COMMENTARY
QUESTION: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A LEFTIST COULD HAVE CRITICALLY SUPPORTED A CAPITALIST PARTY? ANSWER: SEE ABOVE. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT TODAY.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
NOTE: The original intention of this writer was to produce two commentaries on the above-mentioned question, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats. After some thought I realized that except for a change of names I would have been basically writing the same dreary commentary twice. In any case, how much can any writer endure of the same nonsense put out by these two parties over the last one hundred plus years? How much space should be taken up by separate commentaries even on the expansive Internet? Moreover, the little tidbits of wisdom I was going to write about the current crop of Democratic contenders can wait for another day. After all we have two long years to lambaste the likes of Hillary “Hawk” and the Johnnies.
I know some readers will be offended by my choice of Andrew Jackson as the last supportable Democrat. They will ask- What about William Jennings Bryan in 1896? Yes indeed, what about William Jennings Bryan. I am not at all sure that his “cheap money” Cross of Gold campaign was in the interest of working people (or ultimately farmers, for that matter) but that is beside the point. I do not particularly want to argue over the virtues of this or that candidate but to make the point that it has been a very long time since leftists could have supported a capitalist party candidate. As the commentary below will make clear as an almost universally acceptable choice of a ‘progressive’ capitalist politician Lincoln is better in every way.
For Andrew Jackson buffs. Yes, I know Mr. Jackson got waylaid in 1824 by the maneuverings of one John Quincy Adams but cut me a little slack. I was born in Mr. Adams’s hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts so call me a ‘homer’ on that one. Not only that but J.Q.'s position against slavery, the burning issue of the times, was light years ahead of the slaveholder Jackson's. Enough said. For Green Party buffs. Sorry, but leftists have no basis for voting for a modern capitalist third party operation. I did add an appropriate couple of sentences at the end of the commentary about the Greenies. That seems about right. Finally, remember when reading the commentary below where it says Republican put Democrat, where it says Hoover put Roosevelt, etc., etc. Here goes.
Today, after suffering through the likes of Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and various Bushes it is hard to believe these denizens claim the heritage of the party created by Lincoln and the other early stalwarts. Something went terribly wrong somewhere in the 1870’s (even before the Compromise of 1877 which only codified the defeat of the aims of Reconstruction, limited as they were) and it has been downhill ever since. Nevertheless, Lincoln, Chase, Seward, Staunton, the Radical Republicans and others can claim the respect of today’s militants, and the Republican Party presidential candidate Lincoln a retroactive vote in 1864, for two major reasons.
First, when the issue was hot on the fire and there was no way around it Lincoln and his compatriots organized an army and fought a Civil War to abolish black slavery. Now, not all of their motives were pure as the driven snow and to some extend Lincoln, in particular, had to be led kicking and screaming to fight for that aim-but in the end he did it. That is also why, in this writer’s opinion, it is a dicey thing to think that militants should have supported Lincoln-Hamlin in 1860. At that point Lincoln had not been tested and was essentially a sectional candidate, if that. But 1864 is a different question-then all the issues were on the table. Civil wars tend to such clarity. Lincoln passed the test.
Every militant abolitionist or unionist still alive after three years of war, could have, albeit critically, supported the ticket. Even with the War Democrat Johnson on it. That tactical concession could be justified by the need to rally plebian support in the Northern cities. There can be no second guessing that choice just because Johnson’s later career proved him a bust after Lincoln’s assassination. After the furor of the war was over and the Radical Republican elements during Reconstruction lost heart or faith in their program of emancipation for black people all hell broke loose and it broke over the head of those same black people. At that point the Republicans became just another in a long line of garden variety capitalist parties. And what of the program of those selfsame Republicans today toward the question of the oppression of blacks and other minorities? That can be stated in one phrase- their response to Hurricane Katrina. Enough said.
The second reason that militants tip their hat to the Republican Party and to Lincoln is less obvious but also related to the Civil War struggle-that is the preservation of the union or more appropriately the conditions for the formation of a unitary continent-wide national capitalist state. Support for such an outcome by militants today would seem strange but back then when capitalism represented a progressive trend in human history it was not. That system allowed the productive forces of society to be developed more fully than the previous localized, agrarian-dominated society.
Think of this- if the Southern armies, dominated by the planter classes, has won the war or more likely fought to a stalemate and had been allowed to keep their separate state it would have hampered the development of free labor to the detriment of working people. The United States would have probably become, as envisioned by some Southern thinkers, a large ‘banana republic’, an exporter of raw materials for the world market. Today we know that capitalism has outlived its effective useful life. We also know how to deal with that even if we today do not have enough forces to do something about it. But, back then the gods were on our side, the struggle against slavery was righteous and we were sustained by the spirit of the better angels of our nature.
As for the Green Party no commentary can be provided except maybe a comment on the similarities of the program and personalities of that party and the ill-fated Henry Wallace-led Progressive Party campaign of 1948. Sorry Greenies.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
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