SERVES THE RICH World View Forum New York Market Elections: How Democracy Serves the Rich Copyright © January 2000 World View Forum ISBN 978-0-89567-201-8 Published and distributed by: World View Forum 146 West 24th Street, 2nd floor New York, NY 10011 Phone (212) 627-2994 Fax (212) 675-7869 Email [email protected] Web http://www.workers.org The ideas in this book may be freely disseminated. Any properly attributed selection or part of a chapter within “fair-use” guidelines may be used without permission. Edited by Deirdre Griswold Cover design by Lal Roohk Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99—05 3590 Market Elections Table of Contents EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE 2000 EDITION Part I: From Washington to Coolidge CHAPTER 1 Some notes on U.S. presidents CHAPTER 2 A visit to Tammany Hall CHAPTER 3 1828 The Jackson Democrats CHAPTER 4 The Whigs and U.S. industry CHAPTER 5 1864 War Democrats & Copperheads CHAPTER 6 After Civil War, uncivil peace CHAPTER 7 1876-1877 The great betrayal CHAPTER 8 1876 Reform and reaction CHAPTER 9 1884 Democrats return to office CHAPTER 10 Monopolists take government CHAPTER 11 1889 Blaine points imperialism south CHAPTER 12 1896 The new parties CHAPTER 13 The farmer-labor upsurge CHAPTER 14 1896 Bryan Democrats rebel CHAPTER 15 1896 The power behind McKinley CHAPTER 16 1898 The Spanish-American War CHAPTER 17 Imperialism grows at a gallop CHAPTER 18 1900 Guns and butter CHAPTER 19 1900 Mr. Imperialism CHAPTER 20 Teddy Roosevelt and Wall Street CHAPTER 21 1904 Aim at barn, hit bull’s eye CHAPTER 22 1908 A new king-maker chooses Taft CHAPTER 23 1912 The parties in disarray CHAPTER 24 1912 The Wilsonian answer CHAPTER 25 1912 Democrats on the 'right' track CHAPTER 26 1912 King-makers, God and Wilson CHAPTER 27 1912 Wilson as reformer CHAPTER 28 The preparedness hoax CHAPTER 29 1916 'He kept us out of war’ CHAPTER 30 The 'war to end war’ CHAPTER 31 The secretaries of state and defense CHAPTER 32 1920 Harvey grooms Harding Endnotes for Part I Part II: Rigged Elections,1876 to 1976 CHAPTER 33 Why only 1876 to 1976? CHAPTER 34 1876 Stuffing ballots, smothering Black freedom CHAPTER 35 1880 God and Garfield CHAPTER 36 1884 Grover Cleveland, the honest hangman CHAPTER 37 1888 Benjamin Harrison, dark horse with a grandfather CHAPTER 38 1892 The people begin to revolt CHAPTER 39 1896 Whirlwinds of danger CHAPTER 40 1900 Theodore Roosevelt, the not-so-accidental president CHAPTER 41 1904 Trusts reelect 'trust buster' CHAPTER 42 The undemocratic primaries CHAPTER 43 1908 William Howard Taft CHAPTER 44 1912 The three-ring circus CHAPTER 45 1916 'He kept us out of war’ CHAPTER 46 1920 Harding, the senator who was discreet CHAPTER 47 Debs and the Socialists CHAPTER 48 1924 The Morgans run against themselves CHAPTER 49 1928 'Who but Hoover?' CHAPTER 50 1932 Depression and the rise of FDR CHAPTER 51 1936 A semi-Bonapartist beats the bankers CHAPTER 52 1940 War and the third term CHAPTER 53 1944 Fourth term in a bonanza year CHAPTER 54 1948 Time and Chase Manhattan get a surprise CHAPTER 55 1948 Henry Wallace and the third Progressive Party CHAPTER 56 1952 A scholar and a soldier CHAPTER 57 1956 Affable general vs. would-be statesman (Round Two) CHAPTER 58 1960 The last 'normal' election CHAPTER 59 1964 The peculiar split CHAPTER 60 1968 Another election by assassination CHAPTER 61 1972 When Watergate wasn’t noticed CHAPTER 62 1973 Nobody investigated the Watergate investigators CHAPTER 63 1974 Not an election but a cold coup d’état CHAPTER 64 1976 Reagan vs. Ford in the party of Lincoln CHAPTER 65 Shedding a tear for Humphrey Endnotes for Part II BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE 2000 EDITION How can democracy be at the service of the rich? Doesn’t the very word mean government by the people? This is certainly what we are all taught in school. And yet the political system of the United States, which boasts of being the most democratic in the world, coexists quite comfortably with the most undemocratic economic structure, in which a smaller and smaller group of millionaires and billionaires owns and controls more wealth than the vast majority at the other end of the social spectrum. Anyone who thinks must be struck by this seeming contradiction. But a closer look at how the U.S. electoral system has functioned over the last two centuries shows that in fact there is no contradiction. The kind of democracy that exists here has been very well suited for perpetuating the rule of a privileged few while giving the appearance of being at the service of all the people. The word “democracy” in the title of this book refers to the kind of political system prevalent in much of the capitalist world today. It is what the boosters of the United States in particular mean when they couple “democracy” with the “free market.” Together they stand for a form of government that is as much for sale as the commodities around which economic life is centered. As this book is being published, another of the quadrennial presidential elections is getting underway in the United States. Already, a year before the voting, the tens of millions of dollars raised by the candidates from their moneyed backers make the earlier war chests described in Market Elections seem like chump change. As venal as this democracy may be, however, the process whereby the wealthy capture the votes of the many is not simple. History can never be scripted, and life is full of surprises. While Vince Copeland shows that the candidates with the most money behind them usually win, he also shows that there are exceptions to that rule. Mass struggles will impact on elections, even though these struggles are usually resolved through other means. The struggle over slavery, for example, was reflected in the electoral process for many decades. Both the Democratic and Republican parties split and split again over the issue. It was resolved, however, not at the ballot box but in a bloody civil war. And even after that war ended, the struggle over whether the Black people would win full democratic rights, and control the land that their labor had made bountiful, continued to reverberate in the elections. But it was resolved by the back room acquiescence of the Northern money power to Klan terror. Copeland’s book never loses sight of such broad historic trends, but it also gives due space to the quirks and oddities – some comic, some puzzling – of those who enter the political arena, and how that may impact on events. When meteorologists try to analyze a complex weather system, they need to know more than the prevailing wind and water currents. The relatively small eddies and irregularities on the surface of the globe can produce significant storms. And while it takes no specialized knowledge to predict that winter will be colder than summer, your local forecaster needs much, much more information in order to tell people whether or not to carry an umbrella tomorrow. So it is with politics. It is essential to keep the basics in mind at all times, and Copeland does that. Political movements are not just the inspiration or playthings of individuals, but arise out of the struggle of classes over the basic necessities of life. But this struggle is full of twists and turns, alliances are made and broken, and some leaders carry out the tasks assigned to them better than others. The interplay of these two factors, the necessary and the accidental, is what makes this book as delightful as it is instructive. The chapters herein first appeared in article form in Workers World newspaper. They come from two different series Vince Copeland wrote about U.S. presidential elections. One series was written in 1976, the other in 1992-93. The series that appears here as Part 1, “From Washington to Coolidge,” was written during and after the Clinton-Bush race of 1992. Its story begins right after the victory of the colonists’ revolution against England, even though no real presidential elections were held for many years in the original thirteen states. However, Copeland has much to say about those early political developments out of which grew the two major capitalist parties with which we are so familiar. Copeland intended to bring this narrative up to date. Had he been able to do so, that series of articles would have sufficed for this book. But cancer and other illnesses cut his life short before he could finish. The last episode, which appeared in the Workers World of April 8, 1993, was about the 1920 election of Warren G. Harding. Copeland died two months after its publication, on June 7, 1993. It had been an enormous exertion of will for him to sit at the computer, his back bent with osteoporosis, his abdomen and chest crisscrossed with scar tissue from several heart and colon operations. Just picking up the many books he made reference to was an effort. You might expect to find at least a whisper of pain or pessimism in the tone he took to his material. But there is nothing of the kind. The last chapter he wrote, on Harding, is almost light-hearted, if such a dull subject could ever lend itself to levity. Copeland showed how this ho-hum politician had made it to the top because of the behind-the-scenes work of a Wall Street power broker and “king maker.” Copeland let us know what the ruling class really thought of Harding – Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s famous judgment that he wasn’t a bad man, “just a slob” – but he didn’t leave it at that. Because as interesting (or ludicrous) as the personalities may be that march through this story every four years, their importance lay in their ability to employ politics – the art of deceiving the masses – in the service of those who really put them in office. But isn’t that the voters? Aren’t they responsible for which characters get elected and which don’t? Yes, the attitudes and moods of the voters do have to be taken into account by the political parties in a capitalist democracy, but there are a million ways to manipulate that and, ultimately, frustrate what the people really want. We think the reader will agree that Vince Copeland’s writing makes history, with all its wrinkles and little and big ironies, come alive. And that, while having a keen eye for personal foibles, villainies, and tragedy, he used them to illuminate the broader social and class struggles that are engaged in every day by the millions, who are rarely in the spotlight. Vince Copeland’s deep interest in politics and the class struggle was not a bit academic. He spent many years as a militant trade unionist in Buffalo, New York. A welder at the big Bethlehem Steel plant in the gritty “suburb” of Lackawanna, he helped forge a caucus of Black and white workers who successfully struggled against de facto segregation in hiring for the different departments of the plant. He vividly described the conditions there in his pamphlet The Blast Furnace Brothers. Vince edited the newspaper of his local of the Steelworkers Union, using it as a central organizing tool for the great steel strike of 1946. That strike was a real battle of the classes at a time of great labor militancy. Spurred on by what became a daily paper during the strike, the Bethlehem workers organized disciplined squads to turn back the company stooges and scabs who were threatening their jobs. Black and white workers fought together. In 1950 Copeland was fired from Bethlehem after leading a wildcat strike. Eighteen thousand Steelworkers walked out of the blast furnaces, open hearths, coke ovens, and rolling mills to try and force the company to take him back. The newspapers were full of attacks on this dangerous radical. It was the beginning of the witch-hunt period and the Korean War; despite passionate support from his fellow workers, the firing stuck. In 1959 Copeland became editor of Workers World newspaper, and co-founded the party of the same name with Sam Marcy and Dorothy Ballan. He remained a leading light in the organization until his death. Vince Copeland loved the good fight. He didn’t just analyze the U.S. political system and its presidents – he fought the system they chose to serve. It would have been an insult to his memory to put out a book that ended with the bland presidency of Warren Harding. Fortunately, he had written another series about presidential contests, this one entitled “Rigged Elections – 1876 to 1976.” It makes up Part 2 of the present book and overlaps the historical period covered in Part 1 by about forty-five years – 1876 to 1920. So there is some redundancy in the cast of characters and events described here. Yet it is remarkable how much different material he employed and how many new points he made when he took a second go-round at writing on the same general subject. For that reason, and to maintain the historical threads followed in each series, both sets of articles are presented here in their entirety without cutting. – Deirdre Griswold, November, 1999 ALSO BY VINCE COPELAND Expanding Empire (Workers World Press, 1968) The Crime of Martin Sostre (McGraw-Hill, 1970) The Blast Furnace Brothers (Center for United Labor Action, 1973) Southern Populism and Black Labor (World View Publishers, 1973) A Voice from Harper’s Ferry (World View Publishers, 1974) The Built–in US. War Drive (World View Publishers, 1980)