I.4. The Failure of All “Third” Parties

The old, great parties of America have rightly been compared with giant trusts, which dispose of so mighty a capital and dominate all the areas of supply and sale so exclusively that all competition by “third” parties beside them appears to be excluded. If a competitor shows himself, the old parties offer everything to bite him away. If need be they unite for a short time in order to drive the daring rival from the field together.

So the history of the “third” parties in America is indeed a sad history of continual defeats, which leaves little hope for the future. A fleeting glance at the vain attempts that have been made so far to break the sole rule of the old parties will confirm the correctness of what has been said. In this I enumerate only the better-known “foundations”, and my list makes no claim to completeness.

The success of the Populists has been the greatest that any “third” party has yet won in the United States. At the presidential election of 1892 they already brought it to 1,055,424 votes and — what is still more significant — to 22 electoral votes: it was the first time since the Civil War that electoral votes had been cast for a “third” party at all. In 1894 its vote rose to 1,564,318; in 1896 the party already belonged to the past. The Democratic party (which then had to weather the severe silver crisis in its own ranks) absorbed the Populists, who all voted for the silver Democrat Bryan, almost completely. A small remnant is left. It casts some 50,000 votes for Barker in 1900, and 114,637 for Watson in 1904.

This tragic fate of all “third” parties has now undoubtedly itself contributed to increasing the difficulties of an independent party. It has brought the “third” parties as such into discredit. From the numerous individual cases of failure, people infer the character of the “third” party in itself. The interest of the great parties is naturally keenly engaged in spreading among the people the opinion that all “third” parties are “utopian”, incapable of life, “un-American” and so on. They draw new vital strength from the pitiful downfall of their rivals. And a new obstacle would thereby have arisen to the vigorous development of an independent socialist party.

Now, however, I can imagine that the conscientious reader may not yet be satisfied with the argument so far. Is it really, he will ask, only the outward status of party organisation that has so far prevented the rise of a socialist movement in the United States? And will he not rather raise the following objection against this assumption: the reference to the fiasco of other party foundations is not conclusive without more ado. Did not all those parties perish of their own weakness? Were they not incapable of life, because they lacked a clear orientation towards a definite goal, a basis in groups of the population with equal interests? But does not the socialist movement differ from all the currents named precisely in this, that it rests on uniform interests?

And should not a party that pursues really great aims, that really serves the common interests of broad masses, be able in the end to prevail even against the old parties? We even have in the party history of the United States one important example showing that it is possible in extraordinary cases to break the monopoly of the “great” parties and to form a new party capable of life: it is none other than the present Republican party, which was carried up on the enthusiasm for the abolition of slavery and has known how to keep its rapidly acquired possessions. True, the conditions at the time when the Republican party appeared (its beginnings fall in the year 1854) were still considerably more favourable for the rise of “third” parties. Party discipline was not yet so strict; in the West, where the new party first took root, party organisation was as yet only weakly developed at all. And the whole artful “machine” was created only after the Civil War, and precisely by the Republican party.

Nevertheless one will have to say: what a party succeeded in under the battle-cry of the “emancipation of the black slaves” ought — even under more difficult circumstances — to succeed today for a party that has issued the much mightier and more comprehensive watchword: “emancipation of the white slaves from the fetters of capitalism”, “emancipation of the proletariat”. If it were really possible to unite the broad strata of the working population on this programme, that is, to awaken their class consciousness, then the triumphal march — so it seems to me — would be held up by no electoral machine however complicated, by no monopoly of great parties however time-honoured.

If one wants, then, to set out exhaustively the reasons that have so far held back the growth of socialism in the United States, one will have to drive the investigation some shafts deeper. One will have to trace the more hidden causes. And I think that with some attention they are not hard to find. They lie in part — and so far they are to be discussed in this connection — likewise still in the political field. Only that one must try to recognise the political relations of the American Union not only in their outward form but also in their inner nature. In particular the party relations too. Certainly the old parties owe their “electoral monopoly” in good part to their being the “great” ones, to their being in possession of the most artful “machine”. But their character too contributes to maintaining this monopoly. They are still today the parties of the overwhelming part of the proletariat for all the (outward) reasons I have enumerated: certainly. But they would nevertheless not be so if they did not by their nature make it easy for the wage-labourer — and even the class-conscious wage-labourer — to belong to them. Why that is the case is to be explained in what follows.