From Workers' Herald
September, 1984

Both the Democratic and the Republican parties are committed to bourgeois rule, to exploitation of the working class, the subjugation of peoples and nations within the U.S., and the expansion of U.S. imperialism. On these fundamental questions there is not a whit of difference between the two parties. The differences between them lie only in the approach to achieving the goals they share.

Today the Democratic Party, for the most part, plays the role of the "liberal" bourgeois party, the party that is "more responsive to the demands of the masses." It poses as the "party of the common people" and has long cultivated an alliance with the reformist leaders in the trade unions and the movements of the oppressed nationalities. The Republican Party, on the other hand, plays the role of the "conservative" bourgeois party. It most overtly represents the monopoly bourgeoisie and open reaction.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have mass memberships. According to the government, 43% of the electorate are registered as Democrats and 30% as Republicans.⁽¹⁾ Clearly, massive numbers of working people, both petty bourgeois and proletarian, are tricked into supporting the bourgeois parties. The thousands of subordinate positions in both of the bourgeois parties are staffed by members of the upper petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy. The class character of these parties, however, is not determined by the class make-up of the majority of their membership, but rather by who controls the parties and what ideology, programs and policies they promote. Based on these criteria, there is no question that both parties represent exclusively the monopoly bourgeoisie.

History

The current political contours of these parties are the result of their history and of the present day class struggle. The Democratic and Republican parties emerged as the two principal parties of the U.S. ruling class in the years preceding the Civil War. At that time, the Democratic Party was the main party of merchant and banking capital and the slavocracy in the South. It was the open party of reaction, the foremost champion of slavery and it represented reaction on every question.

The Republican Party was organized by the growing industrial bourgeoisie in the North which opposed the expansion of slavery because it was a fetter on the development of capitalism. Allied with the industrial bourgeoisie, and providing the mass base of the Republican Party, were the great mass of small farmers and proletarians in the northern states. The Republican Party was divided from the beginning into a radical abolitionist wing and a conservative wing. The latter, which represented the most powerful sections of the industrial bourgeoisie, was dominant from the beginning.

The Democratic Party was the main organizing center of the Confederate secessionists in the South and their sympathizers in the North. The victory of the Union in the Civil War resulted in the supremacy of the Republican Party throughout the country. Because the Radical Republicans had played the leading role in prosecuting the war against the slaveowners, they emerged from the war as a powerful force. They captured the majority of seats in Congress and, on the basis of the new power of the freed slaves and the poor white farmers in the South, they established Radical Reconstruction governments in the southern states.

The Radical Republicans were American Jacobins - the most radical bourgeois democrats. Their program called for the destruction of all remnants of the feudal-slave system and the establishment of a bourgeois regime based on small property. The future, however, belonged not to the radical petty bourgeoisie, but to the large-scale Industrial bourgeoisie, represented by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. The conservative wing was soon able to win hegemony over the party and it weakened, and finally expelled, the radical wing.

The industrial bourgeoisie, which was rapidly converting itself into a monopoly bourgeoisie, transformed the Republican Party from a progressive bourgeois-democratic party into a reactionary imperialist party. The northern industrialists came to agreement with the defeated southern planters, allowing them to recapture political power in the South under the overall economic and political domination of the industrial bourgeoisie.

The Republican regime of Rutherford Hayes (1877-1881) marked the turning point in the new alignment of class forces. Two critical events demonstrated the new class alignment. The first was the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, which allowed the reactionary Democratic Party to violently reestablish its hegemony throughout the region. The second was the deployment of federal troops to suppress the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which was the first great test of strength between the growing proletarian movement and the bourgeoisie.⁽²⁾

The agreement between the southern planters and the northern industrialists ensured the survival of the reactionary Democratic Party. The party remained the instrument of oligarchic rule by the plantation owners in the South. The official party slogan in the South remained "white supremacy." The overall leadership of the party, however, now passed to the economically dominant industrial and financial bourgeoisie, which was evolving into monopoly capital. Every Democratic administration since the regimes of Grover Cleveland (l885-1889, 1893-1897), the first Democratic president after the Civil War, has been marked by the dominant position of a segment of monopoly capital.⁽³⁾

Up to the turn of the century, both the Democratic and Republican parties were mainly concerned with the problem of the development of capitalism. "The struggle between the parties was over the question how best to expedite and facilitate this development."⁽⁴⁾ After the turn of the century, the two parties concerned themselves fundamentally with the problem of defending capitalism against socialist revolution.

At the turn of the century, these "twin parties" switched poles. The Republican Party was quickly transformed into an open representative of monopoly capital, a party of the most savage imperialism and reaction. The Republican regimes of William McKinley (1897-1901) and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) inaugurated the era of imperialism in the U.S. with rabid chauvinism and military aggression that resulted in the colonization of the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal.

The predatory imperialist tradition of the Republican Party continues today under the Reagan regime which has bombarded the Lebanese people, brazenly occupied the island of Grenada and is waging war on the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador. The Republican Party has also been the most aggressive in waging war on the U.S. proletariat, calling out troops to suppress strikes and demonstrations and engaging in the most perfidious methods to suppress the communist movement.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, covered its defense of monopoly capitalism and reaction with the cloak of bourgeois liberalism. At the turn of the century, in response to the massive populist and labor movements, leaders of the Democratic Party like William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson began to use anti-monopoly slogans to win the confidence of the people.

The liberal trappings of the Democratic Party were expanded under the regime of Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945), which responded to the tremendous upsurge in the workers' movement with reforms like social security, unemployment insurance and trade union legislation. Under Roosevelt, the alliance between the Democratic Party and the reformist misleaders in the trade unions and national movements was cemented.

The fact that the Roosevelt regime instituted reforms did not change its nature as the representative of the monopoly bourgeoisie in the least. Roosevelt's reforms were concessions by monopoly capital to the workers' movement calculated to divert the movement from revolution. The reform legislation was directly formulated by the leaders of monopoly capital themselves, i.e. by the chief executives of U.S. Steel, General Electric and others who served on the Business Advisory Council, which was an official link between the largest corporations and the Roosevelt regime.⁽⁵⁾

The liberalism of the Democratic Party is expressly counterrevolutionary. "Give the people a few reforms in order to divert them from the path of revolution" is the motto of the Democratic liberals. They combine these reforms with fierce suppression of the revolutionary movement.

The Democratic liberals have presided over savage periods of repression against the revolutionary movement in the U.S. The liberal Wilson regime (1913-1921) carried out the first systematic campaign to suppress the revolutionary workers' movement, which culminated in the Palmer Raids of 1920. The liberal Roosevelt signed the Smith Act into law, which outlawed communist political activity. His successor, Harry Truman (1945-1953), presided over the rabid attack on the revolutionary workers' movement that followed World War II. The Democratic Party platform of 1948, on which Truman ran, explicitly declared the objectives of this reactionary campaign:

"We condemn Communism and other forms of totalitarianism and their destructive activity overseas and at home... We reiterate our pledge to expose and prosecute treasonable activities of anti-Democratic and un-American organizations which would sap our strength, paralyze our will to defend ourselves, and destroy our unity, inciting race against race, class against class, and the people against free institutions."⁽⁶⁾

This campaign of repression was carried out jointly by the Democratic and Republican parties. Not only were the conservative elements in the Democratic Party mobilized in the reactionary offensive; the liberals played the critical role. Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey helped lead the Congressional witch hunt, and even the reformists of the CIO unions and the Socialist Party (which has traditionally allied itself with the Democratic Party) were called upon the do their part in "exterminating the communist menace."

The liberal Johnson regime (l963-1969), while enacting reforms to pacify the Afro-American national movement, deployed federal troops to slaughter the heroic fighters in the urban rebellions of the 1960's and unleashed the FBI to persecute the revolutionary leadership of the movement.

The Democratic liberals have also presided over the most barbarous imperialist wars carried out by U.S. imperialism. The liberal regime of Woodrow Wilson was responsible for U.S. intervention into the first imperialist World War. Harry Truman obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs and launched the U.S. invasion of Korea. The liberal regimes of Kennedy and Johnson carried out the monstrous invasion and occupation of Vietnam, as well as invasions of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The Carter regime began the recent war mobilization by sharply increasing the military budget, creating the Rapid Deployment Force and reinstituting military draft registration.

The entire Democratic leadership collaborated with Reagan's military occupation of Beirut and the invasion of Grenada. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives continues to provide funds for the war in El Salvador. The current candidate of the Democratic Party for president, Walter Mondale, has made it clear that he would continue U.S. aggression in Central America. This is the liberalism of the Democratic Party.

As further proof of the reactionary essence of the Democratic Party today, one has only to look to the South, where it is still tied to the most putrid, reactionary remnants of chattel slavery. To this day the Democratic Party remains the principal instrument of the rule of the plantation owners and capitalists in the southern states. The party is therefore the home of some of the most reactionary and chauvinist elements in the entire country. The "northern" and "southern" wings of the Democratic Party have always depended on each other and worked in tandem. Petty bourgeois philistines consider this a curious anomaly, but anyone who understands the class basis of imperialism and its reactionary nature knows that this is neither curious nor abnormal, but inevitable.

Both the major parties are financed by the monopoly bourgeoisie. On the whole, the monopoly bourgeoisie gives more to the Republican than to the Democratic Party. The greater financial resources of the Republican Party help make up for its smaller base of electoral support and assure that a generous supply of overtly reactionary politicians will be available to fill the halls of government. At the same time, the monopoly bourgeoisie recognizes the great value of its Democratic politicians and gives generously to them as well.

Particular families and individuals among the monopoly bourgeoisie have been identified with one or the other of the two parties. The Democratic Party has traditionally received large sums from the Fields, Lehmans, Hochschilds, Kennedys, Roosevelts, Harrimans, Reynolds, Meyers, Browns_, Murchisons, Engelhards and Kerrs, among others.⁽⁷⁾ Major Republican financiers include the Rockefellers, Mellons, Pews, Gettys, Olins, Annenbergs, Danforths, Heinzes, Coors, DuPonts and Watsons.⁽⁸⁾ But most monopoly bourgeois families are not highly partisan. One study of the 1972 campaign contributions by members of twelve prominent monopoly bourgeois families (the DuPonts, Fields, Fords, Harrimans, Lehmans, Mellons, Olins, Pews, Reynolds, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Whitneys) showed that all but one gave to both parties.⁽⁹⁾

Reformists of all kinds, from William Winpisinger to Tom Hayden and Jesse Jackson, promote the idea that the workers and oppressed people must "push the Democratic Party to the left." The Democratic Party, they say, must be "forced" to represent the interests of its mass base. All kinds of strategies are put forward to "infiltrate" the party, to win delegates and fight for reform platforms at its conventions, to advance reform candidates for Democratic nomination, and so on. The presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson this year was a major effort in this vein.

The revisionists, such as the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), League for Revolutionary Struggle (LRS) and the Communist Workers Party (CWP), typically follow in the wake of the reformists, rushing to do the flunky work of the most liberal of the Democratic candidates. All this activity is critical to the bourgeoisie, which wishes to divert the more advanced sections of the workers from the path of political activity independent of the two bourgeois parties. The bourgeoisie loves to see the revisionists mobilizing the masses to help build its political party.

Contrary to the false hopes promoted by the reformists and revisionists, the Democratic Party will always exclusively follow the dictates of the bourgeoisie. The monopolists' massive financial, political and organizational resources control the party from top to bottom. All the efforts to divert the political activities of the proletariat into helping to build this bourgeois party only serve to weaken the class ideologically, politically and organizationally. The proletariat can only build its political power by building its own independent, revolutionary political party. Until this is accomplished, the working class will continue to stumble along, relegated to a subordinate position in the left wing of the bourgeois Democratic Party.

All citations to "LCW" refer to V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 3rd ed., Moscow (1972). "v." refers to the volume.