. A Story of the Campaign of 1896, W.B. Conkey Company, Chicago, 1896, p. 206.

~^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 99.

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election of the President, the senators and the federal judiciary by direct vote, the holding of referenda and so on. In the platform of the Democrats, it degenerated to a ban on a third term of the presidential office.^^1^^ (In fact, the political tradition existing in the United States since the time of George Washington had already enforced this custom.)

Instead of a progressive graduated income tax proposed by Populists in the Congress (reaching 5 or even 10 percent on incomes exceeding 100,000 dollars a year),^^2^^ the Democrats called for a 2-percent tax on capital (the Income and Property Tax Law).

In a bid to attract the workers, the Democrats urged a ban on court injunctions in labor conflicts and protested against federal interference in local affairs (this referred primarily to the use of federal troops by President Cleveland to suppress the Pullman strike). They were also in favor of the attribution of differences between employers and employees.^^3^^ On the whole, however, there was little left from the broad positive Populist platform on the labor question (8-hour work day at government enterprises, government assistance to the unemployed and so on).

The Democrats' tactic of taking certain Populist demands and incorporating them into their platform, obviously aimed at swallowing the Populist Party. The Populists were faced with dilemma. As Henry Lloyd, a member of the Populist radical wing, put it: "If we fuse, we are sunk, if we don't fuse, all the silver men will leave us for the more powerful Democrats.''^^4^^ At the beginning of the elections the struggle between trends in the Populist Party^^5^^ reached a climax. The radical wing led by Henry Lloyd, Thomas Watson and Ignatius Donnelly intensified its criticism of the trusts and was inclined to form a worker-Populist bloc with Eugene Debs as their presidential candidate. The moderate trend headed by James B. Weaver, Herman E. Taubeneck and William Allen pinned all its hopes on the silver panacea. The moderate wing emerged victorious

~^^1^^ ibid., p. 100.

~^^2^^ Congressional Record. Volume XXVI, Part II, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894, p. 1666.

~^^3^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 99.

~^^4^^ Stanley L. Jones, The Presidential Election of 1896, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1964, p. 245.

~^^5^^ See: L. Goodwin, Democratic Promise. The Populist Movement in America, Oxford University Press, New York, 1970; B. Palmer, "Man Over Money": the Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1980.

Two-Party System vs Antimonopoly Movements in 1890s 19i

at the Populist Party convention in St. Louis in July 1896. The silver magic played its part here as well. William Bryan was nominated presidential candidate. The Populists had merged with the Democrats in most states by the time of the elections in November. The decline of the Populist Party continued for 12 more years, but as a leading political force it disappeared after the elections of 1896 in which the Republicans won.

There were various reasons for the fall of the Populist Party. The Populists were never a monolith. From the very outset there was a struggle in the party between the moderate and the radical wing, and serious differences existed between Southern and Western Populists. Some farmers were suspicious of and even hostile to the workers. The policy of the leading parties, however, also played a major role.

Having borrowed a number of Populist ideas which they filled with much more moderate meaning, the Democrats contributed to the downfall of the Populist Party. Despite their defeat in the elections of 1896, the Democrats at the same time managed to overcome the crisis in the party, and played an important part in bolstering the entire two-party system. Extension and radicalization of the electorate led to a certain transformation of the Democratic Party. Elements of bourgeois reformism appeared in its platform as an echo of radical antimonopoly criticism.

In its turn, the Republican Party played the stabilizing role in the two-party system preventing the reformism of the Democrats from swinging too far to the left. In the 1896 elections the campaign of threats against adherents to the ``un-American'' principles of the Populists waged by the Republican bosses and the promise to sustain a worthy standard of living for workers by means of high tariffs^^1^^ played their part in splitting the worker-farmer bloc.

Some time passed and another left wing of the opposition movement broke against the two-party system in 1900. The Spanish-American War, in Lenin's definition the first imperialist war of the Modern Age,^^2^^ and the subsequent colonial war in the Philippines gave rise to a broad antiwar and anticolonial movement led by

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 107.

~^^2^^ See: V. I. Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism", Collected Works, Vol. 23, 1981, p. 106.

192 Chapter Nine

the anti-imperialist leagues.^^1^^ A leading part in these leagues was played by the liberal intellectuals of New England and, partly, by persons close to the Populist opposition (for example Richard Pettigrew). The anti-imperialists had experienced political leaders, chiefly from among the Republicans of the older generation who had taken part in the struggle against slavery---George Boutwell, Moorfield Storey, Carl Schurz and others. Participants in the movement were represented in various government bodies from the US Congress to the reformist, pacifist and remaining Populist organizations. The voice of protest was raised in many university halls and in Catholic churches. Part of the press was attracted to the side of the anti-imperialist movement thanks to the efforts of prominent journalists. The Nation published by Edwin Godkin and The Anti-Imperialist edited by Edward Atkinson became very close to the American Anti-Imperialist League. Imperialist expansion was unanimously denounced by Frank Norris, Henry Fuller, Henry James, Thomas Aldrich and other American authors. The largest response was drawn by Mark Twain's remarks, his pamphlet To the Person Sitting in Darkness was published by the Anti-Imperialist League in 125,000 copies. Mark Twain proposed to slightly change the US flag: "We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones.''^^2^^

The Anti-Imperialist League collaborated with labor unions in the AFL, and the Order of Knights of Labor (Gompers was a Vice-President of the American Anti-Imperialist League). The AntiImperialists were joined by numerous fellow travellers---social and political circles, remote from liberal opposition to colonial acquisitions, who attempted to use the movement in their own interests. But the movement was sufficiently large even without the latter. In summer 1898 the Russian ambassador reported to St Petersburg, perhaps exaggerating somewhat, that "no less than half of all Ame-

~^^1^^ Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire. The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900, MacGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1968;E. B. Tompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate 1890-1920, Philadelphia, 1970; Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire. American Resistance to the Philippine War, Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., 1972; Igor Dementyev, USA: Imperialists and Anti-- Imperialists. The Great Foreign Policy Debate at the Turn of the Century, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1979.

~^^2^^ Mark Twain on the Damned Human Race, edited by Janet Smith, Hill and Wang, New York, 1963, p. 21.

ricans do not approve of the road taken by the government.''^^1^^

In criticizing US foreign policy, the Anti-Imperialists relied on democratic traditions going back to the revolutionary War of Independence; they referred to the theory of natural rights and popular sovereignty. "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with Certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"---these excerpts from the Declaration of Independence were quoted in the documents of the Anti-Imperialist League. Proceeding from these principles the Chicago platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League described US government policies on the Philippines as criminal aggression and demanded that the Philippines be granted independence.^^2^^ The Anti-Imperialists pointed out the detrimental influence of aggression on the domestic situation in the United States: militarization, an increase in the tax burden, and the threat of establishment of despotic rule.

Several attempts to set up an influential political party that would resist expansion were undertaken as the anti-imperialist league movement developed. However, the movement proved unable to break the grip of the two-party system. A special part in this was played by the Democratic Party.

Before the Spanish-American War problems of foreign policy were of little interest to the leaders of the Democratic Party. When the war started, they, as true patriots, did not remain on the sidelines: Bryan commanded the First Nebraska Volunteers, George Dewey, Bryan's chief rival in presidential nomination from the Democratic Party, became a hero of a naval battle in the Manila harbor. The yellow journalism close to the Democratic Party--- Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal--- whipped up the war hysteria. Subsequently, Bryan played the decisive role in concluding the annexationist Paris Treaty which ended the Spanish-American War: he secured the support of Democrat senators.

It was only later, on the eve of the elections of 1900, that the

Archives of the External Policy of Russia, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Chancellery, d. 114,1. 201, "Kassini to Muravyov, June 21, 1898''.

~^^2^^ W. A. Croffut, Papers. Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League. 1899, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.

13-749

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Democratic Party leaders because the silver currency issue on which the election of 1896 had been founded to a large degree lost its viability. The gold standard had already become a fact, the relevant act had been approved by the Republican majority in March 1900. Anyway, the leader of the Democratic Party, William Bryan, had not decided yet which problem would highlight the election campaign of 1900. A month before the Democratic Party convention he wrote an article in The North American Review about the three main issues of the coming elections: currency, trusts and imperialism. Indicating the tactical nature of Bryan's statement, the Russian ambassador in Washington wrote: "Taking advantage of the present administration's setback in the Philippines, Bryan advised his followers to put anti-imperialism and the fight against the trusts in the forefront of their platform in the coming presidential campaign.''^^1^^

The platform of the Democratic Party adopted in July 1900 at the convention in Kansas City extended the range of democratic demands: regulation of railroad companies' operations, election of senators by direct vote, and setting up a Labor Department. On Bryan's insistence the silver currency plank was again included in the platform. But the imperialist issue was proclaimed "the paramount question" in the election campaign, and, unprecedentedly, most of the election platform was devoted to foreign policy!

Like the documents of the anti-imperialists the platform of the Democratic Party began with an expression of fidelity to the principles of the Founding Fathers: "We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that any government not based upon the consent of the governed is a tyranny... We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.''^^2^^

If the election platform of the Republican Party approved the results of the Spanish-American War and US actions in the Philippines and Cuba,^^3^^ the platform of the Democrats denounced "imperialism growing out of the Spanish War" and involving "the

Archives of the External Policy of Russia, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Chancellery, d. 110,1. 254, "Kotsebu to Muravyov, August 6, 1899". ~^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 112. Ibid., p. 124.

Democrat leaders gradually went over to opposition to colonial policy. There were compelling reasons for this tactical move. To begin with, one reason was the extension and radicalization of the party's electorate after the 1896 elections. Making up the bulk of the Silver Democrats, working people in town and country mostly continued to believe in bourgeois-democratic ideals. The chauvinistic frenzy passed quickly because the US war in the Philippines was too similar to the practice of the colonial empires of the Old World.

Influential agrarian circles in the American South were also in opposition to colonial expansion. Their attitude to territorial acquisitions was determined chiefly by the fear of competition from cheap colonial raw materials and agricultural products. Owners of sugar cane, cotton and tobacco plantations were particularly concerned. The main sphere of activity for the Southern opposition, traditionally belonging to the Democratic Party, was the US Congress. Ratification of the Paris Treaty was particularly actively opposed by Senators John McLaurin, Donelson Caffery, Benjamin Tillman, Samuel McEnery, Augustus Bacon and Hernando Money. They pointed out that the annexation policy contradicted the US Constitution and the Monroe Doctrine. But frequently arguments were voiced that revealed their true motives. For example, Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia said: "With that tropical climate and cheap Asiatic labor ... it would be impossible for the American sugar producer to compete with Philippine sugar... Their development will doubtless enrich the syndicates and trusts that will invest their capital there for that purpose.''^^1^^

Finally, Gold Democrats, closely associated with Big Business in the Northeast, disagreed with the ruling party over forms and methods of expansion. They feared that colonial expansion would lead to conflict with major European jsowers in the course of which the military weakness of the United States would be displayed. Relying on American economic power, they rejected the expansionists' assertion that trade follows the flag and proposed a dollar expansion whose model had been already offered by the Open Door Policy in China (for example a millionaire Andrew Carnegie).

The problem of anti-imperialism also attracted the attention of

Congressional Record, 56th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 33, Part 2, pp. 1309-1310.

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very existence of the Republic.''^^1^^ The Democrats condemned the colonial war in the Philippines. However, the element of propaganda and, to a large extent, the demagogy in the party's foreign policy platform were clearly displayed in practical suggestions. If the American Anti-Imperialist League called for immediate independence of the Philippines, the Democrats in effect proposed to make the Philippines a US protectorate for an indefinite period of time: "First, a stable form of government; second, independence, and third, protection from outside interference, such as has been given for nearly a century to the Republics of Central and South America.''^^2^^

After the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty, the American protectorate which was in effect established over Cuba, for whose freedom the United States allegedly waged the war against Spain, acquired the form of an occupation regime. That was why many Americans spoke out for Cuba's independence. The Democratic platform urged: "We demand the prompt and honest fulfilment of our pledge to the Cuban people and the world that the United States has no disposition nor intention to exercise sovereignty jurisdiction, or control over the Island of Cuba," but an important reservation was added: "except for its pacification.''^^3^^ It may be assumed that the reference was to the radical national liberation movement.

The Democrat platform proclaimed isolationism to be its basic principle alluding to Jefferson's behests.^^4^^ Yet the Democrats insisted on supporting the Monroe Doctrine which had been interpreted in a new way by the US Secretary of State Richard Olney as early as the Anglo-Venezuelan conflict of 1895 and proclaimed the legitimacy of establishing US hegemony in the Western hemisphere. Only a few years later President Theodore Roosevelt came forward with the Big Stick policy in the countries of Latin America.

Finally, the platform of the Democrats harshly criticized militarism: "It will impose upon our peace loving people a large standing army and unnecessary burden of taxation, and will be a constant menace to their liberties.''^^5^^ At the same time it favored

J Ibid., p. 113.

3 Ibidem.

National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 113.

Ibid., p. 115. ~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 113.

``trade expansion by every peaceful and legitimate means,"^^1^^ i.e. affirmed the profits of commercial and economic expansion.

The political platform of the Democratic Party on questions of foreign policy put the Anti-Imperialists in an extremely difficult position. Not only financial power and tradition were behind the Democratic Party. As had been the case in their struggle against the Populists, the Democrats now borrowed the slogans of the Anti-Imperialists lending them much more moderate meaning.

The question of the American Anti-Imperialist League's position in the elections was finally settled at the convention in Indianapolis which opened on August 14, 1900. The Anti-Imperialists did not trust Bryan; they could not forgive him for approving the US war against Spain in 1898 and his vote for ratification of the Paris Peace Treaty in February 1899. Besides, most of the AntiImperialist leaders belonged to the Republican Party and approved of the gold standard. Loud voices were raised for a separate AntiImperialist ticket in the elections. The founding of a new party was favored by such influential persons as the prominent Liberal Carl Schurz and outstanding pacifist from New England Moorfield Storey. A leaflet entitled the Third Ticket Movement said: "The Democratic Party is conducting a direct attack upon the institutions of our country. It advocates dishonest money and threatens an integrity of the judiciary. The Republican Party is conducting an indirect attack upon the institutions of our country ... abroad, it wages a wicked war of conquest in violation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.''^^2^^ But most of the convention delegates decided that the third ticket candidates had little chance of winning and chose the lesser evil. The resolution they adopted urged voting for the candidates to Congress who opposed the policy of territorial seizures, and also for Bryan, regarding this as the most effective way of crushing imperialism.''^^3^^

This was the beginning of the end. After the Republican victory in the 1900 elections, the Anti-Imperialist League movement ceased being a significant force. Though the leagues were yet to do much in making public the cruelties perpetrated by the American military in the Philippines, their collapse was inevitable. The President of the

~^^1^^ Ibidem.

M. Storey Papers. Leaflet of Third Ticket Movement. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.

~^^3^^ Literary Digest, August 25, 1900, p. 215.

198 Chapter Nine

American Anti-Imperialist League Moorfield Storey wrote a few years later to the League secretary Erwing Winslow: "The truth is that if we come down to facts, you and I are substantially the Anti-Imperialist League.''^^1^^

The reason for the downfall of the anti-imperialist movement lay primarily in its contradictory principles and social heterogeneity, but the two-party system also played a major role in its collapse, just as it had done in the case of the Populist Party.

The antimonopoly movements suffered defeats, but they did not disappear without a trace. They forced the two leading bourgeois parties to adopt a number of positive reformist demands. The Democratic Party was the first to incorporate in its platforms such planks as prohibition of the use of court injunctions in labor conflicts, and income tax on Big Business, election of senators by direct vote and so on. Subsequently, these demands, as well as the principle of dollar instead of colonial expansion, were also adopted by the Republican Party and were implemented in the momentous reforms of the early 20th century.

At the same time, the smoothly functioning two-party system fulfilled its major role of safeguarding the social and political foundations of the capitalist system. The locomotive of the US political mechanism, rolling along the two-party track, crushed the radical social movements of the coming epoch of monopoly capitalism---the Populist Party and then the anti-imperialist movement.

THE TWO-PARTY

SYSTEM IN THE

PROGRESSIVE ERA

The United States' entry upon the stage of imperialism at the turn of the century was accompanied by in-depth social, economic and political processes in American society. The monopolies were firmly established in the leading industries and became the decisive factor in the country's economic development. A total of 82 trusts with an aggregate capital of over 4 billion dollars were formed in 1899-1902.^^1^^ Intensive concentration of production was attended by a merging of industrial capital with finance capital. Two major monopoly combinations---John Morgan's group and John Rockefeller's group---controlled most of the fixed capital and bank deposits. Corporate relations with politics became increasingly close. By making large contribution to both the Republican and the Democratic parties and by directly bribing politicians, various monopoly combinations sought to make use of the government machinery for their own ends.

The first years of the new century were marked by a new wave of social protest in the United States. Despite a certain decline in the farmer movement at the turn of the century, largely due to the split in the Populist Party, the movement still had real force. However, the social and political movement for progressive reform in the states was increasingly coming to the forefront; it involved chiefly urban strata of society: the working class, part of the petty and middle bourgeoisie, and liberal circles of the intellectuals. The beginning of the 20th century also saw such actions by American workers as the long strike of 1902 in the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, the Colorado War waged by miners in the Rocky

~^^1^^ Congressional Record. Volume XXXVI, GPO, Washington, 1903, p. 1788.

~^^1^^ Quoted from: M. C. Lanzar, "The Anti-Imperialist League", Philippine Social Science Review, July 1933, pp. 226-227.

200 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 201

Mountains from summer 1903 to September 1904 and others.

A campaign was launched in Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, California, and Iowa for democratizing the election system (direct election of senators, holding referenda, and legislative initiative, registering lobbyists), paying compensation to workers in case of accident, providing equality for women, reforming the fiscal system, and restricting arbitrary actions by the railroad managers.

Bourgeois reformists in states were supported by the muckrakers---authors and journalists exposing the predatory ways in which the corporations grew rich and the bribery and corruption in ruling quarters.^^1^^ The mass opposition democratic movement was highlighted by the struggle against monopoly domination of the country's economic and political life because, as Lenin indicated, imperialism meant that "the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.''^^2^^

The intensity of democratic protest and the real opportunity for the appearance and growth of new, third antimonopoly parties, on the one hand, and the objective need to stabilize and strengthen the big bourgeoisie's political positions and the capitalist order as a whole, on the other, faced the two-party system with the task of developing principles of the rulling class's social and political maneuvering and realigning political forces in view of the need to carry out a series of reforms. In American historical studies the period in US history from 1900 to 1916 is known as the Progressive Era.

This transition period in the rise of the principles of bourgeois reformism proved to be complicated and harrowing for the twoparty system. Fierce clashes between the old but still persisting individualistic ideas and the new but still vague tendencies toward social maneuvering had a two-pronged result. To a certain extent slowing down the party-political realignment, the struggle, at the same time, contributed to the emergence of new watersheds in the two major bourgeois parties. A considerable impact on the rise of reformist trends in the two-party mechanism was exerted by the

The muckraker movement is specially analyzed in the following monograph: LA. Belyavskaya, Bourgeois Reformism in the USA (1900-1914) Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1968, pp. 47-73 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", Collected Works, Vol. 22, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 205.

newly emerging ideological and political current, Bryanism, named after the chief ideologist and acknowledged leader of the Democratic Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, William Jennings Bryan. A combination of incipient moderate bourgeois reformism and echoes of Populist antimopoly critique in the mid-1890s clearly reflected the new tendencies both in the Republican and the Democratic parties and served as an ideological catalyst for the party-political realignment in the two-party system.

The first symptom of this process was the disappearance from the political scene of the Silver and Gold Democrats as well as the Silver Bug Republicans. After the act on the gold standard was adopted in 1900, these alignments no longer conformed to the objective tasks of the party-political struggle. This was confirmed, for example, by congressional debates in 1902 concerning the use of silver on a par with gold in the currency of the Philippines. The overwhelming majority of Silver Democrats and Silver Bug Republicans, who only recently would have invariably supported such a measure, on this occasion either opposed the bill or declined from taking part in debates.

The anti-trust theme which, in the 1890s, had been channelled primarily into the struggle for silver, came to the forefront of the political struggle in view of stepped-up monopolization in the early 1900s and indicated the rise of new political groups in the twoparty system. Progressive factions began to emerge on the left wing of the Republican and the Democratic parties, and their members, despite their small numbers, spoke out against the absolute power of the corporations. The backbone of the factions consisted of former Silver Bug Republicans and Silver Democrats. As a rule, members of the progressive groups actively displayed their opposition to the trusts and reflected the interests of mostly small and middle agrarians in the West and South, and also of the radically minded petty-bourgeois intelligentsia who still hoped to do away with the hated power of the monopolies and return to the times of free enterprise.

The ideology and politics of the rising factions were largely influenced by the ideas of William Bryan who insisted that the federal government should ban corporations controlling production and prices. He regarded trusts as the result of ``bad'' legislation and of political and legal rather than economic factors. Therefore, Bryan associated their abolition with adoption of a series of anti-

202 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 203

trust acts. This would restore the principles of free enterprise whose existence, he believed, was incompatible with trusts. The government was assigned an insignificant role: to maintain laissez faire, such was its basic regulating function in Bryan's view.^^1^^

Having adopted Bryan's idea of breaking up the trusts, its advocates launched a campaign in the Congress to strengthen anti-trust legislation at the turn of 1902, soon after the Republican President Theodore Roosevelt had come to power. In the Republican Party these positions were held by congressmen Charles Littlefield, Louis McComas, Knute Nelson, and Moses Clapp, in the Democratic Party by congressmen John Shafroth, Ashton Shallenberger, and Francis Newlands elected to the Senate in 1903, and senators Thomas Patterson, Joseph Rawlings, Alexander Clay and others. It was the amendment to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, submitted to the House in 1901 by progressive Republican Little field and envisaging imprisonment for activities violating it, that served as an impulse for political debates in the highest legislative body on the problem of trusts. Democrats from among Bryan's supporters also made specific proposals to extend the jurisdiction of the act to entrepreneurial companies "tending to create a monopoly," to have businessmen present accounts on their companies to government bodies, and lift the jurisdiction of the act from labor unions.^^2^^

The struggle to strengthen the Sherman Act intensified in the 57th Congress when Republican Senator McComas of Maryland proposed to extend its jurisdiction to the shipyards in January 1902. The amendment was then supported by 24 Democrats and 7 Republicans. Finally, in 1903 Littlefield submitted an anti-trust bill obliging the newly emerged corporations engaged in interstate commerce to present annual reports on deposits, employees, organization and management to the Interstate Commerce Commission. The progressive-minded Democrats went even further proposing to extend the operation of the bill to existing corporations with a total capital of more than one million dollars.

William Jennings Bryan, Under Other Flags. Travels, Lectures, Speeches, 1905, The Woodruff-Collins Printing Co., Lincoln, Nebraska, pp. 75, 269; Speeches of William Jennings Bryan, in two volumes, Vol. II, Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1909, pp. 87-88.

~^^2^^ Congressional Record. Volume XXXIII, Part 7, GPO, Washington, 1900, pp. 6495- 6496, 6500, 6502.

Congressional Record. Fifty-Seventh Congress, Second Session, Volume XXXVI, pp. 1743. 1744.

The proposals of the progressive Republicans and Democrats were easily torpedoed by members of influential conservative groups in both parties chiefly expressing the interests of major industrialists and bankers in the Northeast. The conservatives on the right wing of the political spectrum strongly adhered to the individualistic doctrine, firmly resisted any reforms aimed at restricting the activities of the trusts and sought to set up a reliable legal barrier against federal interference.

In the early 1900s prominent party boss and chairman of the National Committee Marcus Hanna was the acknowledged leader of the conservative faction in the Republican Party. The Republican Old Guard in Congress was led by Senator Nelson Aldrich and Speaker of the House of Representatives Joseph Cannon. In the Democratic Party the backbone of the conservative group consisted of former Gold Democrats such as senators John Smith, Thomas Martin and Congressman Joseph Williams. Their ranks were joined by staunch conservatives such as David Hill, William Cockran and a number of others who, in protest against the possible nomination of Bryan as presidential candidate, had left the party in 1896, and later, under the impact of anti-imperialist rhetoric, returned to the bosom of the Democratic Party during the Spanish-American War. With the break-up of the faction of Silver Democrats, the group was joined by the faction's former members headed by Josephus Daniels and many Southern advocates of the doctrine of individual liberalism---senators Donelson Caffery, William Smith, congressmen John Maddox, Dudley Wooten and others. They associated Bryanism exclusively with the monetary problem which had been consigned to oblivion now. In the final count, this was instrumental in their return to conservative faction. Members of the conservative groups sought not only to keep their parties on the right wing of the political spectrum but also to destroy Bryanism as an ideological and political trend in the two-party mechanism as a whole. "It becomes our duty ... to unite all elements of opposition to radicalism,"^^1^^ wrote the ex-governor of New York David Hill in February 1901.

However, despite their real strength in both parties, conservative ranks thinned gradually. As the problem of trusts moved to the fo-

~^^1^^ "D. Hill to R. Hipp. February 21, 1901", David B. Hill Papers, Albany, N. Y., New York State Library, Manuscript Division, Box 7, folder 13.

204 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 205

refront, a complex process got underway in both parties: the supporters of moderate reforms began to dissociate themselves from conservative groups of Republicans and Democrats and establish independent factions. Members of these factions expressed the interests of liberal circles of the big and middle bourgeoisie and intelligentsia who saw the need for reforms in society which was shaken by profound social conflicts. There were trends of different hues in the groups. On the whole, however, they sought to resist not so much the supporters of individualistic principles, with whom they often found common grounds, but rather the progressive factions in order to hold back the rising wave of political radicalism in the parties and defuse the explosive situation in the country by raising the social role of the federal government and carrying through a series of bourgeois liberal measures.

Theodore Roosevelt could be justly regarded the leader of the moderate reformist group in the Republican Party: he had risen to the office of the chief executive in September 1901 following the assassination of President William McKinley. Roosevelt was just the man America needed at the time: his political aspirations were in line with the contemporary requirements. A realist in politics Roosevelt realized that a bourgeois party should adapt the machinery of government to the general needs of Big Business and tone down the antimonopoly movement. The President's position was clearly evident in his attitude to the problem of the trusts. Roosevelt believed that the trusts were an inevitable result of development and laid emphasis on their economic efficiency. At the same time he proposed to raise certain obstacles to supercapitalization which threatened the operation of the competition and free enterprise system and put an end to the most notorious methods of trust business activity. As a top priority objective, the President suggested introduction of publicity in trust operations, i. e. some measure of federal control over the growth and activity of corporations. The idea of government regulation was included in the political arsenal of the Republicans in the first years of the Roosevelt Administration and became a focal point of interparty rivalry.

Such congressmen and senators as Jacob Gallinger, George Hoar, William Mason, and George Perkins grouped around the President. In the motley crowd of reformist Democrats more moderate views were held by congressmen William Sulzer, Henry Clayton, senators Joseph Blackburn, Augustus Bacon and others. It

was through their efforts that the Sherman Act was watered down by means of the so-called anti-trust legislation of 1903, in effect only a shadow of the afore-mentioned bills and amendments submitted by progressively minded Republicans and Democrats.

The rise of groups identical in ideological and political appearance was not simultaneous in the Republican and the Democratic parties. If the coming to power of Theodore Roosevelt, who based his domestic policies on bourgeois reformism, largely hastened the forming of new factions among the Republicans, the position of the minority party in the Congress, the inconsistency of and blind adherence by Bryan and some of his fellowers to the silver panacea somewhat retarded the political realignment in the Democratic Party. The presidential nomination of a bleak politician and rabid conservative, Alton B. Parker, in 1904, while the wave of social protest was sweeping through the country, made the Democrats' chances for success slight indeed.

The Republicans won a landslide victory. The electorate supported Roosevelt because his administration pursued a flexible reformist course, while the protectionist statements he made during the campaign rehabilitated him in the eyes of the industrial corporations. Following Parker's telegram to the Democratic National Convention in which he said he would withdraw his candidacy were the gold standard plank not included in the party platform, the Western states (which had voted for Bryan in 1896 and 1900, and most of whose population consisted of farmers and the urban petty bourgeoisie) gave preference to the President. As a result, Roosevelt received 7,600,000 votes and the Democrat candidate slightly over 5,000,000 votes (about 38 percent). Parker was successful only in 13 states in the South, the traditional domain of the Democrats. The Republicans gained a sizable majority in the House receiving 250 seats, while the Democrats had only 136. The balance of forces in the Senate was: 57 Republicans against 33 Democrats.^^1^^

The election campaign of 1904 demonstrated the growing influence of the Socialist Party. The Socialists' political platform set forward some of the working class' demands: to reduce the work day and raise wages, introduce insurance in case of an accident, nationalize transport and communications, outlaw child labor,

~^^1^^ Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1970, Partll.U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1975, p. 1083.

206 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 207

impose a tax on incomes, inheritance and land ownership, grant legislative initiative and municipal self-government. The Republican and Democratic parties, the platform pointed out, "alike struggle for power to maintain and profit by an industrial system which can be preserved only by the complete overthrow of such liberties as we already have, and by the still further enslavement and degradation of labor.''^^1^^ Despite the fact that the Socialist Party took part in elections only for the second time, lacked large funds and fully worked-out tactics of the election campaign, its candidate Eugene Debs got 402,000 votes. The Socialists were supported by the most radically minded (in terms of reforms) members of the Democratic Party's former electorate, chiefly from among the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the Western states, who protested in this way against the candidacy of Parker. Some of those who used to vote Democratic also went over to the Populists who received 114,000 votes or twice as many as in 1900.^^2^^

About 260,000 votes went to the petty-bourgeois Prohibition Party which,in addition to temperance, advanced such demands as an income and inheritance tax, legislative initiative and referenda, government regulation of trust activity, and a standing tariff committee, a ban on child labor, election of senators by direct vote and conservation of natural resources.^^3^^ The tendency for third parties to become more popular in a context of growing reformist moods in the country's political structure indicated that the masses were more actively searching for their own, radical alternative to the course of the Republicans and Democrats.

Theodore Roosevelt's second term was marked by a broader program of bourgeois reforms. The need for reforms was spelled out above all by the rising public anti-trust discontent in the country. "Millions of men were out of work. Those fortunate enough to have jobs were dared to form unions. Courts enjoined them, police busted their heads, their leaders were jailed (and new men took their jobs),"^^4^^ wrote E. L. Doctorow in his best selling novel Ragtime which drew a broad picture of American society in the early 20th century. The strike movement of the working class had indeed assumed a large scope at the time. Many of the strikes in those years

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 140.

~^^2^^ Historical Statistics, Pt. II, p. 1073.

Historical Statistics, Pt. II, p. 1073; National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 136-137. ~^^4^^ E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime, Bantam Books, Toronto, 1976, p. 44.

were led directly by a new militant working class organization Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies as they were known) founded in 1905. Its appearance heralded the rise of a left center in the labor movement. The Wobblies immediately began a struggle against the policy of collaboration between employers and employees pursued by the leadership of the American Federation of Labor headed by Gompers. Rejecting the old principles of trade unionism the IWW leaders pointed out the need to unionize workers according to industrial principle, which enabled them to involve the broad masses of unskilled workers.^^1^^

The growth in the influence of the Socialist Party reflected the declining faith of ordinary Americans in the leading bourgeois parties. Major replenishments for the Socialist Party were supplied not by the workers, but rather by petty-bourgeois elements who also felt the full brunt of monopoly oppression. Propaganda of socialist ideas was largely carried on by left-wing Socialists. The movement for progressive reforms in the states was growing deeper and involving broad sections of farmers and the urban petty and middle non-corporate bourgeoisie.

In December 1904, without waiting for his official inauguration, Theodore Roosevelt sent a long message to Congress containing specific proposals to extend programs of social and economic change. In essence, the demands boiled down to the need for stronger federal control over the trusts, extending the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Office on Corporate Affairs, moderate railroad rates on freight, measures to improve working conditions for certain categories of workers, legalization of labor unions, and the conservation policy in natural resources.

The cornerstone of the new reform program proposed by the President was the issue of federal regulation of activities of railroad companies and functions of the Interstate Commerce Commission set up in 1887 to control freight rates on railroads. Congressional debates on the problem started in 1905-1906 when William Hepburn proposed a bill confirming the right of the Interstate Commerce. Commission to control business operations of railroad companies and fix their freight rates. The commission's

~^^1^^ For further detail, see: L. I. Zubok, Essays on the History of the Labor Movement in the United States: 1865-1918, Sotsekgiz Publishers, Moscow, 1962, pp. 382-383 (in Russian).

208 Chapter Ten

1. The signing of the Constitution

(1787) prepared the ground for the

struggle between parties

membership was expanded and the salaries of members raised. At the same time the bill set up a court of transportation consisting of five circuit judges for the entrepreneurs to appeal against the commission.

The latter watered down the already moderate bill. Nevertheless, it was sharply criticized by the conservatives of both parties whose objections boiled down to two arguments. First, they asserted, federal interference contradicted the law of economic development and led to nationalization and socialism. Second, government control, as they saw it, was contrary to the US Constitution. Also unconstitutional was the setting up of the Interstate Commerce Commission which combined legislative and judicial powers without any reason for it. In their interpretation, railroad companies should operate according to state acts and rulings by district courts.

Debates on the Hepburn Bill accelerated divisions in the Democrats' motley reform camp and strengthened progressive moods in the Republican Party. While in the course of discussions of the 1902-1903 anti-trust legislation the Democrat supporters of reforms on the whole acted as one bloc despite certain differences, now the picture began to change: representing mostly the states of the Far and Middle West, advocates of railroad nationalization, led by senators Henry Teller of Colorado, Francis Newlands and William Stone of Nevada, rejected the bill on the grounds that its sole purpose was to achieve a compromise with conservative Republicans. The bill was denounced from the same positions by progressive Republicans Thomas Carter of Montana, Francis Warren of Wyoming, Jonathan Dolliver of Iowa, and Knute Nelson of Minnesota. Robert La Follette (Rep., Wisconsin) was elected to the Senate in 1905. He submitted several amendments to the bill restoring the penalty of imprisonment for violations of the interstate commerce law, fixing a differential, and prescribing both a maximum and a minimum rate, and relief of railroad employees.¹ This compelled the supporters of nationalization to soften their hard line on the Hepburn Bill. However, La Toilette's defeat provoked a new wave of indignation among them and was decisive in the outcome of the voting for most progressives.

The passing of the Hepburn Act showed that the Democratic Party was more interested in the problem than the Republican

Congressional Record, Volume 40, Part 8, p. 7083.

t. mat was occasionally now me federalists and the Republicans settled their counts in Congress

5. The Anglo-American War (1812-1815) undermined the positions of the Federalist Party

who least of all wanted that war. The unfortunate Hartford Convention enabled the

Federalists' adversaries to accuse them virtually of treason

7. Daniel Webster, a prominent politician and eloquent public speaker, advocated the interests of the Northeastern bourgeoisie

8. The Webster-Hayne debate, the first sign of the coming conflict

9. John Calhoun, a politician" who

began with advocacy of strong

federal government and ended with

the nullification doctrine, was a

long-time spokesman for the

Southern interests

10. Despite the CiviJ War the political struggle continued in the North, albeit in a strongly modified form

11. South Carolina announces secession

12. Henry Clay, the father of the American System,

speaks in the House of Representatives

13. The Northerners' idea of the South and the war against Mexico

Mm

UNION

MERCURY

EXTRA:

Ka

JI> >O •tolly

F08 PfflBT f THE MM STATES

ABWUNCOLN

UNION

*&*HrMH^>MWt -*t"ffT1t TtnTT "" t HtgTI njat •! Hill. I M MH1I •'*^ll»l

14. A Republican view of President Andrew Johnson's behavior

15. The Lincoln-Douglas debate : a realignment is under way--- new parties and new leaders come to the fore

16. That was how Reconstruction was imagined by radical Republicans who wanted to involve former slaves into political life

17. In 1877 troops were called out against the railroad workers on strike. A new mass political force appears in the country---the working class

18. William Tweed, a typical boss of the party machine in big cities

19. The Senate at the end of the 1880s

20. Coxey's Army marches on

Washington. The 1890s were a time of

broad democratic movements

'- j_ j

21. The problem of the big cities became part and parcel of the country's political life

22. Socialist candidate Eugene Debs campaigning

23. Robert La Follette, one of the first

Progressives

if-

24. The presidential campaign of 1916

21.

25. William Bryan's style of electioneering

26. The 1920s brought not only prosperity but a revival of reactionary organizations of the Ku Klux Klan type

27. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most outstanding American politician of the 20th century

28. One of FDR's adversaries, Huey Long, a demagogue and reactionary politician 29. The end of prosperity. The crisis shook not only the country's economy but also the political system

30. Little Rock was the first crack in the consensus of the 1950s

31. Martin Luther King, leader of the

black Americans' civil rights campaign

in the 1960s

32. 33.The democratic movements of the 1960s hit the two-party system

34. Local activists remain vitally important for the operation of political parties

34.

36. The New Hampshire primaries mark the start of the election campaign

37. That is how political opponents saw Ronald Reagan during the 1984 election campaign (cartoon from the Miami News, 1984)

Party. The results of voting in the Senate on the bill and all the amendments discussed showed that they were supported by 78 percent of the Democrats and only 33 percent of the Republicans. This was largely due to the fact that the shattering defeat of 1904 had accelerated the separation of advocates of moderate reforms from the conservatives in the opposition party. Roosevelt's victory, on the other hand, had temporarily consolidated the ranks of conservative Republicans in Congress still further and strengthened their resistance to reforms. That was why the reformist Democrats played a major, often decisive part in implementing the program of change outlined by the President.

The 1908 presidential election was another landmark in the evolution of the two-party system during the Progressive Era. The country's ideological and political development in the first years of the 20th century showed that, despite a large number of actions in the parties, the policy of reforms had on the whole become the decisive factor in shaping the quality of Republicans and Democrats. An analysis of the contemporary political platforms of both major parties demonstrates that they were on the whole written in the same reformist spirit, although the Democrats put forward broader demands and their election rhetoric often sounded more radical (for example, the urge to do away with the monopolies). Having listed the ``achievements'' of the Roosevelt Administration in the election platform (Roosevelt was quite popular among the liberal bourgeois public), the Republicans confirmed their readiness to carry on changes aimed at ending the abuses by the trusts, extending the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission, adopting a series of measures in labor legislation (the 8-hour work day at government enterprises, insurance in case of an accident and a ban on child labor), improving working conditions for farmers, intensifying the policy of conserving natural resources and so forth.

The Democrats' platform hardly differed from the above, also promising Americans to extend anti-trust legislation and the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, reorganize the banking system by setting up national banks, introduce an income tax and other measures in a reformist vein. Bryan's victory at the Democratic National Convention, wrote the reformist press in those days, really reflected the situation in the opposition party where a turn to conservatism became impos-

15-749

210 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 211

sible after the disaster of 1904.^^1^^

The Republican candidate William Howard Taft won the 1908 presidential election primarily as the successor to Theodore Roosevelt's program of moderate change. At the same time the results of the election campaign confirmed that, despite defeat, the Democratic Party would offer stiff competition to the Republicans in vying for political power in the nearest future. The Democrat leadership's reformist strategy, and the effort to overcome the party's sectional, agrarian bias (previously the party's mass base was in the Western and Southern states) began to yield the first fruit. There was evidence of this in the growing sympathy of the electorate for the Democrats in a number of urbanized states in the Northeast and Midwest. Bryan won in 69 counties of the states which gave preference to the Republican candidate. Particularly significant in this respect was a certain increase in the Democratic vote in Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Iowa where the party traditionally did not enjoy the voters' support. Democrats managed to have their governors elected in six states where Taft had been ahead---Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Illinois and New York. The Democratic faction in the House was reinforced by 8 new members from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The balance of power was as follows: 219 Republicans and 172 Democrats in the House and 61 Republicans and 32 Democrats in the Senate.^^2^^ The party's turn to the increasingly urgent labor question served to extend its sphere of influence in geographical terms. The Democrats also put forward demands aimed at introducing the rudiments of labor legislation (restriction of the use of injunctions in labor disputes, an 8-hour work day at government enterprises, establishment of a labor department, recognition of the workers' right to unionize and restriction of immigration). These and other demands were previously made by the labor union leadership in the widely known bill of grievances in 1906. All of this served to bring them closer to the American Federation of Labor headed by Samuel Gompers. While gradually drawing the labor unions into the orbit of its influence, the Democratic Party, at the same time, overlooked a large army of nonunionized workers most of whom continued to support the Republicans by tradition.

~^^1^^ The Outlook, July 18, 1908, p. 583; The Arena, August-September 1908, p. 151. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, pp. 707, 709.

The drawing closer of Republicans and Democrats on matters of principle in domestic policy within the two-party system in the early 1900s was accompanied by a further polarization of forces in each of the two major parties, which, to a large extent, determined the specific and the general features of the partypolitical struggle in this period. So, the struggle between parties gave way to the struggle between individual factions on various aspects of domestic policy. Under the circumstances the activity of the factions constituting a more important element in the organizational structure of the American bourgeois parties, acquired a relatively independent significance. A favorable situation was created for the rise of interparty coalitions. Objectively, interparty blocs strengthened the minority party, i.e. the Democrats, and undermined the positions of the Republicans. The process was particularly apparent in 1909-1910 when both Republican and Democrat advocates of reform waged a joint struggle in Congress against usurpation of power by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Joseph Cannon and during the discussion of the Elkins anti-trust bill.

The Democratic Party managed to somewhat rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the voters and even strengthen its influence despite its four defeats by supporting the Republican left wing--- the progressives, by resolutely voting at the decisive moment on the Cannon removal, by adding numerous amendments to the Elkins bill which actually eliminated the articles contradicting the 1890 Sherman Act, and extending the operation of the 1906 Hepburn Act. Congress in this period saw some elements of the Democrats' independent alternative approach to reforms which had been laid down in the party's 1896 platform (trusts, taxation, banking reform, tariffs and democratization of political life). This was largely prepared by the growth of the Democratic reformist camp dominated by the advocates of moderate liberal change. That also showed that the opposition party was gradually abandoning its line of following in the wake of the ruling party's policy. After a long break (since 1892) the Democrats won the 1910 congressional elections and restored their majority in the House (228 Democrats against 161 Republicans).^^1^^ Once the op-

~^^1^^ Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, 1975, p. 1083.

15*

212 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Kra 213

portunity to directly rather than indirectly influence the legislative process was in their hands, the Democrats became less inclined to continue a dialogue with the Republicans.

The interparty struggle in 1909-1910 had serious consequences for the Republicans as well. The growth of factionalism in the party during its long stay in power was a major symptom that a profound inner crisis was in the offing. Under President Theodore Roosevelt the process was to some extent held in check by the reformist course which helped retain a delicate balance between the progressive and conservative forces. When Taft came to power in 1909 the balance was finally upset. Many advocates of progressive change increasingly went over to open conformism with the conservatives, which gradually eroded the moderate reformist faction. As the tide of social discontent was rising high in the country, the President's policy of gradually curtailing reform demonstrated its total untenability and contributed to a further strengthening of the left-wing progressive group whose members refused to follow the conservatives' lead more and more frequently. Taft and his followers refused to compromise with the progressives and even regarded them as more dangerous than the Democrats, urging their expulsion from the Republican Party.

Another sign of the erosion which was eating away at both the Republican Party and the entire two-party mechanism was the formation in 1911 of the National Progressive Republican League on the basis of which the Progressive Party was subsequently founded during the presidential elections of 1912. Among its most active members were Robert La Follette, Frank Norris, Ray Baker, William White, Hiram Johnson, and Amos and Gifford Pinchot. Most of the league's demands, i.e. control of the trusts and railroad companies, bank reform, conservation of natural resources, introduction of a system of primaries, direct election of senators, legislative initiative and referenda in effect merely repeated the platforms of the progressives in many states. Nevertheless, organizational establishment of the new league, whose activities were directed by the progressive left-wingers of the Republican Party, served as an impulse for a further shift to the right of the political course pursued by the Taft Administration. Conservative trends became even more pronounced in the party at the beginning of 1912 when it became obvious that the leadership of the league which had by right belonged to the progressive Senator from

Wisconsin Robert La Follette could be contested by Theodore Roosevelt, an active advocate of moderate reformism. The popularity of the ex-President was still so high that soon the league was joined by many Republicans, supporters of New Nationalism, a reformist doctrine proclaimed by Theodore Roosevelt back in 1910 and based on the postulates of political philosopher Herbert Croly proposed a year earlier: rejection of democratic government and establishment of strong central government (the latter principle, incidentally, was promoted by Alexander Hamilton). Essentially, New Nationalism did not go beyond the program of political and, to some extent, economic development implemented in the last years of Roosevelt's presidency.

Several remarks should be made in describing the two-party system in 1912. The growing centrifugal tendencies in the Republican Party led to a certain shift of the two-party tandem toward conservatism. At the same time, in view of the internal political realignment and evolution of the Republicans, the Democrats became the chief carriers of reformist ideas in the two-party system. The split in the Republican Party at the height of the election campaign, and the emergence from its ranks of an independent Progressive Party which opposed its broad program of liberal reforms to the conservative course of the Taft Administration, contributed to a certain decline of interfactional fighting and a temporary prevalence of partisan principles within the Democratic Party. This laid the ground for leaving the opposition benches, while the moderate reformist group became a kind of connecting link between factions in the Democratic Party. Adherence to partisan principles on the eve of the presidential elections, with all interfactional differences, as a rule, receding to the background, may not be regarded as a sign of the cohesion of party ranks. Nevertheless, under the circumstances, it proved impossible to set up new and recreate old interparty blocs of the Republicans-Democrats type. Finally, the establishment and operation of the Progressive Party reflected the deep-going political crisis at the root of which lay the contradictions of capitalist society and the growth of the working-class movement. Lenin wrote: "The new party is a product of the present epoch, which raises the issue of the very existence of capitalism.''^^1^^ More

V. I. Lenin, "The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections", Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 403.

214 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 215

than four million people voted for the Progressives in 1912, while 3,400,000 voted for the Republican candidate William Taft.

A major success was scored by the Socialist Party in the elections. This party included a wide range of democratic demands in the election platform: nationalization of transport, communications, banks, land, overcoming unemployment, improving conditions of work, introducing government insurance, freedom of speech, the press and assembly, direct election of the President and elimination of his veto right, abolition of the Senate, abrupt curtailment of the Supreme Court's functions, equal rights for women, etc. About a million votes were cast for the Socialist candidate Eugene Debs in 1912.^J Thus, a considerable part of American voters supporting social reforms were released from the grip _Of the two-party system. The credibility crisis of Americans in respect to the two major bourgeois parties was also reflected in growing absenteeism: only 58.8 percent of US citizens eligible to vote went to the polls in 1912.

In 1912 the Democratic Party worked out a broad reformist political program which favorably contrasted with the verbose and vague election platform of the Republicans. Seeking to strength en the party by attracting advocates of progressive reforms, the Democrats included in its platform such demands as an income tax, direct election of senators, and only one term in office for the President. The platform also contained many socialist demands: an 8-hour work day at government enterprises, a department of labor and recognition of labor unions.^^2^^ This was obviously intended to win the votes of radical workers and petty-bourgeois urban sections. The strongly worded anti-trust plank, i.e. the demand to disband the trusts inherited from Bryan which Woodrow Wilson subsequently adopted as the basis of his New Freedom program,^^3^^ enabled the Democrats to dissociate themselves in the election campaign

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 168, 188-191; Historical Statistics, Part II, p. 1073.

~^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 168-173.

Differences between Bryan and Wilson in interpreting the trust problem became apparent later: although both of them regarded monopoly as the absolute opposite of competition, Wilson did not deny the objective character of the process of production concentration and believed that the policy of "disbanding the trusts would not infringe upon the interests of Big Business. (Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom. A call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People, Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, 1914, pp. 165,180.)

from the Progressive Party and its political motto, the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt who still advocated federal regulation of corporate activity. Elimination of monopolies or their regulation by government---such was the general scheme of interparty polemics until the day the president was elected. "Millions of capital which he (Theodore Roosevelt---Ed.) proposes to regulate will as certainly seize the Government as the slave-holding oligarchy seized the government,"^^1^^ wrote the New York World.

The idea of breaking up the trusts was developed by Wilson too. The ghost writer of his election speeches was the prominent lawyer Louis D. Brandeis who subsequently became the chief architect of the New Freedom program and exerted a tangible impact on the government's domestic policy-making, particularly in the economic field. "The Democratic Party insists that competition can be and should be maintained in every branch of private industry; that competition can be and should be restored in those branches of industry in which it has been suppressed by the trusts... We believe that no methods of regulation ever have been or can be devised to remove the menace inherent in private monopoly and overweening commercial power.''^^2^^ "Those who wish to support these monopolies by adopting them under the regulation of the government of the United States are the very men who cry out that competition is destructive... What has created these monopolies? Unregulated competition. It has permitted these men to do anything that they chose to do to squeeze their rivals out and to crush their rivals to the earth. We can prevent those processes by remedial legislation, and that remedial legislation will so restrict the wrong use of competition that the right use of competition will destroy monopoly," Wilson echoed Brandeis.^^3^^ Proceeding from this assumption the future President attempted to discredit the entire reform program proposed by the Progressive Party, including its demands in labor legislation, the introduction of which, and here he closely followed Brandeis' doctrine, was a top-priority problem, but the task could not be fulfilled if the monopolies held sway.

Wilson's election campaign relied on the sufficiently stable financial support of Big Business in the Northeast. First place in this

~^^1^^ New York World, October 30, 1912.

Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Ed. by Urofsky M. and Levy D., in 5 volumes, Vol. II, State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y., 1972, p. 688.

~^^3^^ A Crossroads of Freedom. The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Woodrow Wilson, edited by John Wells Davidson, Gale University Press, New Haven, 1956, p. 79.

215 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Kra 217

zation of the two-party system, but failed to eliminate its roots linked to the unfinished process of political realignment on a reformist foundation. The reasons why the process was not completed stemmed from a number of objective and subjective factors. First, the relatively stable functioning of the economy which had not yet gone through the unprecedented crisis of 1929-1933 prevented the firm establishment of statist principles in the two-party mechanism. That was why the ideological and political doctrine of bourgeois reformism remained undeveloped leaving an imprint only on some, mostly domestic, economic and not social problems of the United States in the 1900s. Second, the final realignment of the two-party system along the lines of reformist policy was hindered by the limited scope of means and methods for bourgeois social maneuvering. Measures to restrict the abuses of the trusts and railroad companies, democratization of the political order ( primaries, direct election of senators, etc.), and conservation of natural resources coexisted with direct suppression of worker strikes, with the growing tax burden on the working people by means of tariff policy, and finally, with overt racism shown by a number of reformist politicians in the South who urged the repeal of 15th amendment to the Constitution which gave Afro-Americans the right to vote. Third, the rise and activity of the Socialist Party, the Progressive Party, and small bourgeois parties somewhat hastened the process of ideological and political reorientation of the Republicans and the Democrats releasing from their influence broad sections of the electorate supporting social reforms, and thereby prevented integration of sufficiently broad groups of the electorate within the two-party system. Finally, the ideological principles of classical liberalism had deep roots in the two-party system. The conservatives in both parties were capable of offering firm resistance to the reformist course, particularly since the advocates of moderate change, most of whom adhered to regulated individualism, frequently followed their lead.

The party-political realignment along reformist lines received a fresh impulse in the years of Woodrow Wilson's first term (1913- 1917). The new President wanted to play down social tensions in the country by politically adapting to the process of social and economic development. He saw his chief task in combining the advantages of the new economic organization and traditional postulates of classical liberalism and in uniting classes by means of

respect by right belonged to New York: according to the estimates of Rolla Wells, treasurer of the National Democratic Committee, individual contributions to the party fund had exceeded 400,000 dollars by the end of October. The total election fund of the Democratic Party was 1,135,000 dollars, i.e. was nearly twice as large as in 1908.* "It is the only campaign in 40 years in which a considerable majority of all the newspapers in America have supported the Democratic ticket,"^^2^^ a prominent Democrat from North Carolina Joseph Daniels wrote a few days before the elections. In a situation when the Republican Party was split and strong antimonopoly moods prevailed among the petty bourgeoisie, middle classes and the liberal intelligentsia, this undoubtedly influenced the outcome of the elections.

Wilson won without polling a majority of votes (41.8 percent). As compared with 1908 he was ahead of Bryan in New England and some states in the South, but fell short of Bryan's performance in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska and Kansas, i.e. in the states where the Progressives and the Socialists had a strong influence in 1912. This meant that they managed to lure part of the electorate away from the Democrats, as a result of which Wilson won while having lost the support of about 116,000 voters who had been for Bryan four years earlier.^^3^^

Wilson's victory was largely facilitated by a split in the Republican party. However, it would be an exaggeration to think that a simple sum of votes cast for Taft and Roosevelt, which exceeded the Democratic total by 1,400,000 votes, could have changed the outcome. The success of the Democratic Party was quite natural. Many years in the opposition contributed to its gradual restructuring along bourgeois-reformist lines and rallied it to the search for an alternative to the ruling party's domestic political course and helped extend its social base. Wilson's New Freedom was the logical outcome of the process. Having absorbed the reformist ideas of Bryanism, the party lent them a more moderate ring, thereby adapting them to the long-term needs of monopoly capital.

The Democrats' coming to power toned down the destabili-

~^^1^^ Historical Statistics, Part II, p. 1081.

~^^2^^"J. Daniels to E. Webb, October 31, 1912", E. Webb Papers, Library of North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Division, box I, folder 59.

~^^3^^ Historical Statistics, Part II, p. 1073.

218 Chapter Ten

Two-Party System in the Progressive Era 219

mutual adaptation and common interests. As a bourgeois-reformist doctrine, a cornerstone of the ruling Democratic Party's domestic policy at the time, Wilsonism absorbed a number of Bryanist demands: break-up of trusts, a bank reform, improvement of the fiscal system, a ban on court injunctions, introduction of elements of labor legislation, direct election of senators, etc. At the same time, the President opposed the idea of extended authority of executive power to the fear Bryan and his followers had of an energetic central government. As Wilson saw it, domination of free enterprise while the government played a passive role, on the one hand, led to the rise of plutocracy, and on the other, provided a powerful impetus for the socialist movement. The President's flexible political course of making concessions to the working masses so as to preserve the power of the monopolists, reflected the overall trend in the ruling class toward effecting social, economic and political reforms. This trend was aptly described by Lenin: "Not liberalism versus socialism, but reformism versus socialist revolution---is the formula of the modern `advanced', educated bourgeoisie.''^^1^^

The Democrats' idea to implement reforms in order to tone down the contradictions of capitalism was realized in the progressive legislation of 1913-1916. In the economic field this was reflected above all in reforms such as the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the Underwood Tariff Act, measures to improve the taxation system and provide credit for farmers. In the social field the New Freedom policy secured legal recognition of labor unions, an 8-hour workday on railroads and regulation of seamen's labor. However, the fact that the Wilson Administration's political course to some extent answered the interests of the masses did not change its overall social tendency---to defend the interests of Big Business, in particular from active regulation by the government which was reduced to the role of a business advisor. The promonopoly spirit permeated the basic act of New Freedom, the Federal Reserve Act, which boiled down to centralization and concentration of the monetary system in the hands of the finance oligarchy. The measures taken in the labor sphere were, in the final count, also aimed at stabilizing and strengthening the position of the monopolists. In the New Freedom

doctrine the main contradiction of the capitalist system---the contradiction between labor and capital---was overshadowed by conflict between the monopoly and non-monopoly bourgeoisie.

The dominating positions in the Democratic Party were still held by the moderate reformist group which was the President's chief support in implementing the political program and which secured for a number of years the balance between progressive and conservative forces in the party. The most prominent members of that group were Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Postmaster General Albert Burleson, and the President's advisors Edward House and Louis Brandeis.

Gripped by a prolonged political crisis, the Republicans at the time could not produce a program for active struggle against the reformist platform of the Democrats. Such attempts boiled down to individual proposals by progressive Republicans, but on the whole they failed to go beyond the framework of the Democrats' social and economic legislation. Hence more frequent attempts by progressive Republicans to start an interparty dialogue with them. However, the heyday in the progressive movement had passed and the conservatives who had finally seized the commanding heights in the Republican camp after 1912 succeeded in neutralizing their influence in the party by 1914. Thus, the Republicans remained faithful to the course aimed at curtailing the program of bourgeois reforms adopted back in 1909 by President Taft. In the past, when there was a strong antimonopoly movement in the country, the position adopted by the party leaders in effect made their claims to political power groundless. Now the situation began to change.

The beginning of World War I in 1914 brought foreign policy to the forefront just as it had happened during the SpanishAmerican War. The Republicans lost no time in taking advantage of this turn of events and in the election campaign of 1916 directed a stream of severe criticism at Wilson's neutrality policy. In addition, the leadership of the opposition party skilfully made use of the fact that with the beginning of the war the bourgeoisie increasingly rallied together before the danger of a new outbreak of political discontent in the country, while many members of the moderate reformist wing of the Democrats believed the reform program had been completed. Having risen to the Republican bait, the Democrats used the neutrality slogan to unite the party in which dif-

V. I. Lenin, "Reformism in the Russian Social-Democratic Movement", Collected Works, Vol. 17, 1974, p. 229.

220 Chapter Ten

ferences concerning Wilson's socio-reformist legislation had grown stronger after 1914. The tactical move undertaken by the Democrats proved correct and they managed to retain the party's political supremacy: as compared to 1912 the number of votes cast for Wilson increased by 3,000,000. Once again, as in 1912, the Democratic platform showed that the party adhered to bourgeois reformism. Moreover, if four years earlier the platform did not go beyond the framework of regulated individualism and demanded government interference only to maintain the necessary conditions for the spontaneous operation of production and the market, in 1916 it favored, albeit in general terms, government regulation of production and private property relations as a whole.

The 1916 elections marked the beginning of the Democrats' retreat from the policy of reforms. Now the policy of reforms had exhausted itself in the eyes of Big Business, and this development gave unheard-of advantages to the Republicans who managed during the 1916 election to win back most of the votes in the Northeast where the monopoly bourgeoisie and financiers were particularly influential. Preparations for war forced the administration to go further in regulation than the majority of the bourgeoisie had expected. That was why the regulation of the economy and social relations along war lines met with the almost unanimous disapproval of the Democrats of all trends. It was also one of the reasons for the subsequent political defeats suffered by the Democratic Party and largely paved the way for the Republican return to power in 1921.

THE TWO-PARTY

SYSTEM: FROM

WORLD WAR I TO THE

GREAT DEPRESSION

World War I and its social and economic consequences once again aggravated the crisis tendencies in the development of the two-party system which had been dampened somewhat by liberalbourgeois reformism in the Progressive Era. The war tremendously enriched the monopoly bourgeoisie. It abruptly increased the US share in the world economy and turned America, formerly a debtor of European countries, into the leading international creditor. The economic upsurge caused by the war stepped up the concentration of production and capital still further. By the early 1920s more than 50 percent of industrial workers and over 66 percent of industrial output in the United States were in the hands of the largest monopolies.

Further concentration and monopolization of economic activity resulted in intensified exploitation of the working people and glaring inequality in the distribution of national wealth. In 1918, in the "Letter to American Workers," Lenin painted a vivid picture of gross social contrasts in imperialist America: "America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in level of development of the productive forces of collective human endeavour, in the utilisation of machinery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At the same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.''^^1^^

The country's rapid industrial development, the enormously

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 62.

222 Chapter Eleven

Two-Party System: World War I to Great Depression 223

increased power of the financial oligarchy, and intensified monopoly exploitation---all this led to an exacerbation of social contradictions and raised the class struggle to a higher level.

The impact of these domestic factors was supplemented by the strong ideological influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. The working people of America saw that Soviet Russia was undertaking to solve the country's most urgent social, economic and political problems.

The political consciousness of the US working class had grown under the impact of major changes in the life of American society and the ideas of the October Revolution. This was seen first of all in the founding of the Communist Party of the USA. The party constituted a force on the political scene which challenged the bourgeois two-party system and put forward a revolutionary program for socialist transformation of society.

The mass working-class movement also made a major step forward in its development. The workers put forward not only the demands that had become traditional for the proletariat in the developed capitalist countries (an 8-hour workday, the right to unionize and collective bargaining) but also radical slogans such as nationalization of certain key industries and transport. Even the American Federation of Labor could not remain indifferent to this militant program. The 1920 AFL Convention adopted a resolution demanding "Government ownership and democratic operation of the railroad systems.''^^1^^

The struggle of democratic forces for independent political action also entered a new phase. A major landmark in the development of this movement was that the working class began to play a more active and independent part in it than ever before. In November 1918 the Chicago Federation of Labor urged the workers of the whole country to stop supporting both bourgeois parties and to form an independent working-class party. The Federation's leadership drew up a program of profound social and political transformations aimed at restricting the domination of the monopolies. The program was to underpin the party's future platform. The most important planks were: nationalization of railroads, hydropower plants and some other industries and transportation systems; higher

~^^1^^ The American Labor Year Book 1921-1922, edited by Alexander Trachtenberg and Benjamin Glassberg, Vol. IV, The Rand School of Social Science, New York, 1922, p. 133.

taxes on Big business; legislation establishing an 8-hour workday and minimal wages; the right to unionize and to collective bargaining; a government system of social insurance; democratization of the US political system, and an end to the intervention against Soviet Russia.^^1^^

The movement to set up an independent working-class party sprang up on the basis of this anti-monopoly platform. The National Labor Party was constituted in November 1919 at a convention of left-wing groups in Chicago. It was transformed into the Farmer Labor Party in July 1920 after several radical groups of farmers and progressive intellectuals had joined it.

In addition to the left wing, a more moderate trend existed in the democratic movement. Its ideologists also came out against the domination of the monopolies, put forward a program of progressive reforms and sought independent political action which, however, they preferred to undertake within the framework of the bourgeois parties. Using the system of primaries, they nominated their own candidates independent of the party bosses on the Democratic or Republican ticket and sought to secure their election to Congress or local government bodies. Edward Keating, editor of Labor, the railroad unions' weekly, argued: "We have something in America that they have in no other country in the world, and that is the primary... The primary law renders the formation of new parties unnecessary for the reason that whenever the people wish to renovate one or both of the old parties they may do so by the simple expedient of taking advantage of the primary.''^^2^^

The unions of railroad workers played the leading part in the moderate wing of the democratic movement. They were supported by some of the farmers, the urban petty and middle bourgeoisie and progressive intellectuals. The tactical line they adopted rested on the experience gained by the Non-Partisan League, a radical farmer organization set up in 1915 in North Dakota. The Non-Partisan League scored a major victory in the elections of 1918. Having entered their candidates into the Republican Party ticket, the League won all the main administrative offices in North Dakota and

~^^1^^ See: The American Labor Year Book 1919-1920, edited by Alexander Trachtenberg, Vol. Ill, The Rand School of Social Science, New York, 1920, pp. 200-201, 438- 439.

Nathan Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States. 1828-1928, Russell & Russell, New York, 1961, p. 371.

224 Chapter Eleven

Two-Party System: World War I to Great Depression 225

secured an absolute majority in both chambers of the state legislative assembly.

A series of important democratic reforms was carried through in North Dakota in 1919-1920. State government set to building public grain elevators and flour mills to exclude monopoly intermediaries. Workers and farmers were granted loans to buy homes on easy terms. Railroad tariffs as well as interest rates on debts were reduced, a minimum wage was fixed and a law passed to compensate workers for on-the-job accidents.^^1^^

The Non-partisan League met with the fierce resistance of monopoly capital. Nevertheless, the League's popularity spread far beyond the borders of North Dakota and by early 1920 its branches had sprung up in 15 Western states and its membership exceeded 1,000,000.

The moderate wing of the democratic movement was also joined by various groups known as progressives. An active role among them was played by the Committee of Forty-Eight, a group of former members of the Progressive Party of 1912 which had broken up by then, staff members of The Nation and The New Republic, and also a group of left-wing Republicans headed by Robert La Follette.

The radical farmer groups and the petty-bourgeois progressives came out actively for united actions by workers and farmers to do away with monopoly domination. A leader of radical farmer circles in the Far West, William Bouck, who was closely linked to the unions, said in 1920: "The policy of the Washington State Grange is friendly relations with and between all those who toil... Our members are looking forward to that time when our country and state shall be emancipated politically from the monopolistic regime of the present ... and we look forward confidently to the near future when the worker who produces all the useful things of the world shall come into complete control of our State and Nation.''^^2^^

The new political situation urged the ruling circles to consolidate the class domination of Big Business. Mass and vigorous action by the workers, the broader demands they made, the growing impact

The New Day in North Dakota. Some of the Principal Laws Enacted by the Sixteenth Legislative Assembly. 1919, Industrial Commission of North Dakota, Bismarck, N.D., 1919.

~^^2^^ Journal of Proceedings of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, FiftyFourth Annual Session, Boston, Mass., 1920, Springfield, Mass., 1920, pp. 83-84.

of socialist ideas, the revival and rapid development of the movement for independent political actions by the working people---all this made it imperative for the ideologists of the two-party system to produce an alternative both to the ideas of the October Revolution in Russia and to the platform of the working class and democratic movement in America itself. However, this required a major party realignment: the two-party system had to break with the theory and practice of rugged individualism, to extend the government's role and pass over to the methods of bourgeois reformism as a liberal version of state-monopoly regulation of the economy and social relations.

The tendency toward a party realignment along these lines was apparent back in the Progressive Era in certain liberal-reformist measures carried out under the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson administrations. In the extraordinary conditions of World War I, the United States made another step along the road of state-monopoly development. When America entered the war, the War Industries Board and several military economic boards for particular industries, which controlled all the basic branches of the economy, were set up. In December 1917 the Wilson Administration decided to put railroads under temporary government control.

Government intervention in social relations also increased in the war years. The War Labor Board consisting of representatives of employers and unionists was set up in 1918. It aimed primarily at preventing strikes and establishing collaboration between labor and capital.

State-monopoly capitalism continued to develop in the United States after the end of the war as well. Although the Wilson Administration began gradually to dismantle the federal agencies for war regulation, government control remained in a number of important industries and transportation systems, and federal expenditures were maintained at the high level of the war years.

As state-monopoly capitalism was taking root, it produced corresponding forms of bourgeois ideology. The Wilson Administration still attempted to operate in line with the ideology of neoliberalism providing for active government interference in the economy and partial liberal reforms in the social sphere. In a context of growing class struggle caused by the general crisis of capitalism and the ideological impact of the October Revolution, the policy of liberal-bourgeois reformism was particularly necessary

226 Chapter Eleven

Two-Party SystL':r World War I to Great Depress;••'. ^i.''^^1^^"

Wilson in late 1919-early 1920. A tight-knit group of delegates from employer associations blocked the approval of proposals by union delegates to legalize labor unions and collective bargaining. Following prolonged debates, the conference ended practically without any results.

Wilson's statements in favor of liberal legislation evoked a hostile response in Congress where a stable majority was won by the Republicans after the midterm elections of 1918. Reflecting the views of the leading groups of monopoly bourgeoisie, the Republican faction in Congress demanded that the President's powers be restricted, government control over the economy eliminated at an early date and no experiments in the New Freedom spirit allowed in the future. In 1919 the Republican Party inflicted another blow against the Democrats rejecting Wilson's foreign policy program. Refusal of the Senate to ratify the Versailles Peace Treaty meant a victory for the isolationist foreign policy proposed by the Republicans. Its main principles were US rejection of military and political alliances with European countries and vigorous foreign economic expansion.

Faced with the direct challenge, Wilson adopted an extremely inconsistent position. On the one hand, he stubbornly defended his program of international cooperation within the framework of the League of Nations and rejected the foreign policy of isolationists who opposed any military and political alliances with European countries. On the other hand, he failed to propose a specific program of social reform to counter the Republicans' reactionary domestic policy and only made a few liberal gestures.

The faltering and inconsistency of the Democratic political course in the first postwar years were not accidental. Wilson's speeches reflected the real class essence of neoliberalist statism aimed primarily at strengthening the capitalist system. The head of the White House unequivocally declared that any liberal reforms in a democratic society should be accomplished only "through the orderly processes of representative government" and those who attempt to go beyond that framework and resort to revolutionary methods of struggle are "enemies of this country" whose suppression is the prime duty of the government.^^1^^

The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents of the United States 1790- 1966, Volume III, p. 2608.

for consolidating the hold of Big Business, and President Woodrow Wilson was well aware of the importance of skilful social maneuvering. In a message to Congress in December 1919 he said: "The great unrest throughout the world, out of which has emerged a demand for an immediate consideration of the difficulties between capital and labor, bids us put our own house in order. Frankly, there can be no permanent and lasting settlements between capital and labor which do not recognize the fundamental concepts for which labor has been struggling through the years.''^^1^^

So, Wilson repeatedly urged the Congress to legalize unions and collective bargaining, reject interpretations of the anti-trust legislation which infringed upon the interests of labor unions, and recognize the right of workers to strike. Otherwise, in the President's words, "capital and labor are to continue to be antagonistic instead of being partners.''^^2^^

Thus the tendency, which had emerged in the Progressive Era, toward a party realignment and adoption by the bourgeois parties of the ideology and practice of state-monopoly capitalism continued to exist in the war years and immediately after it. However, it soon became obvious that the tendency was on the decline, bringing another crisis in the development of the two-party system ever nearer.

The objective basis for this was the growing strength of the United States in the world economy and tremendous enrichment of monopoly tycoons. Having gained strength and confidence during the war, the leading groups of the monopoly bourgeoisie once again resorted to the dogmas of rugged individualism they cherished and prepared for a decisive attack against the working people's rights seeking to deprive them of all their gains. Under the circumstances, Wilson's liberal statements on the so-called equal partnership between labor and capital and recognition of the working people's elementary rights encountered the unconcealed resentment of the most important bourgeois groups.

Resistance by Big Business was the chief reason for the failure of the National Industrial Conference twice convened by President

~^^1^^ The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents 1790-1966, Editor: Fred L. Israel, Volume III, 1905-1966, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1967, p. 2605.

~^^2^^ The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson. War and Peace. Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Public Papers (1917-1924), edited by Standard Baker and William E. Dodd, in two volumes, Vol. I, Harper Brothers Publishers, New York, 1927, p. 487.

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Two-Party System: World War I to Great Depression 224

In line with that social and political philosophy, the Wilson Administration cracked down on the "dangerous radicals" in the working-class and democratic movement. It accused them of sympathizing with revolutionary Russia and seeking to transfer the principles of Bolshevism hated by the bourgeoisie to the United States. The ballyhoo around the "red danger" reached its highest point in early 1920 when police raids against the radicals ordered by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer swept the country.

It was in this context that pogroms were initiated by such ultrareactionary organizations as the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan and fundamentalist groups of the Protestant Church. Acting under a false slogan of "defending Americanism," the jingoists severely persecuted everyone who dared to cast even the slightest doubt on the official dogmas of the American way of life.

Tougher domestic policies and the climate of intolerance to all manifestations of radicalism had an extremely unfavorable effect on prospects of liberal social legislation the need for which was pointed out by Wilson. Virtually the only step taken by his administration along these lines was adoption of the 19th amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote. On the whole, an obvious shift to the right occurred in the administration's social and economic policy in 1919-1920. This was demonstrated with particular force in the 1920 law discontinuing government control over railroads, returning them to their former private owners and guaranteeing the railroad companies high profits.

The political situation in the country changed significantly due to the shift by the leading groups of the monopoly bourgeoisie to a reactionary political course, refusal of the Republican majority in Congress to enact any liberal reforms, and the gradual retreat of the Democratic Administration from the policy of bourgeois reformism. These changes were already in evidence during the 1920 election campaign. True, the election platform of the Democratic Party still featured the rhetoric of the Progressive Era. It laid emphasis on the role of government regulation and praised the social and economic policy of the Wilson Administration.^^1^^ Nevertheless, the Democrats' shift to the right resulted in the growing unpopularity of the President and his party in the eyes of voters. When the economic crisis broke out in summer 1920 bringing new calamities to the

~^^1^^ See: National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 215.

**

working people, the position of the Democrats became utterly hopeless. The Republicans skilfully took advantage of the situation.

The strong traditions of individualism also played a major role in the outcome of the election campaign. The government regulation the Wilson Administration had resorted to in the extraordinary conditions of the war, was more often regarded as a temporary deviation from the natural course of development. That was why the Republican slogan of Back to Normalcy proved to be very popular among voters in 1920.

It was under these circumstances that the Republican Party won the elections. The new administration of President Harding included members of Republican conservative groups. The most important role among them was played by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and Secretary of Trade Herbert Hoover who expressed the interests of Big Business. No wonder the political course of the new administration proved to be so conservative. The administration firmly opposed the policy of government regulation. In his First Annual Message to Congress in December 1921 President Harding declared that it was absolutely impermissible to allow "excessive grants of authority and an extraordinary concentration of powers in the chief Executive.''^^1^^ The Republicans demanded an early return to the truly American principles of rugged individualism. These ideas were most clearly expressed by a prominent Republican Henry Cabot Lodge. In a speech in the Senate on July 21, 1921, he said: "I think at this time the more we take the United States out of business and the less we put it in the better.''^^2^^

According to the above precepts the Harding Administration in a short period of time completed the elimination of wartime government regulation agencies started by the Wilson Administration. The federal agencies controlling the most important sectors of the economy were closed. The government actively supported the anti-union efforts of the employers. Attorney-General Harry Daugherty declared: "I will use the power of the government to prevent the labor unions of the country from destroying the open shop.''^^3^^

The new policy had extremely unfavorable consequences for

The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, Vol. Ill, pp. 2616-2617. Congressional Record, Volume 61, Part 4, GPO, Washington, 1921, p. 4156. ~^^3^^ William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity 1914-1932, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958, p. 99.

230 Chapter Eleven

„, ...

Two-Party System:

World War 1 to Great Depression 231

workers and farmers, because it deprived them of any hope for government aid. As to the monopoly bourgeoisie, despite the curtailing of the government's social and economic functions, it gained unlimited opportunities to receive federal subsidies. A generous gift made by the administration to the monopolies was the tax act of 1921 which slashed the maximal rate of the excess-profit tax on the very rich. The super-protectionist Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922 was also passed in the interests of the monopolies. The monopolists obtained all kinds of privileges through their contacts in the Establishment. They did not even stop at violating the law and embezzling government funds. It had been a long time since Washington witnessed such an unbridled orgy of bribery and embezzlement.

The Republican administration's domestic policy remained the same under Calvin Coolidge who succeeded Harding as president. In the First Annual Message in December 1923 Coolidge firmly defended the principle of "personal responsibility" of each American for the results of his or her actions. The implementing of this principle was combined with unqualified vindication of the monopolies. "The business of America is business," is how the President described the basic principle of his policy. The Coolidge Administration perceived its basic purpose in serving the interests of business and unconditionally fulfilling all its desires.

The policy of the Republican Administration was shaped exclusively in the interests of monopoly capital. It took no account of the needs of the working class, farmers, and urban petty bourgeoisie. It was natural that the masses of ordinary Americans were appalled at the Republican reactionary course. In summer 1921 a resident of Chicago wrote to President Harding: "If Mellon or Hoover swore on a stack of Bibles that they were working for the good of the populace, I would not believe them. Certainly your cabinet has not the confidence of the people and you are losing it also. Do not consider this as an idle threat. If Big Business does not get out of the intimate affairs of government there is going to be trouble from the people of America.''^^1^^ Such moods were widespread at the time. This was why the mass popular movement sweeping through the United States after the end of the war continued at

~^^1^^ National Archives, Washington, D.C., Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, Record Group No. 16, "N. Crosby to Warren Harding, July 6, 1921''.

I

the beginning of the 1920s as well.

An attempt was made in the early 1920s to unite the antimonopoly forces on a national scale by further broadening the social base of the democratic movement and promoting the trend toward independent political action. In February 1922 a national federation of different trends in the democratic movement was set up under the name Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA). It was headed by the leaders of the railroad workers unions, but it also included the Farmer Labor Party and other leftwing groups.

The CPPA platform provided for nationalization of railroads, public control over coal mines and hydropower resources, higher taxes on Big Business, direct election of the President, and restriction of the Supreme Court's powers. At the same time the leadership of the CPPA rejected the left-wing proposal to set up an independent mass party of the working people and sought to channel the mass drive for independent political action into supporting the progressive candidates on the tickets of the two bourgeois parties.

In the course of the 1922 elections the leaders of the CPPA managed to achieve some measure of success in pursuing their tactical line. Several prominent progressives (Robert La Follette, Lynn Frazier, Smith Brookhart and Burton Wheeler) were elected to the Senate on the Republican and Democratic tickets. The CPPA leadership proclaimed the results of the elections a triumph of progressivism. They managed to weaken the positions of the advocates of a mass third party and win over the majority in the democratic movement.

In the 1924 elections the CPPA intended to pursue the same tactical line. However, the hopes that at least one of the two candidates from the main bourgeois parties would be acceptable were dashed. The election platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats, and their presidential nominees---Calvin Coolidge and John Davis---proved to be extremely reactionary. That was why an independent convention of the CPPA was held in Cleveland in July 1924.

Many delegates to the convention were very radically inclined. Senator Lynn J. Frazier of North Dakota said: "Farmers and laborers have in the past been kept out of politics while the big business interests went in. I am glad to see the people are waking

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Two-Party System: World War I to Great Depression 233

up, and hope they will kick out the grafting politicians.''^^1^^ Congressman Fiorello La Guardia continued in the same vein saying that he had come "to let you know there are other streets and other attitudes in New York besides Wall Street.''^^2^^

These speeches were hailed by the delegates. However, the political awareness of most of them was insufficient. For that reason the leaders of the CPPA managed to avoid discussing at the convention the issue of founding an independent third party and pushed through a resolution to nominate Senator La Follette for the presidency on a platform he himself submitted.

La Follette's platform in the 1924 elections was a progressive document. It provided for nationalization of railroads and hydropower projects, higher taxes on Big Business, legalization of unions and collective bargaining, a ban on court interference in labor conflicts, public works for the unemployed, cheap credit for farmers, wide democratization of the US political system, and rejection of imperialist policies and militarism.^^3^^

Nomination of Senator La Follette and his radical platform were supported by many labor organizations. Leaders of the railroad brotherhoods launched a money raising campaign in the unions for his election. For the first time in its history, the AFL leadership officially supported an independent candidate for the presidency. The movement in support of La Follette also involved a considerable part of farmers in the West and groups of pettybourgeois intellectuals in the big cities of the Northeast.

The call for united action by the working class and farmers in the struggle against the monopolies underlay La Follette's campaign. In a radio broadcast in September 1924 he said: "I do not claim that the interests of the farmers and the industrial workers are always identical. But I do maintain that their prosperity, happiness and economic freedom are menaced by a common foe, and that they must take common political action to meet it.''^^4^^

Thus, an important step forward in developing the anti-- monopoly struggle in the United States was made in 1924. The La Follette movement indicated some progress in overcoming the tradition-

~^^1^^ The New York Times, July 6, 1924.

~^^2^^ New York Herald Tribune, July 5, 1924.

^^3^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 252-253. La Follette's Magazine, September, 1924, p. 134.

al disunity of workers and farmers. Industrial workers played a more important part in the democratic movement than ever before.

The election campaign of an independent candidate of the democratic forces pointed to the growing crisis in the two-party system. A considerable part of the voters was getting out of its reach. For that reason both the Republicans and the Democrats attacked the common political enemy. They distorted La Follette's views, called him a red and violator of American institutions. They put strong pressure on voters. La Follette's followers were unable to withstand such an onslaught. Their financial resources were extremely limited, and the refusal to set up a third party deprived them of the opportunity to develop an independent party structure which would, at least to some extent, rival the smoothly running machinery of the Republicans and Democrats. Even under these extremely unfavorable conditions La Follette polled about 4,800,000 votes. But he won a majority only in Wisconsin, which gave him only 13 electoral votes. The Republicans won the election. This was a major setback for the democratic forces.

The response of the two-party system to another attempt at independent political action in 1924 was very unusual. This time both leading parties did not even try to borrow at least some of the ideas proposed by the independent candidate, to say nothing of advancing a constructive alternative to his platform. They completely ignored all the problems raised by La Follette. Never before had the two-party system in the United States been so inflexible in respect to movements outside its framework.

The anomalous behavior of the two-party mechanism was rooted in the fact that upon coming to power the Republicans completely extinguished the tendency toward a party realignment which had been on the decline since the end of the war. The growing power of the monopoly bourgeoisie strengthened the positions of the politicians who promoted the individualist approach to the solution of social and economic problems. These positions became even stronger after the country had entered a period of prosperity. It was at this point that illusions concerning the constructive role of Big Business and its alleged ability to solve all problems facing society without government interference came firmly into vogue.

The ideological precepts of rugged individualism were advocated with particular zeal by the ruling Republican Party. The

234 Chapter Eleven

Two-Party System: World War I to Great Depression 235

1924 election platform, for example, read: "The prosperity of the American nation rests on the vigor of private initiative which has bred a spirit of independence and self-reliance. The Republican Party stands now, as always against all attempts to put the government into business.''^^1^^ The domestic policy of the Republican Administration was based on that principle. In his Annual Message to Congress in December 1926 President Coolidge stated: "The whole theory of our institutions is based on the liberty and independence of the individual. He is dependent on himself for support and therefore entitled to the rewards of his own industry. He is not to be deprived of what he earns... What he saves through his private effort is not to be wasted by Government extravagance.''^^2^^

Accordingly, Coolidge, Mellon and the other leaders of the reactionary Republican Old Guard sought to reduce to a minimum the economic and social functions of the government, which was only to contribute to the most favorable conditions for uncontrolled activities by business, rejecting all attempts at government regulation of its operations.

Another trend within the leading promonopoly wing of the Republican Party sought to modernize the individualist doctrine to some extent. Herbert Hoover was the ideologist of that trend. In a pamphlet published in 1922 he indicated the need "to apply the new tools of social, economic, and intellectual progress" to reduce "the great wastes of overreckless competition in production and distribution.''^^3^^ It was to eliminate these evils that Hoover advertized his system of American individualism which also rejected the idea of government regulation but proposed instead the principles of cooperative action by business. Unlike Coolidge and Mellon, who adhered to dogmas of traditional individualism and spontaneous economic development, Hoover repeatedly said that the laissez faire ideology had grown obsolete and that the United States had entered a period of decisive economic transformation highlighted by the transition from individualism to associative action.

In order to create this specific system of self-regulation of Big Business, the Department of Commerce sponsored numerous trade associations and other employers' organizations which, as

^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 263.

The State of the Union Message of the Presidents, Volume III, p. 2691. Herbert Hoover, American Individualism, Garland Publishing, Inc. New York 1979, pp. 44, 46.

Hoover saw it, would foster the spirit of social responsibility among business circles under government supervision. This gave rise to certain contradictions between Hoover's group and the Old Guard of the Republican Party. But for all their differences, both groups of the party's promonopoly wing were unanimous in their firm opposition to government regulation. Having been nominated the Republican candidate for the 1928 presidential election, Hoover said that in his view the most important accomplishment of the Republican Administration was that "it restored the government to its position as an umpire instead of a player in the economic game.''^^1^^

The openly promonopoly course of the Republican leadership was opposed by the progressive Republicans. After La Toilette's death, Senator George Norris acted as their spokesman most frequently. As before, the left-wing Republicans directed their chief efforts at restricting monopoly domination and establishing effective public control over monopoly operations. But as La Follette's election campaign showed, the seeds of new ideas became increasingly visible in their attitudes, the ideas which were the embryo of a democratic alternative to the bourgeois parties' social and economic course.

Another opposition group in the party---the agrarian conservative Republicans---primarily defended the interests of the agricultural bourgeoisie of the West. They disagreed with the Republican leadership only on agricultural issues, actively campaigning for the McNary-Haugen Bill and the program of equality for agriculture it contained. In this, they frequently acted hand in glove with the Southern Democrats. On all other issues, as a rule, they supported the official course of the Republican leadership.

In the latter half of the 1920s the positions of both opposition groups, particularly those of the progressive Republicans, grew considerably weaker. The economic prosperity and the resultant growth in the social prestige of Big Business enhanced the popularity of the individualist doctrine not only among the petty bourgeoisie but also among a large part of the working class. Hence the growing influence of the reactionary Old Guard and other members of the promonopoly wing in the Republican Party.

~^^1^^ Documents of American History, edited by Henry Steele Commager, Volume II, Since 1898, Appleton-Century Grofts, New York, 1968, p. 223.

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Two-Party System: World War I to Great Depression 237

and made no attempts to really modernize the ideological stand of the Democratic Party, bring it into conformity with the emerging needs of social development, and put forward a program of government regulation. Under the circumstances, it proved impossible to produce a constructive alternative to the Republican political course. It is no accident therefore that the struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans in the second half of the 1920s focussed on ethnocultural, religious and ethical, rather than social and economic problems. This was extremely unfavorable for the Democrats, because such issues as immigration laws, prohibition, the attitude to the Ku Klux Klan, and militant religious fundamentalism provoked acute differences between the party's agrarian and urban factions, widening the split in the party's ranks.

The stronger urban faction gained the upper hand over the weakened agrarian wing. As a result, Al Smith was nominated for the 1928 presidential election despite his being of immigrant stock, a Catholic and a wet. It was quite legitimately pointed out in the Democratic election platform that the depressed state of many sectors of the economy gave no grounds for advertizing prosperity and that the economic policy of the Coolidge Administration benefitted multimillionaires at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. But the Democrats failed to propose an alternative to this reactionary course. As the press saw it, their 1928 platform hardly differed from that of the Republicans. Smith and other Democrats wanted to prove that they could promote the interests of business circles as well as the Republicans did.

Thus the election campaign of 1928 demonstrated that elements of instability in the two-party system were apparent even in the period of prosperity. There was absolutely no alternative in the platforms and specific actions of the Republicans and Democrats and consensus prevailed on the most important questions of economics and politics. Neither of the parties went beyond the bounds of traditional individualism. Both Hoover and Smith as a rule avoided discussing irksome social and economic problems reflecting the instability of prosperity such as the depressed state of agriculture and some other sectors of the economy, the plight of the low-income groups of the population, and so forth. The entire interparty struggle in 1928 boiled down to an actue debate concerning prohibition and the religious affiliation of the Democratic candidate.

The Democratic Party also failed to offer a real alternative to the Republican course. In the 1920s it was torn by an acute factional struggle between the two main sectional groups. One of these was the agrarian wing led by big landowners of the South and part of the rural bourgeoisie of the West supported by broad farmer masses in these areas. William McAdoo and William Bryan were the most influential leaders of the agrarian faction. The other group united round the party locals in the Northeastern states acted under the leadership of the monopoly circles of New York, Boston, Chicago and other industrial centers. Its mass base consisted of the petty-bourgeois strata of big cities in the North and the Northeast and part of the working class, chiefly immigrant workers. The governor of New York, Al Smith, emerged as the leader of this urban faction.

The organizational disunity of the Democratic Party and constant quarrels between McAdoo's followers and Smith's people on the national committee almost completely paralyzed its practical activities. The 1924 Democratic convention nominated its presidential candidate only after two weeks of acute rivalry between the two factions on the 103rd ballot.^^1^^ The situation provoked the concern of many Democrats. However, attempts undertaken in 1924-1925 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and others to strengthen the party organizationally met with the stubborn resistance of the local party bosses concerned primarily with their personal gain.

In the 1920s the social base of the Democratic Party was enlarged by the mass of immigrants who had come to America in the prewar years and settled mostly in the big cities of the Northeast. This led to a gradual urbanization of the party and a strengthening of its Northeastern faction. The change in the Democratic electorate, however, failed to be adequately reflected in the party's ideology and politics. The Democrats made timid attempts to produce an alternative to the Republican course in some issues bearing on social spheres where capitalist stabilization proved to be most precarious (labor policy, agriculture, development of hydropower engineering). Nevertheless, until the late 1920s the party leaders were unable to go beyond the traditional doctrines of individualism

Robert K. Murray, The 103rd Ballot. Democrats and the Disaster in Madison Square Garden, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1976.

I.

238 Chapter Eleven

THE PARTY

REALIGNMENT

IN THE YEARS

OF THE NEW DEAL:

SPECIFICS

AND CONSEQUENCES

In the period of prosperity the Republicans' chances were much higher. Hoover won a landslide victory in the 1928 elections. The Republicans also strengthened their positions in both chambers of the Congress. Having won the elections, they looked forward with optimism. In December 1928, in his last annual message to the Congress, preparing to hand over power to his successor, President Coolidge proclaimed proudly: "The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.'

A year had not passed since the day these words were pronounced when a devastating economic crisis hit America dispelling all illusions about a never-ending prosperity. A fresh exacerbation of all capitalist contradictions compounded the crisis of the two-party system and faced it with the threat of complete breakdown.

The economic crisis of 1929-1933 completely disrupted the operation of the US economic mechanism. In 1932 industrial output dropped by nearly 50 percent as compared with 1929. Farmers' cash incomes dropped from 11,312 million dollars in 1929 to 4,748 million dollars in 1933. By early March 1933 the banking system had in effect collapsed, ruining millions of small depositors. Unemployment reached unprecedented dimensions: even according to official statistics 13 million people were out of work in 1933.^^1^^ Many ordinary Americans were on the verge of starvation. Prominent American historian Robert Kelley has written: "The result was a massive loss of confidence----in the system, in the nation's leaders, and in the American dream. The optimism of the 1920s disappeared under a tidal wave of pessimism.

The situation in the country grew more tense with every passing day. Bewilderment and disappointment gave way to discontent and protest. The more farsighted members of the bourgeoisie watched the growing radicalization of ordinary Americans with concern. "The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever,"³ Franklin D. Roosevelt warned the Establishment. However, the people in power at the height of the crisis were not inclined to heed either warnings or the voice of protest or even common sense. The Hoover Administration tried to retain the air of optimism, while the

Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1957, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1960, pp. 73, 283, 409.

~^^2^^ Robert Kelley, The Shaping of the American Past, Vol. 2, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, p. 586.

~^^3^^ The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Russell & Russell, Vol. 1, New York, 1938, p. 646.

The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents of the United States, Volume III, p. 2727.

240 Chapter Twelve

Party Realignment Under the New Deal 241

Great Engineer (as Hoover was respectfully called in pre-crisis years) himself reassured his fellow-citizens that prosperity was just round the corner. As subsequent events convincingly showed, the numerous impressive statements by the Chief Executive concealed the total lack of recipes to deal with the profound crisis which hit American society.

It could not have been otherwise, because the Republican Administration's political platform was based on rugged individualism. Its ideologists believed that business was the main motive force of social progress and could solve the most difficult social and economic problems on its own, and that free market competition was the only tool which could successfully sustain the stability of American System. However, at the turn of the 1930s American capitalism had reached a point when it could no longer function as a selfregulated system. The World Tomorrow magazine was quite right when it wrote: "To continue building upon the foundations of individualism is to guarantee the collapse of our civilization.''^^1^^ The fact that the administration's fundamental precepts failed to conform to the real state of affairs in the economy resulted in the US government ship drifting helplessly among the enormous waves raised by the crisis.

That the US administration had demonstrated its inability to develop a series of effective anticrisis measures significantly enhanced the part played by the two main bourgeois parties in stabilizing the whole political mechanism of the country. However, the Republican-Democrat party system, which had emerged as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction, coped very poorly with its political functions during this period. As the crisis grew deeper, it became increasingly obvious that the two-party combination could not keep events under its control if it did not give up its traditional principles of individualism. But it was impossible to abandon the fundamental ideological and political postulates followed by the leaders of both parties for many years without a serious party realignment.

While the US economy was sufficiently stable, the ruling circles of the country saw no need at all to introduce changes into the practice of government or the platforms of leading political parties. However, profound internal contradictions existed objectively in

~^^1^^ The World Tomorrow, January 25, 1933, p. 77.

American society even in the 1920s and were bound to surface sooner or later. It was only after the US bourgeoisie and its political leaders had gone through the crash of 1929 and absorbed the negative experience of Hoover's rule, that they realized the need for serious reform which could not be implemented without an abrupt expansion of powers of the federal government and a certain regulation of private enterprise. One would tend to agree with the American scholars who, in studying the realignment of the two-party system at the turn of the 1930s, point out that "importance must be assigned to events after 1932---and particularly to vigorous New Deal policy action.''^^1^^

Having put forward the popular slogan of a New Deal implying a change to the better, the Democrats led by Franclin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) managed to achieve success at all levels. It did not prove difficult to defeat Hoover's party. As Senator Hiram Johnson aptly put it, Hoover was "more unpopular than Judas Iscariot."² It was a much more formidable task to produce a program relying on which it would be possible to conduct national affairs, gain control over spontaneous economic forces undermining the edifice of American capitalism and assemble round the new Democratic leadership the broad but extremely amorphous election coalition which began to form at the time.

In the 1932 election campaign the Democrats still lacked a clear alternative to the Republican Administration's course. Their election platform contained extremely contradictory statements. For example, it said that the Democrats were prepared to effect "a drastic change in economic governmental policies." At the same time, in a traditional individualist spirit, the Democrats came out for a balanced budget and promised "the removal of government from all fields of private enterprise" and "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures.''^^3^^ No wonder two months after the Roosevelt Administration had come to power The Baltimore Sun wrote: "When the entire program is grasped it is an astounding picture, one which no man visualized two months ago,

Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, Nancy H. Zingale, Partisan Realignment. Voters, Parties and Government in American History, Sage Publications, London 1980 p. 259.

~^^2^^ George H. Mayer, The Republican Party 1854-1964, Oxford University Press New York, 1964, p. 421.

~^^3^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 331, 332.

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242 Chapter Twelve

Party Rsalignment Under the New Deal 243

and of which there was scarcely a hint in either the Democratic platform or the Democratic campaign.''^^1^^

From his very first days in office the new Democratic leader got down to actively constructing an alternative program adequate to the problems facing the Democrats. Essentially that program boiled down to radically invigorating the role of government in the social and economic sphere while retaining its overall liberal-reformist thrust. Relying on liberal-statist ideas the Democratic Party managed to set up a ramified mechanism of government regulation of the economy and create a complex social infrastructure in a short period of time (1933-1936).

There are important methodological differences in the approach to the New Deal between Soviet and most American scholars. American historians tend to ignore the objective fact that statist processes underlay FDR's reforms, and exaggerate the importance of FDR himself while underestimating the working-class struggle for progressive social reforms. Soviet historians regard the New Deal as a fundamental change in the country's social advance rooted in the development of American monopoly capitalism into statemonopoly capitalism.^^2^^

A set of important measures aimed at stabilizing the economy was implemented in the first phase of the New Deal; these measures may be tentatively divided into three groups. The first group included legislation aimed at regulating and strengthening the monetary and fiscal mechanism of the United States: abolition of the gold standard; measures to restore the banking system, refinance debts and provide government guarantees for deposits of less than 5,000 dollars. In 1934, the dollar was devalued and the Securities and Exchange Commission was set up to regulate operations on the stock exchange in order to put an end to the runaway speculation in watered stock typical of the 1920s.

The second group of measures adopted in the first phase of the New Deal involved agrarian legislation. The central place here was taken by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration of 1933 directed at raising farmers' incomes by means of higher prices for

~^^1^^ The Baltimore Sun, May 11, 1933.

For greater detail on the subject see: V. L. Malkov, The New Deal in the USA. Social Movements and Social Policy. Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1973; N. N. Yakovlev, Franklin D. Roosevelt: the Man and the Politician, Mezhdunarodniye Otnosheniya Publishers, Moscow, 1965 (both in Russian).

their products. The AAA set up a sophisticated government machinery to reduce the output of staple agricultural produce. For cutting down their output farmers received bonuses paid from a special fund made up of revenues from a special new tax.

The third, and probably the most important, part of legislation in this period involved regulating industrial relations. The new administration's policy was largely embodied in the National Industrial Recovery Act adopted in summer 1933. It consisted of three main parts: (1) streamlining conditions for industrial production; (2) regulation of labor relations; (3) assistance to the unemployed.

Under pressure from the democratic forces the administration took even more deep-going reforms in 1935-1936. Appropriations for public works were sharply increased, the Social Security Act was adopted providing for old age pensions and unemployment insurance, and assistance to farmers was increased, not only to the well-to-do farmers but also to some extent to the low-income groups of the rural population. FDR made a cautious attempt to change the tax system somewhat by a certain increase in the share of persons with high incomes and corporations in total tax receipts. The activities of holding companies were slightly restricted in the sphere of communal services. Finally, in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act was passed providing for collective bargaining by the labor unions.

Thanks to the intense reformist activities, the Democratic Party managed to offset the most negative consequences of the crisis. It also convincingly showed that it had turned into a force better suited to run government affairs because ist rival---the Republican Party---remained on positions of reactionary individualism until the end of the 1930s. Hence the Democrats were the chief motive force behind the party realignment determining its course and many specific features.

The exceptionally rapid, explosive nature of the party realignment was one of its most important specific features. Indeed, having started in 1932, it had been on the whole completed by 1938-1940. Of course, some problems having to do chiefly with the lag in the realignment of the Republican Party still remained, but the outlines of the new Democrat-Republican two-party combination had been shaped quite clearly. In some six to eight years important changes had occurred in the party ideology, balance of power within the parties and between them, the sphere of their sec-

17*

244 Chapter Twelve

Party Realignment Under the New Heal

tional influence and their electorate. These changes had happened particularly rapidly in the Democratic Party.

``Government itself is, of necessity, more complex because all life is more complex,"^^1^^ said FDR. These words could serve as the epigraph to any New Deal legislation and any official national party document approved after 1932. A study of the state and prospects of the two-party system made soon after World War II by a committee of the American Political Science Association concluded: "The Democratic Party is today almost a new creation, produced since 1932. "^^2^^

It is safe to say that in the first three months of the new administration's term in office the social and economic structure of the United States underwent more changes than in the entire preceding decade. The economic crisis of 1929-1933 and aggravation of class conflicts in the country ``radicalized'' the political thinking of the bourgeois liberals^^3^^ and prompted them to undertake quite daring and large-scale social and political experiments.

The changes occurring in American society under the impact of the New Deal reforms were felt even at the time, on the spur of the moment. The journal Nation's Business wrote in May 1933: "America, it seemed, had sharply altered its government viewpoint toward economic matters, and had made swift strides in a new direction. In the history books of later generations that change may take on the significance of an American revolution or a civil war." In the party-political aspect the main innovation was that the Democrats firmly adopted the liberal-statist ideology, moved slightly to the left of the center on the political continuum, incorporated many demands of the masses in their policy-making documents and turned into a broad coalition the leading role in which belonged undoubtedly to the liberal bourgeoisie.

The New Dealers' liberal-statist approach to the solution of basic social problems enabled their party to integrate into its struc-

~^^1^^ The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 5, Russell & Russel, New York, 1938, p. 258.

~^^2^^ Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System, Rinehart & Company, Inc., New York, 1950, p. 25.

~^^3^^ V. L. Malkov, "Slightly to the Left of Center: the General and the Specific in F. Roosevelt's Social Policy", in American Yearbook, 1983, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1983, p. 35 (in Russian).

~^^4^^ Nation's Business, May 1933, p. 13.

ture new contingents of voters highly important from the viewpoint of electoral strategy. The more pronounced multistratal social base of US parties, as compared with the European bourgeois parties, is a distinctive feature of the US two-party system. The heterogeneity of the Democratic Party which was sharply increased as a result of the realignment of the 1930s clearly demonstrated that feature.

The siding of a majority of workers with the Democrats was a major change in the party's electorate. Unionized workers went over to the Democrats more readily: in 1936, 85 percent of CIO members and 80 percent of AFL members voted for Roosevelt. Among non-unionized workers the figure was 72 percent. The pattern was regularly repeated at subsequent elections.^^1^^ As a result, major industrial cities of the Northeast became the Party's reliable mainstays.

The second most important change in electoral party preferences was the about-face of black voters: they went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Roosevelt. In 1936, 76 percent of black Americans who were permitted to vote supported the Democratic candidate.^^2^^ The ensuing situation was a paradox: for some time blacks and Southern whites, who were intrinsically racist, coexisted in one party. Up to the 1960s, despite occasional acute clashes between the Southern Establishment and the national leadership of the Democrats, the latter still managed to simultaneously retain within their sphere of influence the bulk of Southern whites and the black voters.

The Jewish community formerly supporting the Republicans became a major element of the FDR coalition. Not numerically large, the group played an important part in intraparty life of the Democrats securing reliable links with financial circles and the media. Its support was due to a number of reasons. Jewish financiers saw ample opportunities for manipulating capital in growing government expenditures and the new banking policy. The Jewish intellectuals were actively used by FDR to develop new ideas of government. Members of the Jewish community played a significant part in the US labor movement which had firmly linked itself to the

205.

The Gallup Political Almanac for 1946, The Clarke Press, Princeton, 1946, pp. 204, ' Public Opinion Quarterly, March 1941, p. 147.

246 Chapter Twelve

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New Dealers. Finally, the rising fascist threat made FDR's '' internationalist" foreign policy more acceptable to Jews than the Republican isolationism. Since the 1930s the Democratic leadership has greatly valued the support of Jewish voters. The Democratic leaders were frequent visitors to many Zionist clubs. A prominent New Dealer Senator James Murray in a speech to members of the New York Jewish community said: "I wish to assure you that you have strong friends in Washington.''^^1^^ The alliance between these two forces began to" have a notable effect on the development of the two-party system since the mid-1980s.

New groups of the electorate joining the Democrats also expanded the party's sphere of influence geographically. If before the New Deal the Democrats had relied above all on the South and partly on the agrarian states of the West, in the mid-193Os they came to prevail in all the leading sections of the country. In 1932, for the first time since 1912, they won the presidential election in traditionally Republican states such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and South Dakota. The preponderance became even more obvious in 1936 when FDR received 53 percent of the votes in New England, 59 percent in the central eastern states, 60 percent in the Middle Atlantic states, 61 percent in the Midwest, 68 percent in the West, and 76 percent in the South.^^2^^

The Democratic lead becomes even more impressive if we pass from the sectional to the state level. In the presidential elections of 1936 (excluding the Southern states) FDR was ahead of his rival by a margin of 10 percent (almost a landslide by American standards) in 33 states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, i.e. states with a total of 212 votes in the electoral college; by over 20 percent in 19 states; by more than 30 percent in 11 states and by more than 40 percent in three states.^^3^^ The Democrats were also completely predominant at the congressional and local elections.

The Democratic Party naturally underwent serious inner changes after it had firmly established itself as a party of the majority equipped with the ideology of statism. The first thing that meets the eye is the decline in the role played by the Southern wing in

' Congressional Record, Vol. 93, Part 12, p. A 3897. See: Public Opinion Quarterly, September 1940.

Derived from: Edgar Eugene Robinson, They Voted For Roosevelt, Stanford University Press, Standford (Calif.), 1947.

party affairs. The South still remained a mainstay of the Democrats, but as they strengthened their positions in other sections of the country the share of the Dixiecrats in the party structure fell. In 1920-1928 the Southerners made up 56 to 82 percent of the Democratic caucus in the House and 55 to 70 percent in the Senate. As a result of the 1936 elections the corresponding figures were: 35 percent in the House and 34.2 percent in the Senate. When the two-thirds majority rule was abolished the Southerners lost their opportunity to control the nomination of the presidential candidate from the Democratic Party. At the same time the proportion of congressmen elected from urban electoral districts increased sharply from 28.8 percent in 1930-1931 to 46.3 percent in 1937. It was clear that such a situation provoked dissatisfaction among the Southern politicians who were accustomed to playing virtually the decisive role in party affairs. This introduced an element of instability into the Democrats' party life. This was compounded by the actions of a group of conservative Democrats from the Northeastern states led by Alfred Smith, John Rascob, Jouett Shouse and John Davis. Closely linked to the Morgan and Dupont financial empires, these people refused to put up with social and economic statist doctrines in their party. Alfred Smith once said: "I will take off my coat and fight to the end against any candidate who persists in the demagogic appeal to the masses of the working people of this country to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor.''^^2^^ The conservative Democrats believed that FDR's entourage was leading the country to an inevitable downfall and revolution. The conflict reached such scope by 1934 that a break became inevitable. As a result the Liberty League was formed with the purpose of ridding the Democratic Party of the New Dealers.

The movement led by Huey Long was even more dangerous for the stability of the Democratic Party. Being completely unscrupulous he sought power at any price. By means of his demagogic Share-the-Wealth platform Louisiana Senator managed to win to his side the broad sections of poor whites in a number of Southern states, and became an impressive menace for the party national

~^^1^^ Ralph M. Goldman, Search for Consensus. The Story of the Democratic Party, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1979, p. 173.

* History of U.S. Political Parties, ed. by A. Schlesinger, Chelsea House Publishers, Vol. 1, New York, 1973, p. Xliv.

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leadership. Only his assassination in September 1935 removed that problem for FDR.

Erosion of the right wing was more than made up for by what the Democrats acquired on the left wing. Strong support for the Democrats was offered by the labor unions, black and youth organizations. However, they were not directly represented on the Democratic Party leadership, their proxies being left wing liberal politicians (senators Robert Wagner, Huey Black, Elbert Thomas, Edward Costigan, members of the administration Frances Perkins, Harry Hopkins, former progressive Republicans Harold Ickes and Henry Wallace, Governor of New York Herbert Lehman, a member of the brain trust Rexford Tugwell, congressmen John Lesinski, Henry Steagall, Emmanuel Celler, John Dingell and others). The fact that the President himself relied on this faction (particularly in the mid-193Os) lent it specific weight and provided it with broad opportunities for influencing the party's policy-making.

The main rivals of the left-wing liberal group in the struggle for control in the party were the politicians of the moderate-- conservative trend---bosses of the city party machines (Frank Hague, Ed Flynn and Edward Kelly), the leaders of the congressional caucus (Joseph Robinson, William Bankhead, Key Pittman, James Byrnes, Pat Harrison and Sam Ray burn), Vice-President John Garner, and members of the administration Cordell Hull and James Farley. Their attitude to the New Deal may be described in FDR's own words: "They [the leaders of the right center group--- Ed. ] are afraid there is going to be a new Democratic party which they will not like. That's the basic fact in all these controversies and that explains why I will have trouble with my own Democratic party from this time or in trying to carry out further programs of reform and recovery.''^^1^^

As a result of a short but very intense restructuring, the Democratic Party turned into the leading force in the two-party system, remaining essentially a party of the monopoly bourgeoisie. It acquired a new ideological and political image considerably differing from the precrisis model in all respects.

The second specific feature of this realignment was that the components of the two-party system adapted to stepped-up devel-

Roosevelt & Frankfurter. Their Correspondence 1928-1945, The Bodley Head, London, 1968, pp. 282-283.

opment of state-monopoly processes at different rates. If the Democrats adopted the statist methods of solving social and economic problems quite quickly, sufficiently firmly and with relative ease, which enabled them to assume the full responsibility for the fate of capitalism in America, their opponents in the two-party system presented a much more complicated picture.

As a result of the crisis the Republican Party was reduced to the status of a minority party. Initially, however, the leaders of the GOP could not realize the fact, regarding the defeat in the 1932 elections merely as an unpleasant accident. Expressing the opinion of his colleagues, Senator Lester Dickinson, for example, argued in January 1934 that the most reasonable, natural and promising course for the Republicans would be to staunchly follow the traditional party dogmas which had brought the party guaranteed success over many years. "It is much safer to trust experience than experiment,"^^1^^ he maintaind. He was echoed by an influential congressman Hamilton Fish: "The quicker the Republican Party gets back to the early principles of our party, as enunciated by Abraham Lincoln, the sooner we will regain the confidence of the American people.''^^2^^ Speeches by leaders of the opposition abounded in such statements.

It was clear that this approach made it impossible for them to propose an effective alternative to the New Deal. The extent to which the GOP was ideologically and politically helpless at this

Eoint was vividly demonstrated by ex-President Hoover's book pubshed in 1934 under the title The Challenge to Liberty. Outright rejection of the New Deal and hysterical cries about an imminent end to freedom, implying the private monopoly order, and about the country's succumbing to dictatorship, figured prominently on every page. As the only possible alternative to these appalling tendencies the author suggested a return to the principles of true Republicanism on the basis of rugged individualism, a reliable foundation of all of America's epic achievements. Hoover maintained: "We might as well talk of abolishing the sun's rays if we would secure our food, as to talk of abolishing individualism as a basis of successful society.''^^3^^

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 78, Part I.January 11, 1934, p. 427. Congressional Record, Vol. 78, Part 2, p. 2286.

Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1934, p. 27.

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These ideas were strongly advocated by other members of the Old Guard (Ogden Mills, David Reed, Simeon Fess, Arthur Robinson, Henry Fletcher, Bertram Snell and others) who firmly held all the reins of party power in their hands. Hoover's follower Ogden Mills wrote: "We believe that the promise of American life can be fulfilled within the framework of existing institutions, without the destruction of individual freedom, and in accordance with the spirit and purpose of the founders of the Republic.''^^1^^ In line with the above, the Republicans formulated the functions the party would have to perform during what was regarded by their leaders as a short term in the opposition; being in the opposition meant simply rejecting all the administration's measures going beyond the traditional framework. The Chairman of the Republican National Committee Henry Fletcher asserted in 1935: "All we need to do is to apply to present-day problems and conditions the same devotion to economic freedom and social progress which has characterized the Republican Party through these years. "^^2^^

The Republicans' approach to the question of the opposition's functions was one of the reasons why the party leadership was continually accused of obstructionism and refusal to solve the problems produced by the crisis in a constructive way. But that did not bother them. Responding to such criticism Hoover said: "I am not entirely convinced of the fact that when a nation is about to jump out of a window it is necessary to offer him a constructive program. The main thing is to tell him to stop.''^^3^^ People of the Hoover, Fess and Fletcher type had grown so rigid in their views that in order to preserve them in an unaltered form they were ready to reject the pragmatism typical of American politicians and sacrifice the party's influence in certain strata of American society. Fletcher said: "A party cannot live without votes but it cannot live for votes alone. "^^4^^

All these considerations stemmed from a simple failure to understand that increased intervention by the federal government in social and economic relations had become irreversible due to ob-

~^^1^^ Ogden L. Mills, What of Tomorrow?, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1935, pp. 119-120.

~^^2^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, Washington, Feb. 25, 1935, p. 350.

~^^3^^ Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover. The Presidential Years 1933-1944, Vol. 1, Hoover Institution Press, Standford (Calif.), 1983, p. 26.

~^^4^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, p. 352.

jective laws governing capitalist development. As a result the Republicans were in disarray, lagged behind their partners in the twoparty system in adapting to the new conditions, and in a certain sense, had excluded themselves from the political process.

Naturally there is the question of the progressive Republicans who had occupied a prominent place in the party since the early 20th century. With the coming of the economic crisis of 1929, it seemed that this group would initiate the social and economic reforms. The progressive Republicans fulfilled the mission to some extent. The campaign conducted by Senator Norris for the Tennessee Valley Authority, the progressive Norris-La Guardia Act to restrict injunction in labor conflicts, active efforts by Senator La Follette to secure government assistance for the unemployed---all this pointed to the existence of an extensive positive capability of the progressive Republicans. In the final count, however, they gave up the initiative to the left-centrist wing of the Democratic Party.

A most important cause of this was that they lacked a broad base in the urban centers which had become the principal source of social and economic problems. Another reason was that progressive Republicans often seemed to be overzealous advocates of individualism, albeit in its democratic and petty-bourgeois version. When they did propose programs of social and economic reform, their statism proved to be excessively radical and antimonopoly to fit into what was acceptable to most Republicans or even the New Dealers. It was not by chance that Democratic Senator Key Pittman warned FDR of "a progressive Republican membership determined upon going further to the left than you will go.''^^1^^ As years went by there surfaced such a major negative aspect of the progressive Republicans as isolationism which put them at loggerheads with the most active antifascist groups. Of course, in the New Deal years, the progressives largely contributed to reforms but only when they broke with their party and sided with FDR or organized third parties which were to the left of the New Dealers in some Northwestern states. Their ability to influence the state of affairs in their own party steadily declined because the conservative leadership of the GOP held quite a different view of the organization's

Joseph Boskin, Politics of an Opposition Party: The Republican Party in the New Deal Period, 1936-1940, University Microfilms International, Inc., Ann Arbor (Michigan), 1959, p. 72.

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political behavior.

Hoover's followers did not come to their senses even after the sensational defeat of the party in the midterm elections of 1934. The party leadership regarded that defeat as an unfortunate accident. Despite isolated and cautious appeals to revise traditional party dogmas, no serious changes had occurred in the social thinking of the Republican Party until the mid-193 Os. This is borne out by an analysis of the behavior of the republican congressional caucus in 1935-1936 and speeches of its leaders. A typical example illustrating the situation in the party was the Declaration of Grievances approved by a Grass Roots Conference in Springfield, Illinois, in the summer of 1935. The Republican creed was defined as follows: "We believe in individualism ... as opposed to Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Collectivism, or the New Deal.''^^1^^ Not one of the 18 points in the Declaration of Grievances so much as hinted that its authors had changed their former position of rejecting the New Deal. This aggressive document may be placed among the most rabid examples of anti-FDR journalism.

The same tendency was demonstrated clearly at the party election convention in 1936. The keynote to the work of the entire convention was set by the convention's acting chairman Frederick Steiwer at the very beginning of his speech: "Never until March 1933, has an Administration elected to preserve and develop the American system tried, by the autocratic abuse of its executive power, to abolish the very system that it had sworn to conserve.''² These words from the speech became the convention's motto. Convention delegates enthusiastically responded to Hoover's speech entitled "The New Deal and European Collectivism" which became a classic in the legacy of individualist ideology. Having in no way revised their reactionary individualistic views, the Republicans came out flatly against government regulation of the economy and liberal social legislation. Their election platform promised Americans to preserve "their political liberty, their individual opportunity and their character as free citizens, which today for the first time are threatened by Government itself.''^^3^^ Nomination of

~^^1^^ The Literary Digest, June 22, 1935, p. 11.

Official Report of the Proceedings of the Twenty First Republican National Convention Held in Cleveland, Ohio, June 9-12, 1936, Washington, p. 33. ~^^3^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 365.

Alfred Landon who did not belong directly to the Old Guard changed little. The party behaved as if the country had neither gone through a monumental crisis nor experienced an enormous upsurge in the labor and democratic movement or numerous New Deal reforms.

The complete failure to understand what was happening naturally resulted in a catastrophic election defeat for the Republicans and put the party into an extremely precarious situation. No wonder the press then widely discussed whether the Republican Party had any future under the circumstances.

The situation was fraught with many dangers for the two-- party system because it could reliably fulfill its main mission---protect the political rule of the monopoly bourgeoisie---only provided both parties were politically sound. In the mid-1930s hardly anyone (except for the Old Guard, of course) would venture to affirm that the Republican Party was a politically sound body.

This period saw a difference in the extent of each party's influence which was unique in the history of the two-party system, and, more importantly, an extreme polarization of their stands. The political course of Democrats and Republicans was dominated by a clear alternative, while the elements of consensus, highly necessary to retain the system principle, had almost completely disappeared from relations between the parties. As a result a dangerous gap emerged in the center of the party-political continuum threatening to undermine the further operation of Republicans and Democrats within the two-party system. Such was the third feature of the party realignment. Hence the most important task facing the two leading parties: to restore the system principle. Its realization constituted the essential meaning of the development of the two-party combination in the second phase of the realignment which began after the 1936 elections.

The most important precondition for the realization of the task was to introduce statism into the ideological and political doctrines of the Republicans. This proved to be a very trying process. Despite shattering defeats the people holding the reins of power within the party still believed in traditional party imperatives. Thus, commenting on the results of the elections Ogden Mills said: "We were on perfectly sound ground in pointing out the inevitable results of the New Deal policies. But no one has yet actually felt their consequences and people have to feel things before they are

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actually influenced. "* Landon himself explained his defeat in much the same terms.^^2^^ The Republican leaders still thought that the main task in domestic political life was "the destruction of a Roosevelt collectivism that threatens the United States of America."³ It was in this spirit that the Republican leader in the House of Representatives B. Snell defined his action program for the caucus in 1938 directing the party toward dismantling the earlier created state-monopoly mechanism.^^4^^ The National Committee urged the party to do the same. In a speech on the occasion of the closing of the first session of the 75th Congress in August 1937 Chairman of the Republican National Committee John Hamilton said: "I again emphasize the central issue of our times, the issue of Republican representative government against Rooseveltian personal government. I hold that it cannot be emphasized too much.''^^5^^

Despite the subjective rejection of statism in all its forms by the Old Guard, in 1937-1938 the United States already had a ramified state-monopoly infrastructure which affected all aspects of life in American society, including the development of conservative ideology. More and more frequently voices were heard in the Republican Party urging, at least verbally, to take greater account of realities in contemporary America. For example, Frank Knox, the 1936 Republican candidate for the vice-presidency, said at the beginning of 1938 that while the party only indulged in accusing the New Deal, it would be difficult for it to count on success in the fight against FDR's Democrats. It could hope to restore its former power only provided the "Republican leadership address itself to the formulation of progressive, forward-looking, economically sound program. "^^6^^ Knox obviously tried to put a Republican label on many of the New Deal measures---collective bargaining, social insurance, aid to the unemployed---linking them to Republican traditions while strongly modernizing the latter. While such statements did not prevail yet, neither were they solitary. They were specific instances of the rising ``me-too'' political philosophy, i.e. the inevi-

Joseph Boskin, Politics of an Opposition Party: The Republican Party in the New Deal Period, 1936-1940, p. 82.

* Congressional Record, Vol. 83, Part II, pp. 2511-2513. Vital Speeches of the Day, Washington, September 15, 1937, p. 710. Congressional Record, Vol. 83, Part 19, pp. 184-185. Vital Speeches of the Day, Washington, September 15, 1937, p. 712. Vital Speeches of the Day, Washington, February 1, 1938, p. 243.

table adaptation of the Republican Party which lagged behind its rival in terms of statist attitudes to the actions of the Democratic Party which had forged ahead.

Gradually, in the process of acute inter and intraparty strife, the Republicans were groping for an alternative to the New Deal. The essence of the new approach consisted in accepting to some extent the reality of statism but freeing statist principles of what in the eyes of the right-wing forces seemed an inadmissible influence of popular demands and the radicalism and ``socialism'' of the New Dealers. Conservative statism (neoconservatism) formed as a rightcentrist version of state-monopoly ideology and politics which have a common statist platform with neoliberalism but lay greater emphasis on traditional individualist values. However, up to the 1938 midterm elections, these trends had made themselves felt to a limited extent and chiefly on the ideological level. In politics, the prevailing line was still obstruction and rejection of the legislative initiatives of the ruling party. The Republicans had yet been unable to transfer the rudiments of neoconservative ideology into the sphere of specific proposals.

The 1938 midterm elections brought a major success to the Republicans: they increased the number of seats in the Senate from 16 to 23 and in the House from 89 to 164 and the number of Republican governors grew from 5 to 18. Circumstances which were independent of the Republicans played the chief role in this outcome.

In the fall of 1937 the country was hit by another economic crisis which the Republicans immediately called the Roosevelt recession. It is difficult to find another instance in American history when a crisis would provoke such jubilation by the opposition. "This is solely our own depression. Its causes must be searched for right here at home,"^^1^^ Hoover concluded with glee. Such appraisals of the reasons for the new crisis were widespread in the United States. Summing up the changes in public awareness occurring under the impact of the crisis, prominent political analyst Raymond Clapper pointed out that these events exploded the myth that the New Deal had guaranteed the country from a repetition of crises and gave rise to the first serious disappointment in the possibili-

~^^1^^ Herbert Hoover, Addresses Upon the American Road 1933-1938, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938, p. 348.

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While the Republicans were taking the first, tentative steps in the neoconservative direction, the Democrats were laying the foundations for the completion of the realignment by cooling the reformist ardor, for a consensus based on statist principles was inconceivable while the Democrats were seen by their rivals as still excessively ``socialist''. Of course, the Democratic Party's shift to the right was far from straightforward. However, since 1937, all public opinion polls showed a steady increase in the percentage of persons believing that the Democratic Party should follow a more conservative line.^^1^^ The President was urged to do the same by influential moderate-conservative politicians such as National Committee Chairman James Farley, Speaker William Bankhead, and Senator James Byrnes who maintained that "the period of emergency has gone"^^2^^ and therefore, there was no need in further social and political experiments.

Seeking to beat back the onslaught of the conservative elements, the liberal Democrats made a desperate attempt in 1938 to reverse the unfavorable trends. They managed to persuade FDR to intervene in the primaries to defeat certain conservative Democrats seeking renomination and, most important, to force those who were hesitating to adhere to the administration's political course. But the attempt at ``purging'' the Democratic Party in effect failed completely. The Philadelphia Inquirer justly regarded the results of the campaign as a slap in the face received by FDR from his conservative party colleagues.^^3^^ The Roosevelt camp proved to be totally "confused over the next phase of the New Deal"^^4^^ and the President himself began to demonstrate his `` moderation''^^5^^ in all ways trying to distance himself from his recent allies. The results of the 1938 elections reinforced the centrifugal force in the Democratic Party and provided additional impulses for its further drift from the left-wing to the center and even right of center. At the same time, serious changes in the party's electorate which occurred in the first half of the 1930s "inevitably influenced its policy establishing new limits for its

George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy. The Public-Opinion Poll and How It Works, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1940, p. 295.

~^^2^^ The New York Times, May 4, 1937, p. 13.

~^^3^^ Philadelphia Inquirer, September 18, 1938.

~^^4^^ Kansas City Times, December 1, 1978.

ties of government regulation among the electorate.^^1^^

The major corporations attempted to take advantage of the unfavorable business conditions to push the labor movement back from the positions it had gained. Naturally, the unions, the CIO above all, did not intend to remain on the sidelines. Sit-ins became an effective form of struggle against the monopolies. Frequently accompanied by bloody clashes with the police, these strikes had a dual effect: on the one hand, under their impact virtually all the major corporations were forced to make concessions to the workers, on the other, a hostile attitude to labor unions skilfully whipped up by the conservative press increased considerably among the public.

The crisis gave rise to another wave of polemics around deficit spending which was the backbone of FDR's entire social and economic policy. Increasingly often articles appeared in the press affirming that the practice of deficit spending had not been justified and not only failed to invigorate the economy but, on the contrary, disrupted finances, sowing uncertainty among business circles, and as a consequence, caused a new crisis. A massive campaign for the economy of federal funds was no doubt favorable to the Republicans because the issue had always been a central plank of their platform.

Finally, discernable splits appeared in the body of the Democratic Party in the course of sharp political battles which raged in the US Congress in 1937-1938 around such proposals as the reform of the Supreme Court, a Fair Labor Standards Bill, reorganization of executive bodies, the Housing Bill and punishment of officials who had failed to take measures against lynching. The Dixiecrats and some of the conservative Democrats from the Northern and Western states joined the opposition to the New Dealers. This opened the way for the setting up of a two-party conservative coalition thanks to which the sharp disproportion in the balance of power in the political process which had emerged in the previous period was removed. The Christian Science Monitor wrote: "In state after state, the combination of conservative city groups with the farmers appeared to nullify that balance of power which was exercised two years ago.''^^2^^

^ Current History, April 1939, p. 19. Christian Science Monitor, November 12, 1938.

' Philadelphia Inquirer, December 14, 1938.

18-749

258 Chapter Twelve

possible return to conservatism.''^^1^^

In the course of the election campaign of 1938, a strong blow was inflicted upon third parties which had previously enjoyed considerable influence in a number of states. From the very outset of the New Deal most of the Democratic Party leaders felt insecure due to the proximity, on the left, of progressive parties and movements which supported many measures of the New Dealers. However, FDR realized that until a certain time it was necessary to put up with them so as not to drive them further to the left. That was the object of his vigorous flirtation in 1934-1936 with the leaders of the Farmer Labor Party of Minnesota and the Progressive Party of Wisconsin. But as soon as he managed to tie them sufficiently strongly to the Democratic bandwagon, he immediately adopted a tougher line toward his allies on the left wing. As a result of the 1938 elections the Progressives lost gubernatorial posts in both states and the number of their seats in the House dropped from thirteen to four. Commenting on this aspect of the elections, the Chicago Sunday Times stated without concealing its satisfaction: "Once again the two-party system in this country has been firmly entrenched. Threats of Third Party movements have evaporated like the morning dew under the rising sun. "^^2^^ In a private letter FDR himself frankly admitted: "We have on the positive side eliminated Phil Lafollette and the Fanner Labor people in the Northwest as a standing Third Party threat. "^^3^^

The 1938 elections recorded a certain realignment in the highest echelons of the Republican Party. A new group of Republican leaders had emerged by 1938. They were governors Harold Stassen, Leverett Saltonstall, Raymond Baldwin, George Aiken, and the young District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey who made a good showing in the race for the governor's office in New York although he did not win. Together with the earlier elected senators Arthur H. Vandenberg, Henry Cabot Lodge, Styles Bridges, James Davis and others, they made up the cohort of politicians which gradually pushed the Hoover Old Guard to the background. The strength of their positions and serious intentions in the struggle

~^^1^^ V. O. Pechatnov, The Democratic Party of the United States: Voters and Politics, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1980, p. 29 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ Chicago Sunday Times, November 13, 1938.

~^^3^^ F.D.R. His Personal Letters 1928-1945, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Vol. II, New York, 1950, p. 827.

within the party were demonstrated, in particular, in the open letter written by the Governor of Vermont George Aiken and published at the end of 1937 in which he proposed "a purge of 'reactionary and unfair elements' " in the party who hindered restoration of its influence. He pointed out that the years of the New Deal had taught Americans many things and the party had to become "responsive to the enlightened opinion of the voters you profess to serve.''^^1^^

The activity of the new Republican leaders created more favorable conditions for the party to adopt neoconservatism. As political analyst Ernest Lindley aptly remarked, the Republicans passed from general attacks against the New Deal to "highly selective" criticism.^^2^^ The Republicans began to advertise their moderation. Senator Davis, who swapped the career of a union boss for a post in the Republican Party, asserted: "Radical ideas either in government or industry will hurt the Nation. There is a great need for moderation today.''^^3^^

In addition to appeals for moderation the Republican leaders of the new generation drummed it into the heads of voters that the party was prepared to correct the mistakes and excesses of the New Dealers. Congressman Bruce Barton conceded: "The Democrats have proved again and again that they can conceive high ideas and enact far-reaching reforms. They have proved, perhaps, that they have more ideas than we have." Such statements were adopted as brainwashing cliches by GOP officials who were increasingly rejecting the Old Guard's militant and uncompromising stand on the New Deal policies. Less susceptible to statist principles in its ideology, the Republican Party, nevertheless, approached the 1940 elections a different party than it had been in the mid-193Os.

These changes were largely due to the fact that business, the mainstay of the Republican Party, gradually came to take a more favorable view on expanding the powers of government. Supporting and promoting these tendencies the ideologists of neoconservatism conducted an active propaganda campaign in business quarters. One of them, Raymond Moley, a former member of FDR's brain trust who had broken with the New Dealers when they shift-

~^^1^^ Editorial Research Reports, January 13, Washington, 1938, p. 23.

Current History, February 1939, p. 15.

Congressional Record, Vol. 83, Part 9, p. 628. ~^^4^^ Time, July 11, 1938, p. 14.

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ed to the left, cautioned his listeners in a speech at the convention of the National Association of Manufacturers: "Business must realize that, when we talk of a conservative drift, the word conservative must be interpreted to mean a position distinctly to the left of 1929. Business can honestly hope for relief from some of the more oppressive forms of regulation of the past three years, but it should not hope for a reaction that will sweep away the earlier and sounder reforms of the New Deal.''^^1^^ Business gradually absorbed these truths facilitating the rise of New Republicanism which, in turn, had a stabilizing effect on the operation of the two-party tandem. It was not accidental that we used the word. Indeed, the 1930s saw a growing similarity of the parties' positions, a levelling out of consensus and alternative in their policies, although the consensus-alternative principle was now based on state-monopoly foundations.

The ideological and political restructuring of the GOP which began after 1937-1938 soon removed the question of its prospects from the agenda. The mouthpiece of business circles, Fortune, noted that Americans were witnessing "perhaps the most exciting phenomenon in contemporary politics: the reemergence of the G.O.P. from apparent extinction to a functioning role in the traditional two-party system.^^2^^ There was a change in the leadership of the Republican faction in the House of Representatives in 1939. Congressman Joseph Martin from Massachusetts became the leader of the minority. In his memoirs he wrote that in 1939 "there was a far different brand of Republicans in the House from any that the country had known since the Hoover administration." Using more flexible tactics the Republicans offered more effective resistance to the administration's plans in Congress and this, in turn, forced FDR to seek ways to achieve reconciliation with the conservative wing of his party. This weakened the polarization of the electorate and widened the field for the application of consensus-alternative methods by the components of the two-party system that had changed places in terms of political weight but managed to survive.

The extent of change in the two main parties in 1937-1939

^^1^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, Washington, January 1, 1939, p. 179. Fortune, August 1939, p. 35.

Joe Martin, My First Fifty Years in Politics, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1960, p. 82.

is clearly illustrated by two documents: FDR's State of the Union Message of January 1939 and the February 1940 report of the Frank Committee "A Program for a Dynamic America". The first document laid down the Democratic Party's political line and proclaimed: "We have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our program of social reform. Our full energies may now be released to invigorate the processes of recovery in order to preserve our reforms." Such a candid statement by New Dealer No. 1 was regarded by the leaders of the Democratic moderateconservative group as the highest approval of their intention to play down the reforms. The Speaker of the House Bankhead immediately said that the "New Deal's major objective" had practically been completed and there was no need for further reform.^^2^^ Under the circumstances the liberal wing which had provided the chief impulse for the party's ideological and political restructuring in the mid193 Os in effect abandoned the effort to deepen reforms leaving the initiative to the centrist group. The emphasis was now on conserving the state-monopoly infrastructure set up earlier.

The report of the Frank Committee prodded the Republican Party to follow suit. In presenting the document to the National Committee, Frank said: "It has been prepared in the conviction that, if common sense indicates that some obsolete national tradition should be junked and a fundamental change of national policy made, the responsible statesman will not hesitate to propose the change even if somebody calls him radical for so doing. And that, if, on the other hand, common sense indicates that some such touted change could be resisted and the nation called back to the living soundness of some great national tradition, the responsible statesman will not hesitate to lift the banner of that tradition even if somebody calls him reactionary for so doing.''^^3^^ Although there were quite a few sharp criticisms of the New Deal in the report, the authors at the same time admitted that many principles which the New Dealers followed were rational. They wanted not to dismantle the existing mechanism for government regulation of social and economic processes but to lend it a more conservative tinge. American historian Conrad Joyner pointed out: "In essence the report

~^^1^^ The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, 1790-1966, Vol. 3, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1967, p. 2846.

^^2^^ The New York Herald Tribune, January 8, 1939. The New York Times, February 19, 1940.

262 Chapter Twelve

accepted most of the New Deal, with but slight camouflage."¹ Although the report did not have the impact on the party election platform that may have been expected, there is every reason to refer to the neoconservative nature of the Republican platform^^2^^ of 1940. In other words, preliminary conditions had already emerged by the end of the 1930s for the restoration on a new, state-- monopoly foundation of the system principles largely lost in the mid193 Os. This meant that the party realignment had been completed in general, and the outlines of the party combination existing with certain modifications to this day were drawn up.

Being a consequence of major social, economic, ideological and political changes, the realignment, in turn, influenced the social environment. It helped carry through in-depth reforms of a statemonopoly nature and then slow them down, correcting the leftward swing in the government course while retaining statism. Thanks to the realignment, the crux of which was adapting the twoparty system to the conditions of state-monopoly capitalism, institutionalization of statist principles involved all spheres of the superstructure. First having set the parties far apart and then having brought them close together, the party realignment prepared the ground for the rise of a dual center firmly relying on the state-- monopoly platform, which considerably strengthened the positions of American capitalism. The existence of a stable dual center is highly important in the purely functional respect as well. Such a center abruptly narrows the opportunities for third parties to break out onto the national political scene.

The realignment of the two-party system essentially coincided with the New Deal. However, certain anomalies still remained in the two-party mechanism before World War II. Big Business was still rather suspicious of FDR's party. It was repelled by the extraordinary measures and innovative approach in how the Democratic Party tackled social and economic problems. The captains of industry were also troubled by the anti-monopoly rhetoric to which the liberal Democrats often resorted. Finally, the ruling elite was not firmly convinced yet that the various left radical groups integrated into the structure of the Democratic Party in the New Deal

Conrad Joyner, The Republican Dilemma. Conservatism or Progressivism, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1963, p. 5.

A. A. Kreder, "The American Monopoly Bourgeoisie and Roosevelt's New Deal (1932-1940)", in: American Yearbook, 1979, Moscow, 1979, p. 148 (in Russian).

Party Realignment Under the New Deal 263

years were reliably bound to the liberal-statist course of FDR's Administration.

The Republicans also had unsolved problems of their own. Certain circles in the party continued to display a strong attachment to traditional reactionary individualist dogmas not only in rhetoric but also in practical activities. Highly influential forces in the top echelons of party leadership continued to identify any manifestation of statism with socialism and did not lose hope that they would be able to reverse the course of events and dismantle at least a large part,if not all, of state-monopoly infrastructure.

Summing up the results of the realignment, it is to be noted that in the short term it undoubtedly strengthened the political positions of the monopoly bourgeoisie. But the dialectic of the realignment lay in the fact that, having removed a set of old contradictions, it simultaneously gave rise to a series of new acute problems the recipes for. solving which neither FDR nor the leaders of the opposition could find. As subsequent events showed, these contradictions proved to be inherent in the new two-party tandem. The explosive potential intrinsic in these contradictions regularly broke loose, thus giving rise to critical situations in the development of the institution. These situations clearly show the failure of government attempts to find effective ways of overcoming profound internal contradictions existing in American society.

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On the Road to an Interparty Balance 265

fessed isolationism as its official foreign policy. Now the doctrine did not fit into reality, and that prevented Republican leaders from correctly assessing the situation and choosing relevant political recipes.

Lacking real solutions to the emergent problems, the Republicans resorted to the usual tactic of obstructing the administration's moves. "We in this country are facing a choice between new leadership and war,"^^1^^ declared one of the claimants on the presidential office Thomas Dewey. Such, probably, was the only specific slogan the Republicans could offer the country in the sphere which concerned all Americans. This shortsighted course could throw the Republicans back from the positions they had gained and sharply destabilize the entire two-party system.

It is difficult to say how events would have developed further were it not for France's military debacle which stunned the American public. Commenting on the new international situation the Washington Post wrote: "If the Allies lose this war, it will prove to be the worst catastrophe for the US in our whole history.''^^2^^ A growing number of voters were becoming aware of this simple truth, and it was also gaining ground among the ruling circles.

It was on the crest of this wave that a new pretender to the leadership of the GOP, Wendell Willkie, came to play the first fiddle in the party. The Willkie boom had a contradictory effect on the Republican Party. On the one hand, the onslaught by Willkie and his followers contributed to a faster restructuring of the party's ideological and political doctrines and their adaptation to the new conditions associated with state-monopoly capitalism and the beginning of World War II. This, no doubt, raised the party's competitiveness in the struggle for power. On the other hand, Willkie's extremism in the question of the extent of departure from traditional party precepts troubled even many of the advocates of New Republicanism who pinned their hopes on the more reliable and trustworthy Dewey. A prominent Republican, Walter Brown, summed up these moods: "Under the leadership of antiNew Deal Democrats there will be little to interest real Republicans.''^^3^^ For its part, the right wing led by Robert Taft was ex-

~^^1^^ The New York Times, June 22, 1940.

~^^2^^ Washington Post, May 23, 1940.

Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover. The Presidential Years 1933-1964, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford (Calif.), Vol. 1, 1983, p. 165.

The reemergence of the Republicans at the end of the 1930s faced their leaders with two related questions: (1) what was the basis for the party's revival; (2) what ideological and political course was more advantageous in the struggle against the Democrats?

The search for answers to these questions proved to be a rather delicate affair because two approaches to these problems had emerged in the top echelons of the Republican leadership at the threshold of the 1940s. Should statism in social and economic processes be regarded on the whole as an acceptable thing (provided it is lent a more conservative hue) or should efforts be directed at slowing down statism to the utmost and, wherever possible, at dismantling the existing mechanism for regulating private enterprise---such was the essence of the arguments which determined the dynamics of the GOP since the late 1930s.

However, until the beginning of the 1940 election campaign debates on the subject had been toned down. The desire to close forever the chapter in American history known as the New Deal prompted the Republicans to be cautious and not let things leak out of the party headquarters. But it was not easy to restrain passions.

A new bout in the struggle within the party was not long in coming. This time it was triggered off by events on the international scene rather than by another major domestic political initiative of FDR. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland thereby opening the first page in the history of World War II. Foreign policy issues, which had long been in the background of the US political process, swiftly moved to the forefront.

The question of how to respond to the war caused confusion in the Republican leadership. For a long time the party had pro-

266 Chapter Thirteen

On the Road to an Interparty Balance 267

tremely hostile to any attempts to reconstruct the GOP.

Naturally, serious internal quarrels did not raise the Republicans' chances in the coming struggle for the presidential office. The Democrats proved to be better prepared for the situation ushered in by the outbreak of World War II. They clearly realized the threat to US national security presented by Nazi plans to establish a New Order. It was not a matter of chance that on FDR's insistence the State Department statement on Nazi Germany's attack against the USSR included the following words: "Hitler's armies are today the chief dangers of Americas."' To a greater extent than their rivals the Democrats were prepared to collaborate with Britain and France and offer them moral and political support. The idea was even reflected in the party's election platform of 1940,^^2^^ a document which usually avoids mentioning controversial proposals. Since the times of Woodrow Wilson it had been the Democratic party that hatched plans to turn the United States into the leader of Western civilization. With the outbreak of World War II, these plans began to come into focus. In the sphere of foreign policy, the Democrats caught on to the long-term interests of the American monopolies sooner than their rivals and showed themselves to be the party capable of fulfilling the strategic designs of the ruling elite. This undoubtedly strengthened their leading positions in the two-party system.

The war was to the Democrats' advantage for a number of other reasons. First, enormous military orders helped the administration release the American economy from the bog of crisis and depression. The net profits of the corporations also increased significantly from 3,300 million dollars in 1938 to 9,500 million dollars in 1941. The economic boom which began in 1939 blunted many social problems and this, in turn, helped the Democratic leadership abandon with relative ease the struggle to extend social and economic transformations started in the 1930s. The need to consolidate the reforms came to the forefront, and this development was recorded in the principal party and government documents adopted at the time---the election platform and the President's State of the Union Message which political analyst Ernest K. Lindley aptly described

Foreign Relations of the United States. 1941, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, 1958, Vol. 1, p. 768.

~^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, pp. 382-383.

as "gestures of appeasement"^^1^^ toward the rivalling factions.

Second, the economy's conversion to a wartime footing, which had got underway and promised Big Business enormous profits, largely reconciled the business circles with FDR's Administration and its principle of economic regulation. For example, the Statement approved by a Conference of the Midwest Chamber of Commerce (representing nine states traditionally dominated by opponents of the New Deal) this time displayed an unusually reconciliatory attitude. The authors of the document wanted only one thing from the administration: more military orders for their states.^^2^^ Big Business leaders such as William Knudsen, Donald Nelson, and Edward Stettinius gladly entered federal service to occupy the leading posts in government agencies having to do with the war economy, thus pushing the New Dealers away from the helm of the nation. "New Dealers now complain that President Roosevelt no longer has an interest in them or in their ideas,"^^3^^ the US News magazine noted spitefully.

Third, once foreign policy issues came to the forefront and the party's orientations in domestic policy changed somewhat, FDR managed to conclude peace with the conservative wing of his party. "The growing military threat in Europe ... forced Roosevelt to abandon the idea of confrontation with the right-wing opposition and even acknowledge that it was incorrect," noted the Soviet scholar V. L. Malkov. This was born out by the appearance in the White House at the end of September 1939, for the first time after a long break, of one of the most avid critics of the New Deal Senator Carter Glass who, in this occasion, peacefully discussed foreign policy with the President.^^5^^

If the above-mentioned developments were on the whole favorable for the national leadership, such innovations had very detrimental consequences for the left-wing liberal groups oriented toward the Democratic Party. Weakened and disorganized as they were, they found themselves linked to the national Democratic leadership to an even greater extent and were forced to travel in the

~^^1^^ Current History, February 1939, p. 16.

~^^2^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 86, Part 10, p. 10628.

^^3^^ US News, January 24, 1941 , p. 8.

V. L. Malkov, "Slightly to the Left of Center: the General and the Specific in Roosevelt's Social Policy", in: American Yearbook, 1983, p. 59. ~^^5^^ Time, October 9, 1939, p. 12.

268 Chapter Thirteen

tailend of the government course.

The prevailing situation determined the election tactics of the Democrats. "European developments compel the President to run for a third term regardless of the wishes of himself, his friends or his enemies,"^^1^^ wrote Senator Norris. In this way the FDR entourage justified the idea to vie for a third term. A break with the previously firm tradition of two terms prevented an acute struggle within the Democratic Party concerning FDR's successor and helped rally the motley electorate in support of the popular leader. This held another advantage: focussing attention on the outstanding qualities of the President, the Democrats gained an opportunity to avoid specifying their domestic policy objectives.

This was graphically demonstrated by a resolution approved at the convention of Mississippi Democrats which maintained a total silence on the basic political problems and argued that FDR should be reelected because he, "by reason of his background, training, experience, and ability, is the best qualified American to deal with national and international problems in this dark hour and lead this Nation during these critical times.''^^2^^ At election meetings spokesmen for the Democrats as a rule made only general statements to the effect that the party would remain true to the traditions of the previous decade and would do its utmost to secure the natural rights of the Americans subsequently called FDR's Four Freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

These arguments proved to be effective enough in the election polemic. FDR managed to win a third victory and retained the presidential post. However, this time the interparty fight was much more bitter than four years before, and FDR's success was not as impressive as in 1936. He polled only five million more votes than Willkie. It is important to point out that in most states (except for the South, of course) the candidates for the presidency had run an even race. The voting margin was more than 10 percent only in 12, mostly border and Southwestern, states. In 1936 the figure was 33 states and included virtually all the largest industrial states. Republican progress will seem even more impressive if we take the voting by counties: in 1936 they won in only 457 counties, four

^^1^^ The New York Times, May 12, 1940. Congressional Record, Vol. 86, Part 16, p. 3953.

On the Road to an Interparty Balance 269

years later in 1,141. This time FDR scored impressive victories only in the South and in cities with a population exceeding 500,000.

Republicans also progressed at other levels. They won three additional governorships and the number of seats in the Senate reached 28. The influence of the parties in the race for seats in the House of Representatives proved to be more even. In 1936 Democratic candidates (not counting the South) managed to defeat their rivals by more than 10 percent in 22 states (including California, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), in 1940 only in 10 (mostly border) states.^^1^^

The results of the 1940 elections showed that the sharp disproportion in the balance of power between the parties that had arisen at the height of the realignment had now been overcome. A considerable step forward had been made in restoring the interparty balance of power. This does not mean, however, that all the obstacles in the way had been eliminated. If the Democrats managed to consolidate their ranks, strife had not subsided among their opponents but rather grown more acute.

Immediately after the elections, in a letter to Sullivan Hoover declared that the party's defeat only confirmed his old idea that the Democrats could be fought only by professing traditional Republicanism and not by taking after the Democrats.^^2^^ The idea was taken up by the leader of the GOP right wing Senator Taft who argued that the Republicans would return to power only by reacquiring their political countenance. In tactical terms the slogan was used to remove Willkie's followers from party leadership. In terms of strategy the activities of the Taft group which reflected the interests of the most conservative part of the ruling class, were aimed at dismantling the major parts of the social infrastructure, eliminating all products of liberal statism, and roundly defeating the liberal-democratic bloc. This line threatened to destroy the emerging consensus and disrupt the entire system.

The United States entered World War II in December 1941, opening a new page in American history. Although hostilities took place thousands of miles away from the shores of the country, participation in the war had a complex impact on all aspects of life in

~^^1^^ Derived from: The Gallup Political Almanac for 1946, The Clarke Press, Princeton, 1946.

~^^2^^ Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover. The Postpresidential Years 1933-1964, Vol. I, 1933-1945, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford (Calif.), 1983, p. 173.

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unpopular words. One is capitalism which is hated in certain quarters. I am nevertheless for it.''^^1^^ The magazine of the business circles Fortune went even further associating such views with most Americans. Summing up its seven-year-long public opinion research the magazine affirmed that Americans came out of the war adhering to the fundamental bourgeois values as never before.^^2^^

It is obvious that this atmosphere had to have an impact on the overall political climate and the stand of liberal politicians. Instead of criticizing the captains of industry for greed, profit-seeking and ignoring public interests, they began to propagate the idea of national unity. Even such a brilliant and consistent critic of the economic royalists as The Nation could not avoid the general mood: "Today we love each other and our country. We feel a happy sense of union swelling in our hearts... We are one---all of us, read an editorial published in the magazine. In a context of sharply subsided antimonopoly moods, the slogan of national unity helped the Democratic leadership eliminate another phenomenon dangerous for the stability of the two-party system---the trend toward independent political action. The Farmer Labor Party of Minnesota had ceased to exist by 1944. Although the Progressive Party of Wisconsin and the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota had not yet been formally absorbed in the two-party system, they had in effect lost all influence in their states' political life.

The war factor also had a telling effect on the Republican Party. The turning of the United States into a leading imperialist power helped the leaders of the GOP revise foreign-policy doctrines propagated by the strategists of that organization. This task was of major importance for recreation of normally operating model of the two-party system. Celebrated newspaper owner Henry Luce insisted that "until the Republican Party can develop a vital philosophy and program for America's initiative and activity as a world power, it will continue to cut itself off from any useful participation in this hour of history.''^^4^^ The United States' entry into World War II in effect put an end to debates on certain foreign policy issues. As Senator Vandenberg put it, "My convictions regarding

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 89, Part 9, pp. A404, A405.

Fortune, January 1947, p. 5. ~^^3^^ The Nation, December 13, 1941, p. 599.

Henry R. Luce, The American Century, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York, 1941, p. 24.

American society, including the two-party system. While laying emphasis on continuity in the problems of the two-party system in the 1930s and the 1940s, it is necessary to point out the appearance in the course of the war of certain fundamentally new elements in the functioning of the political mechanism caused by radical changes in the social and economic situation in the United States and shifts in the balance of class forces. This is why we single out the 1941-1945 period as a specific phase in the history of the two-party system and of the United States as a whole. Attempting to sum up the essence of these changes we would venture the following formula: a clear swing to the right of the entire political pattern with a simultaneous strengthening of statism and expansionism in American government practices and those of both parties.

For the two-party system the consequences of US participation in the war consisted chiefly in either the complete elimination of the abnormal phenomena which had emerged at the height of the party realignment or a sharp reduction of their impact. This is particularly true of the Democratic Party which had largely discarded the ``social-democratic'' rhetoric typical of the party in the mid19305. Even speeches by liberal Democrats, 100-percent New Dealers such as Wagner, Murray, Mead, Pepper and Kilgore, rarely featured themes critical of Big Business. On the contrary, Senator Wagner made a point of saying: "I have never been an old-fashioned trust buster, because I believe that big business serves a useful purpose.''^^1^^

The reason for the metamorphosis should be sought in the fact that, in the years of the war, business crawled out of the `` doghouse''^^2^^ it had been driven into by the crisis of 1929 and was vindicated in the eyes of the public. The manager of a major corporation once again became a respected and prestigious figure for the public: he competently ran war production making the weapons for victory over the common enemy. The voices of business leaders sounded loudly once again. President of the US Chamber of Commerce Eric Johnson proclaimed: "We [businessmen---Ed. ] fear that the word `capitalism' is unpopular. So we take refuge in a nebulous phrase and talk about the free enterprise system... There are two

J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism, Atheneum, New York, 1968, p. 287.

~^^2^^ Eric Johnson, America Unlimited, Double-day, Doran and Company, Inc., Garden City, 1944, p. 179.

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On the Road to an Interparty Balance 273

anism for social control of production.''^^1^^ Pouring oil on the fire of factional strife in the Republican Party, these different appraisals of the processes occurring in the American economy prevented the demise of the Republican right wing which opposed introduction of statism into the party's ideological and political doctrines.

However, in the war years the balance in the factional struggle was, on the whole, obviously tipped in favor of the supporters of New Republicanism who firmly held the reins of power within the party. The basic party documents of national scope---resolutions approved at the 1942 Republican National Committee meeting in Chicago, the 1943 Mackinac Island Conference and the party election platform of 1944---were drawn up to a much greater extent in accordance with New Republicanism than with the postulates of right-wing Republicans. The keynote of all these documents was that ``free'', unregulated capitalism was a thing of the past. The idea of collaboration between the federal government and the state authorities in solving social and economic problems, recognition of the legitimacy of limited regulation of industrial relations by the Washington administration, the avowal that certain measures aimed at regulating competition to restrict its most destructive aspects have a stimulating effect on business---all this was quite firmly incorporated into the ideological and political arsenal of the GOP.

A weakening of abnormal trends in the two-party tandem strengthened the system principle in relations between the two main parties. From the very first days of the war their leaders announced that from then on all party efforts would be directed to fulfilling one basic mission---achieving victory. This approach set the key of polemics between the parties, outlined the range of problems to be solved by-both parties and defined the system of priorities in the political struggle. Since the actual questions of military strategy were not submitted to public discussion, debates focussed on subjects having to do with US foreign policy-making and a set of complicated problems involving the launching of war production.

It was in solving these pivotal problems that the parties proceeded from a number of general assumptions while elaborating their

~^^1^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, New York, May 15, 1944, p. 458.

19-749

international cooperation and collective security for peace took firm form on the afternoon of the Pearl Harbor attack.''^^1^^ Of course, relapses into isolationism were felt for a long time to come. But on the whole we tend to agree with the conclusion reached by prominent political analyst Karl Keyerleber who, commenting on the results of the Mackinac Island conference of Republican leaders in September 1943, wrote: "Isolationism is not dead, but it no longer rides herd on the old G.O.P. elephant.''^^2^^

Things were much more complicated when it came to overcoming the survivals of the ideology of rugged individualism and introduction of statism into traditional Republican views. On the one hand, state-monopoly processes had made a large step forward in the years of the war. The mainstay of the Republicans, Big Business, increasingly realized that government intervention in social and economic processes was irreversible and, under certain circumstances, could bring considerable advantages. This tendency was clearly reflected in the NAP Economic Principles Commission report "The American Individual Enterprise System": "All of our thinking for the future, therefore, must be based upon the underlying thesis that our economy henceforth may continue to be subject to more or less extensive governmental regulation. "³ There was another important factor contributing to the monopolies' statist enlightenment. Soviet scholars write that "not having yet entered the war, the ideologists of American imperialism clamored for world leadership which did not at all tally with a negative attitude to the role of the government.''^^4^^

Yet at the same time, having already forgotten the Great Scare provoked by the crisis of 1929, business circles grew increasingly annoyed by the petty government regulation of private enterprise and the large taxes necessary for the functioning of Big Government. The undoubtable successes of the war economy enabled the leaders of the business world to assert that " competition, not government control, has proven to be the best mech-

The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg, ed. by Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr. Hough ton Miffin Company, Boston, 1952, p. 1. ~^^2^^ Current History, November 1943, p. 220.

The American Individual Enterprise System Its Nature, Evolution and Future, Vol. II, McGraw Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1946, p. 1028.

~^^4^^ N. V. Sivachev, Y. F. Yazkov, Contemporary History of the USA, Vysshaya Shkola Publishers, Moscow, 1980, p. 145 (in Russian).

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On the Ro.ui to ;in In terp.'irt v U'-.!;in';:c-

own approach. Thus, to a larger or lesser degree both parties had adopted the doctrine of United States responsibility for the course of international events in working out Washington's foreign-- policy strategy. American scholar Robert Divine indicated that "the most significant political development during the war was the gradual emergence of a bipartisan approach to post-war foreign policy.''^^1^^ Both parties believed that wartime required a bigger or lesser reduction in expenditures on social needs. These were the items of the budget, as historian Roland Young correctly observed, most likely to be attacked by the legislators.^^2^^ Both Democrats and Republicans emphasized: everything holding back the growth of military output was to be eliminated. Hence a negative attitude to strikes even on the part of "union friends" on Capitol Hill. Paying tribute to the moods prevailing in Congress, Senator Wagner, author of the law which bourgeois propaganda christened the Magna Carta of American labor (National Labor Relations Act), made a point of denouncing the assertion that it "justifies or approves an action undermining the war effort.''^^3^^ Obviously, both Republicans and conservative Democrats took advantage of the situation to the utmost to translate antilabor rhetoric into antilabor legislation.

Both the ruling and the opposition party unanimously supported various measures of the federal government to regulate different aspects in the war economy (controls over wages and working conditions, rationing of the basic raw materials and so forth). This unanimity, however, was largely due to the congressmen's belief that wartime regulating agencies were temporary. Nevertheless, wittingly or not, both party caucuses in Congress gave the green light to government intervention in social and economic processes. Finally, there was bipartisan support for the idea of broad government outlays on military production, which inevitably led to a growth in the government debt and taxes. The call for a balanced budget and lower taxes and rejection of deficit funding---all these most important attributes of the Republican prewar platform had obviously been put away for the period. Although these ideas

~^^1^^ Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections 1940-1948, New Viewpoints, A Division of Franklin Watts, Inc., New York, 1974, p. 92.

~^^2^^ Roland Young, Congressional Politics in the Second World War, Columbia University Press, New York, 1956, p. 43.

~^^3^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 89, Part 4, p. 5257.

were still dear to many Republican officials, they realized that it was risky to come out with them under the circumstances.

Of course, the above does not mean that both parties occupied identical positions in the war years. Interparty rivalry remained. But the ideological and political programs of both parties were now based on a common set of fundamental values, and the argument mainly concerned their interpretation. This is born out, in particular, by a comparison of the parties' election platforms in 1944. From the viewpoint of an alternative, they were clearly moderate. The convergence of the parties' positions resulted in the erosion of the customary stereotypes of both main parties and the emergence of new ones which had more common features than differences. No wonder public opinion polls conducted in the war years recorded a growth in the number of voters who believed there was no significant difference between the parties.^^1^^

The swing to the right and growing conservative moods were important conditions for the restoration of the balance of power. The midterm elections of 1942 brought a marked success to the Republicans. They won nine more seats in the Senate and 46 seats in the House where they nearly caught up with the ruling party's faction. Commenting on the results of the elections The New York Times noted with satisfaction "a swing back to a normal pattern from a very abnormal pattern of one-party domination of the American political scene.''^^2^^

The outcome of the elections was not accidental. A whole set of varied factors was against the ruling party. Let us consider those that were due to the activities of the parties themselves.

The decline in the reformist urge of the New Dealers at the end of the 1930s cast doubt on the effectiveness of neoliberalism as a means for uniting the motley social elements supporting FDR's party. The left liberal circles warned the national leadership: "A progressive party with a static program cannot win."³ Indeed, in the course of the 1940 election campaign, the CIO unions, black and farmer organizations hesitated to some extent in deciding which party to support. Since the Democrats could not boast any major liberal reforms in the 1942 midterm elections,

' Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall 1944, pp. 339-340. The New York Times, November 5, 1942. The New Republic, November 16, 1942, p. 630.

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On the Road to an Interparty Balance 277

the wavering was even more pronounced.

The situation had not basically changed by the time of the 1944 elections, which promised major troubles for the Democrats. Fortunately for the latter, the negative trends mentioned above were weakened by a whole set of factors which made themselves felt at the height of the election race. First, the imminent end to the war brought to the fore the problem of postwar settlement. As most of the American Establishment saw it, it was a much more pressing issue than the problem of reconversion. Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the Time, said: "We can survive another four years of bad management on the home front but we can't survive another war.''^^1^^ Therefore the task was to provide a political leadership capable of solving the complex foreign policy problems emerging in view of the defeat of the Axis Powers. FDR and his Democrats who were firmly leading the country to victory over the enemy and exerting tremendous efforts to affirm America's hegemony in postwar international relations, naturally seemed more attractive in the prevailing situation to the captains of American industry and rank-and-file voters who believed that FDR would achieve stability in the postwar world. The Democratic bosses were perfectly aware of this. That was why the National Committee meeting in January 1944 approved a resolution calling on President Roosevelt to continue as "our great world humanitarian leader.''^^2^^

Second, it was to the advantage of the Democrats that the right-wing Republican group led by Senator Taft became more active after the elections of 1942. The Senator from Ohio realized that the decisive point would soon come in the argument not only with the New Dealers but also with advocates of government intervention in his own party. The outcome of that argument would decide the direction in which bourgeois relations would develop in the United States. "The new administration will determine whether these controls are permanent or whether the multiple freedoms intended by our Constitution and Bill of Rights are restored to our people as the basis of liberty.''^^3^^ said Taft.

However, at a point when the US war effort had reached its

~^^1^^ The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. I., The TVA Years 1939-1945, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1964, p. 653.

~^^2^^ Newsweek, January 31, 1944, p. 36.

~^^3^^ Russel Kirk, James McClellan, The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft, Fleet Press Corporation, New York, 1967, p. 66.

peak, attempts by right-wing Republicans to revise cardinally the basic tenets of the government course could spell catastrophic consequences for the country. Perhaps influential statesman James Byrnes was somewhat exaggerating when he maintained that "the defeat of Roosevelt would revive their [the Axis Powers.---Ed.} fading hopes, stiffen their opposition, and delay the end of the war." But a replacement of the administration under the circumstances would no doubt result in serious problems for the country. The people who carried weight in the capital's corridors of power were clearly aware of this. To some extent Taft himself realized this and decided to put off the struggle for control over the party until the end of the war. Nevertheless, the militant outpourings of his most rabid followers who abounded both in 1943 and in 1944 drove voters away from the GOP and, in the final count, helped the Democrats.

All the above inevitably told on the elections of 1944 the results of which were far from unequivocal. On the one hand, the Democrats retained their hold on executive and legislative power. Most of the governorships remained in their hands. The liberals managed to defeat some very conservative Republicans---Fish, Danaher, Holman, Day, Maas, Clark and others. On the other hand, a comparison of the 1940 and 1944 election results shows the growing strength of the GOP. In the ensuing four years a decisive step had been taken by the two-party system in restoring the balance of power in the political process. In order to conclude that the two-party mechanism had completely digested the consequences of the party realignment in the 1930s, it remained to see how it fulfilled one of its major functions---redistribution of power within the ruling class.

The problem was partially solved immediately after the war when, as a result of the 1946 midterm elections, after a long break, control over Congress passed to the Republicans' hands. The end of the war became a major landmark in the history of American society. The defeat of the Axis Powers sharply tipped the balance of power on the international scene. Favorable prospects emerged for socialism to spread beyond the bounds of one country and for the world socialist system to be formed. That turn of events was unexpected for the ruling circles of the United States who had

R. A. Divine, op. cit., p. 161.

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On the Road to an Interparty Balance 279

seriously hoped that, as the strongest imperialist power, their country would dominate the system of postwar international relations. During the New Deal and the war American capitalism had been firmly established on a state-monopoly foundation. Serious changes occurred in the two-party system in the first postwar years under the impact of these processes, and attempts were immediately made by the opposition party to take advantage of them in its interests. The end of hostilities seemed to mark the conclusion of the extraordinary period which had started in the years of the Great Depression. The acute social and economic problems of those years were receding into the past. There arose new problems stemming from the United States' becoming a leading imperialist power and the beginning reconversion. It is important to point out the following: the ordinary voter tended to blame the Republicans for the troubles of the 1930s, now, as the legacy of the previous decade subsided, the prestige of the party was rising. Mindful of this advantageous circumstance, the Republicans began to prepare for the 1946 midterm elections long ahead of time.

The election strategy of the GOP was based on the Statement of Principles, Policies and Objectives of Republican Members of Congress approved by the caucus back in December 1945. The ideas set down in this paper were developed in speeches by Republican leaders in Congress and statements of principles approved by conventions of some state party organizations. Taking advantage of the serious difficulties the United States faced in the early period of reconversion, they succeeded in persuading voters that their program for solving the set of problems facing the country promised a change for the better in the position of the average American threatened by Big Government, Big Unions and "Soviet Imperialism." The first two threats had always featured prominently in the list of anti-American institutions. Now a new component was included in the list. The fact that a former ally of the United States in the war was depicted as nearly the chief threat to the prosperity and security of America showed that the tactics of the right wingers had undergone a definite transformation. Having failed to discredit the liberal-statist course by appealing to traditional conservative values, they began to make more active use of anti-Sovietism as an effective weapon in the onslaught against the antimonopoly positions of their opponents. At the same time the whipping up of antiSoviet hysterics laid the ground for realization of the ruling class's

global foreign policy and helped establish the ``legitimacy'' of the tough line in respect to the USSR. The right-wing Republicans argued that their political course would secure a prosperous economy and unrestricted opportunities for the Americans to build their lives as they saw fit and not in line with what the federal government directed. That paradise would be secured by private enterprise and initiative freed of the shackles of government regulation.^^1^^ The lure proved to be attractive. The right-wing alternative received support from the voters in the elections.

The Republican right-wingers believed the hour of their final triumph was approaching. "Expressing the interests of business circles that had grown stronger during the war, the conservative camp launched a powerful attack on the democratic achievements of the New Deal," worte Soviet historian V. I. Borisyuk.^^2^^ However, in order to count on success in the 1948 presidential elections, the Republican congressional caucus had to show in practice how successfully the party could manage government affairs. But it was this task, so important for the destinies of the party, that the Republican elite had obviously failed to cope with. The Republicancontrolled 80th Congress went down in history as the do-nothing Congress. Of course, this description made by the liberal Democrats was an exaggeration to some extent (Congress approved the reactionary Taft-Hartley Act, gave corporations major tax benefits, and carried through measures to de-regulate the economy). However, acute social and economic problems (inflation, civil rights, modernization of the social security system and others) were not solved. Despite the fact, leaders of the right-wing Republicans, who were dizzy with success in the midterm elections, behaved militantly not only toward the liberal Democrats but also toward the like-minded people in their own party. Their attacks against the ``pseudo-Republicans'' reached such proportions that a leader of New Republicanism Harold Stassen was compelled to warn his colleagues that their actions could lead to a split. "The Republican Party should be big enough to have room within it for a divergence of views. This is a vital part of the functioning of our two-party

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 91, Part 10, pp. A1231-A1233; Vol. 91, Part 12, pp. A3913-A3914; Vol. 91, Part 13, pp. A4871-4872, A5329; Vol. 92, Part 9, pp. A131- A132, A926-A927.

* V. I. Borisyuk, USA: at the Roots of the Modern Anti-Labor Policy, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1982, p. 129 (in Russian).

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system,"^^1^^ said the former governor of Minnesota.

The concern shown by the moderate wing of the Republicans was not unfounded. The political line pursued by the Old Guard led to an early revival of the former Republican image which they had taken such pains to get rid of---the image of an organization lagging behind life and closely associated with Big Business. The liberals skilfully took advantage of these miscalculations made by the right-wing Republicans. The words and deeds of the Republican Party was a favorite theme of the Democrats on the eve of the 1948 elections. Democratic Party officials harped on it in almost every speech. As a result, differences on intraparty matters became so serious that the two-party mechanism was threatened with destabilization once again.

In Democratic quarters, however, matters looked far from promising. President Harry Truman, who succeeded FDR after his death in 1945, was under fire both from the right wing and the left wing. A favorite son of the liberals, Henry Wallace, accused the President of pushing the country toward the abyss of a new world war by his bungling in foreign affairs. He did not hide the fact that if his planks were not incorporated in the Democratic election platform a third party would be set up. The issue of civil rights for the black population turned into a major problem for the Democratic national leadership. Liberals of the Humphrey type insisted that "the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.''^^2^^ Humphrey and his followers believed "that it was necessary to carry out some minor reforms 'from above' and thereby prevent an upsurge in the struggle waged by the black masses.''^^3^^ The liberals' proposals could have been simply ignored (as FDR had done on many occasions) were it not for the growing black movement behind them which, despite numerous promises by left-wing liberal circles, more and more firmly demanded that black Americans really be granted the rights provided for in the Constitution. But what civil rights could be discussed with Southern politicians who refused to budge an inch from the

₂ Congressional Record, Vol. 92, Part 11, p. A25501.

Democracy at Work: The Official Report of the Democratic Convention, Philadelphia, 1948, p. 192.

^^3^^ I. A. Geyevsky, USA: The Black Problem. Washington's Policy Cm the Black Question (1945-1972), p. 83.

racist positions on which the entire social fabric of Dixieland rested? The President was accused of being unable to restrain the labor union bosses. The Jewish community expressed its strong discontent with what it saw as Truman's insufficient support for the idea of founding Israel. All this combined to cast doubt on the further existence of the New Deal coalition.

It was obvious that under the circumstances it was naive, to say the least, to hope for success in fighting the Republicans only by referring to their mistakes. That was why, after painful hesitations, Truman finally decided to put forward a wide-scale program of liberal reforms subsequently called the Fair Deal. The program provided for a stepped up and broader intervention of the federal government in solving social and economic problems. That indicated that government regulation of social and economic processes was growing at faster rates and the neoliberal doctrine was being further improved. Truman vetoed the anti-labor Taft-- Hartley Act and proposed a plan to fight inflation and a series of measures to take the edge off the racial question. In this way he managed, in the words of historian Alonzo Hamby, to create "a positive new image"^^1^^ in the eyes of the liberal voters. In addition to solving the purely pragmatic problems of the struggle for power, the President's actions had more long-term implications for the party. This was pointed out by Soviet historian V. O. Pechatnov who noted that the tactic enabled "Truman to promote the reformistdemocratic image of the party in the eyes of the public and effectively confirm its affinity to FDR's party.''^^2^^ This, in turn, was an important factor contributing to the stability of the entire party-political system and stressed that the Democrats were a force capable of political initiative.

The maneuver of the liberal Democrats put their opponents in a difficult position: it was risky to reject outright the proposals which were popular among the broad sections of the electorate, but to support them involved a conflict with their own principles aimed at restricting and, in certain cases, putting an end to activities carried on by the federal government, and dismantling a considerable part of the social infrastructure of state-mo-

~^^1^^ Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism^ Columbia University Press, New York, 1973, p. 191.

~^^2^^ V. O. Pechatnov, The Democratic Party of the USA: Voters and Politics, p. 39.

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nopoly capitalism (SMC).

Simultaneously with a broad reformist maneuver in domestic policy, the Democrats in 1947 finally embarked on the road of confrontation with the USSR on the international scene, thus initiating the Cold War. It is important to point out that US foreign policy-makers lent their expansionist ideas a liberal and humanitarian coloring. It was in this light that the White House's major foreign policy actions were perceived by a larger part of the Democratic electorate. This was particularly true of the Marshall Plan which firmly linked West Europe to Washington's anti-- Soviet course and created a foundation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aimed according to the official American view at holding back Soviet expansion. From the very outset the Soviet Union has had all the grounds to regard NATO as a real threat to its security. Unable to understand the true motives of the Establishment, most ordinary Americans at the time saw the foreign policy of the Truman Administration as an extension of the New Deal to the sphere of international relations. Under the specific conditions of the first postwar years, a combination of the liberal domestic policy with expansionism in foreign policy provided the Democrats with an effective weapon which they skilfully used in the party-political struggle. Nevertheless, Truman failed to prevent a split in the party. On its left wing there appeared the Progressive Party headed by Henry Wallace who opposed the policy of confrontation with the USSR and favored a whole set of social reforms within the country. Another political formation emerged on the right wing of the Democratic Party: the States' Rights Party which sought to perpetuate the principles of racial segregation. But the extent and consequences of the split were much smaller than might have been expected. The tactic chosen by the President's staff sharply slowed down the erosion of the Democrats' electorate and showed both the ordinary voters and the elite that the party was still a viable body capable of solving complicated national problems.

That determined the outcome of the elections in the final count. "Only a political miracle or extraordinary stupidity on the part of the Republicans can save the Democratic Party, after 16 years in power, from a debacle in November,"^^1^^ Time predicted con-

~^^1^^ Time, March 15, 1948, p. 26.

fidently. Such was the viewpoint of the conservative press. But the rank-and-file voters decided otherwise. In 1948 the Republican renaissance did not, it would seem, reach its logical conclusion. The conservatives failed to put an end to the Democratic era. Moreover, they lost control of the Congress they had won two years ago. A zigzag became apparent in the evolution of the two-party system: the steady shift to the right of the two-party tandem since the end of the 1930s was interrupted by an upsurge in the neoliberals' activity who once again had come to set the tune in the political process, albeit for a short time. They won an impressive victory in the 1948 elections: nine new seats in the Senate, 75 in the House and seven additional governorships. Only in the early 1930s did the Republicans suffer worse defeats during the period of current history.

At the time, many political analysts thought that the trend for the liberal model of state monopoly capitalism to be replaced by the conservative one had been abruptly stopped. The mouthpiece of business circles Business Week wrote: "Stated in the broadest terms, the effect of the election has been to remove any prospect of immediate change in the general relation of government to economic life in the United States.''^^1^^ As to the liberal Democrats, they were in the highest of spirits following the elections. The New Republic wrote: "So now we have in the White House a man with the most radical platform in presidential history.''^^2^^ They were drawing up the most extensive plans and preparing to implement the reforms laid down in the Fair Deal program.

The Republicans, on the contrary, were in a state of complete disarray. The rival factions heaped accusations upon each other. At the National Committee meeting in January 1949 in Omaha, Dewey's opponents openly accused the nominal party leader of serious mistakes, irresponsible behavior and the like, as a result of which victory was alleged to have been stolen from the party.³ The followers of the New York governor responded in kind. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. published an article in the Saturday Evening Post in which he laid the blame for the defeat on Taft's advocates who stuck to the past ideas and only discredited the par-

~^^1^^ Business Week, December 11, 1948, p. 61.

~^^2^^ New Republic, November 15, 1948, p. 3. Newsweek, February 7, pp. 10-11.

284 Chapter Thirteen

ty in the eyes of the voters. *

These debates seemed quite natural after the sensational defeat. Republican leaders were indeed worried by the question: why had the party lost? Analyzing the situation in the party following the election defeat, Newsweek noted: 'Throughout 1949 they [ Republicans.---£d.] had been numbed by a feeling of complete hopelessness and helplessness... What nagged them most was the fear that perhaps the country really wanted the welfare state after all."² Such a course of events would indeed be a catastrophy for them, because they would have nothing to oppose the Democrats with. Previously they had resorted to all the conceivable combinations of conservative ideas in the struggle against the liberal-statist doctrines and had failed to gain any success. Such a long abstention from power could prove fatal to the party. The social groups supporting it could turn away from the party after losing hope that their demands would be achieved with the help of the Republicans. The GOP had to urgently find an antidote to the Fair Deal program so as to neutralize the onslaught of the liberal Democrats, discredit their doctrines and return the two-party system onto the conservative road. Only then could they expect to put an end to the Democratic era.

At first the conservative Democrats helped the Republicans repel the liberal Democrats. This enabled the opposition to recover from the post-election shock. The bipartisan conservative coalition was quite effective. As early as May 1949 political analyst Ernest Lindley remarked: "Mr. Truman does not control the 81st Congress.''^^3^^ The coalition's efforts were decisive in thwarting attempts to revise the Taft-Hartley Act, bloc the discussion of the civil rights issue, reject the Brennan Plan providing for farmers' incomes to be maintained at the average level of the previous ten years, and some other measures making up the backbone of the Fair Deal program. But if in achieving a balance of strength in the political process the opponents of the government course could rely on the conservative coalition, the Republicans had little to gain from the coalition in the struggle for power, because their partners---the Dixiecrats-as a rule remained loyal to their

₂ Saturday Evening Post, January 27, 1949. Newsweek, January 9, 1950, p. 6. Newsweek, May 23, 1949, p. 12.

On the Road to an Interparty Balance 285

own party in the elections. The Republicans had to rely solely on their own resources in increasing the potential of. conservative electorate groups to the utmost.

A means to achieve this was found. Paradoxically, success came to the Republicans not when they undertook intensive efforts to elaborate a specific conservative alternative to the social and economic course of the Democrats but when they actually abandoned these efforts. In place of a specific conservative social and economic program the Republicans adopted an obvious palliative in which the emphasis was made on abstract expansion of individual freedoms and protection of genuine American values from the corroding effect of the anti-American ideas allegedly proposed by the Democrats. A gross demagogy of this kind could be effective only during the Cold War. It should be said that the Democrats themselves contributed to a large extent to the atmosphere in which these ideas flourished. The boundless and hysterical antiSovietism of the Truman Administration undoubtedly whipped up anti-Communist sentiment in the country. It was in this fashion that the first link in the chain leading unexpectedly to the complete discrediting of bourgeois reformism was forged.

The mechanism of the process was relatively simple. By long and stubborn efforts bourgeois propaganda managed to impose on the public a stereotype of communism which was synonymous with totalitarianism. But liberal-statist doctrines also provided for a stronger regulating role of the government. Hence it was concluded: those who advocate such views wittingly or unwittingly were pushing society along the road to disaster and were, therefore, enemies of the United States. Of course, the liberal Democrats had no intention of forging the last links of the chain. But having laid its beginning, they created a situation in which events could get out of their control.

And this was what happened in February 1950 when Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy made his notorious statement that Russian spies had infiltrated the State Department. Almost simultaneously with McCarthy's announcement, congressional Republicans made public a document with the pretentious title Liberty or Socialism which became the ideological and political manifesto of the right-wing Republicans in the 1950s. Its authors did not offer readers any particularly original ideas. The principal ``innovation'' was the document's tone, the unequivocal desire to stick a label

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ness on an equal footing accepting that under certain conditions both these forces could have a destabilizing effect on American society; (3) the refusal to regard further expansion of federal government interference as a panacea and an emphasis on the need to stimulate private enterprise. It is obvious that this approach deprived the Democrats, who had swung to the right, of many trump cards that made them successful in the struggle against the Republicans. The latter had firmly siezed the initiative and had no intention of giving it up.

The results of the elections consolidated the situation. Major successes were scored by the conservative Republicans who were firmly linked with McCarthyism. A special place was taken by events in Ohio where the ultraconservative leader Robert Taft was to run for reelection to the Senate. Taft did not think it necessary to conceal his reactionary views and, despite desperate efforts by labor unions and liberal public organizations, he won a convincing victory over his rival liberal Democrat Joseph Ferguson with a margin of over 400,000 votes or 15 percent. Taft called it a victory of principle. It was indeed of fundamental importance. It turned out that neoliberals were unable to defeat an avowed reactionary even in an industrial state where the unions seemed to have sufficiently strong positions. Taft's victory was regarded by conservative America as a signal for the launching of a decisive attack against the positions of the liberal democratic forces.

The position of the ruling party was further undermined by the unsuccessful intervention by US troops in Korea. The Republican leaders, who had initially supported the American invasion of Korea, gradually began to condemn the administration in an increasingly harsh language for its inability to "teach those Communists a lesson." The setbacks in Korea which ordinary Americans could not understand seemed to confirm the McCarthyite idea of Democratic betrayal. Taft said that only a decisive Republican victory in the 1952 elections could save the country from creeping socialism. ^^1^^

At the beginning of the new presidential race it was clear that this time the Democrats' chances for success were low indeed. Of course, the Republicans had their problems too. Despite successes by right-wing Republicans in the struggle within the party,

~^^1^^ Reader's Digest, November 1950, p. 154.

of traitors on all those who did not agree with it and monopolize the right to express the national spirit.

The new approach to political problems enabled Republicans to easily explain any issue and any difficulty faced by American society. Everything turned out to be extremely simple: Russian spies and their Democratic henchmen were to blame for all of America's troubles. The absurdity of McCarthy's ideas was obvious to any reasonable person, but in a context where even many left-wing liberals not only shared but even promoted anti-Communist bias it was not surprising that accusations coming from the right wing found a sufficiently strong response among the voters most of whom did not have a particularly high level of political awareness. One tends to agree with the opinion of the chairman of the Democratic Party's National Committee William Boyle, Jr. who said: "Their [the Republicans'.---Ed. ] motives are plain. They cannot win on the issues, so they spread suspicion, stir up hatred, create doubt.''^^1^^

It was very easy to fight for power relying on such a platform: the opposition no longer had to do the unpleasant chore of drawing up their own positive plans for solving basic problems of domestic and foreign policy. In the course of the 1950 midterm elections the Republicans virtually^restored the positions they had lost as a result of the 1948 defeat. Although formally control over Congress remained in the Democrats' hands (they held a margin of two seats in the Senate and 35 in the House), actually they had lost the majority, because on the most important issues in domestic policy their conservative wing voted with the Republicans. And that meant the Fair Deal program was as good as buried.

Having encountered the unexpected counter-assault of the conservatives, the liberals themselves obviously lost heart. Instead of invigorating the election coalition which brought them victory in 1948 the Democrats engaged in a revision of the outdated, in their view, tenets of neoliberalism. As a result, the ideological postulates of the liberals were significantly transformed and in many respects differed from the neoliberalism of the 1930s vintage. The results of this revision may be reduced to three chief points: (1) a sharply negative attitude to Communist ideology and the achievements of socialist countries; (2) putting Big Unions and Big Busi-

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 97, Part 13, p. A3186.

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On the Road to an Interparty Balance 289

their leader Taft could not feel secure. His opponents within the party advocating New Republicanism had no intention of giving up their positions without a fight. It was very important for them to find a person to oppose the Senator from Ohio. Since 1950 they had more and more frequently turned to the popular war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower. After long negotiations they succeeded in persuading him to run for the presidency. However, Eisenhower's entering the election campaign immediately worsened the situation in the opposition and threatened party unity at a crucial point in its history.

The question of how to reconcile the followers of New Republicanism with the advocates of the Genuine Republicanism or, in other words, Eisenhower's team with Taft's team became the major concern of the GOP strategists. Party unity and success in the fight against the Democrats depended on this. By the summer of 1952 contradictions between the two factions had become extremely acute. Even Eisenhower who tried by all means to avoid a confrontation with Taft did not refrain from a rather sharp attack against his rival. He said: "I am running because Taft is an isolationist. His election would be a disaster.''^^1^^ The right-wing Republicans, always distinguished by greater militancy, responded in kind. They showed no enthusiasm when Eisenhower was nominated as the presidential candidate from the Republican Party. The Indiana Republican leader said: "Until Bob Taft blows the bugle, a lot of us aren't going to fight in the army.''^^2^^ Eisenhower's crew sought to achieve at least a temporary reconciliation between their chief and Taft. The search for a compromise with right-wing Republicans had an effect on the election platform. As compared with 1948, it was a more conservative document. The platform was a sort of businessmen's list of grievances against the activities of Big Government. The authors firmly stated that "The Republican Party will end this hostility to initiative and enterprise. "^^3^^ The document contained a long list of specific measures supporting this initiative. But this did not fully satisfy Taft's followers. The conflict was abated for a while only during Eisenhower's personal meeting with Taft in September 1952. The general, however, had to make

~^^1^^ The New York Times, June 24, 1952.

Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and US Presidential Elections, A Division of Franklin Watts, Inc., Vol. 2, New York, 1974, p. 58. ^^3^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. I, p. 500.

some serious concessions to the Senator. Yet the main aim---party unity for the time of the election campaign---was achieved.

As was expected, the elections brought victory to the Republicans. After a twenty-year break they returned to the White House. Congress was also controlled by the Republicans. They also held most of the gubernatorial offices. Thus the mechanism of power redistribution made a full turn. The Democratic era had come to an end.

These facts, however, did not signify that the two-party system was finally and completely adjusted and perfomed its political functions flawlessly. The future was hardly as promising as the ruling circles would want it. Usually power was redistributed when the opposition grasped the new requirements of the ruling class and elaborated adequate recipes to implement them. This time the Republicans did not have such a platform. Subsequent events showed that the palliative program founded on McCarthyite demagogy they used in the struggle for power was hardly appropriate for governing the leading capitalist power. In order to justify the hopes pinned on the party by the monopoly bourgeoisie, the Republicans would have to solve a delicate problem: to tie the right wing of the party to the consensus founded on state-monopoly doctrines.

The position of the Democrats was no easier. For a long time neoliberalism had been in effect the official party doctrine which helped the Democratic leadership keep a motley coalition within its orbit, solve the most important social and economic problems relatively successfully and lend capitalist society certain dynamics. Neoliberalism had underwent substantial transformation during the 20 years of its existence, losing some of its important features and properties. In the new situation many neoliberals "in their works decided to play down critical notes in respect to the American social and political system and capitalist relations as a whole," writes Soviet historian K. S. Gajiyev. They "began to relegate to the background social and economic conflicts between different social groups of the population and support those which, in their view, united all Americans regardless of economic or other interests."¹ In other words, they repudiated the ``conflict'' theory of social development which largely helped them in the 1930s to develop an

K. S. Gajiyev, Evolution of Basic Trends in American Bourgeois Ideology, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1982, pp. 42, 43.

20-749

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ideological and political platform which won the Democrats the status of majority party. The above-mentioned transformation of neoliberalism made it less effective in the party-political struggle. As a result the Democrats lost the initiative in the political process and were temporarily confused over which principles should underlie their political course.

The situation made the lull in the political process unstable and relative. Despite the fact that in the mid-1950s "statism prevailed over the hysterics of the extreme individualists and lost the liberal and social-democratic rhetoric of the New and Fair programs"¹ which frightened the conservative circles in the ruling class so much, the profound contradictions in the development of the component parts of the two-party mechanism were not eliminated. On the contrary, they were continually compounded by the new problems arising from the rapidly developing scientific and technological revolution and the democratic movement which emerged at the end of the 1950s and provoked an acute social and political crisis in the 1960s.

EM SEARCH

OF A POLITICAL

IMAGE: DEMOCRATS

IN THE OPPOSITION

(1953-1960)

Historians studying contemporary bourgeois reformism in the United States traditionally and quite naturally focus attention on the 1930s, the 1940s and the 1960s when a state-monopoly mechanism was set up and developed for regulating social and economic processes as a result of different measures initiated by the administrations of FDR, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The 1950s usually remain somewhat in the shade, which is, perhaps, justified from the viewpoint of what public life was in those years, but contradicts the ideological and political processes occurring behind the conservative facade of Eisenhower's America. In particular, the Democratic Party was a carrier of liberal-- reformist ideas bridging the gap between the New and Fair Deal programs in the 1930s and the 1940s and concepts of the New Frontiers and the Great Society of the 1960s.

The late 1940s and early 1950s proved to be a precarious time for the Democratic Party. The extremely modest results of the widely advertised Fair Deal in domestic policy combined with rampant McCarthyism and the increasingly dangerous involvement of the United States in the highly unpopular war in Korea launched by the Truman Administration in 1950 undermined the authority of FDR's party in the eyes of the voters. In 1948 ideological differences in the New Deal coalition developed into an acute conflict within the party as a result of which the left-wing liberals headed by Henry Wallace and the conservative Dixiecrats led by J. Strom Thurmond waged an independent struggle for the White House. Adlai Stevenson's defeat in the 1952 election was the result and the highlight of those critical processes, and only contributed to clashes within the party. The Democratic opposition forged its ideological and political course in the context of struggle bet-

N. V. Sivachev, "State-Monopoly Capitalism in the US", Voprosy istorii, No. 7, 1977, p. 92.

20*

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Democrats in the'Opposition

(1953-1960) 293

ween the party's main factions.

When a party controls the executive, it has, as a rule, one national leader, the President. Relying on his authority and the mighty government machinery, he usually determines that party's policy. A party's defeat in the struggle for the presidency promotes centrifugal trends: the party's caucus in Congress, governors and mayors of the largest cities elected on the party's ticket, and finally its official leading bodies, the National Committee above all, tend to lay claim to domination in the party.

The development of certain ideas is inevitably influenced by various social and political processes which derive, in turn, from society's economic life. Therefore, in examining the ideological and political struggle and interparty clashes of the 1950s it must be kept in mind that this was a time when the American economy grew with a relative stability, the scientific and technological revolution marched on confidently, the split in the labor union movement was overcome on a trade-unionist basis and the 17,000,000=strong AFL-CIO was formed, and a mass protest movement against segregation of colored Americans came into being.

After Harry Truman became a private citizen on January 20, 1953, and Eisenhower assumed the responsibilities of executive power, the Democrats faced a dilemma usual for the party which had yielded the helm to its rival in the two-party system: either to support the other party's course on the whole or to advance its own, independent slogans and attempt to get them embodied in legislation. The choice depended on the balance of power in the party. As to the Democrats in the period under consideration, their liberal wing led by Adlai Stevenson was largely discredited by the 1952 defeat. In a context of the electorate's serious disappointment in reformist promises, and the country's swing to the right, the foremost positions in the party naturally came to be occupied by moderate conservative and right-centrist politicians---Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn, both from Texas, who held the key posts in the opposition party: the Senate minority leader and the House minority leader, respectively.

These experienced leaders were well aware that Eisenhower had been elected not because of the election platform or slogans of the Republican Party but rather because of his personal popularity among the voters. Under the circumstances Lyndon Johnson felt that to attack the new President would be "like telling children

that their father was a bad man.''^^1^^ On the other hand, seeking to avoid the complications that had emerged in the Truman years between the President and Congress, Eisenhower tried in all ways to establish firm contacts with Capitol Hill and warned members of his party against excesses in respect to the Democrats because their assistance might be needed: the Republicans did not have a firm majority in Congress on which the new executive chief could rely; there were 48 Republicans in the Senate and 221 in the House while the number of Democrats was 47 and 213, respectively. Finally, at the party convention Eisenhower had been nominated by a group of ``New'' or ``Modern'' Republicans who engaged in a polemic with the Old Guard led by Taft, and favored a renewal of the party's ideological doctrines. They rejected the traditional assumptions of classical Republicanism of the 1920s and first half of the 1930s and accepted some statist elements in the ideological and political legacy of the New Deal. As a result, the program Eisenhower submitted to Congress in 1953 was moderate: retaining in principle many reforms of the 1930s which provided for a stronger regulating role of the government in the country's social and economic life, it lent them a more conservative ring. Having carried through a rapid dismantling of the extraordinary regulation system which emerged in the years of US aggression in Korea, and having abolished Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation in a symbolic gesture, the Eisenhower Administration proclaimed a deficit-free budget and a revision of the taxation structure as the top social and economic priorities. Specifically this meant a deflationary course (issue of long-term government bonds with the aim of raising interest rates, which would make credits less accessible), and introduction of new write-off benefits and elimination of double taxing (since 1954 persons paying investment taxes were exempted from income taxes on corporations into whose assets these investments were included). At the same time the Republican President refused to reduce corporate income taxes, left the social welfare system intact, continued federal programs providing subsidies for marketable agricultural produce, housing and highway construction, and began reconstruction of the St. Lawrence waterway, a program whose cost was comparable only to

Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1976, p. 155.

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parties. Under the circumstances, the opposition's return to power was highly improbable.

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party could offer an alternative to the Republican Administration's course and bring the party out of the state of consensus. However, the party National Committee was the only body fully controlled by the moderately liberal Democrats and capable of serving as an ideological and organizational center at the federal level. Aware of this, the leader of the liberal Democrats, Adlai Stevenson, said following the 1952 defeat: "I hope we can make the Committee something really useful during this interval in which we will have no access to the resources of the Executive Departments and no patronage. After years it will be quite a new concept and enterprise.''^^1^^

In 1953 the Democratic National Committee was a body with vague functions which had been disorganized by the incomplete restructuring of 1951-1952. The reorganization continued in 1953- 1954 with the direct participation of Stevenson and under the supervision of Chairman Mitchell. Two divisions were formed: one in charge of party activities and the other---propaganda. In 1955- 1956, the new Chairman Paul Butler set up a TV-Radio and a Registration Division. Thus the Democratic National Committee in 1956 was quite a logically organized system of bodies working mostly along two lines---organization and propaganda---and better suited to the tasks facing it.

In 1955-1956, on Butler's instructions, a whole network of advisory committees was set up under the National Committee to consider agricultural and labor policies, and problems of small business and national resources. Each of these committees collected material on and analyzed one range of problems (environmental protection, farmer subsidies) and prepared the relevant information for the National Committee.

In 1953-1954 the National Committee had to deal with the most important problem of eliminating its budget deficit. At first this was done by traditional methods: selling tickets to dinner parties and party gatherings, and a large cut in the staff (from 201 to 59 people).^^2^^ All these measures somewhat improved the finan-

The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, Vol. IV, Let's Talk Sense to the American People, 1952-1955, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1974, p. 220.

Hugh A. Bone, Party Committees and National Politics, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1958, pp. 42-44.

FDR's TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority). On the whole, as Soviet historian N. V. Sivachev aptly put it, Eisenhower proved to be "a conservative---no more and no less!''^^1^^ The state-monopoly foundations of American society, which were laid by FDR's Democrats in the 1930s, now had influential advocates within the party that was more inclined to the individualistic course. This inevitably made government statism in the 1950s more conservative but did not change its essence.

Naturally, the President's proposals did not provoke serious criticism from most members of the Democratic congressional faction adhering to positions similar to Eisenhower's. Explaining the overall favorable approach to the President's initiatives, Ray burn said that after the 1952 defeat his party should also recognize its responsibility for the country's destiny and therefore Democrats on Capitol Hill should not block Republican bills in Congress. Moreover, a paradoxical situation took shape in 1953-1954: the Democrats actively supported Republican President Eisenhower in Congress on such issues as financial assistance for housing construction, education, health, etc. On the whole, of 31 legislative successes scored by the President 23 were supported by the Democrats.^^2^^

This situation gave the opposition party certain tactical advantages but involved a definite danger from the strategic viewpoint: most of the President's programs constituted a continuation, albeit in modified form, of the reforms originated by the Democratic Administration, and the Democrat strategists were at a loss having discovered that their party was left without any alternative proposals. As a result of the similarity of the ideological positions of the leading factions in the main bourgeois parties, a consensus began to emerge in the country's two-party system on the basis of acceptance in principle by both the Eisenhower Republicans and the majority of Democrats of the ideas of moderate government intervention in the economic and social processes. Such a state of affairs was fraught with unpleasant consequences for the two-party mechanism: the disappearance of an alternative in the parties' positions led to weaker control over the electorate, which, in turn, bred moods among the voters in favor of creating third

~^^1^^ N. V. Sivachev, Y. F. Yazkov, Current History of the USA, Moscow, 1980, p. 211 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ Congressional Record. Vol. 99, Part 12, July 2,1953, to August 28,1953, U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1953, p. A4160.

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publican course. Thus the Democratic National Committee's activities in 1953-1956 may be described as the beginning of a search for new methods of party work and an attempt to reorient the committee machinery to serve the party while it was in opposition.

In 1953-1954 changes occurred not only in the liberal bastion, the National Committee. They also involved the work of Democratic Party bodies on Capitol Hill. If previously Democratic Party committees on congressional elections carried on their activities chiefly during the campaigns, since the mid-1950s they began to operate on a permanent basis, preparing for the next elections immediately after the end of the previous ones. After the midterms of 1958 Vice-President Nixon said: "Our opponents deserve the victory they have won because of their hard work and their excellent organization... The great lesson of this election for both Democrats and Republicans is that in these days campaigning is a year-round business."^!

The 1954 elections brought to the fore the problem of establishing effective collaboration between the Republican President and Democrat-controlled Congress. The role of intermediaries was played by leaders of the Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill: Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were invited at least once a month and occasionally more often to joint meetings with the Eisenhower cabinet where they participated in working out particularly important projects; they frequently had unofficial talks with the President and exchanged opinions over the telephone.

In the 84th Congress (1955-1956) the Democrats on the whole approved the President's basic legislation, but the coming presidential elections increasingly made themselves felt. The consensus type of relations became a liability for the Democrats. An overall strengthening of their positions in Congress coupled with more vigorous action by the National Committee stimulated the moderate liberals representing the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill.

A small group of congressmen began to form back in 1953. It included 17 liberal Democrats from New York (the leader of the group Emanuel Celler, Abraham J. Multer, Adam Clayton Powell, Isidore Dollinger, Leo- W. O'Brien and others) who voted unanimously on all issues. They constituted the first cell of a future association. In the upper chamber the moderate liberal wing of the

cial situation, but preparations for the 1954 election campaign demanded more and more funds on propaganda. This led to the introduction of the quota system in the party. According to this system each state Democratic committee had to collect a fixed sum of money during the year to contribute to the National Committee's treasury. Thanks to the quota system all the debts incurred by the committee during the 1952 campaign had been paid by the end of 1954.

In 1953-1954 the National Committee still had no clearly defined standpoint on the fundamental questions of political struggle and abstained from stating its opinion. It was only after the Democrats' success in the 1954 congressional elections that the National Committee and its staff introduced changes in their work. Only a few days after Butler took office in January 1955, he publicly criticized Eisenhower's State of the Union Message referring to the growth of unemployment in 1954 as compared with 1953 and the government procurement prices of agricultural produce which were unfavorable for small farmers. This greatly irritated Lyndon Johnson who stated in the press that the National Committee and Butler had no business making such statements. In reply the National Committee officially declared that it would decide for itself what, how, when and why it would do.

After this incident the Democratic National Committee regularly criticized the Republican Administration. In September 1955 Butler committed a sacrilege in the eyes of the moderate conservative Democrats: he made a personal attack against Eisenhower saying that due to failing health and advanced age the President was unable to govern the country effectively. The next serious action by the National Committee was criticism of Democratic governor of Ohio Frank Lausche for failing to help the state party committee in its work and officially thanking Republican Eisenhower for vetoing a Democratic congressmen's bill on farmer subsidies.

However, activization of the Democratic National Committee in 1955-1956 was very superficial. While still remaining the party's organizational body the committee did not offer any serious positive programs which could serve as a real alternative to the ReCornelius P. Cotter and Bernard C. Hennessy. Politics without Power. The National Party Committees, Atherton Press, New York, 1964, p. 180.

Democratic Digest, January-February 1959.

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government in the economic and social processes was not rejected but, on the contrary, regarded as normal. Such interference was viewed not as an emergency measure but as a routine duty of the US government.

However, the real political image of the Republican Administration in the 1956 elections was determined not by the ideology of New Republicanism but rather by specific steps taken by Eisenhower and his staff in the legislative field. These steps showed that the GOP, as represented by its leading faction, had moved beyond the framework of bourgeois-individualist political philosophy and, on the whole, followed a state-monopoly course more adequate to the world outlook of most Americans, refusing in practice to adhere to the slogans of the advocates of the bankrupt laisser-faire theories. In the final count this was why the Democratic Party, armed only with the amorphous idea of New America and lacking virtually any major independent legislative success or initiative as its political asset, suffered a defeat in the 1956 presidential elections---its presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson lost for the second time to Eisenhower. At the same time, from the viewpoint of the Democrats, the situation in 1956 seemed somewhat better than in 1952. The victory of the Republican presidential candidate was not backed up by any growth in the influence of the GOP at the other levels of government: in both the Senate and the House the Democrats retained the majority they had won from the Republicans back in 1954.

The situation was judged in different ways by the various groups of Democrats depending on their ideological bias and specific political plans for the coming four-year term.

In late 1956 and early 1957 the moderate liberals initiated an unprecedented innovation in the party: for the first time a purely partisan body was set up to take charge of domestic and foreign policy-making.

The immediate impulse to its creation was provided by Senator Humphrey's statement urging the Democratic Party which had a majority in both chambers of Congress to push through the highest legislature a number of specific bills flowing from its election platform. Humphrey particularly stressed the need for school desegregation. Johnson and Rayburn opposed the move indicating that they were awaiting civil rights initiatives from the Republican Administration.

Democrats was represented by 18 senators---Hubert Humphrey ( Minnesota), Paul Douglas (Illinois), Patrick McNamara (Michigan), John Kennedy (Massachusetts), Estes Kefauver (Tennessee), Richard Neuberger (Oregon) and others---who acted in a concerted way.

In mid-1954 these New York Democrats proposed a legislative program of the minority party. The program included 18 points and corresponded to the Democratic Party platform adopted by the convention in 1952. The top priority measures were repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, elimination of discrimination against the black population in getting jobs and joining labor unions, an increase in unemployment benefits, an effective housing construction program and others.^^1^^ However, no attempts were made to implement the program up to the Second Session of the 83rd Congress (1953-1954). Nevertheless, the document was highly important as a declaration of principles and a program of action of the moderate liberal wing for the subsequent two years.

The regaining by the Democratic Party of majority in Congress as a result of the 1954 elections prompted the Democrats to advance their own programs more resolutely. Thus, following Eisenhower's proposals on housing, civil rights, education, and labor policy, the Democrats of New York made public their demands which were to considerably enlarge the government programs. They worked hard to get their demands adopted. However, as events showed, the scattered forces of the liberals in Congress were unable to overcome the resistance of the two-party center whose efforts were aimed at achieving a compromise with the Republican Administration.

The leading moderate-conservative wing of the Republicans entered the 1956 elections on a platform of New Republicanism, which was claimed to be the golden mean betwen two extremesbourgeois individualism (the 1896 ideology) and liberal statism (the 1936 ideology). The meaning of New Republicanism, as it was defined in Larson's book,^^2^^ was in asserting the intransient fundamental value of private capitalist initiative in the social and economic life of American society. Yet a certain interference by

~^^1^^ Congressional Record. Vol. 110, Part 6, May 26,1954, to June 21,1954 U S G P O Washington, 1954, p. 8395.

......

~^^2^^ Arthur Larson, A Republican Looks at His Party, Harper & Brothers, Publishers New York, 1956.

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Two resolutions were approved on November 26, 1956, at a sitting of the National Committee's executive: the first urged congressional Democrats to vote for Humphrey's proposals and the other directed Butler to set up an Advisory Committee to include the most authoritative party leaders with the aim of studying, discussing, and analyzing data on the political situation in the country and issuing statements on behalf of the party for all those supporting Democrats.

Acting on the resolution, Butler announced on the next day that the Advisory Committee would be set up and sent invitations to some prominent Democrats. Butler's invitations were received by Adlai Stevenson and all the Democratic leaders in the SenateLyndon Johnson, Mike Mansfield and George Smathers---and in the House---Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Michael Kirwan and Carl Albert---as well as the most prestigious governors and mayors--- Averell Harriman, G. Mennon Williams, Luther H. Hodges, Raymond Tucker and David L. Lawrence. Leaders of the moderate liberals Humphrey and Kefauver and veteran Democrats Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt were also invited.

Johnson refused the invitation and persuaded Mansfield and Smathers to do likewise. The Democratic majority leader in the Senate believed that the Advisory Committee was "completely powerless to produce any votes" yet "completely capable of deepening divisions within the Democratic Party." "The idea that the congressional Democrats have a responsibility for taking the national Democratic platform and program and trying to push it through the Congress is simply crazy.

On behalf of the invited House Democrats, Rayburn also refused to participate, explaining that they had reached the unanimous opinion that it would be a mistake for the leaders of the Democratic caucus to participate in any other committee outside it. A few more politicians refused without explaining the reasons. As a result the Advisory Committee included Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Estes Kefauver, G. Mennon Williams, Raymond Tucker, Averell Harriman, and Paul Butler. At the first meeting Butler was unanimously elected chairman.

The Democratic Party National Committee defined the functions of the Advisory Committee as follows: to provide progressive and

Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, p. 1407.

Democrats in the Opposition

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effective political leadership by continually studying problems arising between conventions and advancing action programs to solve these problems. In effect, this was declaration of war on the right-centrist moderately conservative Democrats who relied on Congress. So the refusal of the leaders of the party caucus on Capitol Hill to join the Advisory Committee was in no way accidental.

The first meeting of the Advisory Committee was set for January 4, 1957. Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn and Democratic majority leader in the House John McCormack were invited. They accepted the invitation: the committee had become a reality which could not be ignored.

The meeting adopted several statements one of which expressed the collective opinion of the Democratic Party, particularly those Democrats who were not represented in the Congress. Another document---the First Day Statement---emphasized that "The Committee places the maximum strength of the Party behind its own positive programs (and) affords our Party the means of rallying national support and public opinion behind our programs or against unwise programs of the Executive Branch.''^^1^^

After the first meeting, a closed session was held by Johnson, Rayburn and Butler precise information about which could not be obtained even by the Washington correspondents of The New York Times. It could be concluded from a vague report in the newspaper of January 6 that Johnson and Rayburn were, apparently, impressed by the adopted statements, and decided to avoid a direct conflict which would inevitably lead to a party split. They agreed to a certain compromise: congressional Democratic leaders officially indicated that they would heed the opinions of the Advisory Committee. The agreement was reflected in the new name of the committee: it was renamed council to lay emphasis on its advisory nature and its subordination to the National Committee. That is how the Advisory Council of the Democratic Party National Committee was born. It had a strong impact on all party activities in 1957-1960.

Two basic trends could be singled out in the activities of the Advisory Council. The first was to compile detailed policy statements on the basis of data collected and processed for publication as condensed press releases in The New York Times. The second was to improve the organizational structure of the Council itself

Democratic Digest, February 1957, p. 7.

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of moderate liberals from the Council was in some way taken into consideration in Congress. It was demonstrated, in particular, that the Council had put forward the ideas underlying the legislation on housing, highway construction bill, farm-produce prices stabilization, unemployment compensation extension measure, depressed area redevelopment bill which were discussed in Congress and subsequently approved. *

Seeking to raise the prestige of the moderate liberal wing and demonstrate their independence of the congressional caucus leadership to the whole party, the Council members sharply exacerbated relations within the party in July-August 1959. They officially expressed a number of ideas concerning the political line of the congressional caucus. Some critical remarks contained in the Council's statement were levelled personally at Johnson and Rayburn and their tactics in Congress. As to the extreme right wing (the Dixiecrats), Butler stated on national TV that the Southerners could "get out of the party" if they did not revise their stand on desegregation.^^2^^ In addition, the Council heard Butler's report "The Current Legislative Situation" in July 1959 and adopted a resolution approving certain bills pushed through the Congress by the Democrats^^3^^ but at the same time indicating that the Democratic majority in Congress should "use its power and give the nation a significant program of constructive legislation." The Council recommended that Democrats in Congress concentrate on the following goals: federal aid for education, revision of the agricultural program under consideration in its committees, raising minimal wages and extension of social insurance.^^4^^

Speaking on TV after the resolution was adopted, Butler urged the leaders of the Democratic caucus in Congress to be more active and persistent in defending party policy, particularly school desegregation,^^5^^ which exasperated Rayburn completely. Responding sharply to the attempt to attack his authority the Speaker angrily wrote in a letter to one of his friends: "I think Paul Butler has destroyed his usefulness because he has half or more of the Dem-

* Democratic Digest, September 1958, pp. 10-11. C. P. Cotter and B. C. Hennessy. Politics without Power, p. 222. The bills in question involved housing, urban modernization, depressed area assistance and revision of tax policy (Democratic Digest, September 1958, pp. 10-11.)

~^^4^^ Democratic Digest, July 1959, p. 7.

~^^5^^ Ibidem.

and set up special advisory committees subordinated to it and to the National Committee.

In early 1957, on Butler's initiative, the Council set up the first two advisory committees: on Foreign Policy (chaired by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson) and on Economic Policy ( chaired by prominent economist John K. Galbraith). A third committee appeared in June 1958---the Advisory Committee on Labor Policy headed by George M. Harrison, President of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, executive committee member of the AFLCIO and the Democratic National Committee. The growing role of science in modern society was reflected in the founding of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology in April-May 1959 headed by a physicist of world renown Ernest C. Pollard. Organization of a fifth committee had been completed by September 1959: it was the Committee on Urban and Suburban Problems. The mayor of New Haven (Connecticut) Richard C. Lee became the chairman. The Committee on Farm Policy began to be constituted at the same time. The Advisory Committee on Health Policy under the chairmanship of Michael E. DeBakey was organized in April-May 1960 not long before the Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles.

In one of its first statements the Council urged congressional Democrats to vote for an amendment against the filibuster rule, but the moderate conseratives refused to take heed and the amendment was voted down by the joint efforts of the right centrist Democrats and Dixiecrats allied with the right-wing Republicans.^^1^^

Subsequently the Council's activities entered a more calm and moderate phase: it approved policy statements prepared by its committees which as a rule did not contain demands to take any immediate actions. However, its members had no intention of rejecting direct political action. In September 1957 the Council repudiated Democratic governor Orval E. Faubus' stand on the Little Rock incident of September 4, 1957. The Council declared that the governor's actions did not conform to the Democratic Party's views on civil rights.

Attempting to demonstrate its influence on the Democratic congressional caucus, from September 1958 the Council began to publish materials in the Democratic Digest showing that the line

Democratic Digest, February 1957, p. 7.

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ocrats of the country utterly disgusted with him. Therefore, his ability to serve the party has vanished to a great extent.''^^1^^

Johnson, Rayburn and Butler met in the latter half of August to settle the conflict. An agreement was reached to retain the former manner of relations between the bodies they led and, as a result, the Council made no policy statements until December 1959, and the Democrats displayed remarkable unanimity---- apparently the July move of the National Committee chairman had an effect---in passing through Congress the Acts of Treaties: TVA Self-Financing (House: 238 Democrats for and 31 against; Senate 56 for and two against) and Public Works Appropriation Bill (House: 266 for and four against; Senate: 55 for and one against).^^2^^

The activities pursued by the Advisory Council of the Democratic Party National Committee did not undermine the prestige of the National Committee and its machinery. On the contrary, changes in the latter's structure and development of forms and methods in organization and propaganda resulted in fundamentally different phenomena in the committee's direction of party life.

The National Committee staff began to pay more attention to work with local party organizations, chiefly Democratic Party Committees in the counties. Regional conferences had been held by September 1957 with the participation of state and local committees. These conferences discussed improvement of contacts in the state-county system, and also propaganda during the 1958 and 1960 election campaigns.^^3^^ A standing seminar devoted to organization of party work began operating under the National Committee in November 1957. Two conferences were held in 1959 dealing with organization of propaganda during the 1960 campaign at the level of state party committees including the conference of state committee chairman representing all the Democratic state locals without exception.^^4^^ It was the first conference of its kind in the history of the Democratic Party.

After the serious financial difficulties of the 1956 campaign, the National Committee introduced a number of innovations in party finances, most interesting of which was subsidizing membership introduced in 1957. This was how Butler described the development: "Democrats will be asked to contribute to the Party on a regular basis---either by annual, semi-annual or monthly payments. The sustaining member will receive a membership card and a year's subscription to the Democratic Digest. He will also receive, from time to time, bulletins of special interest and importance concerning activities of the Democratic Party.''^^1^^ Thus, for the first time in the history of the Democratic Party an attempt was made to introduce permanent (voluntary) membership. Regular contributions resembled membership dues, sustaining members had certain, albeit not very important, moral rather than real, advantages compared to those who supported the Democrats but did not contribute financially.

Changes in the fund-raising system enabled the National Committee to improve its difficult financial position; in 1959-1960 it received more than a million dollars a year.

The growing influence of the moderate liberal wing in the Democratic Party, which was actively promoted by the National Committee and the Advisory Council, was bound to have an impact on the party caucus in Congress. In early 1957, 80 liberal caucus members formerly acting individually formed the bloc of Roosevelt Democrats or Young Turks (70 were congressmen from the Northwestern urban areas and 10 from the farmer Northwestern states) who favored carrying on the New Deal-Fair Deal reforms.^^2^^

The Young Turks developed their strategy approximately along the same lines as the New York Democrats who joined the Young Turks.

On January 30, 1957, Thompson made public the program of the Roosevelt Democrats---the Northern Manifesto---which basically repeated the 1956 Democratic national platform^^3^^ and coincided

~^^1^^ Democratic Digest, July 1957, p. 2.

~^^2^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 103, Part 6, May 16, 1957, to June 6,1957.U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1957, pp. 7459-7460. The Roosevelt Democrats were headed by Eugene McCarthy (Minnesota) and Frank Thompson (New York).

~^^3^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 103, Part 1, January 3, 1957, to February 1, 1957, pp. 1324-1326; Vol. 104, Part 15, August 21, 1958, to August 23, 1958, U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1958, p. 197000.

21-749

Speak, Mister Speaker, compiled and edited by H.G. Dulaney and Edward Hake Phillips, Sam Rayburn Foundation, Bonham, Texas, 1978, p. 379.

Clinton Rossiter, Parties and Politics in America, A Signet Book, New York 1964 p. 132.

3 Democratic Digest July 1957, p. 7;August 1957, p. 14;March 1958, pp. 8-9.

Democratic Digest, May 1959, Second Cover; October 1959, pp. 11-12.

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with the recommendations contained in the first policy statement of the Advisory Council issued on January 4, 1957. Thus the moderate liberals' struggle to implement the Northern Manifesto was an attempt to raise the party's responsibility for carrying out its election promises.

The liberals' efforts were crownd by partial success in 1957- 1958: Congress adopted the Civil Rights Act (1957), the National Defense Education Act (1958) providing for an increase in government spending in the field, the Emergency Housing Bill (1958) raising federal government expenditures on aid to states and local organizations in urban renewal and some others.^^1^^ As a result of the 1958 elections the moderate liberal wing was reinforced by new members, and that influenced the balance of power in the Congress.

However, the situation on Capitol Hill as well as beyond was marked not only by certain successes scored by the liberal Democrats but also changes in the position of the ruling Republican Party. The crisis of 1957-1958 and its consequences, particularly in view of the Eisenhower Administration's return to deficit budget planning, meant a major failure of economic policy based on New Republicanism. The government's agrarian measures which ruined small farmers deprived the administration of support in the country's agricultural areas. In addition, the 1957 events in Little Rock (Arkansas) when National Guardsmen prevented black children from attending schools led to an aggravation of relations between official Washington and the governments of the Southern states and dashed Eisenhower's hopes that the authorities would solve the civil rights problem constructively at a state level or at least keep the situation under control without forcing the federal government to act in this highly sensitive and potentially explosive field. The discrediting of the conservative individualists from the Republican Party which began in 1954 following the fall of Joseph McCarthy, had significantly weakened the positions of the GOP right wing by 1958. On the other hand, it was in the late 1950s that there was a certain growth in the influence of the liberal Republicans headed by Nelson Rockefeller and Harold Stassen, which, on a par with the above, tipped the balance within the ruling party.

Congress and the Nation 1945-1964. A Review of Government and Politics in the Postwar Years, Congressional Quarterly Service, Vol. 1, Washington, 1965, pp. 490, 1208, 1621.

In view of all this it was only natural that the conflict emerging between Democratic moderate liberals and Eisenhower reached its highest point during the 86th Congress (1959-1960) and its participants from the opposition party behaved in such a way that it would appear as a general clash between the Democrats and the Republicans: the presidential elections were approaching, and this raised the Democrats' hopes for success in view of divisions within the ruling party and a general weakening of Republican positions.

A typical example of that conflict was the argument concerning housing construction in 1959 where the bone of contentions was the size of federal subsidies to the states. The President vetoed two variants of the bill submitted by moderate liberal Democrats, and only the third, compromise version of the bill was signed by the President.^^1^^ The issue of government expenditures was the principal watershed in the parties'policies at the end of the 1950s. As opposed to the Republicans who identified rising federal expenditures with growing inflation, the Democrats had no intention of avoiding urgent social problems and offered a quite specific method of solving them---spending. They did not denounce the budget dificit which they regarded simply as investment in a profitable business promising large dividends in the future.

Many of the bills incorporated in the program of the Roosevelt Democrats as top-priority measures were blocked by the conservatives. Thus the civil rights bill, the depressed area redevelopment bill, the school aid bills and others advanced by the liberals in 1959 were schelved by the House Rules Committee and Judiciary Committee where a majority was held by conservative politicians.^^2^^ One of the biggest defeats suffered by the Young Turks was the adoption of the anti-labor Landrum-Griffin Bill: the conservative coalition not only successfully opposed the Young Turks but also initiated reactionary legislative acts.

All this made increasingly obvious the need to rally and improve coordination of the moderate liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It was decided with this purpose to set up an official organization of liberal congressmen in the House. On September 5, 1959, an assembly of liberal Democrats announced the ``birth'' of the Democratic Study Group consisting of 125 members. The Study Group had its political, executive and steering committees and staff

Congress and the Nation, p. 493. Ibid., p. 1208.

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preparing analytical studies. The Group was headed by Lee Metcalf (Montana) assisted by six vice-chairmen, a secretary, a chief of the staff and the senior whip with his assistants. A caucus of all the group's members was the supreme body of the group.

After the first session of the 86th Congress the leadership of the Study Group got down to working out the strategy of the Democratic moderate liberal wing in the House of Representatives for 1960. Particular attention was paid to defining top-priority legislative measures which could find support among most congressmen from the Northern and the Western states and also the tactic for implementing them. As a result the following problems were singled out: the racial problem, government aid for education, assistance to depressed areas, higher minimum wages, housing construction, extending social security and medical services to new sections of industrial and office workers. Accordingly, seven problem groups were formed headed by experienced bloc members.

Thus, in 1960, the Democratic moderate liberal wing on Capitol Hill was better organized and coordinated than four years earlier. Links became stronger between its members in both chambers. Lee Metcalf worked with Senator Eugene McCarthy; Frank Thompson, Jr. with Senator Joseph Clark (Pennsylvania); John Moss ( California) with Senator Albert Gore (Tennessee) and so on.

From the very first days of the second session of the 86th Congress (1960) the Study Group and the liberal Democrats closely linked to it began to implement their plans. In early 1960, in accordance with the Democratic Party platform and recommendations of the Advisory Council, bills were adopted expanding federal housing construction program and government aid to education. On January 6 the Democratic moderate liberals attempted to pass a bill raising the minimum wage from 1 to 1.25 dollars an hour. However, the bill was inevitably defeated in Congress by conservatives backed by Eisenhower. The liberals managed to return the bill on government aid to depressed areas from the committees and have it approved by both chambers. Eisenhower vetoed the bill. The same fate lay in store for the bills increasing federal expenditures on social welfare, health, education and some others.

In the context of the acute confrontation between the Democrats and the President supported by an absolute majority of Republicans in the legislature, the congressional wing of the opposition party demonstrated an alternative to the Republican Administra-

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tion's course.

However, it would be a gross exaggeration to assert that in the Democrats' party life the tone was set only by the moderate liberals in the latter half of the 1950s.

The Dixiecrats traditionally made up the right wing of the Democratic party. On Capitol Hill the Southern wing of the Democrats regularly opposed bills to increase the minimum wages, reduce the workday, and adopt legislation acceptable to the labor unions. It promoted ultrareactionary demands in the racial issue. Forming a compact group, the Dixiecrats established a bloc with the conservative wing of the Republicans in the country's highest legislative body.

The history of the coalition goes back to 1937. During Eisenhower's Presidency the coalition had a strong influence on the legislative process opposing federal aid to immigrants consistently and successfully, and sharply criticizing bills on government subsidies for education, health care and housing. Thus the Dixiecrats in effect blocked many of the measures on the basis of which the liberal Democrats attempted to put forward an alternative to Republican policy in the latter part of the 1950s. In 1959 the conservative forces in Congress rallied to resist the liberals. Leaders of both conservative groups---coalition partners---began to hold joint sessions coordinating their activities in Congress. As a result, in 1959-1960, the coalition acted as a united front against the Northern and Western Democrats in 11 out of 87 House rollcall votes winning 10 of them (91 percent). It is noteworthy that in 1957 it won on 81 percent and in 1958 on 64 percent of the showdown votes on Capitol Hill.^^1^^

On May 17, 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Subsequently, on April 23, 1956, it also ruled that segregation on interstate passenger bus lines was unconstitutional. These rulings by the Supreme Court provoked a wave of indignation among the Dixiecrats, including congressmen from the Southern states.

On March 12, 1956, 19 senators and 78 representatives elected from the Southern states denounced the ruling of the Supreme Court in a specially published Declaration of Constitutional Principles and urged the colleagues to ignore it.^^2^^ The document was de-

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 106, Part 2, January 21, 1960, to February 16, 1960, U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1960, p. 1441.

~^^2^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 102, Part 4, March 8, 1956, to March 27, 1956, U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1956, pp. 4515-4516.

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clared open, but its immediate supporters were joined only by four Southern Republicans: William C. Cramer (Florida), Charles R. Jonas (North Carolina), Richard H. Poff and Joel T. Broyhill (both from Virginia).

The Southern wing of the Democrats was a difficult obstacle to overcome on the way to solving the racial problem, a burning issue both for the party and the country as a whole. A major part in eliminating this obstacle was played by the centrist moderate conservative group of Democrats.

The centrists occupied an intermediary position in the party between the conservatives and the liberals and responded sensitively to changes in the political climate. It carried great weight in the party and that weight tended to grow during all the years of the Republican Administation. The moderates outnumbered the liberals and the Dixiecrats,^^1^^ and they were led by the strong leaders Rayburn and Johnson who had extensive experience of working in the highest legislature and enjoyed vast powers under congressional rules. Moreover, Jonhson managed to secure firm support in the Senate by means of the political committee which consisted of members he had handpicked. Under Jonhson's chairmanship the political committee played an important stabilizing role when the Democratic caucus was torn apart by serious contradictions and was the instrument for achieving compromises.

Sharp differences emerged in the Domocratic caucus on the racial issue. As compared with the 1952 elections, the number of blacks who voted Republican in the 1956 elections had risen. In 1952 Adlai Stevenson got 79 percent of the votes of the black population and Eisenhower only 21 percent. In 1956, 64 percent of black Americans voted for the Democratic candidate and 36 percent for Eisenhower.^^2^^ The tendency put the Democratic Party into a difficult situation: it had to show that it championed the interests of black Americans not to lose their support, while in the Senate, for example, Southern Democrats stood more than four to one against assuring blacks their full rights as citizens.^^3^^

On January 10, 1957, President Eisenhower declared that he in-

In the Senate the centrist group numbered about 25 members and in the House about 100.

^^2^^ U.S. News & World Report, March 29, 1957, p. 66.

Congressional Record, Vol. 103, Part 10, July 26, 1957, to August 8, 1957 U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1957, p. 13826.

sisted on passing the bill extending the rights of the black population. The bill envisaged setting up an executive-commission intended to monitor observance of civil rights and guarantee that the whites under the threat of fines and prison terms, would not intimidate the blacks. Part III of the bill was particularly important since it empowered the Assistant Attorney-General, appointed by the President, to investigate cases of Afro-Americans being deprived of the right to vote. On June 18 a majority of the House of Representatives approved the bill. Only Democrats from the Southern states and ultraconservative Republicans voted against the bill (it was passed by 286 votes against 126, including 118 Democrats and 168 Republicans supporting it and only 107 opposition party members together with 19 Republican congressmen voting against it).^^1^^

In the Senate the Dixiecrats mostly attacked Part III of the bill which they regarded as illegitimate interference by the federal government in state affairs. A major part in securing passage of the bill was played by Johnson who used his prestige and powers of Senate Democratic majority leader to persuade Southerners not to filibuster. He warned the latter that intransigence would only lead to more rigorous demands by the liberals. At the same time, Johnson made it known to the liberal bloc that the course of events would take an unfavorable turn if Part III of the bill was not dropped.^^2^^ Fear that the civil rights legislation would be defeated in Congress controlled by the Democrats forced the liberals to make concessions. As a result, the bill without Part III was approved by a majority of votes in the Senate and, after differences with the wording adopted by the House were eliminated, became law.

On the eve of the 1960 elections the Democratic center put forward its own program on the racial issue. As opposed to the liberals who favored placing civil rights issues within the jurisdiction of the federal government and thereby provoked the acute dissatisfaction of the Southern Democrats, the centrists wanted the government simply to register cases when black Americans were deprived of the right to vote and initiate investigations. The moderates' proposals failed to fully satisfy both the liberal wing and the Dixiecrats but were not particularly denounced by either group, and formed the basis of a bill passed by Congress in 1960. As a result, having made

~^^1^^ Congress and the Nation 1945-1965, p. 1621.

~^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 1624-1625.

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minor concessions, the Democrats managed to keep the black population within their sphere of influence and, at the same time, prevent a split in the party on the civil right issue.

Since the times of the New Deal the Democratic Party had traditionally attached major importance to the votes of organized workers whose potential strength had grown after the establishment of the AFL-CIO in December 1955. The results of the 1956 elections showed that the workers as well as their families on the whole supported the Democratic Party, but union support enjoyed by Stevenson was weaker than in previous election campaigns: in 1948, 76 percent of union members voted for the Democrats, in 1952, 56 percent and in 1956, 52 percent.^^1^^

In the course of debates on problems of labor policy in the years of Eisenhower's second presidency, virtually all the basic groups of Democrats in Congress proposed their variants to solve the problem. Thus, John Kennedy and the liberal group supporting him attempted to push through a bill which could be supported by the AFL-CIO. In June 1958, members of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Subcommittee, John Kennedy and Irving M. Ives ( Republican from New York), submitted a bill establishing government control over labor union insurance funds but at the same time guaranteeing a minimun of democratic procedures in union elections. In the eyes of the employers the Kennedy-Ives bill was excessively ``soft''. Through the efforts of a majority of Republicans and Southern Democrats the bill was rejected during debates in the House.

In 1959, according to the recommendations of the National Committee's Advisory Council, senators Kennedy and Sam Ervin (Democrats from North Carolina) submitted a bill practically identical to the Kennedy-Ives bill. Fearing that the fate of the 1958 bill would befall it, the centrists took upon themselves the mission of making the new bill more acceptable to the whole party caucus on Capitol Hill. In the course of debates the centrists introduced the Rights of Labor bill proposed by Arkansas Democrat John McClellan as an amendment. The Rights of Labor provided for the introduction of freedom of speech and assembly into union charters, acknowledgement of the workers' right to sue the union and have access to union papers. Any union member dissatisfied by the actions or decisions of the leadership could go to court. In enforcement of

~^^1^^ U.S. News & World Report, March 29, 1957, p. 66.

these rules the Department of Justice would execute police functions in respect to the unions. The desire of the ruling circles to strengthen government control over union organizations under the pretext of protecting individual rights and oppose the rank and file to the union leadership in order to split the working-class movement corresponded to the basic principles of the consensus as it emerged in the two-party system in the 1950s. No wonder the bill was approved by 90 votes to one. The unanimity of the Senate is explained by the fact that after numerous rollcalls (55) the Kennedy-Ervin bill lost its excessively liberal nature.

In the House of Representatives the liberal bill was edited even more energetically: the Labor Committee submitted 102 amendments. Democrat Phil M. Landrum of Georgia and Republican Robert P. Griffin of Michigan initiated 80 of them. The main idea of these amendments was to make the labor legislation more repressive. The liberals believed that "the Landrum-Griffin bill, if enacted into law, will turn the clock of labor's progress back a quarter of a century"^^1^^ establishing excessively rigorous framework and curtailing long acknowledged union rights. In the course of the decisive voting on August 13 the Landrum-Griffin bill was passed by 229 to 201 votes, the Democrats voting 95 to 184 and the Republicans 137 to 17. The fate of the bill was decided chiefly by the coalition of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats, although initially it seemed that the supporters of more liberal legislation had some chance of success. The paradox was very easily explained: when the alternative arose either to adopt the Landrum-Griffin bill or to be left with no legislation at all (the conservatives clearly indicated the limits of the concessions they would make), the congressmen chose to ignore the interests of certain groups of the bourgeoisie which they defended so as to promote the interests of the capitalist class as a whole and provided the bill with an obviously conservative common denominator.

However, the conservative coalition's resistance against measures which had become urgent for the Democrats prompted their opponents to take resolute actions.

The lines along which the liberal Democrats advanced alternative ideas to the Republican Administration's policies had been map-

~^^1^^ Congressional Record. Vol. 105, Pajrt 12, August 3, 1959, to August 17, 1959, U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1959, pp. 15514-15515.

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ped out by 1959. If formerly the centrists took either a neutral or a negative stand on these ideas, now, on the threshold of the presidential elections, they began to support the liberal proposals quite consistently. The centrist program officially announced in 1959 generally repeated liberal demands in the field of education, health, space exploration, and federal aid to depressed areas.

At the same time the centrists backed up their words by supporting, jointly with the moderate liberal wing, increased government spending on education, health, redevelopment of depressed areas, housing construction, introduction of higher minimum wages and their extension to new sections of workers, and also some other measures.^^1^^

All this makes it possible to assert that leadership in the party went to the moderate liberals as a result of a long, difficult, and not always successful, struggle, and a certain ideological evolution of the centrists toward the latter had a decisive influence on the party political image on the eve of the 1960 elections.

The 1960 elections ended in a Democratic victory. When asked why Kennedy won the Campaign Director for Vice-President Nixon, Robert H. Finch said: ''An excellent organization that was four years in building ... and the pull of the Democratic Party, which included state and city organizations in far greater abundance than we had.''^^2^^ There is undoubtedly some exaggeration in this statement because, despite the importance of various innovations in the National Committee's organizational work, the role played both by the Advisory Council and the Democratic congressional caucus in 1957- 1960 must be singled out.

During the Council's existence it approved and issued more than 80 policy statements. As a result of the compiling and publication of these documents the moderate liberal wing of the party went to the 1960 convention with a detailed action program partly tested in legislation. For example, the appeal for a dialogue with the socialist countries contained in the foreign-policy section of the platform appeared in virtually all the Council's foreign-policy statements. In the section on armed forces the platform's authors pointed out the importance of "balanced conventional military forces''.

The Cold War, accompanied by the arms race and impressive mil-

~^^1^^ Congress and the Nation, pp. 491-493, 1139, 1208-1209. U.S. News & World Report, November 21, 1960, p. 73.

itary expenditures, had negative consequences for the United States. Many American politicians got convinced that this course would make the United States even more vulnerable. All this made the US government take a serious attitude to the Soviet Union's disarmament proposals. Referring to the problem, the Advisory Council suggested more active negotiations with the USSR on strategic arms cuts and setting up a national arms control agency. The authors of the platform focussed attention on these issues in the disarmament section.^^1^^

The section devoted to economic policy opened with the promise to secure higher growth rates of industrial production (up to five percent a year) to provide jobs for those who would be of age by the early 1960s and also those who had lost their jobs during the Republican Administration's term in office as a result of changing conditions in the age of automation. In numerous statements the Council had proposed the same things with only slight differences--- the production growth rate was to be at least 4.7 percent a year. The Council regarded rejection of the gold standard as a condition for activization of the country's economic life. Economic growth would absorb unemployment, and on this point the authors of the statements agreed with those of the platform. To repeal the `` rightto-work'' laws was considered to be a top priority in labor legislation both by the Advisory Council and the 1960 party convention. Referring to the civil rights problem, authors of the platform promised voters to consistently implement the desegregation acts and delegate special powers to the Attorney-General, which conformed to the Council's proposals as well.^^2^^

Thus a far from complete comparative analysis of the Advisory Council's policy statements and the 1960 Democratic platform known as JFK's New Frontiers reveals underlying links between them and shows that the Council seriously influenced subsequent policy-making of the Democrats. In 1957-1960 the Council, first, drew the electorate's attention to the moderate liberals' alternative course to the Republican Administration's policy. Second, the Advisory Council was the ideological and political center relying on the Democratic Party's National Committee. The moderate liberal

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. 2, 1960-1976, p. 576; Democratic Digest, March 1958, pp. 11-12; August 1958, pp. 11-12; December 1959, and January 1960, pp. 23-24.

~^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. 2, pp. 582-584; 599; Democratic Digest, March 1958, p. 10-12; December 1959 and January I960, pp. 12-22.

i

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bloc of the Democratic Party rallied around the Council and the policy statements it proposed. Third, the continual publication of statements focussed the attention of Democratic Party supporters on the program of the moderate liberals. And finally, fourth, the Advisory Council developed Adlai Stevenson's New America program and the 1956 Democratic Party platform based on it, adjusting the new ideological and political propositions to actual events at home and abroad.

Thus, in 1953-1960, the Democratic Party showed what it was after by practical action in the legislature and by publicizing its national platform. Painstaking daily effort in the National Committee and in Congress, at the state and local levels, yielded fruit: the party rejected by the voters in 1952 regained control over Congress in the 1954 elections and sent its candidate to the White House in 1960.

This success was not accidental. Except for the civil rights act, all the most important bills on domestic issues were initiated by the Democrats in the second half of the 1950s. Most of them were linked with relevant Council statements and were reflected in the Democratic Party platform for which a majority of the electorate voted.

Power went to the JFK Administration which, as well as its direct successor, the Johnson Administration undertook a number of large-scale bourgeois-reformist social, economic and political experiments most of which had been outlined by the Democrats at the end of the 1950s.

CONSENSUS QUESTIONED: THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

vs. MASS DEMOCRATIC

MOVEMENTS (1960-EARLY 1970s)

The turn of the 1960s was undoubtedly a major watershed not only in the political history of the United States but also in the life of all American society. The country was entering a crucial decade marked by acute social conflicts, political instability, and an upsurge in the mass democratic movements which cast doubt on the foundations of the American system that had only recently seemed unshakable.

The coming to power of John F. Kennedy's (JFK) Democratic Administration marked a new stage in US bourgeois reformism. As social contradictions in the country grew more acute, US ruling circles increasingly realized the need for an early and radical solution of social and economic problems and more liberal social policy. Social reforms were also prompted by the successes the socialist community scored in many fields: in a bid to respond to the challenge of existing socialism, the US government had to treat the most obvious social ills in the country.

In addition, the economic principles implemented by the Republicans in the 1950s did not fully satisfy the US ruling class. Over the previous decade the US economy had developed at relatively slow rates. America's competitiveness on foreign markets fell and its share in the capitalist world's industrial output and foreign trade decreased. The need to revise the principles of government regulation became obvious. The United States'foreign policy also required amendment. The apparent inconsistency of the doctrines of Rolling Back Communism and Massive Retaliation which contradicted the balance of power on the international scene that had shifted in favor of the socialist countries, the United States' weakened hegemony in the capitalist camp and deteriorating links with the Third

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The Republicans' overall criticism of JFK played into the hands of the ultrarightists. Attacking the New Frontiers policy from positions of free enterprise, all the Republicans, whether they wanted to or not, brought grist to the mill of the ultraconservatives. Rejecting the measures proposed by the Democrats, many of them more than moderate, most of the Republican leaders abandoned even many of the principles they had adhered to in the 1950s. Take the problem of economic growth for instance. Having stated in their 1960 platform that they supported the idea of securing high growth rates in principle, the Republicans in effect rejected the idea a year later, to say nothing of the projects advanced by the Democrats which really went beyond the tenets of Eisenhower's New Republicanism. The Republicans firmly opposed all proposals to raise government spending. An exception was made only for military expenditures.

Party discipline in Congress, which the Republican leadership regarded as the chief condition for successful struggle against the Democratic spendthrifts, reached an unusually high level for the leading US bourgeois parties in 1961-1962. As the American economy was crawling out of crisis, party unity blossomed forth, and many Republican liberals who had formerly supported JFK's program as an emergency anticrisis measure, were joining those who criticized the government for dangerous innovations and financial irresponsibility. However, liberal Republicans had never been firm in supporting JFK. The White House staff member responsible for relations with Congress, Charles Daly, described the liberal Republicans in the following terms: "The saying was 'That group will be with us except when you need them'.'

The Republicans found reliable allies in the congressional rightwing Democrats from the Southern states. The Dixiecrats did not like many social programs and JFK's platform on the sensitive black issue which seemed too liberal for them. JFK did practically everything he could to appease the Dixiecrats: during the first two years in office neither he nor the liberals whom he cautioned against it submitted any important civil rights bills; the Southerners were the first to be awarded principal military contracts, subsidies to support cotton prices and other government benefits. However, JFK's ap-

~^^1^^ Transcript, Ch. Daly Oral History Interview, April 5, 1966, John F. Kennedy Library, pp. 59-60.

World states, compelled the new Democratic leadership to revise the US military and political strategy in respect to the socialist and developing countries.

JFK became president at a time when the economic crisis of 1960-1961 had not been overcome yet, and for that reason, the government's initial domestic policy was presented as a series of emergency antidepression measures. In the State of the Union Message the President said: "The present state of our economy is disturbing. We take office in the wake of seven months of recession, three and one-half years of slack, seven years of diminishing economic growth, and nine years of falling farm income.''^^1^^ By June 1961, taking advantage of the Democratic majority in Congress and referring to the urgent need to fight the crisis by stimulating demand, the administration had managed to have adopted bills extending payment of unemployment benefits, providing aid for children in families of the unemployed, supporting housing construction and a number of other social programs. Credit and fiscal tools were also actively used to stimulate the economy. The Democrats believed that high growth rates would be attained by increasing government spending.

From the outset, however, JFK's social and economic program encountered serious resistance on the part of the Republican faction in Congress. In the early 1960s, growing statism was perceived by political right wingers as "socialist degeneration" of America, providing a strong impulse for the revival of individualism in the country, chiefly on the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party and in the social sections (the petty bourgeoisie, the "new money" of the West and Southwest and others) it relied on. These moods also afflicted the bulk of Republican conservatives and centrists. Regarding the Democrats' policy as a direct attack on privatecapitalist ideals, many of them began to shift to the right adopting reactionary individualistic positions. If the policy of the Democratic Party did influence the views of the former centrist leadership it was only by pushing them further to the right. Eisenhower wrote: "If by opposing the excesses of the welfare state the Republican Party gets the name of being `against' ... well, for one, I am proud to be against things that I believe bad for America.''^^2^^

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. John f. Kennedy. January 20 to December 31, 1961. U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1962, p. 19. ~^^2^^ The Saturday Evening Post, April 21, 1962, p. 19.

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peasement moves did not prevent the activization of the conservative coalition---a bloc of Republicans and Dixiecrats in Congress.

When they set about working out the New Frontiers policy, JFK and his men took into account that the opposition and above all its ultraconservative elements were gaining strength. Many points in the administration's domestic policy were either drastically curtailed or altogether rejected by the opposition: e.g. the program to combat unemployment, the housing construction, and medicare programs.

In 1962 relations between JFK and Big Business markedly deteriorated: the elite was primarily outraged by price-control measures announced by the government. The Democratic leadership had to improve relations with Big Business, overcome the resistance of the conservative opposition and, at the same time, implement measures to secure further economic growth and social stability. The administration realized that it was impossible to sizably expand government spending and secure a growth of general demand by increasing government demand. So it decided to reduce taxes and, thereby, expand private demand. The Republicans, who usually supported tax cuts, on that occasion firmly opposed the proposal referring chiefly to a consequent growth of the budget deficit and national debt. They tried either to fully avoid or at least minimize general tax cuts, and wanted to reduce only corporate taxes, coupling such cuts with lower social spending. Debates on tax reforms were held in 1962-1964, and the bill reducing taxes by 11,500 million dollars was signed only after JFK's death.

In 1963 the congressional conservative coalition gained unprecedented strength and managed to block many of JFK's legislative proposals. That did not happen because the Republicans managed to increase their influence. The real cause was the growing divisions in the Democratic Party itself after the government had introduced the civil rights bill in 1963. The need to keep spontaneous black protest under the ruling class's control, in the final count, proved more important for the President than maintaining unity in his party. Desegregation Freedom Rides, police violence against black Americans in Birmingham (Alabama) which drew the attention of the entire nation, the national civil rights campaign in the summer of 1963---all this forced the government to sharply change its attitude to civil rights legislation. Legislators hurried to swamp the Congress with dozens of bills. JFK knew better than many other

politicians that discrimination against black Americans in public life could lead to the black population losing its respect for American political institutions. The President wrote: "The right to vote in Federal elections should not be denied or abridged... Participation is inevitably accompanied by a strengthened sense of civil responsibility.''^^1^^ The struggle for the civil rights bill which provided for a ban on discrimination in most public places and in registering voters, came upon a many-month-long filibustering campaign by Southern Democrats and individual ultraright Republicans in the Senate. That struggle dragged on during all of JFK's lifetime.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the major US parties were vastly divided over foreign policy issues. Their approach reflected both traditional differences in their views on international affairs in the postwar years and the equivocal responses to individual events on the world scene by members of the US ruling class. In the foreign policy sphere, based since 1945 on a bipartisan foundation, differences between parties were as a rule less clearly apparent than in the approach to domestic problems. It must be noted, however, that liberalism, more typical of the Democrats, involved a more active, organizing attitude to social changes in the world and the desire to direct them into a channel conforming to US interests with the help of military or reformist measures. The Republican Party, on the other hand, relied more on short-term pragmatism which was regarded by Americans as isolationism and the desire to maintain the status quo. During the 1960 election campaign Chester Bowles wrote to JFK: "We know that we cannot control the world or shape its development to our tastes and interests. But it is important to recognize the changes that are inevitable and to work to make their effects as constructive as possible... Republican failures in foreign affairs can be traced largely to the effort to freeze given situations which are being pressured by powerful forces into new directions."² The Democratic leadership was aware that it had become impossible to implement the Pax Americana by old tools. This was also true of the military-political doctrine: the threat or use of Dulles' big stick of Massive Retaliation could not be considered as a realistic military and political means.

~^^1^^ "John F. Kennedy to S. Holland, March 6, 1962", White House Central File, (WHCF), Box 692, John F. Kennedy Library.

~^^2^^ "Ch. Bowles to John F. Kennedy, September 30, 1960", Ch. Bowles Papers, Box 210, Yale University Library.

22-749

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(1960-early 1970s) 323

In the late 1950s the Democrats started their search for a new strategy along the lines of a more flexible use of the US armed forces and "limited use" of military force. As a result, the JFK Administration adopted the strategy of Flexible Response based on extending the range of wars the United States would prepare for, on backing up the ability to wage an all-out nuclear war by the capability to conduct successfully all possible limited wars---nuclear and conventional, large-scale and local, interstate and counterinsurgency wars. In political terms, the new strategy meant a buildup of military preparations at rates such as the Republican fathers of Massive Retaliation had not even dreamed of.

The Republicans' response to the change in the military and political strategy was not unequivocal. There were quite a few supporters of Flexible Response among them, but the Republican ultras regarded the transition to the concept of limited use of military force as an inadmissible restraint on the American military establishment. In 1961-1962 the Republican Party still strongly felt the inertia of thinking in terms of Massive Retaliation with its emphasis on nuclear forces and saving on defense spending. It was not accidental that in those years GOP senators were less likely to support growth of military expenditures in Congress than the Democratic senators.^^1^^

In approaching the developing countries the JFK Administration at first displayed a better understanding of the processes taking place in these countries than the Republicans. The idea was to undertake a reformist maneuver with the aim of eliminating the most obvious social and economic contradictions so as not to let these states evolve toward socialism.

The Caribbean Crisis was a landmark in the foreign policy of the Democratic Administration. It forced JFK to realize that military confrontation with the USSR would lead to total destruction. In 1963 and early 1964 realism gained the upper hand in the Democratic Administration's foreign policy; the ruling circles preferred not to bring relations with the socialist world to such a dangerous point.

However, even the first signs of an improvement in relations with the USSR provoked a sharply negative response on the part of the Republican Party where a departure from the excesses of the

Barry B. Hughes, The Domestic Context of American Foreign Policy, W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1978, pp. 134-135, 141-142.

Cold War gave rise to stronger anti-Communist feelings. Republican leaders stepped up criticism of the ``passive'' JFK Government, advocated the rolling back of communism in the rhetoric of the worst days of the Cold War, and rejected the possibility of peaceful coexistence in principle. In 1963, for the first time, Republicans supported a growth of military expenditures more strongly than the Democrats, something that would become the rule a bit later. The GOP whipped up war hysteria in the country; having unconditionally supported the President during the Caribbean Crisis, they denounced the peaceful settlement of the crisis as "national treason" by JFK. The utterance by the leading ultra Barry Goldwater " victory is our goal in the cold war---not just ending it"^^1^^ became the battlecry of the Republican Party.

By the beginning of the 1964 election campaign, differences between the parties both in domestic and foreign policies had gone far beyond the framework of the interparty consensus.

Lyndon B. Johnson's first years in office after JFK's tragic death were marked by the flourishing of the Democratic Party's neoliberal reformism. The Great Society program proclaimed by the Johnson Administration in 1964 made the federal government responsible for solving certain problems in health care and education, for giving aid to depressed areas, launching urban renewal and the war on poverty. Major social programs required a considerable increase in government spending; by the end of the decade government expenditures on social programs had reached about 40 percent in federal budget outlays.

Many facts show that the motives behind Johnson's policy were by no wears altruistic. The increase in social spending was chiefly the result of the struggle waged by the working people and a major consequence of the social protest movements sweeping through America. America's ruling circles tried to incorporate millions of poor people, both black and white, in industrial society. The interests of the leading groups of the monopoly bourgeoisie also required a transition to a policy that would raise the population's purchasing power and help stimulate the economy. At the same time a shortage of skilled manpower in a context of high structural unemployment and favorable economic conditions required active interference by

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 109, Part 12, August 21, 1963, to September 12, 1963, U.S.G.P.O., Washington, 1963, p. 16222.

22*

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Consensus Questioned (1960-early 1970s) 325

ported by only 38.5 percent of the voters, 16 million votes behind Johnson. A disproportion arose in the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans, and the elastic equilibrium between the parties most appropriate to the system's functioning was disrupted. The right-wing alternative in the Republican Party's political course went beyond the permissible framework, and the factional strife assumed acute forms. Most liberal and moderate Republicans turned their backs on the party candidate, and the GOP became a refuge for all sorts of reactionaries, including members of the John Birch Society. Even a larger part of Big Business supported the Democrats for the first time in current history. Business Week lectured the party: "The lesson for responsible Republicans should be easy to read: The American electorate will not respond to negative appeals, to invitations to go backward.''^^1^^

Goldwater's Southern Strategy aimed at attracting the votes of white Southerners and exploiting the racist views of voters in the North, produced results that were of major importance for the twoparty system. On the one hand, the Republicans were unable even to retain the positions gained by the party in the South in the 1950s, and Goldwater's campaign provoked an unprecedented upsurge in the political participation of the black Americans who increasingly swung toward the Democratic Party. On the other, he became the first Republican presidential candidate in the 20th century to make a better showing in the South than in the North, and his campaign helped set up a ramified party machine in the Southern states which continued to operate under the control of the right-wing Republicans after the election. "Goldwater brought out a new element in politics in those areas that we were not working like Nashville, and Jackson, Tennessee and Shelbyville and Murfreesboro. Goldwater initiated people to work in politics that have never been involved before,"^^2^^ recalled Republican Senator from Tennessee William Brock. Thus the Goldwater campaign became an important starting point in the Republican conquest of the South at the level of presidential elections.

After the 1964 elections, it seemed that many things were in favor of the Johnson government. The economy was on the rise;hav-

the government in vocational training and use of manpower.

The decisive step forward in neoliberalism once again resulted in the Republican Party lagging behind the Democrats in the extent of adoption of statist dogmas, and objectively faced the Republicans with the task of producing an alternative policy which would help adapt Eisenhower's New Republicanism to new conditions. However, the Republican Party was headed in a totally opposite direction---toward reactionary individualism and a rejection of all US domestic policies since the time of FDR's New Deal. "Zealots had taken over key positions and they seemed to believe that it was more important to nominate a candidate who was ideologically pure than to find someone who could win an election,"^^1^^ Gerald Ford was to write later in his memoirs.

Barry Goldwater took full advantage of the domestic political climate of the early 1960s and the tangible swing to the right by the Republican Party itself and managed to win the party nomination in 1964 by relying on the organizational cohesion of the ultraright forces and the support of the ``young'' monopoly groups in the South and West which were not part of the monopoly elite and refused to accept any social responsibility devolving on businessmen and the government. The Senator from Arizona completely rejected the doctrine of the government's social responsibility on which the Great Society doctrine was based, regarding the latter as merely an election gimmick used by the Democrats. Without proposing an alternative to Great Society, the Republicans pointed out in their platform that the war on poverty would "dangerously centralize Federal controls.''^^2^^ Prominently featuring racism and rabid antiCommunism and in effect proposing to dismantle the welfare state, Goldwater's platform evoked a negative response from most Americans. And so did his superaggressive foreign policy. The advocate of "extremism in defense of liberty" waved the nuclear big stick, called for an offensive on all the fronts of the Cold War and urged further escalation of intervention in Indochina. Johnson, on the contrary, managed to produce the image of a peace candidate and declared that he would not send soldiers to Vietnam.

Seizure of control in the Republican Party by Goldwater's followers led to a crisis in the two-party system. Goldwater was sup-

A Time to Heal. The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1979, pp. 76-77.

~^^2^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. 2, p. 680.

Business Week, November 14, 1964, p. 200.

Transcript, W. Brock Oral History Interview, February 1, 1974, p. 9. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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As the democratic movements developed, members of all factions in the Republican Party more and more resolutely accused the Johnson Administration of appeasing the black and youth rebellions and provoking them by making all sorts of promises which the government would not or could not keep. Many Republicans regarded mass actions as "neglect of certain fundamental moral principles," "the decline in respect for public authority and the rule of law" due to "indulgence of crime because of sympathy for the past grievances of those who have become criminals." The conservative Republicans harped in all ways on what they called "a touch of red" behind the black movement. In conceptual terms, the leading place in the ideological arsenal of the GOP was taken by the idea of "black capitalism", i.e. encouraging capitalist enterprise by black citizens. Supporting black capitalism the leaders of the Republican Party wanted to strengthen the bourgeois strata in the colored population, keep the black movement within the existing system and increase the influence of bourgeois ideology among black citizens.

However, neither the measures of the Democratic administration nor Republican plans could eliminate the underlying causes of racial discrimination---social and economic inequality of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States.

In the latter half of the 1960s a serious potential danger to the foundations of bourgeois society emerged in the shape of the antiwar movement caused by widespread public discontent with the administration's policy in Indochina.

The system of priorities of the Johnson Administration which had inherited the basic principles of the New Frontiers foreign policy, steadily attached less and less importance to the reformist element in the approach to the developing countries (due to what Soviet historian V. O. Pechatnov called anti-Communist degradation of liberalism) with greater emphasis on military strength in resisting revolutionary processes in the world.

The tremendous scope and persistence of the national liberation struggle in South Vietnam, its close links with progress of socialism in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, fraternal assistance coming from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the fear of losing the extensive strategic and diplomatic positions US imperialism

~^^1^^ Reader's Digest, August 1967, p. 68; October 1967, p. 50; The New Republic, August 5, 1967, p. 6.

ing consolidated their positions in Congress as a result of the election, the Democrats successfully implemented one measure of the Great Society program after another; the Vietnam adventure did not provoke public resistance yet; having rejected the program of the ultras, the Republicans were left without a clear-cut alternative platform and were healing the wounds received in the election by implementing organizational reforms in the party. But that was a lot of wishful thinking.

To begin with there was the question of how to deal with social protest movements. The mid-1960s initiated a new stage in mass democratic movements, chiefly the black and antiwar movements, marked by a more fierce struggle often going beyond non-violent actions. The ruling class faced a dilemma: whether to respond to the fresh democratic upsurge by harsher police and administrative repressions against the participants or to make further concessions securing de jure equality of black citizens and improving their living conditions by extending social programs within the framework of the Great Society. The Johnson Administration tended to resort to both means. Not stopping at repressions against participants in the protest movement, the administration attempted to integrate them in the existing system.

Two civil rights acts were enacted in 1964 and 1965. Attorney General Clark said: "There is immense pressure and insistence and potential for friction and violence that caused us to face up to these problems and do something about it.''^^1^^ The Republicans did not take long to respond. If in 1964 most Republican leaders refused to assume the responsibility for rejecting the bill because this could lead to dangerous outbursts in the tense atmosphere of the black ghettos, in 1965 the Republican Party as a whole adopted a negative stand in respect to the bill.^^2^^ While the 1964 act was aimed primarily against segregation in public places, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as American political scientist Merle Black correctly notes, "was to bring into the electorate participants who were much more likely to vote for Democratic than for Republican candidates---one likely reason for the lack of enthusiasm by northern Republicans.''^^3^^

Transcript, R. Clark Oral History Interview, February 11, 1969, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

~^^2^^ For further detail see: I.A. Geyevsky, USA: the Black Problem, Moscow, 1973.

Merie Black, "Regional and Partisan Bases of Congressional Support for the Changing Agenda of Civil Rights Legislation", The Journal of Politics, May 1979, p. 671.

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had in Southeast Asia, and the illusion of omnipotence---all this prompted US ruling circles to launch an aggressive war in Indochina the ground for which had been prepared back in the 1950s.

The Johnson Administration found the most zealous supporters of its expansionist foreign policy among the Republicans. The notorious Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave the green light to unleashing a wide-scale aggression was approved virtually unanimously. The GOP House leader Charles Halleck said on the occasion: The President knows "there is no partisanship among us".^^1^^ The Republicans hailed the subsequent escalation of war in 1964-1966. If some of them did express discontent with the Democratic Administration's policy, it was criticism from the right, urging to step up the bombing of the DRV and impose a complete naval blockade of Vietnam. Bipartisan support of power politics was confirmed in 1965 during the US intervention in the Dominican Republic.

However, that support quickly began to melt away as America's aggressive plans crumbled in Vietnam, its international prestige declined, and Washington's financial resources started to run out. All this clearly pointed to a profound crisis of American imperialism's global strategy. The war was eroding the internal setup which could no longer be propped up by jingoism. It was becoming evident to millions of Americans that aggravation of chronic social and economic ills such as racial conflicts, growing crime, unemployment, inflation, etc. was due largely to aggressive foreign policy.

Senator Joseph Tydings said in 1967: "The war costs as much every week as the demonstration cities program will cost this entire year. The war costs every day as much as Congress will vote the whole year for hospital modernization, rat extermination, and juvenile delinquency control... Urgent domestic priorities have been ignored, deferred or pathetically under-funded.''^^2^^ Spokesmen for Big Business began to be worried by the overstrained economy, rising inflation and budget deficits resulting from spiralling military expenditures, the upsurge in the antiwar movement in the country, unrest on university campuses, and the growing criticism levelled at Johnson by leading foreign statesmen, including those in allied countries. The Vietnam syndrorne was gaining momentum in the country.

Notes Taken at Leadership Meeting on August 4, 1964, "Presidential DecisionsGulf of Tonkin", Vol. 2, Tab. 21, NSC History, NSF, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

~^^2^^ "Address by Sen. J. Tydings at the Plenary Session of the National Student Association, August 26, 1967," Papers of]. Tydings, Box 15, University of Maryland.

Consensus Questioned (1960-early 1970s) 329

Opposition to Johnson's policy in Congress mostly came from the Democrats---Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, senators Eugene McCarthy, William Fulbright and others. The Republicans also hurried to dissociate themselves from Johnson, criticizing him both from the right (Tower, Ford, Nixon) and from the left (Hatfield, Cooper, Javits, Case). However, even the proposals of the left-wing critics favoring political settlement and opposing military escalation invariably contained the obviously unacceptable demands to "end the aggression by North Vietnam," abolish the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, maintain the puppet regime in Saigon and the American military presence in Indochina.

Both principal approaches to the developing countries taken by the Democrats---first the reformist (managing social changes in the world) and then from positions of strength---were shattered by the real course of events at the end of the 1960s. Having gotten bogged down in the meaningless struggle against Communism in Indochina, the Democratic Administration attempted to pursue a more balanced and varied policy in the rest of the world. In 1966- 1968 the administration signed a number of agreements with the USSR. The Johnson Administration, however, tried to link normalization of bilateral relations with both the war in Vietnam and more active efforts to undermine the socialist system through the bridge-building policy.

The change in the administration's policy was firmly opposed by the Republicans. They unconditionally rejected the Democrats' proposal to provide commercial credits to and expand trade between the United States and most countries in East Europe, and delayed ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for a year. The Republican Party increasingly sought to link improvement of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union with the latter's ``behavior'' in the world (in view of Soviet support for the DRV and the events in Czechoslovakia).

By the beginning of the 1968 election campaign the policy of the Johnson Administration had driven both opponents and many supporters of liberal reform from the Democratic Party. The belief that increased federal spending would be a panacea was declining. Great Society program failed to secure social stability. The ongoing upsurge in democratic movements made significant part of the big bourgeoisie and conservatives of the South discontinue their support for the Democratic Party's domestic reformism. At the same time

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solve major domestic problems by transferring, in particular, a number of manpower training programs to employers (Human Investment Plan) and setting up a mixed government-private corporation to finance part of the social programs (Economic Opportunities Corporation). This turn in the party's ideology coincided with changes in the views of the monopoly bourgeoisie itself which showed an increasing desire to display social responsibility and heal social ills. The reasons for this were explained by an editorial in Fortune, a business circles magazine, urging Big Business to take part in solving the problems of the ghettos while the urban crisis could still be controlled in view of the little hope that city hall, the welfare department, the local Democratic organization, the labor unions, the churches and the schools could somehow combine to prevent an even greater outburst of anger.^^1^^

The Republicans also insisted on raising the role of state government proposing the idea of revenue sharing which in general terms boiled down to transferring some of the federal funds to the state governments so as to make up for their narrow tax base, and making the states administer a number of federal programs. Thus, the Republicans entered the 1968 elections with a sufficiently detailed domestic policy. Moreover, they had a very vulnerable target in the form of the Democratic Administration whose chief had refused to run for a second term in view of obvious political setbacks.

The 1968 presidential campaign was the focal point of all the United States burning issues and dramatic events of the late 1960s: the Vietnam War, the unstable economy, the black movement at its climax, youth unrest, and murder of outstanding politicians Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. However, polarization of society failed to bring about a polarization in the leading parties. On the contrary, the election showed a high degree of consensus in the two-party system. On the one hand, the Republican candidate Richard Nixon continually emphasized his support for active use of federal government in the course of the campaign. He said: "The days of a passive Presidency belong to a simpler past... The next President must take an activist view of his office. He must articulate the nation's values, define its goals and marshal its will.''^^2^^ At the same time the Republican candidate spoke out firmly against

~^^1^^ Fortune, January 1968, p. 127.

^^2^^ The New York Times, September 20, 1968.

the Democrats began to lose the support of the middle strata and some sections of the working class who shouldered the brunt of the tax burden and had been persuaded by the mass media that rising taxes were due primarily to the growing number of persons receiving government social benefits. The war in Vietnam also sapped Democratic positions among the liberal forces, including progressive labor unions and young people. Deep fissures appeared in the Roosevelt coalition. Back in 1966 the President's assistant Clifton Carter wrote to his boss: "One observation that does bother me is an apparent cooling between the ethnic groups, labor, and others who have made up successful Democratic coalitions in recent elections."¹ Having taken three seats in the Senate and 47 in the House from the ruling party in the 1966 midterm election, the Republicans intensified their opposition to the Great Society and managed to block or cut outlays for certain important measures proposed by the administration in 1967-1968.

At the time, largely under the influence of the protest movements, the GOP was gradually overcoming the excesses of Goldwater's reactionary individualism and strengthening the enlightenedconservative approach to social and economic problems derived from the Willkie, Dewey and Eisenhower tradition. The change in the Republican views occurred along the lines of conservatism's merging with Neo-Keynesian theory as presented in the Neo-- Keynesian New Economics Theory and also the doctrine of limited social responsibility of the federal government. The policy-making reports compiled by the Republican Coordinating Committee provided for long-term stimulation of economic growth and rejected the invariable dogma on the need for a balanced budget.^^2^^

The leaders of the Republican Party no longer engaged in the rhetoric on liberty, enterprise and the federal monster. They had realized that a growth of the federal government was inevitable and that people on the whole supported the programs which made their lives at least a little better. As an alternative policy the Republicans proposed a whole gamut of neoconservative doctrines. They believed it was necessary to make use of the private sector's initiative to

~^^1^^ "C. Carter to the President, January 3, 1966", Files of M. Watson, Box 23, Lyndon B.Johnson Library.

Choice for America. Republican Answers to the Challenge of Now. Reports of the Republican Coordinating Committee 1965-1968, Republican National Committee, Washington, 1968.

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the Democrats.^^1^^ That was why the results of the election in which Nixon polled 43.4 percent of the votes, Humphrey 42.7 percent and Wallace about 13 percent were regarded by the GOP leaders as highly promising in terms of setting up a New Republican majority relying chiefly on the social forces which supported the American Independent Party. One of the leading spokesmen for the New Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips, argued: "Although most of George Wallace's votes came from Democrats rather than Republicans, they were conservatives---Southerners, Borderers, German and Irish Catholics---who had been trending Republican prior to 1968.''^^2^^ The new majority was seen by the Republicans as a coalition of their traditional supporters: disillusioned Democrats who were beginning to regard personal freedom higher than the imperatives of the welfare state; white Southerners who were moving further from the Democratic Party under the influence of the black civil rights movement; black businessmen and the silent center who regarded the upsurge in social protest movements as undermining the foundations of American society and supported the Republican call for law and order. Widespread disillusionment in the liberal reforms widely advertised by the Democratic Party in the 1960s was seen as a leading precondition for the founding of the conservative coalition.

For this reason the Nixon Administration in the first years in office focussed on stimulating enterprise in the private sector, decentralizing government regulation, reducing social spending, stepping up repressions against participants in the democratic movements, rejecting extension of civil rights legislation and shifting the emphasis on black capitalism. However, the economic crisis of 1969- 1971 undermined the Republican strategy of reducing government intervention in social and economic processes. Growing disproportions in the capitalist economy and an intertwining of skyrocketing inflation with high unemployment narrowed the possibilities for using traditional methods of regulation, on the one hand, and prompted the Republicans to search for a way out of the situation,

~^^1^^ Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, Jerrold G. Rusk, Authur C. Wolfe, " Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election", The American Political Science Review, December, 1969, pp. 1083-1105; Herbert F. Weisberg

and Jerrold G. Rusk, "Dimensions of Candidate Evaluation", The American Political Science Review, December, 1970, pp. 1167-1185.

~^^2^^ Kevin P. Philips, The Emerging Republican Majority, Arlington House, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1969, p. 462.

``promises unkept and unkeepable" and against the Democratic Party's extensive social reforms.

On the other hand, disappointment in the results of the liberal reforms also affected the Democratic Party. The Party platform adopted at the turbulent convention in Chicago where the authorities severely cracked down on the youth and antiwar movements, contained more cautious promises to secure economic growth and stable prices and do away with poverty in America than the 1964 platform. The Democrats proposed no new government social programs. Priority was given to "simplifying and streamlining the processes of government, particularly in the management of the great innovative programs enacted in the 1960s".^^1^^ A strong emphasis was made on ideas cherished by any Republican to involve the private sector, state and local governments in solving urgent problems of American society.

Both candidates offered almost identical foreign policies. Nixon and Humphrey alike opposed an immediate end to hostilities and favored gradual deescalation of American military efforts and Vietnamization of the war. On the whole, however, the Democratic platform was less ``hawkish'': as distinct from Nixon, Humphrey believed that it was possible to begin withdrawal of US troops in 1969 and discontinue bombing of the DRV. That was why most voters favoring an immediate end to the aggression supported the Democratic candidate.

The Vietnam syndrome, however, largely affected the Republican Party as well. Its platform conformed to the cannons of classical anti-Communism but also contained certain realistic propositions: "It is time to realize that not every international conflict is susceptible of solution by American ground forces.''^^2^^ Hence the Republican foreign policy better accorded to the changed balance of power in the world.

A certain influence on the course and outcome of the 1968 election campaign was exerted by a strong third party---the American Independent Party headed by George Wallace who succeeded in rallying a motley coalition which primarily advocated the system of racial segregation. Authoritative American studies of public opinion showed that Wallace's campaign hurt the Republicans more than

~^^1^^ National Party Platforms, Vol. 2, p. 740. * Ibid., p. 761.

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Of course, not every measure taken by the Nixon Administration met with Republican approval. The ultra-rightists displayed growing discontent with the President's economic policy and also with government measures in social security and education. In addition, a widening gap emerged between the party leaders in the White House and the other cogs of the party machine. This was a result of obvious concentration of the policy-making process in the hands of the government under the "imperial presidency." Senator William Brock said: "I remember the frustration of the very early years of the seventies when I first came into the Senate. The attitude of some of those who surrounded the President was an attitude of 'them against us.' There was almost a sense of paranoia in the White House. There was a lack of willingness to trust people and to allow others to participate in the decisions.''^^1^^ The President did not even trust the party faction in the Senate, considering its leader Hugh Scott too liberal.^^2^^

Many moderate and liberal Republicans took advantage of every possibility to criticize the administration for excessive conservatism, for disregarding human rights, the Southern strategy, appointment of rabid conservatives to the Supreme Court and the desire to do away with the programs of aid to the poor and the hungry rather than reorganize them. Liberals were equally concerned with the administration's refusal to put an end to the military adventure in Indochina, which resulted in serious economic difficulties and further alienation of participants in the antiwar movement from the ruling elite. Recalling the antiwar movement of 1969 Senator Charles Goodell said: "At that stage, things were almost completely out of control of any `establishment' figures... Anybody who was elected to an office that was a part of the `establishment' was an enemy. Only through a process of very tough negotiations within the antiwar groups did they accept George McGovern and me to march down Pennsylvania Avenue.''^^3^^

But the main burden of winning back the participants in the antiwar movement and all forces in the new politics---young people,

Transcript, W. Brock Oral History Interview, February 13, 1979, Library of Congress, p. 45.

~^^2^^ Transcript, H. Scott Oral History Interview, October 15, 1976, Library of Congress, p. 58

Transcript, Ch. Goodell Oral History Interview, June 6, 1973, Library of Congress, p. 40.

on the other. At first, the crisis factor was ignored in Nixon's economic policy. Attaching priority to anti-inflation measures, the administration sought above all to reduce economic activity and cool down the overheated economy. The Republicans tried to present the decreased economic activity of the government as a useful counterbalance to inflation, and growing unemployment as an inevitable result of price control. The growing economic difficulties, however, finally forced the Republican Administration to adopt a more active economic policy. In 1971 a program of extraordinary measures was announced to invigorate the economy which included measures unprecedented for the Republicans such as deliberate use of budget deficits to stimulate the economy, price and wages control. The government welfare machinery set up by the Democrats in the 1960s was not completely dismantled, and there was a continued growth of social spending, which the Republicans regarded as a tool to raise demand and lower social tensions.

In the first term of the Nixon Administration, the President's social and economic programs enjoyed sufficient although not unconditional support in the party. Most Republicans regarded the New Economic Policy as a temporary measure which could be useful under extraordinary circumstances and even help (under a wage freeze or control) launch an attack against labor-union and workingclass rights. They also found much in common when it came to implementing the doctrines worked out by the GOP in the 1960s: plans of revenue sharing in the form of Nixon's New Federalism; and ideas of a negative income tax (underlying many Republican projects to reform social welfare). There was support in the party for the conservative and even reactionary political course pursued by the administration in respect to the labor unions and mass social protest movements, which meant increasing repressions against their participants, young people and black Americans above all. On the racial issue the Republican Party supported the President's actions aimed at promoting black capitalism. This slowed down the rate of desegregation. Historian Milton Viorst wrote: "The Nixon Administration was not overtly racist. It simply made clear that the federal government could no longer be counted on to promote the cause of racial equality.''^^1^^

Milton Viorst, Fire in the Streets, America in the 1960s, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979, p. 508.

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blacks, ethnic minorities and the poor---fell to the lot not of the Republicans but of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

After the 1968 elections which marked a profound crisis in the Roosevelt coalition the Democrats were living through hard times. Prominent political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau described the situation quite aptly: "The Republicans after 1964 only needed to reformulate their philosophy, to retune their political machinery, to unite behind a leader, and to watch the Democrats ruin the country--- and they look like unchallengeable winners four years later. The Democrats cannot do after 1968 what the Republicans did after 1964, for the popular base of their political power has crumbled under the impact of the Vietnam war and the racial crisis. The disaffection of the intellectuals and students, as well as large sectors of the lower middle class in the North and of virtually the whole party apparatus in the South, has left the Democratic Party with a drastically diminished population base.''^^1^^ In searching for a new coalition the party had either to rely on the forces of New Politics and reject the South and the conservative part of the middle class and bluecollar workers or attempt to revive the traditional bloc of the South, the urban party machines and labor unions.

Most of the Democratic leaders (Humphrey, Muskie and others) tended to take the second option, which in the language of practical politics meant combining a neoliberal economic course with appeals for a tougher attitude to social policy and racial and student unrest (law and order). However, the practical policies of the Republican Administration which implemented many of the Democrat's former social and economic doctrines, deprived the latter of the opportunity to play the part of constructive opposition in the spirit of traditional neoliberalism. However, an adequate replacement to it could not be found.

The crisis of the old neoliberal course and the growing split between the national leadership and the party's Southern wing created conditions for an increase in the influence of the left-wing forces which thought that the party could undergo a liberal regeneration and be directed toward the forces of New Politics by ousting the old coalition of union bureaucrats, Dixiecrats and party machine bosses. The left-wing liberals (McGovern, Harris and others) intend-

Hans J. Morgenthau, Truth and Power. Essays of a Decade, 1960-1970, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1970, p. 204.

ed to combine the incorporation of protest movements in the party with attracting the bulk of the middle class by advancing neopopulist slogans of income redistribution via a reform of the fiscal system, restriction of monopoly privileges and democratization of the political process.

The left-wing liberal course materialized in the reform of the Democratic Party structure which was carried out by the McGovernFraser Commission in 1969-1971. McGovern said in 1969: "It's going to be difficult to know what the young people will do. I think they are suspicious of both parties at this point---many of them. That is one of the reasons why the party reform effort is so important.''^^1^^ More democratic rules for appointing delegates whose consequences were originally underestimated by the centrists and the rightists, increased the share of formerly under-represented sections of the population. This largely predetermined McGovern's success in the party infighting in 1972 despite the resistance of the party bosses.

Issues of international policy assumed major importance in the interparty struggle of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a turning point in US foreign policy marked by a transition from an era of confrontation to an era of negotiations. Hence considerable changes in the foreign-policy planks of both parties.

The obvious failures of US foreign policy, acute domestic problems, the Vietnam syndrome, and the mass protest movements created a fundamentally new situation for the American leadership. In the early 1970s the Republican Administration decided it would be better to adapt American objectives to the surrounding reality, and this required that more moderate aims be advanced in the sphere of foreign policy. The gaining of absolute domination in the world was no longer regarded as the overall purpose of US militarypolitical strategy. Major emphasis was put on maintaining a dynamic status quo through the balance of power. The Republican leadership believed that a more flexible foreign policy would help it adapt to the new international realities marked by a military-- strategic parity between the Soviet Union and the United States, a weakening of the United States' hegemony in the capitalist world and of its positions in the developing countries. In a sense the Nixon Administration played down the importance of ideology in foreign-

Transcript, G. McGovern Oral History Interview, April 30, 1969, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, p. 31.

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policy making, having reduced it to a pragmatic theory of national interests and balance of power.

At first departure from Cold War policies was regarded by the US ruling circles as an objective necessity prompted by the weakening of the material and moral base of interventionism, divisions in society and growing differences in the foreign-policy establishment itself. In the early 1970s the prestige of the hawks in society as a whole and in the ruling class fell sharply.

Implementing a policy of international detente the Nixon Administration relied on a bipartisan coalition of centrist and liberal forces in which Democratic centrists and left-wingers prevailed. A crisis of Cold War policy made liberal Democrats seriously revise the power politics on which they actively relied in the 1950s and most of the 1960s because domestic reforms were growing increasingly incompatible with interventionist foreign policy. An awareness of the limits to American military power, the negative consequences of the arms race which consumed resources needed to reduce domestic tensions, and the deteriorated economic situation prompted the liberals to opt for detente and reduced military spending and US military presence abroad. It was in the early 1970s that liberal domestic policies and criticism of the Cold War combined for the first time. The foreign-policy plank of the 1972 Democratic platform with its isolationist appeal "Come home, America!" was a reflection of the new stand taken by the liberals and not only left-wing liberals. Many traditionalists (Mansfield, Humphrey, Muskie and others) also spoke aloud about the weakening of US positions in the world and the need to attach top priority to domestic problems. But it would be a gross exaggeration to say that centrist Democrats agreed with McGovern's left liberal program both in foreign and domestic policy. The social forces the left liberals hoped to rely on compelled them to put forward such proposals as an immediate and unconditional end to the Vietnam war, pardoning of draft dodgers, radical cuts in the military budget and transfer of the funds released to domestic needs, a guaranteed minimum income for every family, expansion of public works programs, tougher anti-trust laws and a breaking up of the monopolies.

The platform caused a split in the Democratic Party because it went far beyond the limits of usual Democratic liberalism and represented a clear-cut alternative to the ruling party's stand. The traditionalists believed that realization of the platform would relegate

the United States to the position of a second-rate power in military terms, called the plans for a guaranteed income "reckless and unpractical," and attacked McGovern's excessive liberalism in moral and ethical questions. Even despite the fact that McGovern was forced to moderate his platform in the course of the 1972 election campaign, it was more leftist than was usual for American two-- party politics. The platform also broke with the neoliberal tradition because it contained a strong element of democratic antistatism: it did not urge an extension of the federal government's powers but brought to the forefront protection of the individual and democratic institutions from the government itself.

The consequences of the Democratic swing to the left for the two-party system can hardly be summed up in simple terms. On the one hand, the party had once again proved its ability to dampen protest movements by including part of its slogans in its political platform and absorbing them in a set of ideas and recipes acceptable to the system. McGovern had brought to the Democratic Party an overwhelming majority of the participants in the antiwar and student movements as well as members of other liberal and radical forces in the women's lib, black and other movements, and consolidated Democratic positions among the liberal intelligentsia.

On the other hand, however, it must be noted that the left-- liberal rebellion in the Democratic Party coincided with a decline in the social protest it was intended to bridle. The polarizing effect of the Vietnam war, the black and youth movements had been weakened by 1972, and McGovern's slogans no longer conformed to the moods prevailing in society. This was one of the most important reasons for his shattering defeat when only 37.5 percent of the voters supported the Democratic candidate. Richard C. Wade wrote: "Somehow voters believed that the country had returned to ' normalcy.' To be sure, underneath were all the vexing questions---race, injustice, war, and a new generation---but the daily upheavals of the previous years had disappeared. The tide which had swelled in 1968 had receded and through the wreckage lay an uncomfortable view across the beach, most Americans preferred to look beyond at a more tranquil sea.''^^1^^ Once again the Democrats failed to win the

~^^1^^ History of U.S. Political Parties, Vol. IV, 1945-1972. The Politics of Change, General Editor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 2856.

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votes of their electoral backbone---unionized workers, Southerners and Catholics. As a result, the two-party balance which had emerged in the post war years on a state-monopoly basis was no less disrupted by the Democrats' sharp swing to the left than it was in 1964 when the Republicans moved far to the right. No wonder works by political scientists, speeches delivered by politicians and even the platform of the Republican Party were filled with unconcealed concern for the fate of the two-party system.

On the whole, however, violation of consensus relations between the parties did not lead to a serious disruption of the system: most Democrats remained on the usual neoliberal positions and managed to retain a firm majority in both houses of Congress laying the ground for a quick return to the status quo in the interparty ballance. The emerging crisis in the two-party system (a fall in the influence of the party organizations on the electoral process, weaker impact of party machines on legislative and executive bodies, alienation of voters from the party-political system and the growth of an independent electorate) was to a much greater extent due to the inability of the parties' leaders to find an adequate replacement for the state-monopoly methods of regulation which had obviously failed, while the left-liberal alternative remained unacceptable to the US ruling circles. And the 1972 elections proved this beyond any doubt. The parties' prestige was also undermined by the in-depth moral and political crisis which began with the Watergate scandal whose investigation revealed many until then hidden vices and contradictions of political life in the United States.

Watergate hit above all the ruling party leaving it only slim chances for knocking together a new Republican Majority. Chairman of the Republican National Committee George Bush, in a letter to party leaders, expressed concern for the party's future: "In incidents like the Watergate affair, there are many personal tragedies. But the real tragedy for our Party will come if we allow Watergate to obscure the great record of not only the Administration, but of Republicans in Congress and in state and local offices throughout America.''^^1^^

At the same time, the Watergate scandal also prevented the Democrats from strengthening their positions among voters because

``G. Bush to Republican Leaders, May 9, 1973", Ford Congressional Files, Gerald R. Ford Library, Box 184.

the disclosure of abuses of power in the highest echelons of the American leadership undermined the authority of the entire partypolitical system. Democratic Senator Samuel Ervin wrote: "I don't believe that the Democratic Party can callously hope to profit from the Watergate affair. The accusations that have been levelled and the evidence of wrongdoing that has surfaced have cast a black cloud of distrust over our entire society. Our society do not know whom to believe and many of them have concluded that all the processes of government have become so compromised that honest governance has been rendered impossible.''^^1^^

The crisis in government regulation methods, the Watergate scandals and the obvious vulnerability of the Nixon leadership aggravated the ideological struggle in American society. Disillusionment with liberal reforms which grew stronger as a result of the end of the McGovern movement, increasingly often gave rise to nostalgic appeals by bourgeois scholars, certain groups of American businessmen, the petty bourgeoisie and middle strata to return to the times of minimal government intervention. This outburst of individualist ideology provided fertile soil for the revival of ultraconservative forces in the country, and chiefly in the Republican Party. During the 1970s, a considerable part of the US monopoly oligarchy swung significantly to the right: they more resolutely accused the government of creating unfavorable conditions for investment and saw a way out of the economic difficulties which exacerbated in 1973-1975, in more obvious support of corporate interests, cuts in government social spending, new tax benefits for business and an onslaught against the rights of the labor unions and working people.

The opposition to the Republican Administration's foreign policy was gaining momentum as the process of detente was extended, the left wing of the Democratic Party was weakened after the 1972 election and Nixon's leadership discredited by the Watergate scandal. Critics of detente regarded it as a breathing spell in confrontation with the Soviet Union and perceived a serious threat to their economic, political and ideological interests in the results and, particularly, prospects of that policy.

The leading part in the opposition to detente was played by the right-wing Republicans, Dixiecrats, and also individual traditional-

~^^1^^ "S. Ervin to T. Gridley, June 14, 1974", Papers of S. Ervin, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Box 384.

342 Chapter Fifteen

Consensus Questioned

(1960-early 1970s) 343

ist Democrats who continued to advocate the Cold War liberalism. They treated detente as a tactical move by the Soviet Union allegedly intending to undermine the West's military-political alliances and dominate the world. In order to end detente, its opponents raised the human rights issue, thanks to which discriminatory measures in trade and economic relations with the Soviet Union were adopted.

The Nixon Administration was not particularly interested in easing tensions: they combined lip service to the need of maintaining Soviet-US strategic parity with an illusory hope that the Soviet Union would change its ways and stop supporting the national liberation movements. They sought to use detente to secure unilateral advantages for the United States. Moreover the Republican Administration had no intention to drop plans aimed at achieving military and strategic superiority over the Soviet Union in the long term. In his memoirs Henry Kissinger wrote: "After the signature of SALT I, our defense budget increased and the Nixon and Ford administrations put through the strategic weapons (the MX missile, B-l bomber, cruise missiles, Trident submarines, and more advanced warheads) that even a decade later are the backbone of our defense program and that had been stymied in the Congress prior to the easing of our relations with Moscow.''^^1^^

The chorus of opponents of detente increasingly often included the voices of Democrats who began to dissociate themselves from the left liberals after 1972 and waged a struggle to expell them from the party machine. Democratic leaders criticized Nixon's foreign policy for its excessively defensive and static nature, for being aimed at maintaining the status quo and increasingly out of line with US objectives in the world. They believed that detente weakened the United States' ties with West European allies and put forward the concepts of mutual vulnerability or the balance of terror which could not become a real basis for arms reductions. They were at one with all the reactionary forces in denouncing Soviet actions in defense of the gains of socialism and the national liberation movement.

The ousting of the left liberals from leading posts in the Democratic Party, abolition of McGovern-Frazer's most far-reaching reforms, and criticism of the administration's involvement in the Watergate affair---all this still could not secure the party's revival. It was urgently necessary to develop new concepts of managing socie-

~^^1^^ Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, Little, Brown, Boston- Toronto, 1982, p. 237.

ty, and this proved to be quite a difficult matter. In November 1972 a Coalition for a Democratic Majority was founded by party centrists and conservatives and supported by the AFL-CIO and the intellectual establishment oriented toward the Democrats. It issued a Manifesto in December 1972 in effect proposing a return to the discredited welfare state concept. New, more effective ways of government interference in social and economic processes were needed. But congressional Democrats failed to supply alternative legislative programs. Note should be made, however, of the Health Insurance Bill, suggestions to transform Nixon's new federalism by transferring federal funds not to the states in whose legislatures conservative elements often prevailed, but directly to the cities where acute social problems demanded urgent solutions. The mass democratic movements tended to decline after the end of the Vietnam war, which stopped exerting its polarizing effect on society, and under the impact of the administration's repression. This largely relieved the Democrats of the need to produce new programs which might attract the radical groups of the population. Besides, during the Watergate affair public opinion was focussed on the setbacks of the ruling party and not on the absence of a constructive Democratic alternative. With a majority in both chambers of Congress and relying on a high wave of resentment caused by Watergate, Democratic leaders were in full control of the situation. Contradictions between the President and the Democrats in Congress were sharply exacerbated. Former advocates of broader executive powers, the Democrats, now loudly called for a restriction of the White House's powers, particularly in foreign policy, and achieved considerable success. The struggle between executive government and the Democratic majority on Capitol Hill did not subside but, on the contrary, grew more fierce after Nixon's forced resignation in August 1974 and the coming to power of Gerald Ford. "When Gerald R. Ford took office as President, he faced a situation unprecedented in the annals of American leadership: disillusionment, cynicism, and even fears about our government at home; worldwide inflation, recession and growing unemployment;uncertainty about the will of the American people and the reliability of a politically-divided U.S. Government to fulfil its commitments in the world.''^^1^^ That is how Vice-

Remarks of the Vice-President at Republican National Convention Special Committee on Resolutions, August 9, 1976, WHCF, Ford Library, Box PL 76.

344 Chapter Fifteen

President Nelson Rockefeller described the difficulties facing the Ford Administration. The credibility gap and the coming to the forefront of economic problems in 1973-1975 dismissed many of the issues (racial, social, cultural and others) which had eroded the Democratic coalition in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Democrats managed to win an impressive victory at the 1974 midterm elections (receiving 58 percent of the votes against the Republicans' 38.9 percent). And the Democratic Party retained the support of young people and liberal circles it acquired in the early 1970s, and won back the sympathies of the working class and the middle strata, which provided it with hope for success in 1976.

THE ``ROLLING'' REALIGNMENT: DEMOCRATS

AND REPUBLICANS

IN CONSERVATIVE TIMES (LATE 1970s AND EARLY 1980s)

The 1976 election campaign was held against a background of the deep 1973-1975 stagflation and a Watergate-induced credibility gap which had seriously discredited the ruling Republicans and, thereby, raised the chances of the Democrats. There was certain logic in the fact that the nomination, and then the Presidency, went to Jimmy Carter, a little-known politician from the Southern backwoods who was far away from the discredited Washington Establishment and the rival Democrat groups and who had a reputation of a competent administrator and a pastmaster in vague populist rhetoric (he promised to make the government as good as the people).¹ The Democrats were elated by a firm majority in both chambers of Congress and in local government, the sorry state of their rivals and the rallying of the party around a new promising leader after a long period of divisions. But the favorable situation was more apparent than real, concealing serious problems in store for the Democrats.

Carter's victory over Ford did not mean that centrifugal trends had been overcome within the party and the former Roosevelt coalition restored as it seemed to many Democrats and observers. Although Carter received 62 percent of the votes of union members and their families, 83 percent of the black votes and 62 percent of the votes of people with low incomes, he was still unable to fully regain the vote of the white South, the bulk of non-unionized workers and other former Democrats who had defected to the Republicans in 1972. To heal the split in the party leadership was no easy task either. Most importantly, the country's domestic and interna-

Howard Norton & Bob Slosser, The Miracle of Jimmy Carter, Logos International Plainfield, New Jersey, 1976, pp. 51-52.

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The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 347

tional condition was changing in a critical direction gradually undermining the social and economic policies which were the Democrats' chief asset and which were based on stable economic growth rates maintained thanks to US hegemony in the capitalist world's trade, economy and politics, and an abundance of resources and markets.

Over the 1970s conditions of reproduction sharply deteriorated in the United States due to spiralling prices on basic raw materials (energy resources above all), the ecological crisis, a narrowing of markets, growing competition from the West European countries and Japan, obsolete production assets in traditional US industries, an increase in non-productive capital investments having to do with extension of government regulation to new spheres (environmental protection, labor safety, etc). As a result profits, labor productivity and competitiveness of American industry were steadily declining. Hence slower growth rates and a falling living standard of the late 1970s. Inflation was on an average 9.68 percent in 1976-1980, unemployment---6.8 percent, productivity growth---only 0.33 percent. Real weekly incomes of nonagricultural workers in 1973-1980 declined by almost 13 percent and profit growth rates of industrial corporations (as a percentage of stock capital) declined by 33.4 percent in comparison with 1956-1968.^^1^^

All the above, and primarily simultaneous high rates of inflation and unemployment, pointed to a serious crisis in traditional NeoKeynesian macroeconomic regulation underlying the social and economic policies of the Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Economic difficulties combined with setbacks in US foreign policy resulting from the Vietnam debacle, loss of military and strategic superiority over the Soviet Union, victories won by the national liberation movements in Africa, Iran and Central America, growing economic dependence of the United States on raw-material exporting developing countries, its sharply reduced ability to control the situation in the Third World, and the growing political independence of its NATO allies.

The simultaneous and inter-related crisis in both the economy and foreign policy was growing deeper. This changed the social and political situation in the country and added urgency to the

Economic Report of the President Transmitted to the Congress February 1983, GPO, Washington, 1983, pp. 206-207; Survey of Current Business. February 1981, pp. 58, 62.

question of how US domestic and foreign policies should develop in the near future. Society lost confidence in traditional state-- monopoly recipes for governing the country, it acutely felt that control over the domestic and international situation had been lost and was uncertain of the future. All this prepared a social and psychological atmosphere for a revival of right-wing forces.

Due to slower economic growth rates, the US ruling circles no longer enjoyed freedom of maneuver. A decline in production efficiency and profitability led to an "accumulation crisis" (an expression coined by neo-Marxist sociologist James O'Connor),^^1^^ a way out of which Big Business saw in restricted consumption and government social spending. In other words the Keynesian synthesis of capitalism and democracy in the shape of Welfare State was breaking down. In foreign policy the question was: would the United States follow a policy of realistically adapting to the changed balance of power in the world initiated during the years of detente or would it attempt to regain its former position in the world by abruptly increasing its military power, resorting to intervention and confrontation?

Such was the domestic and foreign situation in which the Democrats had to swiftly adapt themselves to the fundamentally new conditions.

Disunited from within and lacking the former tools of economic regulation and freedom of maneuver, the Democrats tacked in vain between a swing to the right, which was increasingly demanded by the upper echelons of society and the party itself, and the views of the democratic wing of its electorate whose demands were to some extent reflected in the 1976 party platform. The platform provided for a cut in defense spending, energetic measures to fight unemployment, broader economic planning in the spirit of the HumphreyHawkins bill, and "a complete overhaul of the present tax system." In the social field it promised to carry through a fundamental reform of the welfare system, introduce comprehensive national health insurance, and firmly support labor legislation, and socio-economic equality for women and ethnic minorities.^^2^^

However, material resources for fulfilling these far-reaching promises were not listed in the platform, and that omission clearly

~^^1^^ James O'Connor, Accumulation Crisis, Basil Blackwell, New York, 1984, p. 102.

~^^2^^ Congressional Quarterly Almanac-1976, Washington, 1976, pp. 855-859.

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The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 349

showed that resources for continuing the traditional liberal-reformist course were severely restricted. In a policy-making study the Brookings Institution warned that the federal government had little leeway left "in the next five years to expand domestic programs or to inaugurate large new ones. The leeway would be even less, indeed would virtually disappear, if it were decided to expand the real level of defense outlays modestly during the next several years.''^^1^^

That is why the Carter Administration had a quite different mandate from the monopoly elite and the conservative ideologists of its own party who saw the way out of the dead end of liberalism in limiting government social programs and reducing the working people's participation in the political process and their demands upon the federal government.

In view of this the real policy of the Carter Administration drifted increasingly toward conservatism. Novices in the national party leadership and far removed from the unions and liberal organizations, the President and his staff took the support of the democratic wing for granted and set about winning the sympathies of businessmen and the propertied and conservative sections of the electorate, which implied a considerable revision of the party's liberal-- reformist tradition and the borrowing of some of the Republican slogans and policies.^^2^^ The administration buried the idea of national health insurance, passed the Humphrey-Hawkins bill in a strongly downgraded form, easily put up with the defeat in Congress of the key labor legislation bill, and gave the conservatives and rightists a free hand in changing its own proposals on energy program and tax reform in favor of the monopolies. The administration's conservative bias was strengthened by the fact that the Democratic majority in both chambers was hamstrung by the growing rift between the liberal wing representing urban industrial centers in the Northeast and the Midwest and the bloc of conservative Southerners and Democrats from suburban electoral districts who demanded a cut in social spending.

As inflation and the federal budget deficit increased (due in part to the growth of real military expenditures since 1978), the administration gradually drifted from restricting to cutting social spending

Setting National Priorities. The Next Ten Years, ed. by Henry Owen and Charles L. Schultze, The Brookings Institution, Washington, 1976, p. 356.

See: the political strategy memorandum written by Carter's pollster Patrick Caddell, for the new President, The Washington Post, May 4, 1977.

and transferred the emphasis in its social and economic policy from problems of unemployment to the fight against inflation and for a balanced federal budget at the expense of "the liberal wing of their own party," as the US Conference of Mayors pointed out at the end of 1977.^^1^^ Thereby, the President, in the words of The New Republic, "repealed the domestic half of the 1976 Democratic national platform.''^^2^^

This political reorientation was accompanied by corresponding ideological outpourings the keynote of which were Carter's calls for thrift and financial responsibility borrowed from the arsenal of the conservatives and even anti-statist complaints on the impotency of the government in solving basic national problems.

A similar situation developed in foreign policy where the Democrats, who had solemnly pledged in the 1976 party platform to cut the military budget and achieve a sharp reduction in strategic arms, bragged, four years later in a similar document, that they had increased defense spending and strengthened the military potential of the US and NATO (after the Republicans had allegedly been inactive) by modernizing "its strategic deterrent through the MX, Trident, and cruise missile systems.''

While these efforts proved insufficient for the administration to gain active support from the right of center, they were quite sufficient to progressively alienate the most loyal groups of the Democrats' electoral base---unionized workers, liberal and democratic organizations and the needy---from the party.

The question of budget priorities naturally became the focus of the conflict within the party, acquiring an increasingly clear-cut organizational shape. In late 1977 left-centrist labor unions and a number of liberal congressmen founded the Democratic Agenda, an organization which sought to implement the 1976 Democratic platform and prevent a further swing of the party to the right. The next important step was the Detroit National Convention in October 1978 which set up the Progressive Alliance bringing together dozens of labor unions, black, liberal, women's and religious organizations favoring a renewal of the Democratic Party by intensifying the pressure on the administration from the left.

~^^1^^ Newsweek, December 12, 1977, p. 37.

The New Republic, November 11, 1978, p. 12.

~^^3^^ The 1980 Democratic National Platform, Democratic National Committee, Washington, p. 18.

350 Chapter Sixteen

The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 351

The first major open clash between the administration and liberal opposition occurred at the 1978 Democratic Convention in Memphis where the administration's envoys managed to have its anti-inflation program passed only by a slim majority, having failed to secure the whole party's support for its new course. The highlight in the intraparty conflict was the 1980 election campaign when the leader of the party liberal wing Senator Edward Kennedy openly challenged Carter in his bid for the nomination. And although Carter managed to win at great pains, the party split remained, which inevitably weakened and demoralized the party's supporters. The party's troubles were compounded by the economic slump in 1979- 1980, the first in many years to break out while the Democrats were in office. This cast doubt on their economic competence and further undermined confidence in Keynesian methods of regulating the economy. As a result the crisis of liberalism was apparent not only in ideology and politics; in organizational terms, it was evident in the weakening of the left-centrist majority coalition traditionally rallying around the Democratic Party. All this created favorable conditions for an ideological and political advancement of the right-wing alternative which was gaining momentum in the Republican Party.

The main political change in the Republican Party during the 1970s was a sharp growth of the right wing. One of the reasons for this was a rapid shift of the party's sectional base from the Northeast, the traditional domain of the moderate Republicans, to the Sun Belt, the bastion of the extreme rightists. They had grown particularly active since the mid-1970s when the foundations were laid for the organizational infrastructure of the New Right---the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the Heritage Foundation, the Conservative Caucus, and the Moral Majority. This development largely reflected the growing financial and economic capabilities and political greed of the aggressive new financial and industrial groups of the South and West, the traditional supporters of the right-wing forces. These groups, primarily the independent oil industrialists of Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, played a decisive part in joining the efforts of the Republican machinery and the extreme rightists, which was confirmed by data on the close relationship between the financial sources of both. At the beginning of the 1980s donations by one and the same group of Southern oil industrialists made up over a third of total contributions to the treasuries of extreme right-wing

organizations and the Republican Party. As a result there was a "shift of the financial heartland of the GOP south from Wall Street and from downtown Chicago to Houston, Dallas, and Tulsa,"¹ which largely shaped the balance of power in the party. In turn, expansion of the Republican electorate in the Southwest through the mechanism of state representation at party conventions provided the rightists with additional leverage to influence the drawing up of party platforms and the nomination of candidates. As a result the short-lived post-Watergate domination of the party leadership by the moderate-centrist bloc was challenged in 1976 by the rightwingers led by Ronald Reagan, and the former managed to retain their nominal leadership only with great difficulty and at the price of serious concessions in the platform, mostly in foreign policy. Having strengthened their positions in Congress and the party machinery, the rightists gained control of the party convention and rallied the party on a right-centrist basis in 1980.

Political activization and the swing to the right by most monopoly capitalists in the United States became an important external factor in the growing strengthening of the right wing in the Republican Party and the country as a whole. In 1975-1976 Big Business launched a massive counterattack mustering enormous financial and organizational resources: it set up an influential lobby---the Business Round Table---and also hundreds of Political Action Committees to pressure government agencies at all levels. Besides, the previously existing employers' organizations stepped up their activity. In terms of interparty struggle all this implied increased support for conservative politicians (chiefly Republicans) competing against liberal candidates and organizations.

The rallying of the political efforts of Big Business, the extreme right and the Republican Party itself was accompanied by better coordination of actions, and among other things, provided the Republicans with the enormous financial and organizational resources which contributed to their victories in the 1978 and 1980 elections. "In gross terms the Republican national party raised $ 130.3 million in 1979-80; their Democratic counterparts mustered about $23 million. "^^2^^

Thomas Byrne Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1984, p. 101.

^^2^^ Money and Politics in the United States. Financing Elections in the 1980s, ed. by Michael J. Malbin, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, 1984, p. 75.

352 Chapter Sixteen

The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Eariy 1980s 353

There were other changes unfavorable to the Democrats in demography, the social structure and political participation: the rapid migration of population in the 1970s from the urban industrial centers in the Northeast and Midwest---traditional Democratic areas---to the politically more conservative Southern and Western states and also the suburbs, a decline in the number of labor union members in the overall number of employed, the ebb in the mass democratic movements, and growing absenteeism of the needy and poor sections of the population in the elections. As a result, the active electorate of the 1980s (although not society as a whole) became more conservative and pro-Republican, while the share of firm supporters of the Democratic Party substantially shrank.^^1^^

The political consolidation of the right-wing forces in the Republican Party was accompanied by a notable change in its ideology and policy, primarily in economics. The new economic platform was a combination of several ideological and theoretical currents: neoconservatism, focusing attention on problems and contradictions of government intervention, monetarism, traditional conservatism and particularly its new trend, supply side economics, closely linked to the new right (Laffer, Vanniski and Gilder).

While there was a difference in emphasis, the diagnosis of the economic situation was common to all the trends: they linked the extension of government intervention to economic decline, stressed the advantages of market competition and free price-formation as the chief regulators of capitalist production, and urged a return to the neoclassical postulates of a "self-regulating economy.''

Considering capitalism chiefly as a system of incentives for work and capital investment, the authors of the supply side economics attached top priority to stimulating the accumulation process and the profitability of capital investment in the private sector by reducing taxes on employers and well-too-do sections of the population and tax rebates on write-offs and other benefits. An opposite set of incentives was proposed for the working people---rejection of attempts to reduce the ``natural'' unemployment rate or alleviate the position of the poor. The aim was to increase competition on the labor market, discipline the work force by the threat of poverty and in the final count to reduce its market cost for capital. A long-term anti-inflation climate created by means of a tough credit-monetary

~^^1^^ Thomas Byrne Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality, pp. 181-191.

policy according to the recipes of the monetarists was advanced as another important condition for stable economic growth.

A fresh impulse was given to the traditional conservative demand to reduce government social spending which was now also justified by the need to shift the emphasis from demand and spending (the main source of which was the government) to supply and savings accumulated in the private sector. The political aspect was equally important: the conservatives sought to narrow the sphere of the government's social activities and impose on the Americans the idea, expressed by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan Administration, David Stockman, that government did not have to provide every service that someone might need^^1^^ in order to put an end to the escalation of demands made on the government which, as the conservatives saw it, was the chief source of the "governability crisis.''

New Federalism was part of the strategy of "unloading the state" which developed Nixon's plan of revenue sharing. As distinct from its historical predecessor, New Federalism provided for substantial cuts in outlays on social programs, including by indirect methods of transferring these programs to the states without federal regulation of the allocated funds. There was also a much more far-reaching purpose: to gradually remove the responsibility for solving acute social problems from the federal government to the state governments and private capital, thereby putting an end to the federalization of social policy, a trend which had been developing since the times of the New Deal. The dismantling of federal social programs threatened to become irreversible if the sources of financing the programs were also transferred to the states as was planned.

Thus the modified social and economic platform of the Republicans involved a serious revision of aims, methods and scope of government regulation: instead of the relative autonomy of the federal government, virtually total identification of its interests with those of the monopolies on the basis of the old formula "leave business to itself and it will take care of you"; instead of an anti-cyclic economic stabilization policy, creation of the most favorable conditions only for capital accumulation; instead of the reformist ideology and policy of the Welfare State, a course aimed at reducing the

~^^1^^ Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, The Reagan Revolution, E.P. Button, New York, 1981, pp. 134-135.

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354 Chapter Sixteen

government's social responsibility and extending society's social differentiation regarded as an incentive to the population's economic activity.

In effect, it was a nostalgic attempt to revitalize capitalism on a traditionalist basis, releasing its inner forces by freeing it of the liberal-reformist restraints of the last decades. At the same time it was an attempt by the rightists and conservatives to avenge the long ideological and political domination of the liberals, and no wonder the main attacking force here was the right wing of the Republican Party which had refused to put up not only with Great Society but even with the New Deal. Not accidentally the Reagan people regarded Coolidge, Taft and Goldwater as their ideological predecessors. The Republicans' ideological tenets relied on elements of traditionalism in mass consciousness revived in a context of liberalism's crisis---extreme bourgeois individualism and antistatism, a cult of success in private enterprise, free competition and so on.

The version of Republican social and economic program offered to the ordinary voter was, of course, different from its real class implications. The price that would have to be paid to invigorate the economy was hushed up, and the emphasis was made on popular, but not typically Republican, themes of economic growth, material progress and tax cuts. These recipes provided by the advocates of the supply side economics became increasingly widespread among the Republicans. In 1977 the key law in the program, the KempRoth Bill, reducing income tax rates, was adopted by the party National Committee and then the entire Republican caucus in the House. Tax cuts together with a bloated military budget to secure a "build-up of American strength" became the keynote of the party and its candidates in the 1978 election campaign.

Approaching the 1980 elections, the Republicans focused on economic issues in the interparty struggle. By skilfully taking advantage of mass disappointment in liberalism, profound distrust of government and growing discontent with rising taxes, they managed to channel these negative moods against the Democrats whom Republican propaganda identified with bureaucracy, economic incompetence, wasteful spending and the tax burden. But they realized that this was not sufficient for contemporary America, that it was necessary to discard the economic conservatism which was typical of the Republican Party with its thinly concealed disregard of the working majority's needs and, at least in word, to make a bid for

The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 355

the support of wider sections of the population. A well-known political adviser of the Republican right wing Arthur J. Finkelstein argued: "The key to conservative victory is in presenting conservatism as a can-do philosophy, as the party of more, not less. We have to convince the voters that the election of conservatives will improve their situation. For too long, we have pushed an essentially negative austerity approach.''^^1^^ In other words, as distinct from Nixon's times, it was planned to make a "turn to the masses" not so much on the social but rather on the economic front. And the supply side economics was to play the part of a positive alternative to the liberal statism of the Democrats.

Reagan's 1980 election campaign was a graphic example of this course in action.^^2^^

The same themes prevailed in the party's 1980 platform. The order of priorities typical of the Republicans was reversed and now sounded as "economic growth and full employment without inflation.''^^3^^

The renovated economic declarations of the Republicans seemed more optimistic and promising than the policies pursued by the Carter Administration in 1979-1980. As a result, for the first time since the 1930s, the Republicans carried out a successful counterattack under the most urgent for the ordinary American slogan of bread and butter, which had been the Democrats' chief asset since the times of FDR. This was borne out not only by the results of the 1980s elections but also by the inversion of the usual images of both parties in the eyes of the voters: for the first time in many years a Gallup Poll showed that Republicans had taken a lead over the Democrats on the question of which party can "do a better job of keeping the country prosperous.''^^4^^

The Republicans also retained the slogans of social and cultural conservatism widespread in the country as a response to a profound decay of traditional bourgeois morality in the 1960s and 1970s. Defending traditional values---the family, community, reli-

Quoted from: James C. Roberts, The Conservative Decade. Emerging Leaders of the 1980s, Arlington House Publishers, Westpoit, Conn., 1980, p. 312.

~^^2^^ See the admissions of the leaders of his election campaign in: Party Coalitions in the 1980s, ed. by Seymour Martin Lipset, Institute for Contemporary Studies, San Francisco, Calif., 1981, p. 240.

' Congressional Quarterly Almanac---1980, Washington, 1981, p. 58-B. Party Coalitions in the 1980s, pp. 300-301.

24*

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The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 357

program of historical optimism of sorts met with a certain response among the population who, after many years of self-criticism, once again wanted to see America a strong and confident power.

However, from the very outset, it was doubtful that this nostalgic program of "conservative revival" was realistic: could US hegemony relying on military force be re-established in the contemporary increasingly heterogeneous and democratic world? To what extent could the long-time trend toward extension of the government's regulating role and social functions be reversed in the United States given the complexity of domestic problems and rising democratic expectations of the people? In that sense the further fate of the Republican Party became closely linked to the conservative experiment carried out by the Reagan Administration. After the elections the National Chairman Bill Brock said: "We have brought together the elements of a new coalition. The cementing of that coalition depends on our performance in office.''^^1^^ The Republican leaders wanted to further develop success at the 1982 midterm elections and finally become a majority party after the 1984 elections, hoping, as a leader of the new right, Congressman Jack F. Kemp put it, "to become the party of peace and prosperity and to stay in power for two generations.''^^2^^

The main challenge for the Republican Administration after the 1980 victorious election was to combine a swing to the right in domestic and foreign policy with retaining a political base sufficiently wide to stay in power. That was why the initial political strategy of the Republicans was aimed at bringing together a new pro-Republican majority coalition whose prototype was Reagan's 1980 election coalition. As distinct from the left-centrist coalition of the Democrats, this was to be a right-centrist coalition which, in addition to the usual supporters of the Republican Party, would include the new right and the more conservative-minded and wellto-do part of the white workers and urban middle strata who had previously stayed with the Democrats. A strange mixture of business conservatism, economic populism, militant chauvinism, and moral and religious traditionalism in the renewed political posture of the Republicans was to serve as the ideological basis for uniting these forces.

gion and the flag---became one of the main themes of the Reagan campaign and the Republican platform which for the first time openly supported such demands of the new right as a ban on abortions, introduction of prayers at school, and rejection of the amendment to the Constitution on equal rights for women.

In foreign policy the Republican Party's course underwent a substantial evolution from the policy of detente of the early 1970s to a revival of Cold War with its open bid for military superiority, buildup and use of military force, and rejection of the principles of peaceful coexistence. Underlying this turn was the stubborn reluctance of the aggressive circles of corporate and political elite to continue bringing America's imperial ambitions into line with its narrowing possibilities, the process that began in the period of detente. As Caspar Weinberger was to say somewhat later, "If the movement from cold war to detente is progress, then let me say we cannot afford much more progress.' Instead, it was proposed to eliminate the growing gap between aims and means by extensively building up US military might, that is, not only regaining militarystrategic superiority over the USSR (which was the battlecry of the Republican election campaign) but also overcoming the so-called paralysis of will and, as Ronald Reagan put it, ridding "ourselves of the 'Vietnam Syndrome.' It has dominated our thinking for too long.''^^2^^

On the whole, the new Republican policy-making statements featured one keynote---the promise to put a stop to "the decline of America," strengthen its economy and military capability and "move the nation" again, this time not under the auspices of modernizing state-monopoly capitalism (as the Democrats had promised in 1960) but by returning to the basics and tapping the classical sources of Americanism---private enterprise, free competition and traditional moral values at home and assertive nationalism relying on force beyond its borders. The Democrats were pictured as "the chief architects of our decline" and the Republicans as the party of national revival "best able to arrest and reverse the decline.''^^3^^ This

~^^1^^ "America and the World 1981", Foreign Affairs, No. 3 1981, p. 532.

~^^2^^ Peace and Security in the 1980s. Address by Ronald Reagan to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Chicago, 111., March 17, 1980.

~^^3^^ Congressional Quarterly Almanac-1980, Washington, 1981, p. 58-B, 59-B. See also: Jack F. Kemp. An American Renaissance: A Strategy for the 1980's, Harper & Row, New York, 1979.

; The New York Times, January 21, 1981. ' Ibidem.

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The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1930s 359

At the core of the Republican ideological appeal to the voters was an attempt to rally well-to-do white middle-class America round the promise to defend it from attacks by the needy (mostly colored) and government that allegedly supported them. As former President Ford said at the 1980 Republican Convention: "We have forged a giant government out of compassion for the needy. Now we can trim government out of compassion for the taxpayers.''^^1^^ In that sense, the half-hidden implication of Reaganomics (with its extreme individualism, pathetic antistatism, and self-reliance) well understood by successful America, was the revival of the social-- Darwinist assumption on the survival of the fittest backed up by the veiled prospect of redistribution of national resources in favor of the better off sections of the population. Successful implementation of that strategy would turn the Democrats into a party of the minorities and welfare-supported people driven into the decaying industrial centers of the Northeast.

However, attempts to implement these ideological and political recipes led to their substantial transformation or even complete rejection. This was true above all of the social and economic part of the Republican platform. Practice failed to confirm the hopes of the supply side economics that enormous hand-outs and benefits for Big Business would result in an abrupt upsurge of business activity. Economic stagnation combined with a sharp cut in taxes substantially reduced the receipts of the federal budget. At the same time, government spending continued to rise, and not only under the impact of record military outlays: faced by a growing political opposition in Congress and the country as a whole, the Reagan Administration failed to reduce social and other government programs as it intended (its plan of New Federalism encountered particularly strong opposition). A natural outcome of all this was an unprecedented rise in the federal budget deficit, which, in turn, not only undercut the belt-tightening policy still further but also held back economic growth due to more expensive credit. The budget deficit thus became the focal point of all the principal contradictions and failures of Reaganomics. The road was thereby paved for adoption of Draconian measures to restrict government expenditures under the Gramm-Rudman Amendment. However, inflation

~^^1^^ The Hidden Election, Politics and Economics in the 1980Presidential Campaign, ed. by Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Pantheon Books, New York, 1981, p. 316.

growth was reduced, which was important in psychological terms (particularly for the wealthier voters), but at the high price of economic slump and growing unemployment. Another consequence of the tough credit and monetary policy was a drastic deterioration of the country's balance of payments (the 1984 deficit reached 100 billion dollars).

The Republican political course considerably deepened differences between the parties, tied the well-off sections of the population to the Republican Party still closer and repelled the groups of voters most vulnerable in economic terms---the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, working and single women. According to extensive polling data, the ideological and political polarization among the supporters of both parties on issues of domestic and foreign policy reached a record level in 1982-1983 unprecedented since the 1960s.^^1^^

This naturally revived the usual image of the Republicans as a party of Big Business and the rich, and substantially weakened its positions in the electorate, primarily among the former Democrats and independents who had voted Republican in 1980. This was clearly borne out by the 1982 midterm congressional and local elections as a result of which the Republicans lost 26 seats in the House, two seats in the Senate and seven governorships.

So, the Republican Administration approached its first midterms in such a weakened state that even experienced observers who sympathized with the conservatives, like Kevin P. Phillips began predicting an erosion of Reaganism's social base, chiefly because broad sections of the working people would turn their backs on it.^^2^^

Faced with the danger that its political base might shrink even further, the administration introduced certain changes into the initial plans and ideological and political proposals despite criticism from the new right. In 1982-1983 the administration actually put up with higher social outlays, dropped the short-term objective of a balanced budget and abandoned plans to reduce the share of the federal budget in the Gross National Product to 19 percent (actually that share rose from 22.9 to 25.3 percent in 1980-1983).^^3^^ More-

~^^1^^ National Journal, October 29, 1983, p. 2210; Public Opinion, October/November 1983, pp. 26-29.

~^^2^^ Kevin P. Phillips, Post-Conservative America. People, Politics and Ideology in a Time of Crisis, Random House, New York, 1982.

~^^3^^ Economic Report of the President Transmitted to the Congress, Februrary 1985, GPO, Washington, 1985, p. 66.

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over, it substantially increased indirect taxes to reduce the budget deficit, and gave up attempts to push through Congress the program of new federalism.

The economic recovery which began in 1983 alleviated the situation for the administration and for a while made it unnecessary to introduce new changes into its economic policy. Although the recovery and subsequent boom were cyclic in nature and had little to do with government policy, the administration managed to turn them to its own political advantage. As a result, in early 1984 the voters once again regarded the Republicans as the party capable of securing the country's progress, and the improved state of the economy was the Republicans' chief trump in the election struggle.

The social and cultural questions on which the Republicans pinned large hopes proved to be a weapon that cut both ways. It was one thing to play on discontent and appeal to traditional values while in the opposition and quite another, after coming to power, to assume responsibility for government interference in religious, family and moral issues which could prove to be highly unpopular among or, in any case, controversial for most Americans. Hence the administration's reluctant and spiritless support for demands made by the new right such as a ban on abortions, and adoption of a constitutional amendment on religious lessons at school.

From the very outset, the Republicans' most extremist ambitions in the field of foreign policy were in glaring contradiction with existing realities. Yet, despite the fact that there was no real strengthening of US international positions, the deliberately tough and aggressive foreign policy, coupled with a military buildup and muscle showing (particularly the invasion of Grenada in 1983), to some extent calmed down feelings of "weakness and American retreats" existing in the country. But the economic and political costs of this course turned out to be high indeed. The spiralling arms race aggravated the country's economic and financial difficulties. The aggressive course leading to a complete rejection of detente, replacement of diplomacy by military force combined with new, more dangerous doctrines of its use, provoked growing concern among US allies and a sharp upsurge in the antinuclear movement in West European countries and America itself.

A natural political consequence of the Reagan Administration's militarist course was a change in the attitude of American voters to the Republican Party as a whole: in 1981-1984, for the first time

in the entire postwar period (the 1964 election being the only exception), it gained the stable reputation of being the war party less capable of preventing the US from being involved in military conflicts and curbing the arms race than the Democrats.^^1^^

Seeking to conceal its weakest spot in the election struggle, the Reagan Administration made desperate attempts to change its image, temporarily abandoning, if only in words, the initial assumptions concerning relations with the USSR and the possibility of using nuclear weapons, and resuming talks with the USSR on nuclear arms limitations. At the same time, the core of the Republicans' foreign policy---rabid anti-Sovietism and hawkish militarismremained unchanged, which was clearly shown by their election platform adopted at the party convention in August 1984. Openly confirming continuity with the "policy of peace through strength" proclaimed by the rightists in 1980, the platform was based on contrasting the Republicans to the Democrats, whom they called the party of weakness and appeasement, and intended to create the impression of the USSR's retreat in the face of growing American power.^^2^^

On the whole, the Republican Party entered the 1984 presidential elections retaining in essence, its basic ideological and political guidelines, but at the same time tactically correcting them with due account for the actual situation and the need to extend the party's social base in the country. The Republicans sought to present themselves as the party of peace and prosperity which, as the President stated in the 1984 State of the Union Message and elsewhere, had allegedly stopped "a long decline that had drained this nation's spirit and eroded its wealth" and had received the voters' mandate to "finish our job.''^^3^^

These Republican efforts would have been less successful were it not for the low competitiveness of the Democrats who had failed to recover from the heavy defeat of 1980. The poor showing in the election was only the most striking part of the overall picture. Ideological exhaustion, organizational and financial weakness, erosion ot the electoral base and narrower sectional base combined with the head-on attack by their rivals (as opposed to the situation in 1952

The Gallup Report, No. 235, April 1985, p. 27.

~^^2^^ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, August 25, 1984, pp. 2111-2112.

~^^3^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, February 15, 1984, p. 258.

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The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 363

and 1968) on the legacy of the Democrats in domestic and foreign policy---all this forced them to undertake urgent measures to secure their political survival.

Although the Democrats unanimously admitted that the situation was really grave, they disagreed on specific recipes to overcome the party crisis. They were almost at one on how to strengthen the party organizationally and financially: the Democrats, particularly since the election of a new National Chairman Charles T. Manatt, had firmly taken the road of imitating the Republicans' experience. It proved much more difficult to carry out an ideological and political renewal because various groups in the party had different ideas on that score.

Objectively, the crisis of traditional liberalism provided Democrats with an opportunity to revise it both from the left and from the right. The swing to the right which had emerged in the late 1970s, now received a fresh impulse from the conservative-- Republican onslaught and quickly acquired an organizational form. Founded by Democratic congressmen from the Southern and Southwestern states immediately after the 1980 election, the Democratic Conservative Forum openly voiced its solidarity with the Republicans' social and economic policy and made a bid to strengthen the influence of the conservatives in the party. And although the Southern group known as the Boll Weevil Democrats won some loud publicity and served as the decisive makeweight on the scales in passing through Congress the basic economic measures of the administration in 1981-1982, such frank identification with rivals, as most Democratic leaders realized, implied not only a loss of face for the party but also went contrary to the interests of most other groups. Faced with the strong resistance offered by the main body of the Democratic congressional caucus, the Boll Weevil Democrats proved unable to strengthen their positions in the party leadership. This led the most avid among them such as Philip Gramm from Texas to break with the party and join the Republicans.

The opposite trend was developing on the left wing of the party. The main initiative here came from the grass roots, mass democratic movements and organizations coming out against Reagan's policy of cutting social spending, providing new privileges to the monopolies and sustaining an unlimited arms race. On the theoretical plane, the ideological search of left-wingers implied the evolution of liberalism in the direction of European Social Democracy, the overcoming of

its limitedness by extending zones of economic democracy (from jobs to public control over investment decisions), debureaucratization of social policy and a rejection of expansionism and militarism in foreign policy.^^1^^ In the tactical respect the ideologists of the left wing proposed a course aimed at invigorating the political participation of the usually passive lower sections by urging them to defend the Welfare State from the Reagan conservatives and further develop it. In the final count it was intended to realign forces in the twoparty system between the extreme right-wing Republican Party and the Democrats transformed along Social Democratic lines.^^2^^

However, despite all its inner logic, the left-wing alternative evoked even less enthusiasm among the overwhelming majority of the party leadership than the frank ``Me-tooism'' of the Boll Weevils. That was only natural. Such an abrupt realignment threatened to undermine the party's support among business circles, and the course toward political polarization, particularly since there was no strong organizational pressure from the left, contradicted the traditional Democratic tactics of "class harmony" and their usual posture of the party of the whole people. That was why the party's moderate centrists tackled other questions: how to secure an optimal combination of guns and butter during a period of economic stagnation without weakening military power and, at the same time, without provoking a dangerous social and political destabilization in the country? How to retain their democratic image and the support of the lower sections while abandoning high-costing reforms unwanted by Big Business and the well-to-do? How to distance themselves from the Republicans ideologically and politically without going beyond the safe limits of centrism?

Naturally, the Democrats sought to solve these questions primarily by revising traditional liberalism from centrist positions (or

Samuel Bowles et al, Beyond the Wasteland: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline, Anchor Press, Doubleday, Garden City (N.Y.), 1983;Atternatives: Proposals for America from the Democratic Left, edited by Irving Howe, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984; Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, On Democracy: Toward a Transformation of American Democracy, Penguin Books, New York, 1983; Gar Alperovitz, Jeff Faux, Rebuilding America: A Blueprint for the New Economy, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984.

2 Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, "Toward a Class-Based Realignment of American Politics: A Movement Strategy", Social Policy, Winter 1983; Joel Rogers, "The Politics of Voter Registration", The Nation, July 21-28, 1984, p. 46; James McGregor Burns, The Power to Lead. The Crisis of the American Presidency, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984.

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The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 365

al industry, financing research and development, and finally, in establishing closer coordination between employers and labor unions in working out and implementing long-term economic policy. It was not accidental that this "trilateral partnership " in its different shapes became the basic organizational and institutional formula of the entire neoliberal industrial policy. Reflecting the generic disposition of liberal reformism toward social partnership, that policy was called upon to dampen contradictions between classes which were aggravated by the difficult and painful restructuring of the US economy, and, above all,'to force the working class to make voluntary sacrifices instead of the head-on confrontation in the spirit of Reagan's labor policy.

In the military field and foreign policy the neoliberals' chief slogans were now a "strong but lean defense" involving renunciation of certain supermodern weapons systems of questionable efficiency, and greater emphasis on raising combat efficiency; reducing US economic dependence (chiefly in raw materials) on the outside world; and greater restraint in US relations with other countries, particularly of the Third World.

As Soviet analysts remark, the neoliberals, on the whole, made a step forward in ideologically and theoretically adapting traditional liberal statism to new economic realities.^^1^^

At the same time, largely due to its eclectic nature this trend had serious weaknesses substantially restricting its political possibilities. The neoliberals failed to convincingly combine the need to expand the role of government up to the level of national economic planning (a need dictated by the nature of the new economic problems) with the new cult of the market and their own sceptical attitude to the effectiveness of government intervention, an attitude prompted by the experience of the 1960s and 1970s. These inner contradictions of industrial policy together with the deliberate technicism and pragmatism of the neoliberal constructions deprived the neoliberals of a clear and viable alternative needed to gain the support of the rank-and-file voter. It was equally important that the neoliberal social and economic platform which conformed to the outlook of the well-off and educated middle sections, was a far cry from the urgent needs of the working class, racial and ethnic mino-

See: E.Ya. Batalov, B.V. Mikhailov, "American Liberalism: A Search for New Roads", USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, No. 9, 1984, p. 21.

looking for new "third options between the left and the right,"^^1^^ as Senator Gary Hart put it). That revision was to take into account specific new problems and lessons drawn from the experience of conservative government.

Initially relying on a small group of young congressmen and ideologists seeking to say their new word in politics, this ideological and political trend, christened neoliberalism,^^2^^ quickly turned into a serious political force in the party.

With all the different hues and the general vagueness of the neoliberal credo, its principal features reflected in numerous speeches and works by its advocates^^3^^ were sufficiently clear. As distinct from the Democrats of the 1970s, the neoliberals transferred the chief emphasis in domestic policy from social problems to economic issues---raising productivity and US competitiveness on world markets, restoring stable rates of economic growth which once again, as in the 1950s and early 1960s, was regarded as the decisive condition for solving domestic problems.

Like the conservatives, the neoliberals attached top priority to factors of supply, accumulation of capital and encouragement of private enterprise and initiative above all, and agreed that there was a need to stimulate private capitalist accumulation by relevant tax benefits and relaxed regulation. The neoliberals took a much more sceptical attitude than their predecessors---the statist liberals of the 1960s and 1970s---to direct government interference in economic and social processes, at the same time laying emphasis on the advantages of flexible use of market mechanisms. But contrary to the Republican version of the supply side economics which assigned the entire task of restructuring the American economy to private capital and spontaneous market forces, the neoliberals believed that it was impossible to solve the problem without the government's active participation in investment policy, in expanding investment in the economic infrastructure and human factor, in supporting nation-

Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, December 3, 1983, p. 2535.

This current term should not be confused with the basic distinction between neoconservatives and neoliberals adopted in the present work.

~^^3^^ Gary Hart, A New Democracy. A Democratic Vision for the 1980s, Quill, New York, 1983; Paul Tsongas, The Road from Here. Liberalism and Realities in the 1980s, Random House, New York, 1982; Lester Thurow, The Zero-Sum Society, Basic Books, New York, 1980; Robert Reich, The Next American Frontier, Times Books, New York, 1983; Randall Rothenberg, The Neoliberals. Creating the New American Politics, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984.

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rities, and the poor. Naturally, it was given a cold shoulder on the left wing of the Democratic Party as "Reaganism with a human face.''^^1^^

Nevertheless, neoliberal ideas had a major impact on party policy-making in view of the acute ideological hunger and thanks to active support by most rising young Democrats.

The Democratic Party Conference in June 1982 saw the first serious attempt to draw up a single party-wide platform and pointed to a substantial swing by the party in the relevant direction. Sparing no effort to stir up public discontent with Reaganism and ostentatious determination to do away with the "narrow band of extremists,"^^2^^ the Democrats at the same time failed to propose a single major social initiative and even did not want to do anything substantial about the nine million unemployed, limiting themselves to protests against the excessive cuts in social spending. Although the keynote of the conference (and also of the 1982 election campaign) was economic growth and justice, the former obviously prevailed in the specific proposals formulated in the spirit of industrial policy. In foreign policy, the Democrats pursued their usual line of incorporating the demands of social protest movements, attempted to associate themselves with the rapidly growing antinuclear movement and supported, albeit cautiously, proposals to freeze the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union. All these efforts were underpinned by the Democrats' desire to once again emerge as the vital center (combining "fair and generous social programs" with "fiscal prudence" and "arms control" with "a strong national defense") and to depict the Reagan Republicans as dangerous extremists reflecting the interests of the minority.

The same basic themes were offered in subsequent policy documents of the Democrats: the Yellow Book of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives (September 1982), the Blue Book issued on the eve of the 1984 election campaign jointly by the House caucus and other national leaders and then the party

~^^1^^ The Nation, June 26, 1982, p. 786.

Official Proceedings of the 1982 Democratic National Party Conference, Democratic National Committee, Washington, 1982, p. 82.

From a speech by Chairman of the House Budget Committee James R. Jones at the conference in Philadelphia, Official Proceedings of the 1982 Democratic Party Conference, Democratic National Committee, Washington, 1982, p. 221.

The ``Rolling'' Realignment: Late 1970s and Early 1980s 367

election platform of 1984.* The difference was only in the extent of detalization and further development of the fiscal prudence theme under the impact of the abruptly rising federal budget deficit.

The swing toward new centrism was also obvious in the next phase of the party reform which, according to recommendations of the Hunt Commission, enhanced the role of the party elite in the nominating process.

Thus the ideological rearming of the Democratic Party was highly tentative and incomplete; the party's practical capability was even at a lower level. Initially, in 1981-1982, the Democrats in Congress were so disunited and demoralized that they could not offer any serious resistance to the passing of the Republican legislative program. The situation changed somewhat following the 1982 elections which lent the party strength and confidence. In 1983 and 1984 the Democratic caucus in the House managed to draw up its own draft budget and introduce substantial changes in the administration's budget proposals. Democrats in both the Senate and House voted quite unanimously for maintaining the system of social insurance and other social programs bearing on problems of employment, education and housing construction and in support of the bill on voting rights, constitutional amendment on equal rights for women and against certain weapon systems and the ``secret'' war in Nicaragua.^^2^^ At the same time, due to serious differences between party groups, the Democratic caucus split in voting on such major issues as freezing nuclear arsenals, financing the MX ICBM, the B-l strategic bomber, building up chemical weapons, adopting a constitutional amendment on a balanced budget, a ban on abortions, and introducing prayers at schools.

The disagreements among the Democrats in Congress pointed once more to serious cleavages existing in the party which lacked the element of cohesion. These cleavages became fully apparent during the 1984 election campaign when, instead of the expected joint struggle against the Republicans, the Democrats engaged in internecine strife. Although they involved subjective and personal elements, the clashes between Walter Mondale, Gary Hart and Jesse

~^^1^^ Rebuilding the Road to Opportunity: Turning Point for America's Economy, Democratic Caucus, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, September 1982; Renewing America's Promise. A Democratic Blueprint for Our Nation's Future, The National-House Democratic Caucus, Washington, January, 1984; The 1984 Democratic National Platform, Democratic National Committee, Washington, 1984.

~^^2^^ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, November 3, 1984, pp. 2854-2863.

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Jackson in their bid for the nomination reflected the objective process of stratification in the Democratic coalition and the serious conflict of interests between the forces it included. Walter Mondale, an orthodox liberal of the old school, relied on the support of the party elite, and also the leadership of labor unions, most black, women's and other liberal organizations. Gary Hart, one of the leaders of neoliberalism, personified the opposition to the traditional party leadership and its policy on the part of the new generation Democrats representing the well-to-do urban middle strata. And finally, Jesse Jackson brilliantly expressed the protest of the most needy and radicalized colored part of "the other America" directed against not only Reaganism but also the conservative drifting of the Democratic Party itself. As Jackson wrote in a letter to George McGovern: "Too many Democrats have gone along with Republicans on every Reagan policy.''^^1^^ The social base of the three contenders was manifest in the support each of them received in the primaries. Most union members, ``strong'' Democrats, older and less educated people voted for Mondale. Hart's supporters were mostly younger, more educated, well-to-do and politically independent Americans. Jackson polled 77 percent of the black votes and only five percent of the white Democrats;^^2^^ his daring idea of an interracial election coalition including all the colors of the rainbow (blacks, Hispanics, women, youth, white poor and liberal activists) and potentially capable of becoming the core of an independent left-wing party failed largely due to the survival of racial antagonisms.^^3^^ It was the Jackson platform, envisaging, albeit in an incipient form, the radical revision of the system of national priorities in favor of social problems, a complete break with the expansionist and militarist tradition in foreign policy, that became the prototype of a real alternative to the trends prevailing in politics and, not surprisingly, provoked the anger of the Democratic Party's right wing. These differences were also in evidence at the Democratic convention controlled by the Mondale forces where Jackson's followers received about a third of the votes on the platform planks he proposed and which called on the United States to reject the first use of nuclear

~^^1^^ Quoted from: National Journal, July 14, 1984, p. 1348.

See: The Elections of 1984, Edited by Michael Nelson, Congressional Quarterly Inc., Washington, 1985, p. 67.

A.N. Darchiyev, "Jesse Jackson and Black Voters in the 1984 Election Campaign", USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, No. 2, 1985, pp. 68, 72-73.

weapons and make major reductions in defense spending.^^1^^ The nominal unity between the party groups achieved at the convention did not mean that their mutual alienation had been overcome. As the subsequent development of the election campaign and the election results showed, about a third of Hart's followers voted for Reagan and the black voter participation proved to be much lower than expected.

The cleavages within the Democratic Party were an important but not the principal factor in their defeat. The overall situation in the country in early summer 1984 was highly favorable for Reagan's reelection. The boom psychology bred by the cyclic rise in the economy, and a revival of jingoist moods, particularly after the `` victories'' in Grenada and at the Olympics in Los Angeles, were skilfully used by the Republican strategists to rally the country round the President under the slogans of national unity and greatness, to identify the President and the governing Republicans, in Reagan's coinage "America's party," with real Americanism and any opposition to it with anti-Americanism, hostility to the flag, the family and even religion.^^2^^

All this highly complicated things for the Democrats. In order to win the election Mondale, like Adlai Stevenson in 1956, had to prove to the voters that the facade of Republican "peace and prosperity" concealed serious problems which the Democrats could solve better than the Republicans. And although the Democratic arguments were largely justified, they failed either to dispell the feeling of well-being widerspread among middle-class America or prove the Democrats' better ability to effectively govern the country.

The inner contradictions of the Democrats' political strategy were also instrumental. On the one hand, they were perfectly aware that in order to win the election it was necessary to fully mobilize all the liberal-democratic forces as the basis of the anti-Reagan coalition. Hence a campaign, unprecedented in scope since the 1960s, to register and attract voters from the union members, women, racial minorities and retired people. Hoping that the tendencies of the 1982 elections would develop, the leaders of the Democratic National Committee did not hide the fact that they mostly intended not so much to gain the sympathies of new groups of the electorate but

^^1^^ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, July 21, 1984, p. 1736. Newsweek, November-December, 1984, p. 88.

25-749

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find a dominating theme for their platform favorably differing from the Republican.^^1^^ If this were the case, the reason lay not with Mondale 's personal shortcomings but rather with the fact that the overall ideological and political crisis in the party had not been overcome as it entered the 1980s.

The elections showed the further development of the 1980s tendency toward electoral polarization along class and property lines, which was a natural outcome of the conservative policy of revenue sharing reflecting the growing gap between the well-to-do and the "other America." The spread between the poorest and richest (10 percent of the population) supporters of Reagan was 43 points as compared with 16 points in voting for Eisenhower in 1956 ( according to Martin P. Wattenberg from National Election Studies).^^2^^

A similar trend was even more obvious at the level of party identification where the spread between the same groups of voters (favoring Democrats over Republicans) had grown from 40 points to 69 points by 1984.^^3^^ Of course, these changes pointed not to the growing popularity of Democrats among the lower strata in American society but rather to their rejection of the Republicans. Neither can the election results be regarded as reflecting the true proportion between the victims of the conservative policy and those benefitted by it in view of the unproportionately large role of the latter in the US political process. It is clear, however, that under the existing class pattern of political participation and the specific circumstances of 1983-1984, the Republicans managed to knock together a coalition of the privileged.

It is quite another question whether the Reagan coalition would prove to be stable enough to turn the Republican Party into a firm majority party. In that sense the results of the 1984 elections were far from clear-cut and did not fit into simplified schemes of either a final realignment in favor of the Republicans (as their leaders hoped)⁴ or a personal victory for Reagan as some Democrats would have us believe. A number of developments---the progressive weakening of the Democrats in presidential elections since 1968, a rise in partisan identification with the Republicans (particularly among the youth)

rather to activize the existing potential supporters by increasing participation, above all of female voters, taking advantage of the "gender gap." Mondale followed the same reasoning in his campaign, which was dramatically demonstrated by his choosing Jeraldine Ferraro as candidate for Vice-President (contrary to traditional considerations of sectional balance) and focussing his main efforts on the traditional bastions of the party---the industrial Northeast and Midwest.

At the same time, the Democratic leaders feared further alienation of the more conservative-minded sections and the big bourgeoisie which had rejected the party in the 1980 election. That was why the left wing was rallied by purely technical, manipulative methods without a real offensive program of action, which undoubtedly reduced the effectiveness of that effort. It was hard to expect that the appeals to reduce the federal budget deficit (in part by ``fairly'' cutting certain social programs and raising taxes) pervading the Democratic platform and Mondale's speeches and abundantly sprinkled by egalitarian rhetoric combined with an extremely vague version of neoliberal "industrial strategy", could rally the masses to the struggle against Reaganism.

The foreign policy plank of the Democratic platform offered a more realistic alternative to the Republican course because it included positive moves to relax international tensions and normalize American-Soviet relations. But here too, seeking to pose as the "party of American strength" capable of coping with the alleged "Soviet threat," better than the Republicans, the Democrats paid tribute to militarism and anti-Sovietism. In sum, this dual strategy resulted in an obvious decline of enthusiasm on the left without any gains in the center and on the right, as was the case in Carter's times. Mondale received a majority of votes only in a few groups most loyal to the Democratic Party: union households (53 percent), Jewish (66 percent), blacks (90 percent), unemployed (68 percent), Hispanics (65 percent) and under 12,500 dollars in income (53 percent) (whose turnout remained traditionally low), while the outflow from the Democratic Party of white Southerners, middle sections and part of the working class, which began in the late 1960s, continued unabated.^^1^^ Mondale himself acknowledged after the elections that the chief trouble of the Democrats was that they had failed to

~^^1^^ The New York Times, November 8, 1984.

The Washington Post National Weekly Edit ion .January 6, 1986, p. 23. Ibidem.

See: George Bush, "1984: The Year the Republicans Became the Majority Party The Brookings Review, No. 2, Winter 1985, p. 4.

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and in voter judgement of the party's ability to cope with the country's basic problems^^1^^---pointed if not to a completed realignment of forces then to the shaping of conditions for a more long-term consolidation of Republican positions among the active electorate. At the same time, what obviously meets the eye is the total lack of depth in Republican victory which practically failed to touch the other levels of interparty rivalry---congressional and local elections--- where the Democrats continued to prevail. The exception here was the more extensive Republican offensive in the South, but this constituted a delayed completion of the realignment of the New Deal times rather than a fundamentally new development of the 1980s. No wonder split ticket voting achieved a record level in 1984 over the postwar period. It seemed that, instead of transferring full power to the Republicans, the voters preferred to retain a strong countervailing force in the shape of Democratic Congress. According to public opinion polls, the same thing is indicated by the refusal of most voters to regard the Republican Party as the country's leading political force and also support by most of them of "divided government.''^^2^^ In this respect the Reagan landslide resembled not the Democratic triumphs in 1936 which really consolidated the realignment in the two-party system but rather Nixon's victory in 1972. As distinct from the 1972 campaign, the Republicans made maximum use of the "presidential coattails" effect trying to turn the election into a referendum on the President and his policy, while the lion's share of the enormous political resources of the Republicans, their allies and the President himself was mustered in deliberate effort to develop the party's success in depth.

All this contradicted the classical realignment model to such an extent that even some sober-minded pro-Republican observers and experts were forced to admit that it was, at best, "a rolling realignment" which could move either way.^^3^^

Thus, although it failed to solve many of the basic problems (and created a number of new ones), the attempt to implement the program of Reagan Republicans led to a temporary rallying round the party of the right-wing conservative coalition and increased the alternative element in the two-party system. Ironically, as the pro-

~^^1^^ See, for example: The Gallup Report, No. 235, April 1985, pp. 22-27.

~^^2^^ The Harris Survey, December 2, 1985, p. 2.

~^^3^^ Public Opinion, December/January 1985, pp. 62, 63.

-minent political scientist James McGregor Burns put it, in terms of ideology, Republicans were mobilized "behind one of the most narrow, negative, and backward doctrines---market conservatism---any major party had embraced in modern American history, and behind a most dangerous foreign-policy doctrine of indiscriminate, belligerent, hard-nosed anti-Communism.''^^1^^

It was this negative attitude of contemporary American ultraconservatism that in the final count determined the transient nature of its political successes and the weakness of its social base. Although the Republicans managed to take advantage of the crisis of liberalism at the turn of the 1980s, the basic objective trends in the development of contemporary American capitalism---growing socialization of production, extension of the government's regulating role, and the weakening of US formerly dominating positions in the world---continued to operate, as a collective study by Soviet Americanists concluded^^2^^, and were contrary to all the principal postulates and the spirit of the latest version of Republican conservatism.

The party realignment might have been more complete had the Democrats responded to the offensive on the right by rallying liberal-democratic forces on the basis of a new left liberal alternative. As some American experts suggested, such a course of events could result in a serious revitalization of the party-political struggle and improvement of the political climate as a whole.^^3^^ But this proved impossible due to the class nature of the leading political parties and in view of the absence of strong pressure from the left. The Democrats decided to adapt the liberal credo to the conservative agenda, attempting to make the swing to the right in government policy more acceptable to broad sections of American society and better conform it to real capabilities of the United States. Once again, this strengthened the element of consensus in relations between the parties but failed to overcome the recent crisis of the two-party system under which neither Democrats nor Republicans were able to find a realistic program to solve the new national problems that could gain the support of the bulk of the population in the country.

James M. Burns, The Power to Lead, p. 70.

Contradictions of Modern American Capitalism and the Struggle of Ideas in the United States, ed. by Y. A. Zamoshkin, R. G. Bogdanov, E. Ya. Batalov, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1984 pp. 410-411 (in Russian).

Walter Dean Burnham, American Politics in the 1980s: Development and Scenarios, (Mimeographed), 1984, pp. 19-20.

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A TIME OF POLITICAL DISILLUSIONMENT: THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM AND VOTERS IN THE 1970s- EARLY 1980s

seriously threatened.^^1^^ Since all three components of the party are closely linked to each other, a change in one gives rise to relevant processes in the other components.

These changes will be seen even if one takes a cursory glance at the results of voter turnout in presidential elections and they are compared with those of elections at other levels. But they will strike the eye if one makes a more detailed analysis of voter party affiliation, activities in support of party candidates, the evolution of attitudes to parties and of general views of the social and political system, and the principles and operation of bourgeois democracy in the United States. Although this chapter deals chiefly with the 1970s and early 1980s when these processes were most clearly evident, it is to be noted that they have been of long-term nature and not confined to the framework of that period.

Thus, voter absenteeism in the presidential elections has been a stable trend for a number of years: 62.8 percent of eligible voters participated in the 1960 election, 61.9 percent in 1964,60.9 percent in 1968, 55.2 percent in 1972, 53.5 percent in 1976, and 52.6 percent in 1980.^^2^^

These data show that the most substantial changes occurred between 1968 and 1976 when participation was almost at its lowest level in the 20th century (43.5 percent in the 1920 presidential elections). In some states participation in presidential and midterm elections at the turn of the 1970s plunged to 30-40 percent.^^3^^ If in the 1960s an absolute majority of Americans took part in the national and local elections, in the subsequent period only half or even less participated in the process.

In 1984, despite the special efforts and enormous possibilities of the Republican Party to register and rally voters, the number of registered voters increased by four percent as compared to 1980 (from 70 to 74 percent), according to public opinion polls. However, only 53 percent of those registered were absolutely certain that they would vote in the elections. The preliminary returns of the elec-

V. O. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1944, pp. 243-272.

~^^2^^ The Gallup Report, No. 230, November, 1984, p. 20.

W. Burnham, "American Politics in 1970's: Beyond Party?" in: American Party System. Stages of Political Development. Oxford University Press, New York, 1977, p. 339; Dennis J. Palumbo, American Politics, Appleton-Century-Grofts, New York, 1973, p. 514.

Instability of the political process and aggravation of the negative phenomena, the symptoms of which were to some extent evident in the US party-political system at an earlier date, made many American bourgeois historians, sociologists and political scientists describe these phenomena as a crisis, decline and degradation of the main bourgeois political parties in the United States.^^1^^

``As instability has developed in the total society, political constants too have declined,"^^2^^ wrote Gerald M. Pomper. Another prominent author, Paul Kleppner, emphasized that the "disintegrative process" and "the functional decline of the country's political parties" and their inability "to mobilize a mass electorate" resulted in "widespread disillusionment with electoral politics.''^^3^^

The spread of political disillusionment and a decline in the influence of the two-party system in the 1970s and early 1980s was most obvious in the weaker control of the parties over the masses, a fall in the prestige of the party leaders and the parties themselves, and a narrowing of their base. As a result, what is regarded by American political scientists as fundamental to the modern bourgeois party---the threetier model consisting of the party electorate, party organization, and party caucus in federal government bodies---was

~^^1^^ Everett Carl Ladd, Jr., Where Have All the Voters Gone? The Fracturing of America's Political Parties, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1978; A. Ranney, "The Political Parties: Reform and Decline", in: The New American Political System, edited by A. Kyng, Washington, 1978; William J. Grotty, Gary C. Jacobson, American Parties in Decline, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1980.

~^^2^^ Gerald M. Pomper, Voter's Choice. Varieties of American Electoral Behavior, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1975, p. 19.

~^^3^^ Paul Kleppner, Who Voted? The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout 1870-1980, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1982, p. 112.

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tions showed that 92 million people voted for either Reagan or Mondale, which was about 52.5 percent of all citizens eligible to vote.^^1^^

It is very important to find out whose participation in the elections has declined. The data show that absenteeism is not a new phenomenon in American political life. Moreover, the ruling circles even gained some advantages from the situation whereby poor Americans withdrew from the political process and formed the bulk of the inactive electorate.

The US party-political elite was quite content with the traditional apolitical attitudes, low level of information and ideological conviction not only of the absentees but also the principal mass of voters among whom the "dependent voter" prevailed until the early 1960s.

The portrait of such a voter was vividly painted by the authors of The American Voter, a monumental work which was published in 1960s. The authors noted that although many voters responded knowingly to problems on which legislative or administrative actions might be taken, "the citizenry is almost completely unable to judge the rationality of government actions"^^2^^ or what the parties proposed.

The result was that most of those regularly participating in elections firmly affiliated themselves with one of the two bourgeois parties and supported its platform and candidates for various elected offices, including that of the President. Moreover, the party was chosen on the basis of family, group, occupational or other traditions.

These specific features in the electorate's political behavior were ``scientifically'' substantiated in the concept of normal voting which indicated that in any election the supporters of the Democratic Party would vote for the Democratic candidates and the Republicans for "their own" candidates.^^3^^

The theory was marked by an arrogant and scornful attitude on the part of the bourgeois ideologists to the ordinary American citizens and their ability to find their bearings in the political situation and make an independent choice. For example, a basic conclusion of The American Voter was that "knowing little of ... policies ... the

~^^1^^ Derived from The Gallup Report, No. 230, November, 1984, pp. 20, 21.

A. Campbell, P. Converse, W. Miller, D. Stokes, The American Voter, Wiley New York, 1960, p. 543.

~^^3^^ Gerald M. Pomper, Voter's Choice. Varieties of American Electoral Behavior, p. 19.

mass electorate is not able to appraise either its goals or the appropriateness of the means chosen to serve these goals.''

Of course, it would be naive to deny the apolitical attitudes widespread in the United States or insufficient knowledge among the voters. However, it would seem that the causes of such voter behavior in the first postwar decades should be sought in deeper specific features in the operation of the party-political system in the United States at the time.

First, with both bourgeois parties being integrated at the time in the state-monopoly system, there was a temporary decline in the polarization of political forces and an increase in the homogeneity of the parties and the political elite in the 1950s.

Another important feature of the period was the relatively favorable economic situation and social and economic gains made by the masses, which gave rise to an exaggeration of the achieved results and an insufficiently critical attitude to bourgeois parties and political institutions.

This created particularly favorable conditions for the flourishing of the simplified, market pattern of the political process when "the problem of political decision-making is reduced to a choice between two salesmen of political merchandise, the differences between whom are of secondary importance and only indirectly reflect the interests of the bulk of the population.''^^1^^

Under the circumstances it was difficult to expect a socially grounded choice from the politically unsophisticated voter, and in view of this, family, group and other voting traditions acquired increased weight and importance, as did the inertia of political behavior.

The postwar restructuring of the party-political system reflected the ruling circles' adaptation to the new social, economic and political situation in the United States highlighted by state-monopoly capitalism's becoming the basis of American society. The aim of the restructuring was to "develop a mass base which would, on the one hand, secure the stability of political institutions, and on the other, would not affect them in a way detrimental to the power and interests of bourgeois ruling circles.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ F. M. Burlatsky, A.A. Galkin, The Modern Leviathan, My si Publishers, Moscow, 1985, p. 112 (in Russian).

New Developments in the Mechanism of the Monopolies' Political Domination, Part I, the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of World Economics and International Relations, Moscow, 1975, p. 42 (in Russian).

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popularity of the Democratic Party began to decline, which was largely linked to Johnson's policy in Southeast Asia; this was accompanied by a decrease in the number of Republicans particularly after the Watergate scandal involving Nixon's Republican Administration.''^^1^^ As a result, by the end of the 1970s the share of both parties' supporters had fallen to 60-65 percent, while the share of independents had correspondingly risen to 35-40 percent.^^2^^

The inner structure of groups of both parties' backers also changed to the worse. American political experts divide the parties' followers into ``strong'' and "not strong" and undecided. In 1964 both parties had an approximately equal number of ``strong'' and "not strong" supporters (38 percent). Subsequently, while the overall number of both tended to decline due to an increase in the number of the independents, the number of ``strong'' supporters of both parties was falling much more rapidly.

Thus the public opinion surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of Chicago in 1972-1982 showed that the ``strong'' Democrats constituted 16 percent, "not strong" Democrats 25 percent, independent voters gravitating toward the Democrats 12 percent, simply independents 12 percent, independents gravitating toward the Republicans 8 percent, "not strong" Republicans 14 percent and ``strong'' Republicans 7 percent. The sum of both parties' ``strong'' backers was only 23 percent, while the overall number of "not strong" supporters was 39 percent, and independents 32 percent.^^3^^

A similar picture was revealed by another survey conducted in 1980 on the eve of the elections. The pollsters asked different questions to find out party affiliation, and the results were almost identical. Asked to say whether they regarded themselves as supporters of a political party, only 39.4 percent of the polices answered in the affirmative and 58 percent negatively.^^4^^ Asked to say which party

N.P. Popov, Politicization of Public Awareness in the United States, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1981, p. 86 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ Warren E. Miller, Arthur H. Miller, and Edward J. Schneider, American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952-1978, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1980, p. 81.

~^^3^^ See: National Opinion Research Center (NORC), University of Chicago. General Social Surveys, 1972-1984, Chicago, 1984.

~^^4^^ American National Election Study, 1980, Vol. 1, Pre- and Post Election Surveys, Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1982, p. 189.

However, this phenomenon had an acute inherent contradiction. To retain their dominating positions the ruling minority did not have to involve the broad masses in the political process. It is even undesirable to do so. This explains why the American bourgeoisie had consistently adhered to the market pattern in the two-party system aimed at painlessly transferring power from one party to another and, as a result, low participation and involvement in politics by the citizens.

At the same time, the bourgeoisie has a vested interest in retaining its influence over the masses, and this requires reckoning with their interest and involving them in the political process. In this sense growing absenteeism has been a potentially dangerous phenomenon for the American political system.

What emerged in a concealed form in the 1950s came out into the open as a result of the economic and political upheavals in the 1970s. Absenteeism not only grew in terms of quantity but also changed in terms of quality. Virtually all the demographic categories of the electorate were now represented in this group, including the most educated voters and members of the middle class.

Contemporary American political scientists point out that if the above trend were to continue the question would inevitably arise as to "the stability and representativeness of American political institutions.''^^1^^

The crisis in the two-party system in this period was not exhausted by growing absenteeism. The decline in partisan loyalties was also an important factor. It was seen in a continuously falling number of supporters both of the Democrats and the Republicans and an increase in ``independents'' supporting neither party.

Until the mid-1960s the category of independent voters rose only slightly, but the decisive trend was an increase in the number of supporters of the party in power at the expense of the opposition party. Such a redistribution of votes was the result of the parties' rivalry for a mass base. This did not threaten the existence of the two-party system, but, on the contrary, enabled it to keep an overwhelming majority of the electorate (up to 85-89 percent) under its political control.

Since the mid-1960s, Soviet scholar N.P. Popov, wrote, "the

William J. Crotty, Gary C. Jacobson, American Parties in Decline, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1980, p. 247.

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advantage of the Republican Party but at the same time did not give it a decisive lead over the Democrats. As a result, the term " majority party", applied to the Democrats since the 1930s, gradually disappeared. Data of polls conducted during 1984 feature differences in party identification depending on the time of the poll. This is a new development. Thus a national telephone poll conducted jointly by the CBS and The New York Times in mid-October 1984 showed a 14 percent lead by the Democrats, while a similar poll conducted a month later indicated both parties' equal popularity among the electorate. Particularly large fluctuations (up to 41 percent) in party identification were observed among the white population in the Southern states and among younger voters, although these changes affected all voter categories to some extent. Prominent American political scientist Everett Ladd ponders over the "present-day meaning of party identification and its constancy. We have long assumed that party identification reflected deep loyalties---not easily changed. A group might vote for another party in a given presidential election, even in a number of elections, and still not abandon its ancestral party ties.''^^1^^ The author argues that the meaning of changes in electoral behavior today lies in a considerable part of the electorate refusing to show any party preference, easily denying their vote to the candidate from ``their'' party and making "party identification a more casual matter than it ever has been before." The contemporary voter has weaker party ties. Mass political behavior does not tend "to recreate the extent and degree of stability in party ties that they displayed in the New Deal

they supported, 15 percent said the Republican Party and 22 percent the Democrats (total 37 percent).

At the same time when the question was put somewhat differently: "Do you ever think of yourself as a political independent or not?" 42 percent of the polices answered yes and 55 percent no.^^1^^

Even if we take into account differences in responses and the inaccuracy of the survey, there is every reason to believe that the share of independent voters in 1980 did not tend to decline but, on the contrary, increased.

Political events in the United States between 1980 and 1984 and particularly the impressive victory scored by Reagan and Bush over the candidates of the Democratic Party, Mondale and Ferraro, gave rise to different appraisals and judgements concerning the party loyalty of American voters. The most debated question was whether there was a fundamental shift by the voters toward the Republican Party.

Public opinion polls do not provide a clear answer. Thus, Gallup surveys showed that the number of Republican Party supporters grew from 28 to 35 percent in 1984 and that of the Democratic Party backers declined from 41 to 38 percent and of independents from 31 to 27 percent.^^2^^

At the same time the 1984 survey data of the Chicago National Opinion Research Center showed only slight fluctuations in party affiliation as compared with 1972-1982; ``strong'' Democrats from 16 to 17 percent; "not strong" Democrats from 25 to 19 percent; independents gravitating toward the Democratic Party from 12 to 14 percent; independents from 12 to 11 percent; independents gravitating toward the Republican Party from 8 to 10 percent; "not strong" Republicans from 14 to 16 percent; and ``strong'' Republicans from 7 to 8 percent.^^3^^

An analysis of data from other 1984 polls together with similar 1980 information enables us to conclude that the influence of the Republican Party continued to grow slowly due to a decline in the number of Democratic Party supporters, while the number of independents remained the same or changed slightly both ways. There was an evening out of the popularity level which was to the

^^1^^ ibid., p. 192.

^^2^^ The Gallup Report, No. 230, November, 1984, p. 25.

National Opinion Research Center (NORC), General Surveys 1972-1984.

era.

The rise in the number of ``independents'' and "not strong" supporters, and changes in party identification promoted "issue voting" or "ticket splitting." The implication is that the voter in an election supports a candidate not because of his party identification but on the basis of the candidate's stand on major domestic and foreign policy issues. Thus, the voter supports candidates from different parties in various elections, and it becomes difficult to predict the outcome of an election.

This phenomenon was not widespread in the 1950s. But during

~^^1^^ Everett Carl Ladd, "On Mandates, Realignments, and the 1984 Presidential Elections", in: Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1985, p. 22.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 23.

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negative attitude.^^1^^ An overwhelming majority of voters (70 percent) said it was better to choose a candidate without paying attention to his party affiliation. More than half of the polices (51 percent) agreed that "parties do more to confuse the issues than to provide a clear choice on issues.''^^2^^ Very serious ``anti-party'' attitudes were also apparent in the fact that 44 percent of the polices agreed that "it would be better if, in all elections, we put no party labels on the ballot," and 22 percent agreed to a larger extent (and another 7 percent to a lesser extent) with the statement that "we probably don't need political parties in America anymore." And 58 percent of those polled believed, while 35 percent disagreed, that "parties are only interested in people's votes but not in their opinions.''^^3^^ That there is a stable credibility gap was also confirmed by subsequent polls. In 1984, for example, most voters expressed dissatisfaction with the election system. Thus, 53 percent (against 35 percent) favored a reform of the election system, 67 percent were for abolishing party conventions and nominating presidential candidates at national primaries. Voters wanted to vote not only for candidates but also for issues and policy problems; they supported the idea of abolishing the electoral college and introducing a direct election of the President.

In analyzing the reasons for the existing situation American bourgeois political scientists referred to the most varied problems which, in their opinion, negatively affected the functioning of the two-party system. Most of them sought to explain the parties' decline from the viewpoint of pluralism resorting to the principle of multiple reasons. However, in the interpretation of bourgeois authors this principle leads only to eclecticism and confusion of various concepts, the objective and the subjective, and cause and effect. The hierarchy of causes and an analysis of their essential meaning are almost totally absent. As a result the explanation is submerged in a host of causes from the enhanced role of the mass media, electronic press, and the fall in the influence of party machines to general social structural shifts occurring outside the parties.

Almost all the authors mention changes lying on the surface of the electorate's empirical features, in particular the fact that it had

the September 1976 Gallup poll, 60 percent of the polices said that the presidential candidate's stand on basic political issues was foremost in their voting choice, 21 percent indicated personal qualities, and only 12 percent mentioned the candidate's party identification.^^1^^

A Gallup poll after the 1976 election showed that on the whole 56 percent voted for candidates from different parties and 41 percent for candidates of one party. The percentage of those who voted for different parties was even higher (83 percent) among the independents, whites (60 percent), voters with a college education (67 percent) and voters from 25 to 29 years of age (77 percent).^^2^^

In 1980, 60 percent of votes went for different parties and only 37 percent for the straight ticket. In the 1984 presidential election a majority (54 percent) voted for different parties and a smaller number (43 percent) for the straight ticket.^^3^^ As a result, even in the states where Reagan had a 30-40 percent lead, Democrats could be elected senators (Georgia, Nebraska, Oklahoma).

On the basis of these trends, some American political scientists advance the hypothesis of greater voter neutrality and cynicism in respect to political institutions.

However, data of the Michigan Center for Political Studies and most works by leading political experts suggest a direct link between a party's weaker influence on the electorate and growing disillusionment in the activity of parties and critical judgements on their abilities to represent the interests of ordinary voters.^^4^^

Obvious disillusionment of voters in the two-party system was seen in the low level of confidence in parties and critical judgements concerning their activity. Political parties in the mid-1970s enjoyed the lowest level of confidence (2 percent) as compared with the Supreme Court (35 percent), the President (27 percent) and the Congress (25 percent).^^5^^

In 1980 only seven percent of the voters thought that the parties were doing a very good or good job and 26 percent indicated a

~^^1^^ The Gallup Poll. Public Opinion 1972-1977, SR Scholarly Resources Inc., Vol. 2, Wilmington, 1979, p. 883.

~^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 922-923.

~^^3^^ The Gallup Report, No. 230, November, 1984, p. 11.

Warren E. Miller, Arthur H. Miller, and Edward J. Schneider, American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952-1978, p. 318;S. Craig, "The Decline of Partisanship in the United States: A Reexamination of the neutrality hypothesis in: Political Behavior, No. 1, 1985.

^s See: American National Election Study, 1976.

~^^1^^ American National Election Study, 1980, Vol. 1.

^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 197, 198.

^^3^^ Ibid., pp. 198,616.

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grown younger and better educated. It has been pointed out that since the mid-1960s each consecutive generation of voters has been growing more and more "independent." In 1952 the share of independents in the oldest (older than 66) and the youngest (21 to 25 years) age groups of the electorate was 20 and 25 percent, respectively, whereas in 1974 the figures were 23 and 53 percent.^^1^^

However, this fact in itself fails to answer the question why in 1952 most young people supported both parties, while twenty years later a considerable number of them have become neutral or taken a critical stand toward the two-party system. In addition, the rise in the number of independents was typical of all age groups, although not to the same extent.

As to the fact that the electorate has become more educated, it may be assumed theoretically that the result would be better knowledge of political problems and more consistent action. But why does the better knowledge and consistency turn against the twoparty system? Does that mean that more knowing people do not see much sense in political clashes between the parties?

Bourgeois sociologists and political experts cannot just ignore the questions. They seek to find answers to them in the fact that party positions and activities have been inadequate to the realities of society's life in the United States. Paul Kleppner writes: "Party politics proved irrelevant to the resolution of emerging tensions because the sociopolitical conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s crosscut the partisan cleavage lines that had originated in the Great Depression.''^^2^^ Among these conflicts the author pinpoints "race, Vietnam, and quality-of-life issues.''^^3^^

Another prominent contemporary political scientist, Gerald Pomper, also offers a similar system of arguments. He notes that there was a "redefinition of political disputes" and conflicts involving 'Very basic values rather than merely opposing interests." These include patriotism, anti-Communism and the military intervention problem aggravated by the US aggression in Vietnam, the way-- oflife issues brought about as a result of the generation gap, the more heated polemics on equality in connection with racial conflicts,

Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, John R. Petrock, The Changing American Voter Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1977, p. 60.

'

Paul Kleppner, Who Voted? The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout 1870-1980 p. 136.

Ibid., pp. 136-137.

etc.^^1^^ All the above changes, as the author sees them, reflect political modernization in the United States which determines changes in the electorate's political behavior.

Reiterating Samuel Huntington's ideas, Pomper believes that in the past "America's development has shown more of an economic than political character.''^^2^^ As a result, the "modernizing process is evident in four trends: increased political participation, the loss of traditional authority, national integration, and the growth of ideology." In view of this "the role of political leadership" is particularly critical. 'The electorate is capable of responsiveness, but the parties and candidates must appropriate stimuli for creating a response.''^^3^^

The concepts presented above undoubtedly reflect certain realities in contemporary American society. Both authors acknowledge the existence of social and political contradictions and conflicts, the widening gap between the political elite, bourgeois parties and masses of voters, and politicization and ideologization of public consciousness. In this sense, a certain step forward has been made as compared with former consensus, structural-functional, and "end of ideology" theoretical models of the political system, which somewhat enriched the analysis of social and political problems and helped accumulate theoretically useful analytical material.

At the same time the extent to which bourgeois social science has progressed should not be exaggerated. The meaning of the concepts used and their ideological and methodological basis are important in theory. Former concepts were modernized and renewed because it was no longer possible to deny the existence of acute social contradictions and conflicts. However, this does not change the substance of the approach taken by bourgeois theoreticians to the problems under consideration. That approach is still marked by multidimensional analysis, a gap between the subjective and the objective, politics and economics, socio-political conflicts and underlying contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, and the glossing over of class differentiation of American society.

Paul Kleppner only vaguely refers to changes beyong the twoparty system pointing to the rise in the United States of "massive

~^^1^^ Gerald M. Pomper, op. cit., p. 15.

^^2^^ Ibid., p. 13.

'Ibid., p. 15.

26-749

386 Chapter Seventeen

institutional systems" (corporations, the machinery of government), structural changes, and geographical mobility, without disclosing the importance and essence of these concepts.^^1^^

Pomper adheres to the theoretically highly dubious concept of separate economic and political development. But the essence of that concept lies in the desire to picture modern social and political conflicts as extra economic, provide a psychological explanation of these phenomena, and reduce everything to values, emotions and willpower. As many other political experts, both authors believe that previously the difference between the two bourgeois parties was based on different socio-economic interests and views on the role of government. But now, they claim, these issues have been pushed to the background, while top priority has gone to values to which the parties are unable to adapt. Therein lies the cause of the electorate's disillusionment and a decline in the parties' influence.

Attempting to prove the concept, Pomper embarks upon an extensive analysis of the sources and roots of political behavior and the shaping of the Democratic and Republican parties' mass base. He writes that originally the behavior of voters was underpinned by social-class factors such as income and occupation. Since then, however, much has changed. Pomper argues: "If social position dictated political preference, most workers should be Democratic and most of the middle class Republican, but such polarization has never been evident.''^^2^^

Analyzing the makeup of the supporters of each party, he concluded that their "social-demographic variables"^^3^^ had become increasingly similar. Among such factors as parent partisanship, occupation, class self-identification, education, religious affiliation, sex, and age only the first, according to Pomper, has any relation to party affiliation.^^4^^

In analyzing the political behavior of voters in the 1970s, the author assumes that class and other social-demographic variables do not determine a predisposition to some party, and that party affiliation of voters, in turn, no longer has a dominating effect on the results of the voting. What, then, underlies political behavior?

To answer this question Pomper divides the entire electorate

~^^1^^ Paul Kkppner, op. cit., pp. 138, 139.

~^^2^^ Gerald M. Pomper, op. cit., p. 27.

~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 28.

~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 30.

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not into classes or large social groups but simply into two parts. He calls members of one part "dependent voters" and the other " responsive voters." In the case of the "dependent voter," in Pomper's view, "social class is a direct influence, permanent in its effects, with little variation from one political context to another." In making a political choice such a voter takes into account "nonpolitical characteristic," that is, his or her economic condition.^^1^^

The same factors have a different effect on the "responsive voter." "While his class affects his life, its political relevance is indirect, and it becomes salient only when he considers issues and parties which deal with economic matters. The relationship between status and the ballot ... changes with ... the character of the election and the policy views of the citizenry.''^^2^^

Unable to completely deny the existence of classes in the United States and their influence on political behavior, Pomper finds a convenient way out by predicting two major trends of subsequent development: either "complete disappearance of status polarization" or retention of "class differences" as "a potential basis for American politics.''^^3^^

Similar theories are widespread in American bourgeois political science and political sociology.

Contrary to such ideas Marxist-Leninist sociology lays emphasis primarily on the objective, material, economic and class nature of social and political activity including the behavior of individual people and social groups. L.A. Nechiporenko, a Soviet expert on sociology, writes: "Of course, as the study of any form of social interaction, investigation of social conflicts implies attention to the emotional and willpower components. But only taking into account the decisive part of material conditions in which people live and the objective nature of contradictions as the basis for social clashes enables us to correctly appraise the role of the subjective factor in social conflicts.''^^4^^

An analysis of events which have occurred in American society in the 1970s and early 1980s shows that society have been racked by the most serious economic and political upheavals since the

~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 43.

Ibidem. ~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 64.

L.A. Nechiporenko, Bourgeois "Conflict Sociology", Politizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1982, p. 47 (in Russian).

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1930s. As a rule, bourgeois ideologists perceive them as isolated incidents without linking them to the underlying contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. The Marxist approach to these problems implies a comprehensive analysis of their common roots. From the Marxist standpoint, despite their variety and large number, these critical phenomena are part and parcel of the general crisis of capitalist society.

The situation in the country has changed substantially since the 1960s when there was no shortage of various theories intended to prove that capitalism was forever rid of economic crises and had become a system with no poverty and social antagonisms. In the 1970s, the United States came face to face with stagflation, chronic unemployment, a decline in labor productivity, lower family incomes, aggravation of tensions between labor and capital, an upsurge in the strike movement, disfunctions in the currency and financial system, the energy crisis, chronic fall of output in a number of industries, environmental pollution, the urban crisis and many others. Finally, mention must be made of the 1974-1975 cyclic crisis, deepest since the 1930s, a crisis which the system of state-monopoly regulation was unable to prevent.

The scope and depth of the above phenomena were so great that they inevitably had an impact on political life in the United States. It is therein that one should look for the basic causes of the stronger instability of the political process, major changes in the functioning of the two-party system, the political behavior and attitudes of the mass voter.

Of course, the links between economics, relations of production and concrete politics constitute a most complicated problem. The links do not always lie on the surface and are usually difficult to describe and study, as the bourgeois political experts would like it, by using a purely empirical approach and a set of only a few variables. This is particularly true because the data are gathered according to a quite definite scientific and ideological approach, which often determines the outcome of research.

It is particularly difficult to discover the links if all phenomena of public life are considered independently, in isolation from each other, and the objective is mixed with the subjective. The argument that economic problems had been pushed to the background in the 1970s and the politico-cultural values the parties were not used to had come to the fore, does not hold water and is contrary to the

realities of life and politics in the United States.

It is quite another question that in the 1930s government intervention in the economy really did give rise to acute ideological struggle between parties. The leadership of the Democrats sought to implement the principles of states-monopoly reforms, while the Republican Party was in the opposition on this issue advocating the conservative bourgeois-individualist approach.

As time went by, two important circumstances emerged that changed the situation the parties and voters were used to. First of all, the Republican Party had finally adopted the state-monopoly ideology, which removed the former acuteness of strife between parties and changed the nature of their rivalry. Second, the effectiveness of former methods of government regulation of the economy and social processes had obviously declined, and a crisis and swing to the right of neoliberalism had become clearly visible. Right-wing statism was increasingly coming to the fore as the leading alternative combining elements of conservatism and state-monopoly activism.

That the parties addressed voters with the same rhetoric when dealing with social and economic issues made the content, rather than form, of the interparty struggle more important. Under the circumstances party labels and other formal signs began to play a relatively smaller role, and the voters visibly drifted toward the issue approach and greater independence from the parties in voting.

That tendency received a strong impulse as a result of the deterioration in the material condition of the mass of voters who had every reason to lay the blame for this on both Democrats and Republicans in the 1970s. This was supplemented by widespread disillusionment in the ruling circles' policies in view of the US debacle in Vietnam, the blame for which lay with the Democrats, and the Watergate scandals involving the Republican Party.

It was also an incontestable fact that far from all the numerous problems disturbing the voters fitted the Procrustean two-party policy. Nor did both parties provide adequate answers to the questions they dealt with in their activities. Spontaneous, uncontrollable processes proved to be stronger in the United States at the time than those which could be controlled by the bourgeois political system and its institutions.

In considering the political behavior of members of different US classes in the 1970s and 1980s, it is necessary to point out that we are concerned with the most widespread and at the same time the

390 Chapter Seventeen

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simplest forms of political action---electoral behavior. This behavior is manifested, first, in voters' response (positive or negative) to the operation of the political system and its institutions, which, in itself, does not suggest the polices' activeness, and second, in regular participation in delegating authority (voting) in elections.

The Marxist approach to the analysis of elementary forms of political behavior has nothing in common with vulgar economic determinism. From the standpoint of Marxist theory, the relationship between material factors of life and social (including class) awareness (and behavior) is a complicated, multifaceted dialectic process. Objective conditions shape a definite political consciousness which determines political behavior. Changes in objective conditions occur in the course of specific political action and struggle. It is important to understand that there is no automatism and rigid unilateral determinism in these processes. Development and change in material conditions does not happen by itself but as a result of specific actions by people who take into account the actual objective conditions.

Classes and social strata are an objective phenomenon of capitalist society. But their nature and activity, the balance of power between them and the level of class consciousness depend on numerous historical conditions and specific features. Hence "there is no direct coincidence between the class status of an individual and his political, including electoral, behavior, since the actual social position, its perception by that individual, and the political conclusions made on the basis of these perceptions and the subsequent political behavior are linked to each other by a system of complicated relations which are also subject to outside influence.''^^1^^

The social and class structure of capitalist society is a complex phenomenon which cannot be reduced simply to income, occupation or class self-identification. Lenin wrote: "Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production ... by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ F.M. Burlatsky, A.A. Galkin, op. cit., pp. 272-273. V. I. Lenin, "A Great Beginning", Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 421.

It should be taken into account that classes (for example, the working class in the United States) consist of many social layers. In addition, there are intermediary interclass social strata. That is why it is such a complicated task to determine the political orientation and electoral preferences of individual classes and strata. It cannot be reduced to an analysis of one or two variables built on the basis of subjective data obtained by polls and sociological surveys.

In appraising the political behavior of American workers in the period under consideration, we are dealing with a political process which occurs only within the framework of the bourgeois partypolitical structure controlled by two leading bourgeois parties. The mass consciousness and political behavoir of American workers are highlighted by strong and long-term domination by bourgeois ideology and, as a result of this, their support for the two-party system.

In the course of the political process propositions and ideas reflecting the class status and interests of the workers tend to combine with ideas alien to these interests. That is why the class bias of the workers' mass consciousness and political behavior do not emerge in a pure form as an expression of class requirements and interests but prove to be contradictory and distorted. This is particularly true since the policies of the US bourgeois parties do not serve as stimulators of working people's class interests but are aimed at eroding them.

The political monopoly of the two bourgeois parties, as well as the growing homogeneity of their mass base, does not point to the disappearance of classes in the United States. Moreover, the abovementioned negative trends in the functioning of the two-party system, politicization of the voters' mass consciousness, increasing critical attitudes and the stable growth in the number of independents indicate the aggravation of contradictions and intensification of class struggles in the 1970s.

Classes in the United States exist objectively and independently of the two-party system. According to estimates made by Soviet scholars on the basis of American national statistics, the US working class numbered 76,600,000 at the end of the 1970s or 76.6 percent of the gainfully employed population.

Taking not one election but a longer period as the basis, it is quite safe to refer to identical processes occurring in the social structure of society on the whole and in the electorate. The larger

392 Chapter Seventeen

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(1970-Karly 1980s) 393

is a chief cause why workers are unable to gain a true idea of their class identity.

However, even these indirect data and variables make it possible to discover differences in the political behavior of workers and other groups of the population.

Let us, for example, take the problem of absenteeism. Most analysts who considered the question indicated a clear-cut trend toward polarization into the active and passive parts of the electorate. Absenteeism is more widespread and grows at a faster rate among the lower sections of society promoting changes in the social makeup of absentees. At present, no one would deny that most of those who do not vote in the United States (70-80 percent) "fit the stereotype of being less educated, less affluent, more urban, and less often white.''^^1^^ It is not difficult to notice that these are characteristic features of the social category of blue-collar and production workers employed in industry, services, and government service who make up the larger part of the working class.

According to the data of surveys, people belonging to this category have less hopes than the rest of the electorate to improve their condition, show less confidence in basic political and economic institutions and political leaders, and are more disillusioned with them.

Data of this sort forced even some American political scientists to conclude that the "aggregate decline in turnover has been far from neutral in terms of class.''^^2^^ The direct relation between income, education, occupation and turnout shows that the poor tend to increasingly drop out of the traditional political process.

The question of class differences among those who come to the polls gives rise to many more debates and disagreement than an analysis of the problem of absenteeism. This is only natural. Class delimitations in this field are glossed over by contradictory, intersecting interests, judgements, hopes and purposes because the political process of action and choice occurs in relation to two parties which are homogeneous in social and class terms and display agreement on basic problems (private property, the political system, etc.).

Voter turnout should therefore be regarded as a sign of loyalty

~^^1^^ Richard J. Jensen, Grass Roots Politics, Parties, Issues, and Voters, 1854^1983, Greenwood Press, Westport (Conn.), 1983, pp. 144, 145.

~^^2^^ Thomas E. Cavanagh, "Changes in American Voter Turnout, 1964-1976", in: Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1981, p. 58.

part of the electorate consists of the working class and the middle sections, and the smaller part of the middle and big bourgeoisie.

American sociologists and political scientists divide the social structure into four classes (lower, working, middle and upper) or five classes (lower, working, middle, upper middle, and upper). According to a whole series of regular polls conducted by the Chicago National Opinion Research Center in 1972-1984, 2.6 percent of the polices identified themselves with the upper class, 40 to 42 percent with the middle class, 42 to 44 percent with the working class and 4.5 percent with the lower class.

In 1982 a special poll was conducted among the black population: 4.8 percent identified themselves with the upper class, 28 percent with the middle class, 57 percent with the working class and 2.8 percent with the lower class.

Even according to this self-identification, about 60 percent of the population belonged to the working class and lower sections, although it is well known that such a classification is based on income levels and not real class membership. Often, members of the petty bourgeoisie or middle sections identify themselves as belonging to the working class, while many workers attribute themselves to the middle class.

Nevertheless, class relations are reflected in the consciousness of the working people when the concept of property, rather than income, begins to appear in polls. When asked in 1984 whether traditional differences between property owners and workers continued to exist in the United States and whether a person's social status depended on his belonging to the upper or lower class, 15.6 percent of the polices strongly agreed, 50.9 percent somewhat agreed, 21.9 percent somewhat disagreed, and 6.2 percent strongly disagreed.^^3^^

It is difficult to discover trends in American workers' political behavior also because available political data and surveys divide the electorate into numerous groups according to income, occupation, education, religion, membership in labor unions or other organizations.

As the classification of jobs, this classification of the electorate

i

National Opinion Research Center, General Social Surveys, 1972-1984. '• Ibidem. ' Ibidem.

394 Chapter Seventeen

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(1970-Early 1980s) 395

of part of the electorate to the political parties and other political institutions, i.e. as a factor to some extent uniting different groups of the population.

Class differences are manifested among the active part of the electorate only indirectly and to a limited extent. They operate via contradictions within classes reflected in the activity of the two bourgeois parties. Relations between the parties in each specific historical period may or may not be marked by acute political conflict and rivalry. In other words, they may express intra- and inter-class contradictions or lead away from them. It is hardly easy for the ordinary voter to find his bearings in these intricate contradictions and understand whether the party he has favored in the past advocates his real interests or not.

The voter's response to possible changes in the parties' policies is restricted to a definite set of actions: he can turn to another party, take a neutral stand, vote for candidates from different parties or refuse to take part in the political process altogether. The latter case has already been briefly considered. It remains to be seen whether class differences are disclosed in the voting and party preferences.

Over several decades since the 1930s, some presidential elections (1936, 1948, 1964) have featured voting along class lines. This occurred when class contradictions were clearly apparent in the parties' policies. It was during this period that the Democrats became a majority party. A stable stereotype has emerged showing the Democratic Party as the working man's party, a party for everyone, while the Republicans were made out to be a minority party reflecting privileged money interests.

However, since the mid-1960s the crisis phenomena mentioned above have become evident. And the disintegration of parties and a weakening of their links with the masses affected the Democratic Party as the majority party to a greater degree than the Republicans. But the substantial difference between the mass base of the Democrats and the Republicans has remained. If we take the totals from the data of the Chicago National Opinion Research Center for 1972- 1984 as a basis and bring together various occupational groups of the electorate into two large groups, including independent businessmen and managers in one (bourgeois) group, and all hire employees and workers in the other, then we can gain an idea of class differences in the parties' mass base (percent):

Classes

Strong Not strong Ind Ind Ind Not Strong Other

Dem

Dem

Dem

Rep Strong Rep parties

Rep

Bourgeoisie

11.5

14.7

11.5

17.6

10.7

Worki ng

class

19.1

26.4

12.9

12.5

7.2

13.8

6.1

Derived from: National Opinion Research Center. General Social Survey, 1972-1984.

In calculating the figures in the upper row of the table, the total number of persons belonging to the bourgeoisie and the middle sections was taken as 100 percent; in the bottom the total number in the lower categories of office and industrial workers. The table shows that both parties have an almost equal share of supporters among the upper and middle sections of society. The largest proportion of the bourgeois class made up "not strong" Democrats (21 percent) and "not strong" Republicans (17.6 percent). The groups of strong supporters of both parties were approximately equal. Among the blue- and white-collar workers the largest groups are ``strong'' (19.1 percent) and "not strong" Democrats (26.4 percent). The total number of supporters of the Democratic Party was 45.5 percent, while Republican backers constituted 19.9 percent or more than twice as few.

Our attention was drawn to a sufficiently high share of independents among the workers (32.6 percent), of whom those sympathizing with the Democrats (12.9 percent) also outnumbered the Republican sympathizers (7.2 percent); among the workers there were even more pure independents than in the upper sections.

A similar picture of party preferences in the upper and lower strata of American society is given by the surveys carried out by Michigan University in the 1970s and the 1980s, despite the fact that the 1980 poll, for example, was not sufficiently accurate and representative. Thus, in the total number of respondents by occupation (1,444 persons) the proportion of higher managerial personnel and part of the middle strata made up an overwhelming majority (67.5 percent), while the group of lower white-collar workers and industrial workers made up only 32.4 percent, which was obviously at variance with the social structure of American society.

In the 1970s and early 1980s the bulk of the Democratic mass

396 Chapter Seventeen

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(1970-F.arly 1980s) 397

some headway in this direction in 1983-1984. However, the Republicans' platform, their conservative domestic policy providing tor cuts in vital social spending, and also their foreign policy which in the first half of the 1980s was marked by an arms buildup, rejection of constructive Soviet proposals contradicted the objectives they have set themselves. On the one hand, the growing budget deficit discredited the postulates of Reaganomics. On the other hand, however, the positive changes in Soviet-American relations ( particularly success of the Washington summit) have promoted the Republican Administration's prestige.

base still consisted of white- and blue-collar workers. The main change in comparison with previous years was in the growing number of independents in that category. The increase in the share of independents and "not strong" Democrats among the workers in this period made the situation so contradictory because ordinary Americans, while remaining loyal to former political ideals and stereotypes, were obviously disappointed and dissatisfied with specific Democratic policies, which, in turn, undermined and transformed old views. This, however, does not prove that workers were growing more conservative yet. An analysis of the parties' mass base and voting results does not support the hypothesis. A small majority of the working people preferred the Republicans in 1972 and 1984 when the principal factor influencing their choice was the hope that the unfavorable economic condition of the masses would improve. The results of the 1980 elections are contradictory and inconsistent, but they fail to show a change in the balance between supporters of Democrats and Republicans among the worker voters.

The events of the last 10-15 years have shown that serious changes are occurring in the functioning of the two-party system in the United States which undermine the influence of parties as apolitical institution. The causes of these developments lie both in the electorate and the political parties. Better educated and informed voters with a slightly higher level of political awareness tend to take a more critical attitude to parties, which reduces automatism in the political behavior of the electorate and restricts the possibilities of the parties in manipulating mass consciousness and behavior. This long-term process coincided in the period under consideration with aggravation of social, economic and political contradictions, and the condition of society's lower sections. This has bred widespread disillusionment with the parties' policies among a broad group of voters. The Democratic Party was hurt most of all because it had been the majority party for many years. The Democrats lost the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, yet the events of 1986 and 1987 (the 1986 midterms, the Iran-Contras affair, and the fall 1987 currency upheavals) helped the party to boost its prestige.

Over the recent years the Republicans have launched wide-scale efforts to gain the positions left by the Democrats, secure the support of the broad voter masses and win the status of majority party. A slight improvement in the economic situation, and President Reagan's personal popularity helped the Republicans to make

Conclusion 399

CONCLUSION

sphere of influence, and bringing various social groups into amorphous coalitions, the parties largely manipulate the electorate's political behavior. The seesaw of the two-party system is simultaneously a kind of shock absorber protecting the American government machinery from abrupt jolts: if the political course of a governing party is discredited or obviously fails, this leads not to a loss of faith in the system as such but only to a change in the party decor in the Washington halls of power. The parties continue to fulfill other important functions. They foster, train and sift through the personnel from among whom government staff is recruited from the local alderman to the US President. Finally, it is mostly of party material that the bridge between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue---the White House and Congress-is built today, parties are still the most reliable link between different branches of government.

Then is it possible at all to refer to a crisis of parties in presentday America? It certainly is. But critical developments are rooted not only in structural and functional changes in the party-political system, as American political experts often suggest, not only in changes in the procedure and system of election funding or new techniques of election campaigning with an emphasis on extensive use of the media, political consultant companies and personification of the candidates, and not only in general antipartisan attitudes among Americans.

The underlying causes of the crisis in the two-party system should be sought in the growing contradiction between the objective course of history and the direction the US ruling class and its parties would like it to take. The entire set of problems facing the country (frequent and deep economic depressions, chronic inflation, mass unemployment, enormous budget deficits, and the falling standard of living of society's lower sections) demonstrated that the political course and ideological views of the major parties were untanable and that these parties were unable to propose and implement an effective program of government. Both the Republicans' and the Democrats' aggressive foreign policies and global ambitions for a Pax Americana sharply contradict the realities of the modern world and the interests of an overwhelming majority of the American nation.

The weakening of US positions in the capitalist world economy and the growing domestic economic difficulties reduced the possibilities of the parties in social maneuvering and wooing different

This book which examines the 200-year-long history of political parties in the United States reflects the growing interest of Soviet historians in this political institution.

The shrewd reader may wonder whether it is worth investigating American parties in such detail since, if we are to believe most US political experts, the parties are losing their basic functions and approaching their decline. Indeed, contemporary US political sciences are dominated by the idea of a crisis and decline of parties most clearly expressed in the works of scholars of End of Parties school and its unofficial leader, Walter D. Burnham.

One tends to agree with many conclusions reached by American authors, but it would seem that individual signs of their growing weakness do not eliminate the importance of parties in the system of the US ruling class's domination. No wonder President Reagan's short inaugural address on January 21, 1985, included words of praise for the parties: "Our two-party system has served us well over the years but never better than in those times of great challenge when we came together not as Democrats or Republicans but as Americans united in a common cause.''^^1^^

The flexibility of the parties relying on the strongest economic potential in the capitalist world, and their omnipresence in all the echelons and at all levels of the political system help the US ruling circles survive the acute social and political crises and adapt to an environment of growing class contradictions. Parties are still actively used to influence society ideologically with the aim of furthering respectable bourgeois values. Retaining the population within their

~^^1^^ U.S. News & World Report, February 4, 1985, p. 65.

400 Conclusion

groups of the electorate. The narrow framework of the two bourgeois parties makes it increasingly difficult to propose programs and solutions answering the interests of all sections of the population. So it is not accidental that there is growing disillusionment in the institution of parties and increasing alienation of citizens from the party-political system.

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)KaKOB A.H. MeMOKpaTutecKaa naprua e Kompecce CDIA u ee no3uu,ux no eonpoCOM PeKOHcrpyKifuu Mea (1865-1868) . - B KH.: Comia/ibHax crpyKTypa u o6 uiecTeeHHbie deuxenua e crpahax Eeponw u AmepuKu. M., 1984.

SonoryxHH B.n. JJeyxnapniuHax CUCTCMU. - B KH.-.rocydapcreeHHbiu crpou CDIA. M., 1976.

SonoryxHH B.n. AMepuKancKax deyxnapTuunax CUCTCMO: coepeMeuubie reudenUuu. - ,,CIIIA: 3KOHOMHKa, nonHTHKa, Hfleonorna", 1975, N^^5^^ 2.

SonoTyxHH B. Hroeu ebiGopoe e CUIA. - ..Mnposaa 3KonoMHKa H

Hbie oTHomeHHH", 1977, N» 1.

SonoTyxHH B.n., JIHHHHK B.A. BbiGopbi 6 Kompecc: MexamsM u TeudeHtfuu. - ,,CIIlA: aKOHOMHKa, nonHTHKa, Hfleonorna", 1978, N^^8^^ 10.

SopHH B. RoMiapvi u nojiuruKa BawuHZTona. M., 1964.

SopHH B. Kpu3uc deyxnapTUUHOU cuciettbi. - ,,CDIA: sKOHOMHKa, nonHTHKa, Hfleonorna", 1970, N^^8^^ 2.

3opHH B.C., CaaieHKo B.n. Kpusuc deyxnapTUUHOU cucreMbiu 6ydyiu.ue eviGopbi.

- ,,C!lIA: SKOHOMHKa, nonHTHKa, jweonorna", 1979, N^^8^^ 6.

HsaHOB P.(D. rpaxcdaHCKUH eoum e CDIA (1861-1865). M., 1960.

HsauoB P.O. AepaaM JIuHKOJibH u epaxdancKax eouna e CDIA. M., 1964.

HuaHou P.O. B.H.JIemho CoeduneHHbix Ulramx AMepumi. M., 1965.

HsaHoB P.®. flyauT 3u3eitxay3p. M., 1983.

HBanaH 3.A. Eejibiu MOM: npesudembi u nojiuruKd. M., 1979.

tfcropu*C7tt4.B4-XTOMax.T. 1 (1607-1877). M., 1983; T. 2 (1877-1918). M., 1985.

KepTMan T.J1. floKTpuw cou.u<vibHOU OTeeTcieeHHOCTu 6usneca u nosuifux pecnyBnuKOHCKOu adMUHucrpau.uu e CDIA (1924-1929). - B KH,: npd6netia>i noeou u Hoeeuuteu ucropuu. M., 1979.

KepTMaH T.JI. Bopb6a e pecnySauKancKou napntu CDIA no eonpocaM uanoaoeou nonuTUKU (1925-1928). - ,,BecTHHk MOCKOBCKOFO yHHsepCHTexa", Cep. 8. HcTopna. 1980, N^^8^^ 5.

KoseHKO B.fl. ,,Hoean deMOKparux" u eouna. BHyrpemxx nonuruKO CUIA (1914- 1917). CapaTOB, 1980.

KoaeHKO B.jl IIpoipeccusM e deMOKpanmecKou napruu. - B KH.: Ms ucropuu enyTpunojiuruvecKOU 6opb6bi u odutecreeHHOU Mbicnu CDIA. KyH6bimeB, 1981.

KOKOUIHH A.A. CUIA : sa diacaooM zaooajibHou HOJIUTUKU. (BHyrpeHme dxiKiopbi dJopMupoeanux eHeumeti nonuTUKU ajaepuKOHCKoeo uttnepuanusMa na nopoze 80-x zodoej.M., 1981.

KOKOUIHH A.A. CDIA: xpusuc nosiunmecKou enacru. M., 1982.

Kormilets A.A., "The Democratic Party in the Northern United States during the First Part of the Civil War (1861-1862)" in: Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Series 8, History, No. 6, 1982.

KpacHOB H.M. IIpesudeHTCKue ebioopbi e CDIA 1924 z. - ,,HoBan HHOBettuiaa HCTopna", 1979.NS6.

K CTOJieiwo zpaxoaHCKOu eounbi e CUIA. non pen. A.B. EcpHMOBa H JI.H. 3y6oKa. M., 1961.

KyponsTHHK T.n. (DepMepCKoe deuxceuue a CUIA, Or epeuudzcepoe K Hapodnou napruu. 1867-1896 ez. M., 1971.

KypoiKHHa E.B. MxcHoe Kpbiao deMOKparuteCKOu napniu CUIA e 1933-1935 zz. u ,,HO8biu Kypc" 0. Pyseenbia.--- B KH. : CoifuanbHaa crpyKTypa u oSutecTseHHbie deuxceHuxe CTpanax Eeponbi u AtiepuKu. M., 1984.

Jlau B.H. Knaccbi u napruu e CUIA. OtepKu cou.uajibHO-SKOHOMU'iecKou u nonuruvecKou ucropuu CDIA. M., 1937.

Jlan B.H. CUIA: OT ucnaHO-ajaepuKaHCKoii do nepeou Mupoeou eouHbl. M., 1975.

Jlan B.H. CUIA : OT nepeou do eiopou Mupoeou eounbi. M., 1976.

JIaH B.H. CDIA e eoeHHbieu nocneeoeHHbie zodbi, M., 1978.'

JlanuiHHa H.K. 3aKOHodaTeabHbiu npoifecc npu pasdeaennoM npaejieuuu ( npoxoxodeuue npozpaMMbi adttuHuCTpau.uu M. 3u3euxay3pa vepes 86-u Konzpecc 1959-1960 zz.)

- B KH,: UpoGfieMbi noeou u Hoeeuuieu ucropuu. M., 1982.

B.A. OcHoenbie GypxyasHbie nonutwecKue napruu u npotpcoiosbi CDIA.

27»

Soviet authors on the history 404 of us parties

Soviet authors on the history

of us parties 405

- B KH. : Cou.ua/ibHax npupoda 6ypxya3Hbix napniii e coepeMCHHOM KanuTajiucnivecKOMMupe. KHCB, 1980.

JIHHHHK B.A. ITpesudeHTCKax KOMnmux K. MaKKapru 1968 e.---B KH. : AjttepuKauCKUU exeeodnuK. 1972. M., 1972.

HHHHHK B.A. C-bead e IUKOZO (Ms ucmpuu nonuTuwcKou GopbSbi a CMA 1960-x zz.). - ,,Bonpocbi HcropHH", 1978, N^^8^^ 6.

MajibKOB B.J1. ,Jfosbiu Kypc" e CIUA. M., 1973.

MaHHKHH A.C. PecnyQnuKOHCKax nap-run CIUA a nouCKax onbTepHaruebi ,,uoaoMy Kypcy". - ,,BecTHHK MOCKOBCKOFO yHHBepcHTexa", Cep. 8, HcTopna. 1978, N^^8^^ 5.

MaHblKHH A.C. 3eojiK>uux opeawisaifuoHHou crpyKTypbi GypxyasHbix napniii.--- ,,CIIIA: 3KOHOMHKa, nonHTHKa, Hneojiorna", 1978, N^^8^^ 10.

MaHblKHH A.C., CHBaies H.B. JJeyxnapntuHax cucrejua e CMA: ucropux u coepeMeHHocn (neKompbie MemdonoeuiecKue npoGneMbi uccaedoeamx). - ,,HoBaa H HOBeftuiaa HCTopna", 1978, N^^8^^ 3.

MaHblKHH A.C. Hcmpux deyxnapruuHou cucreMbi CU1A. M., 1981.

MaHblKHH A.C. Y. YIUIKU u zenesuc ,,uoeozo pecny6nuKauu3Ma". - B KH.: AMBpuKOHCKuu exeeoduuK 1980. M., 1981.

MaHblKHH A.C., £3bKOB E.O. Ponb rpenux napruu e napTUUHO-nojiuTuiecKou cuereMe CDIA. - ,,Bonpocbi HCTOPHH", 1981, N^^5^^ 2.

MaHblKHH A.C. MeyxnapTuuHax cucreMO Ha nepenyne. - B KH. : Upo&ieMbt amePUKOHUCTUKU. Bun. 2. M., 1983.

MaHblKHH A.C. PecnyBnuKOHifbi HO nyru a Eejibiu OOM (deyxnapiuuuan CUCTCMO HO py6exeSO-x zoooe XXe.). - B KH.: HpooneMbiOMepuKOHUCTUKU. Bbin. 3. M., 1985.

MmacaH T.E. YipeduTeabUbiu ctesd u npedebiSopnan nnartfJopMa npoepeccuenou napruu Fenpu Yojuieca.--- B KH. : H3 ucropuu enyTpunonunmecKou 6opb6bi u oSiyecr8CHHOU Mbicnu CM A. KyH6bimeB, 1981.

MHUIHH A. A. FocydapcreeHHoe npaeo CIIIA. M., 1976.

Mopoa B.H. ffeMOKpaTutecKosi naptun u paooiuu taiacc CIUA. KHCB, 1971.

HHKHTHH B.A. CIIIA: npaebiu 3KcrpeMU3M - yzpoaa deMOKpatuu. M., 1971.

HiiKOJiacBa C.M. Us ucmpuu OMepUKOHCKoeo KoncepearusMa nocaedneu rperu XIX eeKa. - B KH.: Us ucmpuu eHyrpunonuTuiecKou SopbSbi u oSuiecreeHHoii MbicJiu CIUA. KyH6biiueB, 1981.

HHKOHOB B.A. OpzanusaituoHHaa nepecrpouKa e pecnya/iuKancKou napruu CDIA nocne ee nopaxenua ua sbioopax 1964 z. - B KH.: UpodjieMbi noeou u Hoeeuweu ucropuu. M., 1980.

Nikonov V.A., "The Republican Party and Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' Program" in: Vestnik MoskovskogoVniversiteta, Series 8, History, No. 5, 1982.

HHKOHOB B.A. 4>edeptwu3M u Gypxyasubie nojiuruvecKue napruu. - B KH.: IJpoB-

JlSMbl OMepUKUHUCTUKU. Bbin. 2. M., 1983.

HHKOHOB B.A. Bonpom paseuTux napruuHo-nojiuTuvecKou cucreiubi CIUA HO crpaHUUOX .JlxcopHM o<f> nojiuniKc". - ,,HoBaa H HOBenuiaa ncropHa", 1984, N^^8^^ 4.

HHKOHOB B.A. Or 3u3enxay3pa K HuKcouy. Hi ucropuu pecnyGnuKOHCKou napruu CIIIA. M., 1984.

,,Hoean nojiumnecKax ucropuu" e CIUA: ananus Konnenifuu u nemdoe. Pecpepa-

THBHblft cSopHHK. M., 1985.

O6u4ecTeeHHO-nonuTutecKue deuxceuuH e CIllA (60-e-Havajio 70-x eodoe XX e.). M., 1974.

OvepKu Hoeou u Hoeeuuieu ucmpuu CDIA. T. 1-2. IloA pen. T.H. CeBocTbanoBa. M., 1960.

HeTpoBCKaa M.M. CMA: nojiuruKa CKeosb npusMy onpocoe. M., 1982.

IleMaTHOB B.O. ffeMOKpamiecKaH napmx CttIA:u36uparenu u nojiuruKa. M., 1980.

IleHaTHOB B.O. JJeMOKpaTuiecKax napmx u ee MeKTOpare zodbi ,,Hoeozo Kypca".

- B KH.: AMepuKOHCKuu exeeodnuK 1980. M., 1981.

IleHaTHOB B.O. MeMOKpam e nouctcax noeozo oQnuKa. - ,,CIflA: 3KOHOMHKa, nonHTHKa, HAeonorna", 1981, N^^8^^ 7.

IleHaTHOB B.O. ffeyxnapruuHaji cucrejua u awfibpw. - ,,C!lIA: aKOHOMHKa, nonnTHKa, Hfleojiorna", 1982, N^^8^^ 9.

neiaiHOB B.O. HeKompbie noebie Tendemtuu (pyHKyuoHupoeanux deyxnapmuHou cucreMbi e 70-x - nawuie 80-x zoooe. - B KH.: UpoQaeMbi oMepuKauucruKu. Bbin. 2., M., 1983.

IleHaTHOB B.O. FaMUJibmH u Hxecfic/iepcoH, M., 1984.

ILiexanoB C.M. Meuxcenue JJxopdxa VoMieca.--- ,,HoBaa H HOBeftuiaa Hcropna", 1974, N^^8^^1.

IIonuTuiecKax xatSHb e CIUA. (IIpoBneMbi eHyrpeHHeu nojiuruKuj. M., 1966.

TIoAUTutecKue napruu CIIIA e noeoeepejux. Don pen. H.B. CnBaneBa. M., 1981.

UojiunivecKue napruu CIIIA e noeeuuiee epeMX. tloflpeji. H.B. CHBanesa. M., 1982.

IlonKOBa JI.H. HdeuHo-nojiuruvecKOX npoepaMMa deMOKparuvecKou napruu CIUA ua ewobpax 1916 z. - B KH.: Cou.uajibH.bie deuxcenux u paseurue o6u4ecreenHou Mbicnu. M., 1981.

IIonoB H.II. nojiuTU3au.ux Maccoeozo COSWHUX e CUIA. M., 1981.

TTopmaKOB C.A. OGpasoeanue pecnyGnuKancKou napruu (1854-1856 ee.).--- B KH.: Us ucropuu enyTpunoauTuvecKou 6opb6bi u oGwecreeHHOu Mbicnu CMA. Kyft6 biiiieB, 1981.

IIopiiiaKOB C.A. Kpax euecKoii napruu e cepedune 50-x zodoe XIX e. - B KH. : IIpoSneMbi Hoeou u Hoeeuuieu uciopuu. M., 1982.

IIopmaKOBa A.A. BHyrpunojiuTuiecKax GopbSa e deMOKpanmeCKOU napruu CIUA.

- B KH. : FIpoojieMbi Hoeou u Hoeeuuieu ucropuu. M., 1982.

IIoTexHH A.B., THMomeHKO A.F. IIpo6neMbi Monodexcu CIUA e nonuruKe npaexWux 6ypxya3Hbix napruu. - B KH. : CoifuaabHax npupoda 6ypxya3Hbix napruu e coepeMCHHOM KanuTO/iucruvecKOM Mupe. Rues, 1980.

FIoTOKOBa H.B. 3Kcnancux CIUA e Texace u 6opb6a e Konzpecce e nepuod npesudeHcrea 3. flxeKcoua (1829-1837). - B KH.: Hs ucropuu eHyTpunojiuTuvecKOU 6opb6bi u o6u4ecTeeHHOu Mbicnu CIUA. KyttSbinieB, 1981.

Porosa r.B. AMepuKOHCKue npotficoiosbi u deMOKpani: odocTpenue npoTueopevtu.--- ,,Pa6oHHH Knacc H coBpeMeHHUH MHp", 1980, N^^8^^ 5.

Ponb GypxyasHbix nonuTuiecKux napruu e odutecreeHHOu JKUSHU CBIA. Pe(pepa-

THBHblH cSopHHK. M., 1981.

CasenbeB B.A. CMA: cenaru nonuruKa. M., 1976.

CanoMaTHH A. IIpoBneMa ,,cepe6pxHbix denee" u Kpusuc deMOKparuvecKou napruu CMA e cepedune 90-x zodoe XIX e. - B KH. : IIpoBneMbi Hoeou u Hoeeuuieu ucropuu. M., 1982.

CaxapoB H.A. Ponb denee HO OMepuKancKux ebiBopax. - ,,CIIIA: 3KOHoMHKa, nojiHTHKa, HfleonorHa", 1984, N^? 12.

CaxapoB H.A. Eusuec u pecny&iuKOHCKax napiux e 70-e eodbi. - B KH. : TlpooneMbi aMepuKOHucruKU, Bbin. 3., M., 1985.

CesocTbaHOB F.H., YTKHH A.M. TOMOC flxce$$epcoH. M., 1973.

Sivachev N.V., "The Realignment of the Two-Party System of the United States during the New Deal" in: Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Series 8, History, No. 4, 1983.

Soviet authors on the history 406 of us parties

Name Index

CHBaieB H.B., fl3i>KOB E.<f>.Hoeeuiuax ucmpun CMA. M., 1980.

Sivachev N., Yazkov E. History of the USA since World War I. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.

CorpHH B.B. YucroKoe coepeMewtou oypxyaauou udeojiaeuu e CMA. M., 1975.

CorpHH B.B. HdeuHble Teienua e OMepuKaucKou peeonicmuu XVIIIeeKa. M., 1981.

CorpHH B.B. HdeonozuH (JJedepanuCTCKOu napruu e CMA (KOHCH XVIII - Havana XIX a.), - B KH.: AMBPUKOHCKUU exezodmiK 1981. M., 1981.

Sogrin V. Founding Fathers of the United States. Historical Portraits, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1988.

CraHKeBiw C.B. CospeMCHHbie Tendeunuu e paseumu ,,uoeou nojiuTuiecKOu ucTOpuu" e CMA. - B KH.: AMepuKOucKuu exeeodnuK 1983. M., 1983. CMA: nojiuTuvecKaaMbicnb u ucmpua. OTB. pen. H.H. HKOBTOB. M., 1976.

TepexoB B. H. Paseurue 83zjixdoe pecnyGnuKOHitee Ha ponb zocydapcrea e 3 KonoMuiecKou u coiiuajibHou xu3Hu oSufecreo a nepuod npesudencrea M. 3u3enxay3pa.--- "BecTHHK MocKOBCKoro yHHBepCHTeia", Cep. 8, Hciopiw, 1976, No. 5.

TepexoB B.H. PecnyGauKauifbi y ejiacru: comiajibHO-3KOHOMimecK.au nonuruKa npaeuTtuibCTeaH. 3u3eHxayspa (1953-1960). M., 1984.

TpoaHOBCKaa M.O. TOMOC JJxedidiepcon u nonuTuieCKOx 6opt>6a HO nepeoM KOHTUHeHTajibHOM KOHtpecce: (K ucropuu ipopMUpoeaHUX nonimmeCKux (ppaKuuii).--- ,,BecTHHK MocKOBCKoro yHHBepcHTera", Cep. 8, HcTopna, 1980, NS4.

TpoanoBCKaa M.O. JJxetfidiepcoHoecKue pecnyOnuKanubi u Mtoapeo 1807 z.--- B KH.: UpoSneMbi noeou u uoeeuiueu ucropuu. M., 1982.

VuiaKOB B.A. AMepuKa npu BautumtOHe. UojiuTuvecKue u coyuanbHO-- SKOHOMUnpoGneMbi CMA e 1789-1794 ^^. JI., 1983.

OeflopoB B. KOK usBupaioT npesudenra CMA. M., 1980.

OypiviaH JJ.E. PenwuH, nojiuruKa u ewdopbi 1980 z. - ,,CulA: 3KOHOMHKa, nonna, HaeojiorHa", 1981, N^^8^^ 4.

d>ypceHKO A.A. AMepuKancKOH peeo/itoifux u oGpasoeanue CMA. JI., 1978.

OypceHKo A.A. KpitTuveCKoe decxrujienie AMepuKu. 60-e eodbi. JI., 1974.

fflHpaeB E.A. UOJIUTUWCKOH 6opb6a e CMA. 1783-1801 a. JI., 1981.

IilnoTOB B.M. QepMepcKoe deuxenue e CMA e 1780-1790-eeodbi. M., 198

IIlnoTOB B.M. Cosdanue KoncruTyyuu CMA u npoBaeMa deMOKpantu. (1787e.j. BKH.: AMepUKaucKuu exezodnuK 1977. M., 1977.

3eojiioi4UH nojiujvvecKOU cucTCMbi CMA. PechepaTHBHbiJt cSopHMK. M., 1984. H.H. npecrynueiuue zpanb. M., 1970. H.H. BaiuuHitoH. M., 1972.

H.H. QpaHKjiUH PyseejibT: tenoeeK u nonutuKa. Hoeoe npovTemie. M., 1981.

Yakovlev N. Washington Silhouettes. A Political Round-Up, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1985.

Acheson, Dean---302

Adams, Charles-102, 162

Adams, John-36, 42, 44, 46, 49

Adams, John Quincy-80-83, 86, 88,

89,91,94,163

Aiken, George-258, 259

Albert, Carl-300

Aldrich, Nelson-203

Aldrich, Thomas-192

AUen, William-190

Allison, William-175, 176

Ames, Fisher---44

Archer, John---59

Arthur, Chester---171

Ashley, James---148

Atkinson, Edward---192

Austin, Benjamin---62

Bell,John-12I

Bellamy, Edward-180

Belyavskaya, I. A.-200

Benton, Thomas---91

Bibb, William-58

Biddle, Nicholas-91, 93, 94

Birch, John-325

Birney, James-100, 103

Black, Huey-248

Black, Merle-326

Blackburn, Joseph---204

Elaine, James-171, 173

Blair, Francis-114, 119

Blinov, A. I.-105

Bloomfield, Joseph-52

Bochkarev, A. G.-187

Bogdanov, R. G.-373

Bolingbroke, Henry---45

Bolkhovitinov, N. N.-88

Bonaparte, Napoleon---36

Borisyuk, V. I.-279

Bouck, William-224

Boutwell, George-192

Bawles, Chester-321

Boyle, William, Jr.-286

Brandeis, Louis-215, 219

Breckinridge, John-124, 134, 135

Brennan, George---284

Bridges, Styles-258

Brock, Waiiam-325, 335, 357

Brookhart, Smith-231

Brown, John-122

B

Bacon, Augustus---194, 204 Baker, Ray-212 Baldwin, Raymond---258 Bankhead, William-248, 257, 269 Barton, Bruce---259 Batalov, E. Ya.-365, 373 Bates, Edward-119 Bayard, James---134 Burnside, Ambrose---143

408 Name Index

Name Index 409

Brown, Walter-265

Broyhm,Joel-310

Bryan, William-189, 191, 193, 195,

197, 201-203, 205, 209, 210, 214,

216,218, 236

Bryce, James---185

Buchanan, James-109, 121, 122

Burke, Edmund---45

Burlatsky, F. M.-377, 390

Burleson, Albert---219

Burnham, Walter-373, 398

Burns, James-12, 363, 373

Bush, George-340, 371, 380

Butler, Paul-295, 296, 300-305

Byrnes, James-248, 257, 277

93, 94, 96, 101, 103, 107, 111, 115

Clayton, Henry-204, 218

Cleveland, Stephen-164, 173, 174,

185-87,189,190

Clinton, De Witt-73, 75

Clinton, George---28, 32

Cockran, William-203

Colfax, Schuyler-158

Colton, Calvin-99

Commager, Henry---12, 235

Coolidge, Calvin-230, 231, 234,

237,238,354

Cooper, John-3 29

Corvin, Thomas---119

Costigan, Edward-248

Cox, Samuel-145

Coxey, Jacob---184

Cramer, WiUiam-310

Crawford, William-81

Crittenden, John---121

Croly, Herbert-213

Dixon, Archibald---113

Doctorow, E. L.---206

Dollinger, Isidore-297

Dolliver, jonathan-208

Donnelly, Ignatius-180, 182, 190

Douglas, Paul-298

Douglas, Stephen-109, 112, 113,

123,124,134,135

Duane, William---47, 52

Dulles, John-321

Dupont, Pierre---247

Dye, Thomas-18

Frazier, Lynn-231, 342 Fremont, John---121 Freneau, Philip---34 Fulbright, William-329 Fuller, Henry-192

Gajiyev, K. S.-10, 23, 289

Galbraith,John-302

Galkin, A. A.---377, 390

Gallatin, Albert-47-49, 52, 62-64

Gallinger, Jacob-204

Gallup, George-245, 257, 269, 355,

361, 372, 375, 376, 380, 382

Garfield, James-148, 151, 171

Garner, John-248

Garnett, James---58

George, Henry-180

Geyevsky, I. A.-15, 280, 326

Giddings, Joshua---119

Gilder, George-352

Glass, Carter-267

Godkin, Edwin-192

Goldwater, Barry-12, 323-25, 330,

Gompers, Samuel-184, 192, 207,

Goodell, Charles-335

Gore, Albert---308

Gorman, Arthur---175

Gramm, Philip-358, 362

Granger, Francis---89

Granger, Gideon---47

Grant, Ulysses-158, 160, 161, 164

Greeley, Horace-162, 163

Griffin, Robert-307, 313

Grundy, Felix---64

Cabot, George---38

Cadell, Patrick-348

Caffery, Donelson-194, 203

Calhoun, John-64, 65, 68, 81, 87,

90,95, 102, 107

Cameron, Simon---119, 171

Cannon, Joseph-203, 211

Carnegie, Andrew---194

Carter, difton-330

Carter, Jimmy-345, 348-50, 355,

Carter, Thomas---208

Case, Clifford-22, 329

Cass, Lewis-109, 112

Celler, Emmanuel-248, 297

Chambers, William---98

Chandler, William-171, 174

Chase, Salmon-119, 139

Chase, Samuel-50, 58

Clapp, Moses-202

Clapper, Raymond---255

Clark, Christopher---59

Clark, Joseph-308

Clark, Ramsey-326

Clay, Alexander---202

Clay, Henry-64, 65, 80, 81, 89-91,

Eisenhower, Dwight-21, 288, 291-

94, 296-99, 306, 307-310, 312,318,

319,324,330,371

Engels, Frederick-16, 21, 70, 109,

130, 132,138,172,178, 179

Entin, L. M.-19

Ervin, Samuel, Jr.-312, 313, 341

D

Farley, James-248, 257

Faubus, Orval-302

Fenno, John-34

Ferguson, Joseph---287

Ferraro, Geraldine-370, 380

Fess, Simeon---250

Fessenden, William---119

Fillmore, Millard-111, 114, 115,

121,122

Finch, Robert-314

Finkelstein, Arthur---355

Fish, Hamilton-249, 277

Fletcher, Henry-250

Flynn, Ed-248

Foner, Philip-187

Ford, Gerald-324, 329, 340, 342-

44,358

Fordney, Joseph---230

Frank, Glenn-261

Franklin, Benjamin---32

Daly, Charles-319

Danaher, John---277

Daniels, Josephus-203, 216, 219

Darchiyev, A. N.-368

Daugherty, Harry---229

Davis, James-258, 259

Davis, Jefferson-109, 125

Davis, John-231,247

Day, Stephen-277

Dearborn, Henry---47

DeBakey, Michael-302

Debs, Eugene-179, 190, 206, 214

De Leon, Daniel-179

Dementyev, Igor---192

Dewey, George---193

Dewey, Thomas-258, 265, 283, 330

Dickinson, Lester---249

Dingell, John-248

Dingley, Nelson---175

Divine, Robert-274, 288

H

Hague, Frank-248

Halleck, Charles-328

Hamby, Alonzo-281

Hamilton, Alexander-30-32, 34-36,

410 Name Index

Name Index 411

38,39,42,44,47,56,57,213

Hamilton, John---254

Hanna, Marcus-203

Harding, Warren-229, 230

Harper, Robert-37

Harriman, Averell---300

Harris, Fred-336

Harris, George---164

Harrison, George---302

Harrison, Pat-248

Harrison, William-98

Hart, Gary-364, 367-69

Hartley, Fred-279, 281, 284, 298

Harvey, William-188

Hatfield, Mark-329

Haugen, Nils---235

Hawkins, Augustus---347, 348

Hayes, Rutherford-161, 164, 169,

Hearst, William-166, 193

Hepburn, William-207, 208, 211

Hill, David-203

Hoar, George-139, 204

Hodges, Luther-300

Hofstadter, Richard-180, 183

Holman, Rufus-277

Hoover, Herbert-229, 230, 234,

235, 237-41, 249, 250, 252, 255,

258,260,265,269,293

Hopkins, Harry-248

House, Edward-219

Hull, Cordell-236, 248

Hume, David---45

Humphrey, Hubert---14, 280, 298-

300, 332, 333, 336, 338, 347, 348

Huntington, Samuel---385

Jackson, Andrew-54, 81, 83, 86-88,

90-95, 108, 182

Jackson, Jesse-367, 368

James, Henry---192

Javits,Jacob-329

Jay, John-31,42, 54, 66

Jefferson, Thomas-34, 40-58, 60-63,

180, 182, 196

Jensen, Richard-98, 393

Johnson, Andrew-117, 135, 151-57

Johnson, Eric-270

Johnson, Hiram-212,241

Johnson, Lyndon-291, 292, 296,

297, 299-301, 303, 304, 310, 311,

316, 323-26, 328-30, 337, 379

Jonas, Charles---310

Jones, James---366

Joyner, Conrad-261, 262

Julian, George---126

Kreder, A. A.-262 Kuropyatnik, G. P.-17, 129, 179

Madison, James-31, 43, 44, 47, 50,

53, 54, 62-65, 69

Main, Jackson---28

Malkov, V. L.-14, 242, 244, 267

Manatt, Charles-362

Mansfield, Mike-300, 329, 338

Manykin, A. S.-183

Marchenko, M. N.-20

Marcy, William-94

Marshall, George-282

Marshall, John-50

Martin, Joseph---260

Martin, Thomas-203

Marx, Karl-16, 21, 70, 109, 117,

119, 124, 129, 130, 132, 138, 172,

178,179

Mason, William---204

McAdoo, William-219, 236

McCarthy, Eugene-305, 308, 329

McCarthy, Joseph-285, 286, 306

McClellan, George-132, 147, 148

McClellan, John-276, 312

McClernand, John---135

McComas,Louis-202

McCormack, John-300, 301

McCumber, Porter-230

McDougall, James---135

McEnery, Samuel-194

McGovern, George-335-39, 341,

342, 368

McKinley Crmsby, Richard---90

McKinley, William-204

McLaurin, John---194

McNamara, Patrick-298

McNary, Charles-235

Mead, James-270

Mellon, Andrew-229, 230, 234

Metcalf, Lee-308

Mikhailov, B. V.-365

Mills, Ogden-250, 253

Mills, Roger-164, 174

Mishin, A. A.-9, 19

Mitchell, Stephen-295

Moley, Raymond---259

Mondale, Waiter-367-71, 376

Ladd, Everett, Jr.-374, 381

Laffer, Arthur-352

Lafollette, Phil-258

La Follette, Robert-208, 212, 213,

224,231-33,235,251

La Guardia, Fiorello-232, 251

Landon, Alfred-253, 254

Landrum, Phil-307, 313

Larson, Arthur---298

Lausche, Frank---296

Lawrence, Cornelius---94

Lawrence, David---300

Lease, Mary-180, 181

Lee, Richard---302

Lehman, Herbert-248

Lenin, V. I.-7, 9, 10, 14, 16, 22,

100, 178, 191, 200, 213, 218, 221,

Lesinski,John-248

Lincoln, Abraham-17, 119, 124,

126, 129-31, 132, 134, 137-39,142,

143, 148, 151, 152, 185, 245, 249

Lincoln, Levi---47

Lindley, Ernest-259, 266, 284

Lipset, Seymour---21, 355

Littlefield, Charles-202

Livingston, Robert---47

Lloyd, Edward---59

Lloyd, Henry-180, 190

Lobanov-Rostovsky, A. B.---188

Lodge, Henry-229, 258, 282

Logan, John---134, 173

Long, Huey---247

Luce, Henry-271

M

Maas, Melvil-277 Maddox,John-203

K

Keating, Edward-223 Kefauver, Estes---298, 300 Kelley, Robert-239 Kelly, Edward-248 Kemp, Jack-354, 356, 357 Kennedy, Edward---350 Kennedy, John-291, 298, 312-23 Kennedy, Robert-331 Key, David-169 Keyerleber, Karl-272 Kilgore, Harley-270 King, Martin Luther---331 King, Preston---114 King, Rufus-69 Kirwan, Michael-300 Kissinger, Henry---342 Kleppner, Paul-374, 384-86 Knox, Frank-254 Knudsen, William-267 Kotsebu, E. K.-188, 195

Ickes, Harold-248 Ilyinsky, I.P.-19 Ivanov, R. F.-17, 129, 160 Ives, Irving---312

Name Index 412

Name Index 413

Money, Hernando---194

Monroe, James---44, 57, 69, 75, 81,

Morgan, John-166, 199, 247

Morgenthau, Hans---336

Moss, John---308

Multer, Abraham---297

Murray, James-246, 270

Muskie, Edmund-336, 338

Perkins, Frances---248

Perkins, George-204

Pettigrew, Richard---175

Phillips, Kevin-333, 359

Pierce, Franklin-Ill, 113, 114

Pinchot, Amos---212

Pinchot, Gifford-212

Pinckney, Charles---56

Pinckney, Thomas---54

Pinckney, William---60

Pittman, Key-248, 251

Poff, Richard-310

Polk, James-99, 103

Pollard, Ernest-302

Pomper, Gerald-374, 376, 384-87

Popov, N. P.-378, 379

Porter, Peter---64

Potter, John-132

Powell, Adam-297

Pulitzer, Joseph-193

Pullman, George-179, 184, 186, 190

324,330,345,355

Roosevelt, Theodore-196, 202, 204-

207, 209, 212, 213, 215, 216, 225

Rossiter, Clinton-12, 304

Roth, William-354

Rudman, Warren-358

Rush, Benjamin---32

Rutledge, John---55

Steagall, Henry-248

Steiwer, Frederick-252

Stephens, Alexander-101, 102, 111,

154,164

Stettinius, Edward---267

Stevenson, Adlai-291, 292, 295,

299, 300, 310, 312, 316, 369

Stockman, David---353

Stone, Charles-132

Stone, William-208

Storey, Moorfield-192, 197, 198

Sullivan, Mark-269

Sulzberger, Arthur---276

Sulzer, William-204

Sumner, Charles-119, 139, 142

Swank, James---175,176

N

Salamatin, A. Y.-186, 187

Saltonstall, Leverett---258

Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr.-92, 101,

247, 339

Schurz, Carl-151, 155, 162, 192,

Scott, Dred-122

Scott, Hugh-335

Scott, Winfield-111

Seward, Williain-94, 102, 119

Seymour, Horatio-135, 147

Shafroth, John-202

ShaUenberger, Ashton-202

Shays, Daniel-28

Sherman, John-154, 176, 186, 202,

205,211

Shouse, Jouett---247

Simpson, Jerry---180

Sivachev, N. V.-ll, 23, 272, 290,

Smathers, George-300

Smelser, Marshall-61, 62

Smith, Alfred-236, 237, 247

Smith, John-203

Smith, Robert---47

Smith, Samuel---47

Smith, William-203

Snell, Bertram-250, 254

Spalding, Thomas---59

Stanford, Richard-58

Stanford, Thomas-58, 59

Stanley, John-51

Stassen, Harold-258, 279, 306

Nechiporenko, L. A.---387

Nelson, Donald---267

Nelson, Knute-202, 208

Neuberger, Richard---298

Newlands, Francis-202, 208

Nicholas, Wilson-58

Nikonov, V. A.-21

Nixon, Richard-21, 297, 314, 329-

35, 337, 338, 341-43, 353, 355, 372,

Norris, Frank-192, 212

Norris, George-235, 251, 268

Taft, Robert-13, 265, 269, 276,

277, 279, 281, 283, 284, 287, 288,

293, 298, 354

Taft, William-210, 212-14, 216, 219

Tallmadge, James---73, 74

Taubeneck, Herman-190

Taylor, John---44, 57

Taylor, Zachary-99, 117

Teller Henry-208

Thomas, Elbert-248

Thompson, Frank, Jr.-305, 308

Thompson, Philip---58

Thompson, Thomas---58

Thurmond, J. Strom-291

Tilden, Samuel-145, 164

Tillman, Benjamin-194

Toombs, Robert-101, 111

Tower, John-3 29

Trigg, Abram---58

Troyanovskaya, M.O.---8

Truman, Harry-280-82, 284, 285,

291,293,300

Trumbull, Lyman-119, 155, 156,

Tucker, Raymond---300

R

Randolph, John-50, 56-59, 62, 65

Raskob,John-247

Rawlings, Joseph---202

Rayburn, Sam-248, 292, 294, 297,

299-301,303,304,310

Reagan, John-164, 177

Reagan, Ronald-351, 353, 355-58,

360-63, 365, 366, 368, 369, 371,

372,376,382,396,398

Reed, David-250

Rhett, Robert-109, 110

Robespierre, Maximilien---36

Robinson, Arthur---250

Robinson, Joseph---248

Rockefeller, John-159, 199

Rockefeller, Nelson-306, 344

Romanova, N. K.---92

Roosevelt, Eleanor-300

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano-14, 236,

239, 241-48, 251, 252, 254-64, 266-

69, 275-77, 280, 281, 294, 305, 307,

O

O'Brien, Leo-297 O'Connor, Charles---163 O'Connor, James---347 Olney, Richard-196

Paine, Thomas-32 Palfrey, John-102 Palmer, Mitchell-228 Parker, Alton-205, 206 Patterson, Thomas---202 Pechatnov, V. O.-18, 258, 281, 327 Peffer, WiUiam-180 Pepper, daude-270

Name Index 414

Tugwell, Rexford-248 Twain, Mark-165, 192 Tydings, Joseph-328

Webster, Daniel-88, 89, 111, 115

Weed, Thurlow-89, 102, 138, 139

Weinberger, Caspar---356

Wells, RolIa-216

Wheeler, Burton-231

Wheeler, William-169

White, William-212

Whitney, Eli-41

Williams, David-58

Williams, G. Mennon---300

WiUiams, Joseph-203

Willkie, Wendell-265, 268, 269, 330

Wilmot, David-104, 112, 114

Wilson, Henry-119

Wilson, William-175

Wilson, Woodrow-164, 175, 214-20,

225-29, 266

Winslow, Erwing-198

Wooten, Dudley-203

REQUEST TO READERS

Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinion of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications.

Please send all your comments to 17, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR.

U

Underwood, Oskar-218 Ushakov, V. A.-40

Vail, I. M.-20

Vallandigham, dement-134, 141,

145, 146

Van Buren, Martin-75, 86, 95, 101,

102, 104,107

Vandenberg, Arthur-258, 271, 272

Vanniski, Jude-352

Verplanck, Gulian---94

Viorst, Milton---334

W

Yakovlev, N. N.-242 Yancey, William-109, 110 Yazkov, Y. F.-183, 272, 294 Yefimov, A. V.-105 Young, Alfred-28 Young, Roland-274

Wade, Richard-339

Wagner, Robert-248, 270, 274

Walker, Robert-102

Wallace, George-332, 333

Wallace, Henry-248, 280, 282, 291

Warren, Francis-208

Washington, George-34, 35, 40, 42,

Watson, Thomas---180, 190

Wattenberg, Martin---371

Weaver, James-190

Zamoshkin, Y. A.-373 Zeigler, L. Harmon---18 Zolotukhin, V. P.-10 Zubok, L. I.-207