After dominating U.S. Politics for many decades, the Democratic Party and Republican Party, both pawns of big business, are now in collapse.
Both of these parties were created during the industrial period of the U.S., and that period is finished.
When the U.S. first elected a president, George Washington, in the pre-industrial agricultural society in 1788, there were no parties. As industrialism developed, various parties were formed, such as the Whigs, but eventually all died out except the Democrats and Republicans.
During the Industrial Revolution in the U.S. (1700-1800) predominantly agrarian (farming) rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. Both the Democratic and Republican parties flourished in an industrial and urban society.
The Democrats were founded in 1828 by President Andrew Jackson, notorious for the massacre of Native Americans. It was the dominant party of slave owners and white Southerners until the mid 20th century. The Republicans were founded in 1854 by Northern anti-slavery activists and modernizers, including President Abraham Lincoln who was elected in 1860. As the Republicans led the fight against slavery, Northern whites switched to the Democrats.
Abraham Lincoln was a railroad lawyer, and his victory against the South in the Civil War paved the way for the entire country to be industrialized.
The need to finance the Civil War pushed banks into the forefront of the economy. It wasn’t long before the owners of banks began to control more assets than the owners of all industries and railroads combined. The book
Power in America: The Southern Question and the Control of Labor, Nov 1983 by John F. Keller points out:
Prior to the Civil War and abolition . . . [t]he capital invested in railroads (including land and equipment) was greater than the capital invested in all manufacturing industries combined.
The government gave the railroads so much public land that railroad land grants eventually covered ten percent of the continental United States. It was not a coincidence that a railroad attorney helped form the Republican Party and lead the North in the Civil War. Each political party represents certain economic interests.
The Democratic Party is the oldest existing political party in the United States. At its beginning, it actually was named the “Republican” Party, the opposite of today. In 1792, followers of Thomas Jefferson adopted the name Republican to emphasize their anti-monarchical views. By 1833, the party became known as the Democrats, and the party kept that name.
It gained prominence after the Great Depression of 1929. To combat that disaster the “New Deal” to help labor was enacted, and the U.S. entered World War II in 1941. During the War, to fight fascism in Europe, the Democrats had to act in a relatively democratic, egalitarian manner at home.
With the end of the War, both parties came to be dominated by the banks and finance and remain that way today. Both the Republican and Democrat parties colluded to remove legal restrictions on the financial sector of the economy. This played a major role in causing the 2008 crisis where so many lost their homes to the banks.
Today the U.S. is undergoing a leap to the computer-electronic society, and everything that was created by industrialism is collapsing, including the Democrats and Republicans and even smaller political groupings.
Both parties are challenged from within and are in process of splitting. The first readily visible sign of cracks in the Republican Party was the growth of the “Tea Party” within its ranks. While this group was largely funded by the reactionary Koch brothers, it appeared to be a grassroots challenge to Republican leadership. In the 2016 elections, Donald Trump cornered support of the disillusioned Republican masses and through the mechanism of the electoral college, which had been created to throw a bone to slaveholding states, he became president.
The split in the Democratic Party leapt into view with Bernie Sanders’ campaign sweeping the U.S. although he failed to dislodge the corporate favorite, Hillary Clinton. The broad masses who were attracted by Occupy and by the Sanders campaign remain a disintegrating force within the corporate Democratic Party.
A party represents the interests of a class, and Republicans and Democrats have represented the interests of the capitalists and big finance. With the new economy old classes are being destroyed, and new ones, such as the destitute proletariat, are being created. New parties will spring up to represent these new classes. But as everything is changing, and in the face of social media, the new parties that arise may be quite different from the old, industrial parties. The movement around Bernie Sanders is part of something new that will continue regardless of what individual wins or loses elections.
Robin Yeamans has been a lawyer fighting for equal justice in California courts for almost 50 years since she graduated from Stanford Law school in 1969. As an undergraduate in college, she majored in philosophy, and her love of philosophy and her understanding of how important a role it plays in people’s lives continues to today.
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