FOR ALMOST four decades, from Roosevelt's election in 1932 until Nixon's victory in 1968, Democratic dominated US politics. It held the US presidency for 28 out of 36 years. The only Republican president in that period, from 1952 to 1960, faithfully continued the policies laid down by Democratic president Truman and was succeeded by Democratic president Kennedy. During four decades the Democrats trequently controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives and continue House of Representatives today. All essential parts of the notably AFL-CIO, the US equivalent of the TUC, were tied to the Democrats.
The corollary of supremacy was the political backwardness of the US working class. The US working class failed to form any mass working class party at all. Furthermore, in a certain sense, it regressed. Prior to War I a small but significant Socialist Party existed. Its presidential candidate Debs secured 900,000 votes, six per cent, in 1912. Between the wars a working class party, the Farmer-Labour Party in Minnesota, could win seats in the US senate and House of Representatives as well as the state governorship.
the completely beginning ot the working trade union organisation of Eisenhower dustrial seemed further away than ever. that control the American the and CIA in international affairs ing funds labour movements Democratic CIO gave it unstinting support had earlier the Korean war.
struggle throughout weakened -United States. output - but with the American working class more politically integrated in US capitalism than ever before. By the 1950s oreansalon had been eliminated as a significant force in the US. The problem of mass cynical the US workers was solved during the 1930s with the rise of the Congress of in.
Organisations (CIO). But
political independence of US workers even This lack of political organisation of American workers weighed heavily, and adversely, in the international relation of forces after World War II. The AFL-CIO functioned as almost a direct arm of the American state department - US' split the of other countries and preaching a full blooded cold-war While line in the US itself. When the Vietnam war started in the mid-1960s the AFL.- as 1t Without level. even a reformist political organisation of the American working class every the was • because of the role played by US imperialism in the world, there is called no international class struggle which does not rapidly need assistance in the the When opposition to the policies of the US ruling class did start after World War Il this commenced outside the core aDouT movement with the Black movement in the 1950s and 1960s apart legal racial •Jim Crow', DOnLICS But that scruggle was not organised through the policies - the anti-Vietnam war rese ment of the 1960s and early 1970s. This rocked the United States, but its driving force were student mobilisations. The great bulk of the white American working class, while increasingly opposed to the Vietnam war, still remained locked firmly into support for Democrats or, increasingly, became apathetic about any of the major US political parties.
Given this decades long hegemony of the Democratic Party over the US working class few events in the world are therefore more important than the cracks in this supremacy which began to appear in the late 1960s. They more striking in the presidential election of 1988. demands from it. The final symptom that was the campaign of Jesse Jackson ТО П Democratic president in 1984 campaign for the presidential nomination by a black capitalist party in history.
The Democratic consensus is now disintegrating in three basic directions. • The first, US capital, is so called 'neo-liberalism' 'neo' because it is not liberal at all, promises no concessions to the working al C class or oppressed, and wraps rhetoric in few individual issues with acceptance the basic economic policies of Reagan.
• The second is the attempt to forge a closer will bureaucracy around a chauvinst platform of protection of US industry. This is the policy advocated at this election by Gephardt — but it is not a policy, at least at present, acceptable to the US ruling class. the • The third current is that of Jackson - wiict carlol will Given that no serious current in the Democratic Party is capable of gaining a majority will nominate Dukakis, for president almost equally certainly be defeated by bush. Inal will make lve wellocram losses in presidential elections out six.
The travails of Gephardt, Dukakis et al need not detain us, significant development in the election is Jesse Jackson. of had an impact in US politics far greater than any impression given in the British Dress. Here Jackson is presented as the 'black candidate. But the truth is that major much deeper than previously into the white population and the white working class.
In 'the whitest states in the union, nomination the first major candidate in a US that most clearly tied to aristocracy population, day', almost certainly nonentity, Michael who will , but the really Americans.
states Fi has beer eating Jackson neapolis. In Iowa, heartland of the midwest, and a state with a negligible Black Jackson quadrupled his 1984 level of support. On 'Super Tues in 21 primaries and caucuses, Jackson won a stunning victory - with 31 per cent of the VULC beating his closest competitor, Michael Dukakis, by almost five percentage points. Ever in the South it is estimated that 10 per cent of white voters supported Jackson.
Racism All this is on top of the overwhelming support Jackson has among Black He received over 90 per cent of the Black vote. For a Black candidate to win the Democratic primaries such Mississippi Alabama is to indicate that a political revolution has taken place in the United States in the last thirtv vears. But int fact that Jackson's support is also cựtling into ine wnile workig class lil dicates a still deeper political process — particularly in a society which is one of the most racist in the world.
gaining support by presenting politics far to the left of any other Democrat. His rhetoric is that 'economic violence is the critical issue of the day, and that "beyond social justice is the quest for economic justice He argues for black emthrough local control of government and the community and for a woman's right to choose Jackson gives particular emphasis to foreign policy. The 'Jackson Doc.