I.3. The Monopoly of the Two “Great” Parties

From the very beginning of the republic, the public life of the United States has been dominated by two great parties of nearly equal strength, whose names have changed: until the beginning of the 1820s they were called Federalists and Republicans (Democratic Republicans); then (National) Republicans, later Whigs, and Democrats; since 1856 Republicans and Democrats. On their essential nature I shall say something in another place, and there also try to answer the question why it has always been precisely two parties that have attained importance in the United States. Here I want first to pursue only the reasons that can explain the monopoly-like position of the two ruling parties; that is, the reasons for their power of attraction.

There will come into consideration, in the first place, the circumstance that they dispose of the necessary means in money to keep the gigantic electoral machine, of whose complexity the discussion in the preceding pages has given an idea, in working order.

The funds with which the parties in America work come from three different sources:

1. From voluntary contributions of rich party members and general public subscriptions, as with us. Only that in America capital, because it sees immediate successes before its eyes, is more inclined to support with large sums the party from which it expects precisely the greatest advancement. It is connected, as we shall yet see, with the inner nature of party organisation in the United States that now the one, now the other of the two great parties receives its subsidies from one and the same capitalist power. The great trusts finance all party undertakings, but the Standard Oil Company or some other great company will let its money flow in New York to the Democratic, in Pennsylvania to the Republican party, to whichever of them rules the state or has the prospect of ruling it in the near future. Enough, the parties are continually in a position to make large sums available from the rich people of the country.

2. The assessment of officials in post (assessments) gives the party organisations the second possibility of raising the necessary funds. A certain percentage of the salary is collected “for party purposes”. Bryce (2, 112) reckons the annual salaries of the city officials in New York at the end of the 1880s at 11,000,000 dollars, and those of the 2,500 federal officials, who, if they belong to the same party, are likewise taxed, at 2,500,000 dollars. An assessment of 2 per cent on these sums brings the party treasury 270,000 dollars, that is, about 1¼ million marks. Even policemen, even errand boys and ordinary workers in state institutions are drawn in by their parties to this tax in this way.

3. The taxing of the candidates for the individual offices, finally, likewise yields abundant funds. The custom is that everyone who aspires to a post and wishes to be put up as a candidate pays his party a “contribution to expenses”. This contribution is quite considerable. It mostly absorbs a full year’s salary and more in the salaried offices; indeed in some cases it is higher than the whole regular income that the official draws during his term of office. The level of the contributions to be paid in this way into the party treasury is stated variously. According to a price list whose rates one often finds named, in New York a judgeship costs 15,000 dollars, a seat in Congress 4,000 dollars, a seat on the city council 1,500 dollars, election as alderman 600 to 1,500 dollars, and so on. Tammany draws from these contributions an income of 125,000 dollars a year, the opposing party one of nearly 100,000 dollars.

The “electoral purposes” for which all these moneys are raised are, first, the buying of votes pure et simple. Most Negro votes, the votes of many uneducated immigrants from half-barbarous states, the votes of the big-city lumpenproletariat are notoriously venal and are notoriously bought. The price fluctuates; one reckons on average, for example, 3 dollars for a Negro vote.

The great mass of the votes, even of the common people, is naturally not to be had in this crude way. But among broad strata of the poorer population the party leadership nevertheless knows how to make itself popular by standing by the needy with its gifts in want and trouble: to this one a dollar is lent; for that one a railway ticket is got free; here coal is distributed on cold days; there a chicken is given at Christmas; medicine is bought for the sick; in cases of death a coffin is procured at half price, and so on. And alongside all this welfare runs a generous treating in the bars — the saloons — where perhaps the most important part of the whole electoral business is transacted. For here the party agent, the “worker”, who is missing from no tavern (often it is the landlord himself), also works on all those who are to be won otherwise than by money or by direct assistance of the kind mentioned above. Every voter is — as Ostrogorski aptly puts it — taken by the worker at his weak side: one wants the police permit for running a street trade or for opening a saloon; another has broken the building regulations or has some other transgression on his conscience: the “machine” puts everything in order by influencing the authorities concerned in favour of its clients, the authorities being themselves for the most part in its power (as elected officials!). Or else the matter is taken up from the other side: the party imposes penalties on the recalcitrant voter and thereby wins him back, or at least frightens others: it sees to it that he is dismissed — if he is an employee in a state or municipal institution; that — if he is an employer — the factory inspection keeps a sharper eye on him. The tax-collector examines the books of the disliked trader twice as carefully and discovers that he has not paid his dues in full. The publican who does not keep the police closing-hour at once gets his penalty notice, and so on.

The discussion so far already lets us recognise the circle in which party life in America moves: because the great parties have the money with which they can buy votes directly or indirectly, with which they can pay the great staff of workers as well as the rest of the apparatus of the electoral machine by means of which the electorate is influenced, because they dispose of all kinds of methods of helping the adherent and harming the opponent: therefore they have the great following, therefore they possess the great power of attraction, therefore they have the political monopoly, whether it be that they are in power or have well-founded prospects of coming to power next time. And: because they hold this position, because they are in possession of power, therefore the means are at their command to bless and to damn, therefore they dispose of the necessary sums of money to keep the electoral machine going.

This circle — so fateful for all who stand outside — appears much more clearly still in other connections.

First, in the advantages that the ruling party offers its adherents as the distributor of offices. That is evident in the case of all elective offices. Everyone who has his eye on such a position, for himself or for his friends, must naturally have the liveliest endeavour to belong to the largest party, at any rate to a party that has any chance at all of carrying the day. For place-hunters there is no place in a party that unites a tenth or a twentieth of the votes on its candidates and — perhaps one day! — in ten or twenty years will have the majority. This reasoning, however, holds by no means only for the elective offices, but also for the majority of the offices that are filled by way of appointment. For these too are meant for the adherents of the ruling party.

The so-called spoils system has prevailed in the United States generally since the presidency of Jackson (1829–1833), while it had become naturalised earlier in some states, notably New York and Pennsylvania. It consists in this, that the booty falls to the victor — “the spoils to the victor”! — that is, essentially, that the offices are filled not by qualification but with regard to the party allegiance of the applicant. If one considers that this principle holds for the highest as for the lowest positions in the Union, state, county and municipality, for the secretaries of state and postmasters as for the office messengers and policemen, one can easily gauge what an immense power of attraction is exercised thereby on the masses by those parties which alone come seriously into question in this “distribution of booty”: precisely the two “great” parties.

The importance of this close connection between political party and distribution of offices for the development of party relations in America can hardly be rated too high. It deserves particular attention when, as is done here, one traces the reasons that are to make plausible the slight development of the socialist movement. For it is precisely this movement that has suffered most under the ruling system.

One can easily be a Social Democrat as a worker if one knows for certain that one will not — even if one belongs to a party that “upholds the state” — become an industrial councillor or exhibition commissioner or president of the Imperial Insurance Office or of the Royal Statistical Office. Just as one can confidently indulge one’s Social Democratic leanings (in secret) as a postman or policeman, if one knows that the probability of being removed from one’s office is not great.

In America things are different. Here the way even to the most modest offices leads, as we saw, through the yoke of party allegiance. And all who speculate on a “little post” in the service of the state or the municipality must first deliver themselves up to the “party”, and that not only on election day, but preferably long before as active party workers. There the “soundness of conviction” is put to a very hard test, which most do not withstand. This is repeated on a large scale with the labour leaders, the leading trade-union men. To them a richer reward beckons if they swear loyalty to the ruling party: a well-paid office, from factory inspector up to secretary of state, according to the importance attached to the man to be provided for. It is a thoroughly tried procedure, which the ruling parties have applied for years with the best success: to make the influential labour leaders “harmless” by conferring a lucrative office. We can follow this process of emasculation in a whole series of the most notable leaders. At this moment the president of the Am. Federation of Labor — in Germany Legien — is said to be chosen as successor to Carroll D. Wright, that is, as director of the bureau of labour statistics, while John Mitchell, the victorious miners’ leader, say Sachse or Hué in Germany, is to receive an under-secretaryship of state in Washington.

It has been established that in this way, during a few years, 13 labour leaders in Massachusetts and 30 in Chicago have attained official positions.

Now let anyone be a “Social Democrat” and demand “the overthrow of the existing social order” when the picture of the fat sinecure floats unceasingly before his eyes! Let him have selflessness enough to preach to his followers in the evening the hopelessness of the ruling politics and the necessity of a socialist movement, when that very afternoon the candidacy for a lucrative elective office has been offered him by the “boss” of one of the “great” parties, or a fat “share in the booty” of the next electoral victory has been promised him!

But if in this way the influential leaders, each time they have attained power and standing among their comrades, are lost to an opposition labour movement, that means not only a direct gain for the great parties, so far as the person of the leader, and also the circles of the working class itself that gave that leader their confidence, come into question, but in a much wider compass an indirect strengthening, because with the leader caught by the bait of office a possible independent workers’ party suffers a painful loss. In other words: each time the great parties snatch the officers away from under the nose of the socialist party organisation that may be in course of formation.

In all the cases discussed so far it is personal interest, the wish to obtain an advantage in some form for oneself or one’s good friends, that drives the individual into the arms of the “great” parties.

But it is not only personal motives that chain the great mass to the old parties. Ideal factors come into question in equally strong measure.

There is, first, the general “political interest”, that is, the interest in the shaping of public life, that in America often enough drives the individual to join one of the “great” parties, only because it is the “great” party, that is, because only with its help can he hope to carry through at once a reform that lies close to his heart, to remove at once an evil that oppresses him. To understand this one must make clear to oneself the fundamental difference that exists between the constitutions of the European states (always with the exception of Switzerland, for which indeed considerations similar to those for the United States hold) and the constitution of the North American Union. In the European states an influence by the people on the course of public life is possible at best only by the long detour of forming a parliamentary majority. One elects deputies to parliament and hopes to obtain a majority in it, to which the government will then adapt itself: evidently a very slow and by no means always radical procedure.

While this process of transformation is going on, however, fine speeches are made in parliament to give expression to the principles of the party, and these fine speeches gain all the more importance the smaller the prospects of a real influence on the machinery of state. Then there is at least some sense in electing a few deputies who, though they do not belong to the “majority”, will nevertheless let out their tirades of sound conviction through the window: a consolation for the people, condemned to powerlessness and want of influence. Hence the German Reichstag, whose resolutions are as good as irrelevant for the course of public life in Germany, is the most fitting place for minority parties with fine speakers. Everyone knows that everything Stadthagen says might just as well be left unsaid, without a single important political measure turning out any differently. But the Social Democratic voter is glad when he reads these bloodthirsty expectorations in his little paper, and says to himself with a grimly satisfied smirk: “He gave it to them properly again.” It is the lack of “political sense”, that is, of a sense for immediate gain of influence and power, that leads over to this kind of mood. If one is more polite, one calls what shows itself here “idealism”. And that is, after all, again most highly developed in the land of “poets and thinkers”. We are for this reason too the born minority politicians.

Exactly the opposite is the case in the United States. Here, first, the purely democratic constitution suggests to the masses that they direct their attention to tangible success. Because not only the deputies to the parliaments, but also judges and administrative officials proceed from popular elections, interest has turned away from the parliaments and towards the elections of officials. For reasons still to be discussed, parliament, and especially the House of Representatives in Washington, plays a very much less important part than parliament in a western European state, perhaps even a smaller one than the German Reichstag. On the other hand, people are interested in the highest degree in the elections of officials. And that for the obvious reason that through them one can achieve much more quickly a definite success, which is all one is after. To remove a disliked governor or judge is much more worth the Americans’ trouble than to send a fine speaker to parliament in Washington. And it would be more worth any people’s trouble. The German too. Think if it had been possible for the workers of Berlin, at the time of the Anti-Socialist Law, to cashier the public prosecutor Tessendorf, or today to blow sky-high some criminal division of a court that is notorious for its draconian sentences for strike offences, or to take revenge on a particular bench of judges, say the one that passed the Löbtau sentence, by giving them their marching orders at the next election!

The American worker can do that; at a price, admittedly, that will seem high to many: he must, namely, join one of the great parties, because they are the great ones. For only with their help is it possible to influence the result of the election successfully.

One can follow quite exactly in individual examples how considerations of this kind in fact lead the working class back again and again to the great parties from which they were perhaps already on the point of turning away. Especially instructive are the events at the last elections in the state of Colorado. Here a quite respectable number of votes had already gathered on the socialist candidates in 1902. Then came the great strikes of 1903, which (as so often happens in America) degenerated into a regular civil war. Bombs were thrown, buildings set on fire, the militia was called out, there were fights between workers and soldiers, the best-known labour leaders were banished by decree of the governor, all the newspapers were full of “Civil war in Colorado”, the embitterment of the working class knew no bounds.

By German notions one would have had to say: the Social Democratic vote in this state is bound to show an enormous increase. And what was in fact the case? The votes falling to the Social Democratic candidates in 1904 were half as many as two years before! The explanation of this event, incomprehensible to us, is very simple when the political conditions in the United States are taken into account: the formerly Social Democratic voters had gone over into the camp of the Democratic party, in order to support it effectively in the struggle against the hated Governor Peabody (in whom one rightly saw the soul of the whole anti-labour conduct of the authorities during the great strikes). And behold: success did not fail to come. The Republican governor was not re-elected, but replaced by a Democrat. Even if the actual conditions under the government of the new man should not change, one has nevertheless satisfied one’s need for revenge and dealt the hated enemy a painful blow. And that always does one good. More even than a poem by Ludwig Thoma.

Besides these rational and practical considerations, however, a series of indefinite sentiments leads the American to the great parties and holds him fast there.

I pointed out in my introductory remarks how strongly the sense for measurable size, for great figures, is developed in the American, and how this sense leads him to an overvaluation of outward “success”. Now: such a temper predestines one to majority politics. To the American it is an unbearable feeling to belong to a party that again and again comes out of the ballot-box with tiny figures, that will achieve no tangible successes in the foreseeable future, and that is consequently branded with the stigma of the ridiculous. To stand aside with the resigned air of a sufferer on election days, when the ecstasy over the numerical success of the great parties is driven to its height, when all the newspapers record the electoral successes of their candidates in giant letters, when the telephoned figures of the votes cast blaze on the mighty transparencies that the great newspaper offices put up on the day of the presidential election — that is not the minority politician’s line, and it is not the line of the American, full of temperament.

Further: the sense for what is measurably great has developed in the American, in connection with the radical-democratic principles of the constitution, into a blind veneration of majorities: the majority, he thinks, is on the right road, otherwise it would not be the majority. How can the people in its masses err? That is what Bryce, with an apt expression, calls the “fatalism of the multitude”.

With this respect for the great mass of voters as such there now pairs the inclination of the American to join with many others in common activity, what has been called his gregariousness. This disposition, which by itself would only lead to the formation of parties — great or small — once again benefits the great parties, because with it is joined a strong feeling of loyalty and attachment to the herd once chosen. This expresses itself in a regular party fanaticism, a “fanatical party loyalism”, as Ostrogorski calls it. But to satisfy fully the need of the heart that comes to expression in this enthusiasm for party allegiance, it must be able to act on a “great” association of which one can be proud. It seems to me a correct thought when Ostrogorski connects all these stirrings of the soul with the fact that the American is poor in natural communities and therefore attaches himself, with all the longing of a lonely man, to the great organisations of the old parties. There is much truth in the following remarks: “Like the ancient Greek who found in the most distant colonies his national deities and the fire from the sacred hearth of his Polis, the American finds in his nomadic existence everywhere, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to Florida, a Republican organization or a Democratic organization, which recalls him to himself, gives him a countenance and makes him repeat with pride the cry of the New York politician: ‘I am a Democrat’ or ‘I am a Republican’.”

So many factors — of a material as well as an ideal nature — come together to work towards the same result: to keep the “great” parties great and mighty and thereby to secure their political monopoly: they have this monopoly because they are the “great” parties, and they are the great parties because they have the monopoly.