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.From New Militant, Vol. II No. 16, 25 April 1936, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Donkey and the Elephant are now getting their preliminary rub-downs in preparation for their formal entry into the world’s greatest puppet show, the last act of which is scheduled for the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The Nominating Conventions will he held in June, and for the next six months the well paid publicists will use their energy and money in trying to persuade the citizens of this country that their lives, liberties, and general happiness depend on marking the cross on the appropriate side of the ballot.
The Election Campaign started this year earlier than usual. Its
first big gun was fired by Roosevelt in the form of his Annual
Message to Congress, a procedure which the Republicans felt was a
distinctly unprincipled abuse of the privileges of his office. The
Republicans managed, however, to follow up during the next six weeks
with a barrage of grotesquely ghost-written speeches by Hoover, a
studiously meaningless statement by Landon, Talmadge’s
ill-fated Grass Roots gathering, and a heavy offensive thru-out,
their press. Neatly padded statistics were issued weekly to show that
the people were ready to throw New Deal policies on the garbage
pile.
Things quieted down, to be revived on both sides during the past months. The Republicans surprise themselves by announcing a brand new Brain Trust all their own – naturally non-partisan in character, whose public-spirited function it will be merely to demonstrate in the most objective scientific manner conceivable how Roosevelt is leading the country to destruction. They continue to observe that Marx reigns as the guardian deity of New Deal Washington. The Democrats have more substantial weapons at hand for the counter-attack: they utilize the investigations of the Congressional Committees to secure frontpage agitation against the Tories, and to show the public that the Republicans plan to turn the government over openly to Morgan and DuPont. Roosevelt mounted his white horse again at Baltimore to ride at the head of the nation’s youth, and to promise once more security for all.
It is, of course, a foregone conclusion that Roosevelt will be
renominated on the first ballot at the Democratic Convention. There
will be a few squabbles over the wording of the platform, but in the
end it will be worked out according to the Roosevelt pattern. The
Annual Message and the Baltimore address make clear what this will
be: Roosevelt will lean back on the New Deal slogans of his first
campaign, and will appeal to the voters on the basis of the “left”
promises which he is so gracious in formulating. The old melody needs
little tuning up: denunciation of the Tories, of the selfish few, of
those who would rob the people of their liberties; concern for the
common man; the great aims of social security and neighborliness;
protection and aid for agriculture; against the corruptions of the
mighty; for a true peoples’ government. An admirable program,
in short, for a genuine People’s Front. The Democrats are
abandoning hope of toning down the attacks in the Republican press,
since they find that every publicly avowed protestation of friendship
for big business only spurs the Republicans to new heights. They are
falling back, there ore, into a purer form of demagogy.
The Republicans have a somewhat more difficult, and less rewarding task. They are confronted with a most undignified scramble for the Presidential nomination. Landon, Borah, Knox, and Hoover are now in the lead, with Landon out in front at the moment. Landon, however, is suffering from the too ardent kiss of Hearst, and none of these four seem to have sufficient support to secure nomination on an early ballot. The old-line politicians maintain tight control of the Convention through the device of having “uninstructed delegates” elected from most of the states; and it is not improbable that they will engineer the nomination of a compromise dark horse – perhaps Vandenberg of Michigan, or Stelwer of Oregon, the latter of whom has been selected as the Keynoter for the Convention.
The Republicans will have somewhat more trouble than the Democrats
over the wording of their platform, particularly because of the
strategic position in which Borah may find himself. As a concession
to Borah, they will no doubt take care to point out that the
Republican Party is the genuinely liberal party in terms of the true
American tradition, and that the great task before us is to prevent
the tyranny of the state over the individual, to guard our cherished
liberties from socialistic regimentation, and to oust the soviet from
the White House. They will then go on to show that this means a sound
monetary system, balancing of the federal budget, ending of
corruption and extravagance, and a cessation of interference with
legitimate business.
It can hardly be thought, however, that the Republicans seriously believe that they have a chance in November. Every indication is for a decisive victory for Roosevelt. The struggle for Republican nomination, therefore, is largely a struggle for control of the Republican Party’ machinery and what this can bring apart from actual possession of the Federal Administration And, apart from this, the Republican campaign will be run not so much to try to secure election as to put continuous pressure on Roosevelt to prevent him from getting too far out of line with the aims of the industrialists and financiers back of the Republican Party; an object which is not so difficult when it is remembered that these aims correspond in all important respects with the aims of the industrialists and financiers back of the Democratic Party.
It is hardly necessary to point out that, words and slogans aside, in their concrete significance programs and activities, there is at the present time no important difference between the two parties. They both represent, from top to bottom, the fundamental social interests of the big bourgeoisie, of finance-capital. The axis of the aims of each is simply to keep capitalism going, with the largest possible percentage of its fruits going to the bourgeoisie.
On the central question confronting the United States (and every
other) government – the war question – there is no
dispute even in words between the two parties. Both see the next war
approaching rapidly and inevitably, and plan to have the United
States in a position to enter it in its later stages to reap the
largest reward from the re-division of the world. Roosevelt has
successfully carried through the largest peace-time armament budget
in the history’ of this or any other country; and no Republican
cry for economy has ever mentioned the armament expenditures. Even
the D.A.R. and Hearst have recently praised Roosevelt in public for
his devotion to the “national defense”, and on this
subject there are no stricter judges.
Doubtless the two parties differ to some degree in the details of their schemes for managing the political aspect of the great bourgeois business of exploiting the masses. For example, there is more sentiment for direct relief as opposed to work relief in the Republican than in the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, the difference here also is largely on the surface. Both are agreed that relief should be kept as low as is compatible with the prevention of too much mass resentment. The Republicans talk more about a “balanced budget”, but they, like Roosevelt, are not willing to levy sufficient new taxation to attain it; and there are as many inflationists among the Republicans as among the Democrats. The differences in general tariff policy between the two parties have disappeared; and there remains only individual deals on tariffs involving individual backers of the respective parties. The Democrats have, it is true, a more aggressive farm policy; but this is largely an ideological difference – one of the differences in the means by which the two try to maintain their mass bases, rather than any fundamental cleavage.
There was once a day when these two parties faced each other with
lines sharply drawn, when they presented themselves to the country as
the political representatives of two mortally opposed classes
together with their subordinate allies. Through them the slaveholders
of the South fought it out against the industrialists and merchants
of the East. But this issue required a Civil War, not merely an
election, to settle. And as a necessary part of that mighty struggle
for state power, the Republican Party was led to wipe out utterly the
class which opposed it, first in part by arms, and then by uprooting
the social basis upon which it was constituted. In the succeeding
years the bourgeoisie consolidated its victory, and finance-capital
replaced the industrialists and merchants.
Henceforth the only major social struggle is between imperialist finance-capital and the proletariat. This struggle is not yet, however, reflected to any important extent in the parliamentary domain, and cannot be directly expressed in any possible contest between the Republican and Democratic parties. Consequently, the masses, in choosing between them, have only the question – as Marx expressed it – of which group of brigands they shall elect to take the lead for four years in exploiting them.
Nevertheless, even the electoral contest between these two parties is not without social significance. For one thing, the business of government has become the biggest of all businesses, and there is a genuine rivalry in determining who shall have the right to its profits. But much more important than this, the elections are a major means for spreading illusions among the masses, for preventing the masses from understanding what the true issues of modern society actually are. Exaggerating the appearance of differences between the two parties aids the bourgeoisie in sustaining the belief on the part of the masses that it is a vital question for them whether the next Administration is Republican or Democratic. Thus the masses are hindered from learning that the only political struggle of real importance for them is the struggle not against one or another of the parties, but against the bourgeois state itself in its entirety, is the struggle for the overthrow of the state.
But it is doubtful that this illusion can be sustained much longer by the quadrennial electoral contest between Republicans and Democrats. The puppet show is becoming too unconvincing. Consequently. the bourgeoisie will have to turn to a new device to stave off the mass growth of revolutionary pol itical struggle against the state. Two devices are possible: a mass Fascist movement – though the time for that has not yet come, and probably will not for some years; or a reformist party – a People’s or Labor or Farmer-Labor or Progressive Party – whereby the beginnings of deep revolt can be channelized into safe directions. Preparations for the latter alternative are already under way. Indeed, Roosevelt himself has transformed the Democratic Party a considerable distance along the path, and, with the active help of the trade union bureaucracy, is making it into the “Labor Party of 1936”. Labor’s Non-Partisan League, supporting Roosevelt this year, is jockeying into a position where later it can gather up the leftward movement of the masses into an avowed Labor Party, under firm anti-revolutionary control.
Only one strategy can defeat this perspective: revolutionary strategy, revolutionary agitation and organization. The reformist distinctions between “friends” and “enemies” among the bourgeoisie, between the Liberty League and Farley, between the Supreme Court and Congress, between Hearst and The Times or Scripps-Howard, merely plays the game of Roosevelt this year, and the subtler game of the Third Party advocates in the years to come. Our attack must be against capitalism; our struggle must be for socialism. And for this attack and this struggle there is one, and only one, political weapon: the revolutionary party. Our task is to forge this weapon. There is no other that will serve.
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