The Shape of US
Populism
By
Henry C.K. Liu
Part I: Legacy of
Free Market Capitalism
Part II: Long-term
Effects of the Civil War
Part III: The
Progressive Era
This article appeared in AToL
on March 27, 2008
The United
States
entered the twentieth century with impressive concrete achievements in
political and economic reform derived from the ideological ferment of
the final
two decades of the nineteenth century. Still it has failed to this day
to
address, much less resolve, several of the fundamental contradiction
and
problems that had plagued the young nation from the very beginning.
The Civil War brought about the abolition
of
slavery
but
racial discrimination has continued unabated in US
society and politics, keeping the nation divided along race lines,
largely into
two separate economies, two segregated societies and two antagonistic
political
cultures. Most equal opportunity among the races has been in the form
of
tokenism. Among those denied equal opportunity because of their race,
the
common complaint about tokenism is that the mainstream only lets in
people who
look like us, but not those who think like us.
The Race
Issue
The race issue is now threatening to
torpedo the
near
certain nomination of Barack Obama, born in the US
of an African father and a white American mother, as Democratic
candidate in
the 2008 presidential campaign. The controversy on the seemingly
shocking rhetoric
of Reverent Jeremiah Wright, long-time mentor of a young Obama, and
recently
retired pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, shows
not the
pastor’s views as extremist as much as how clueless the white
mainstream is
about the centuries-long anger and frustration the majority of its
black
brethrens are still laboring under. Wright
is not anti-US nor is he against what
the nation’s ideals stand
for; he is condemning those policies and practices that the US
government and society have regularly forced on African American
citizens in
violation of the moral ideals of the nation. Can any self-respecting
American
do less?
The mainstream US press has focused,
sensationally
and out
of context, on Rev. Wright “God damn America”
sermon. Readers can judge for themselves what Wright actually said:
“The
[US]
government gives them [African Americans] the drugs, builds bigger
prisons [to
incarcerate African Americans], passes a three-strike law [against
African
Americans] and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America,
that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people...God damn America
for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America
for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
The test is less about Obama as a viable bi-racial candidate
for president for being partially a product of the black political
culture as
much as about whether the United States
can finally fulfill the national pledge of allegiance required of every
grade
school children of “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice
for all.” The test is whether the US can accept Obama as president without molding him as
another empty token of racial harmony.
There is no need for
Obama to deny reality or to reject justifiable black rage against
racial
injustice. Obama’s message of moving on towards a coming together of
all races
is right on. The issue of racial and religious harmony is of critical
geopolitical importance because the president of the United
States is also a world leader in a
world
where over 70% of the population is non-white and 65% non-Christian.
The Economic Issue
The Civil War also
destroyed agrarianism to firmly establish
Federalism with policies that support economic centralization at the
expense of
economic democracy. By the end of the nineteenth century, populism had
been
co-opted into the two-party political system as progressive factions in
both
major parties. The subsequent period is known in history as the
Progressive Era
led by Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson in
national
politics, three leaders of distinctly different ideologies.
can accept Obama as president without molding him as another empty
token of
racial harmony.
Continuing the populist movement, early
twentieth-century
progressive reformers campaigned against what they viewed as two
related prime
evils: growth of political corruption and the disturbing trend of
government on
all levels to grant, in the name of the national interest, special
privileges
and protection to organized wealth at the expense of popular wealth.
Progressives professed a populist faith in the wisdom of the common
people and
insisted that good government must safeguard the common interest of all
in the
nation and respond to the voices of the common people. They worked to
eliminate
the control of government by political bosses and machines that were in
the
employ of narrow special interests, and to re-impose high standards of
integrity and honesty along with transparency and accountability to
make
holders of public office more responsive to the general electorate.
Specifically, progressives were alarmed by
the
unhampered
growth of monopolies that routinely resorted to unjust exploitation of
farmers
and workers. They wanted government to promote the general welfare of
all the
people and to protect small businesses from predatory assault by big
business.
Progressivism Then
and Now
A century later, progressives in 2008
stand for practically
all the same reform objectives as their comrades in 1908, even as the
specifics
and context have changed with time.
Progressives in 1908 were conservative
reformers rather than
revolutionaries. They wanted to restore to the nation the early
founding ideals
of democratic government, individual liberty, the rule of law, and the
protection of private property rights from predatory invasion by big
business
and big finance. What progressives
wanted was a new set of legislative mandates and regulatory tools
needed to
preserve these founding national ideals that had been increasingly
corrupted by
arrogant big business and big finance mentality in the industrial age. In other words, they wanted socio-political
progress to keep pace with techno-economic progress.
Progressives in 1908 did not merely want a
rich economy at
any cost; they wanted a rich economy not exclusively benefiting the
rich elite
and created not by making the majority poor, but by preserving fair
economic
equity among all the people to share fairly the fruits of progress.
They did
not merely want a strong nation; they wanted a strong nation the
security of
which did not depend on an outsized military; but on being a “shining
city upon
a hill,” an early self-image increasingly receding from reality a
century after
the nation’s founding.
The Shining City Upon
a Hill
“The shining city upon a hill” was an image
first invoked decades
before the birth of the United States by John Winthrop (1587-1649), who
was
elected 12 times as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of
Britain, to
guide his new Pilgrim homeland as a communal, non-capitalistic society,
drawing
from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus had addressed a large
crowd:
“You
are the light of the world. A city
set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a
bushel,
but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light
so shine
before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your
Father who
is in heaven.” (The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:14-16)
Echoing previous references by Democratic president-elect
John F. Kennedy in 1961 and unsuccessful Democratic presidential
candidate
Walter Mondale in 1984, Republican president Ronald Reagan invoked Winthrop’s
image in his farewell speech to the nation on January 11, 1989:
“The
past few days when I’ve been at
that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the “shining city upon a
hill.” The
phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America
he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early
Pilgrim, an
early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little
wooden
boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would
be
free.”
Continuing with his sugarcoated Disneyland
version of history, Reagan continued:
“I've
spoken of the shining city all my
political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I
saw when I
said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks
stronger than
oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds
living in
harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and
creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and
the
doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.
That’s how I
saw it and see it still.”
The open doors to the shining city on the hill Reagan had in
mind were meant for Soviet dissidents in the context of the Cold War.
Pathetically, the current battle cry on the war against “illegal”
immigrants by
Reaganites is to close all the doors of the wall of the shining city
upon a
hill. The doors are closed for all practical purposes even for legal
immigrants
who routinely have to wait several years to get naturalized because of
a large
bureaucratic backlog. Multinational corporations are complaining that
they have
to relocate high-paying jobs overseas to skirt US
immigration restriction on highly skill foreign workers.
The Freedom Myth
Reagan’s “early freedom man” Winthrop, who
incidentally was
a British colonial and not a US citizen since he died 172 years before
the
founding of the United States in 1776, and who, because of his long
tenure as
governor of the colony, began to assume the undemocratic role of a
feudal lord,
did not have much good to say about democracy and much less about
liberty. Winthrop
saw to the hanging of Mary Latham and James Britton in 1644, both found
in
adultery, notwithstanding that he also admitted to an illicit encounter
with a
Native American woman at an abandoned settlement not far from his home.
Many
volunteers searched for him all night during his unexplained
disappearance
fearing for the worst, only to find him the next morning not far from
home with
a fantastic story to excuse his awkward absence from home and family.
New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who brought
about much
progressive reform on Wall Street to protect small investors, and in
the
process created more enemies in big finance than he could handle, did
not
manage to command the same moralistic elasticity four and a half
centuries
later on a similar matter of personal transgression, even though the
rest of
the world have moved far beyond Puritan morality.
Winthrop, like
his Puritan brethren, strove to establish a Christian community that
held rigid
uniform doctrinal beliefs that brooked zero tolerance for dissidents,
leading
to his presiding in 1638 over the heresy trial and subsequent
banishment of
Anne Hutchinson from the colony.
On liberty Winthrop
wrote: “There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is
now
corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts
and other
creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath
liberty
to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This
liberty
is incompatible and inconsistent with authority and cannot endure the
least
restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of
this
liberty makes men grow more evil and in time to be worse than brute
beasts: omnes
sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and
peace,
that wild beast, which all of the ordinances of God are bent against,
to
restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or
federal; it
may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and
man, in
the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men
themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority and
cannot
subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good,
just, and
honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of
your
goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not
authority but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and
exercised in
a way of subjection to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty
wherewith
Christ hath made us free.”
Under Winthrop’s
moral liberty, God help those who think, let alone act, independently
of
authority. The term "Puritan" first began as a taunt or insult
applied by traditional Anglicans to those who criticized or wished to
"purify" the Church of England. “Puritan” refers to two distinct
groups: “separating” Puritans, such as the Plymouth colonists, who
believed
that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must
separate
themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans, such as the colonists
who
settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform but not
separation
and wished to reform the established church, largely Congregationalists
who
believed in forming churches through voluntary compacts. The idea
of
compacts or covenant was central to the Puritan conception of social,
political, and religious organizations. Belief in
predestination differentiates Puritans from other Christians.
Salvation is determined by
God’s sovereignty, including choosing those who will be saved and those
who
will receive God’s irresistible grace.
As such, Winthrop
also subscribed to the belief that the native peoples who lived in the
hinterlands around the colony had been struck down by God, who sent
disease
among them because of their non-Christian beliefs:
“But
for the natives in these parts,
God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of
them are
swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath
thereby
cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being
in all
not 50, have put themselves under our protection.”
God Clearing Our
Title to this Land
Notwithstanding Winthrop’s dubious claim of
“God clearing
our title to this land”, which made a farce of the principle of private
property rights, particularly when such clearing had been accomplished
by biological
terrorism, the historical fact was that smallpox was spread to Native
Americans
by the biological terrorism practiced by Lord Jeffrey Amherst,
commanding
general of British forces in North America during the final battles of
the
so-called French & Indian war (1754-1763).
Amherst
distributed smallpox-infected blankets as instruments of germ warfare
against
Native Americans, as reported in Carl Waldman’s Atlas of
the North American Indian. Waldman writes, in reference to
a siege of Fort Pitt
(Pittsburgh) by Chief
Pontiac's
forces during the summer of 1763:
“...
Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought
time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the
Indians
surrounding the fort -- an early example of biological warfare -- which
started
an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a
letter
to Ecuyer.” [p. 108]
As president, Reagan’s official attitude on HIV/AIDS as
God’s punishment for homosexuals did much to forestall effective early
prevention of a global epidemic. Political support for Reagan
came primarily from the newly-organized religious right as represented
by the
Moral Majority, a right-wing political-action group founded by the
Reverent
Jerry Falwell who proclaimed with religious authority: “AIDS is the
wrath of
God upon homosexuals.” Reagan’s communications director Pat Buchanan
echoed
that AIDS is “nature’s revenge on gay men.” AIDS became the convenient
weapon
and gay men the easy target, for the Reagan era politics of fear, hate
and
discrimination that carried on the “shining city on the hill” tradition
of John
Winthrop. In reality, socio-medical data show that innocent African
American
women, not sinful gay men, are the largest AIDS-infected group. Over 57%
of all infected children were black in a population in which blacks
constitute
only 13%.
Taxes and War
Reagan also said in his farewell speech:
“Common sense told
us that when you put a big tax on something, the people will produce
less of
it.”
By this simplistic logic, there should be a
big tax on war
to produce less war and more peace. Yet, instead of a big tax on war,
the
Reagan administration provided a big subsidy for foreign wars,
producing the
largest national debt in history by big spending on offensive arms. The
financial statistics of war in the US
economy show definitively that war has been highly profitable for big
business
as most war purchases are directed towards the private sector. The
current
concern about the two foreign wars draining funds from domestic needs
is part
of the revived wave of populism. War spending is a big factor in the
strong
corporate earnings that silly pundits continue to refer to as sign of
fundamental strength in the economy in the face of a total collapse of
the
financial sector.
The moral imperialism of US
foreign policy is based not on what Reagan believed is “a tall proud
city built
on rocks stronger than oceans” but on an illusionary fantasy built on
the quick
sand of self indulging morality. As a nation, the US
is probably not better or worse morally than other nations. What makes
the US
dangerous as the world’s sole remaining superpower is its
transformational
foreign policy to “enlarge democracy” based on an unjustified
self-image of
self-righteous moral superiority. God may be on the side of the US,
but facts are not.
Teddy Roosevelt – the
First Progressive President
With the assassination of President McKinley
in 1901,
Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the
Nation’s
history and served two terms until 1909. Roosevelt
reversed the pro-big-business polices of McKinley with progressive
policies. The official White House
biography of Roosevelt read:
“He
brought new excitement and power to
the Presidency, as he vigorously led Congress and the American public
toward
progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy. He
took the view that the President as a
‘steward of the people’ should take whatever action necessary for the
public
good unless expressly forbidden by law or the Constitution. … As
President, Roosevelt
held the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the
conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital
and
labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none. Roosevelt
emerged spectacularly as a "trust buster" by forcing the dissolution
of a great railroad combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust suits
under
the Sherman Act followed. Roosevelt steered the
United States
more actively into world politics. He
liked to quote a favorite proverb, ‘Speak softly and carry a big
stick.’ Aware
of the strategic need for a shortcut between the Atlantic
and Pacific, Roosevelt ensured the construction
of the Panama Canal. His corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine prevented the
establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean
and
arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America
to the United States.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War,
reached a
Gentleman's Agreement on immigration with Japan,
and sent the Great White Fleet on a goodwill tour of the world. Some of
Theodore Roosevelt’s most effective achievements were in conservation.
He added
enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for
public use,
and fostered great irrigation projects.”
Roosevelt was followed as president
by William Howard Taft. According to official White House biography:
“[Taft]
was caught in the intense
battles between Progressives and conservatives. … He pledged his
loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in
the West, while his
brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan,
running
on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was
having to
oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern
conservative
Taft. Progressives were pleased with Taft’s election. ‘Roosevelt
has cut enough hay,’ they said; ‘Taft is the man to put it into the
barn.’
Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt--the ‘mad messiah.’
Taft
recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his
predecessor.
Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the
stretching
of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt
‘ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same
ends.’
Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the
Progressive Party,
by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high
tariff
rates. … In 1912, when the Republicans re-nominated Taft, Roosevel
bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the
election of
Woodrow Wilson.”
Notwithstanding the co-optation of populism into the
progressive wings of the two-party system, the presidential
election of 1912 was contested by three major
candidates, two of whom had previously won election to the highest
office of
the land.
Incumbent Republican President William Howard
Taft was
re-nominated with the support of the conservative wing of the party.
Frustrated, former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, supported
by the
populist faction, formed a new Progressive Party (nicknamed the “Bull
Moose
Party”, a name derived from his response to press question about his
health
that he was “as fit as a bull moose”.
Woodrow Wilson –
Populist Democrat
Democrat Woodrow Wilson was nominated only on
the 46th
ballot of a contentious convention, helped finally by the support of
populist
William Jennings Bryan and the delegates Bryan
controlled. In the election Wilson
won a large majority of electoral votes with only 42% of the popular
vote and
became the only Democrat in the White House over a period of four
decades from
1892 to 1932, and only the third Democrats to be elected President
since 1856.
Progressive Party candidate Roosevelt won
27.4% of the
popular vote with 88 electoral votes, drawing votes mostly from Taft,
thus
spoiling the conservative Republican plans to stay in the White House
for
another term. After Roosevelt in 1912, no other
third-party candidate again came in second in the Electoral College,
though
several had become spoilers to derail major party plans to gain the
White
House. In 1916, Roosevelt won as the Republican
candidate. In 1924, Robert M. La Follette ran as candidate for the
Progressive
Party and won 16.6% of the popular vote with 13 electoral votes. Since
1924,
only three third-party candidate manage to get more than the average
5.6% of
the popular vote received by third-party candidates: George Wallace in
1968
winning 13.5% of the popular vote with 46 electoral votes; John B.
Anderson in
1980 winning 6.6% of the popular vote with no electoral votes; and H.
Ross
Perot winning 18.9% of the popular vote with no electoral votes and
Perot again
in 1996 winning 8.4% of the popular vote with no electoral votes.
The Populism of the 1912
Democratic Platform
The 1912 Democratic platform, heavily
influenced by Southern
populists, and repeating the demands of the 1908 platform, declared
“it to be a
fundamental principle of the Democratic Party that the Federal
government,
under the Constitution, has no right or power to impose or collect
tariff
duties, except for the purpose of revenue, and we demand that the
collection of
such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of government honestly
and
economically administered. The high Republican tariff is the principal
cause of
the unequal distribution of wealth; it is a system of taxation which
makes the
rich richer and the poor poorer; under its operations the American
farmer and
laboring man are the chief sufferers; it raises the cost of the
necessaries of
life to them, but does not protect their product or wages. The farmer
sells
largely in free markets and buys almost entirely in the protected
markets. In
the most highly protected industries, such as cotton and wool, steel
and iron,
the wages of the laborers are the lowest paid in any of our industries.
We
denounce the Republican pretence on that subject and assert that
American wages
are established by competitive conditions, and not by the tariff.”
Free Trade and
Populism
A century later, on the issue of free trade, US
populism in 2008 takes the opposite from the anti-tariff position of
populism
in 1908 that crystallized in the 1912 Democratic platform. This is
because US
farmers in 1908 were disadvantaged by having to sell their produce in
free
market and to buy their needs in protected markets, as agricultural
land by
nature could not be moved overseas. In contrast, US workers in 2008
find
domestic markets for their labor declining as corporations move their
factories
overseas to capture low wage advantages. As the US became a global
industrial
and financial superpower after the Cold War, big business no longer
needs
protected markets at home, but instead wants to keep the home market
open in
order to convince other nations to reciprocate with open markets
promoted by
neoliberal globalization propaganda, while US workers finally wake up
to the
need for protective tariffs to prevent cross-border wage arbitrage by
US-based
transnational corporations.
The fact remains that weak economies around
the world now
are not acting in their national interest by adopting US promoted
globalized
free trade, anymore than the US
in 1908 would be if it had adopted British promoted globalized free
trade. The
high tariff advocates of 1908 served the US
national interest in their effort to protect underdeveloped US industries, while populist
opposition to high tariff was based on
narrow
sectional interest.
What made high
tariff a target of the populists was the unwillingness of the Northern
financiers and big-business leaders to share equitably the benefits of
protectionism with the agricultural South.
Populism today remains a power struggle
between the
financial elite and the common people, only the battle ground has
shifted 180
degrees between 1908 and 2008 due to the rise of the US
as the world’s sole economic superpower. Populists in 2008 do not
oppose free
trade as such; they oppose the unfair terms of so-called free trade
that
unjustly exploit the working poor of not just the US
but of the whole world.
Such unfair terms of trade cannot be corrected
by
re-imposing high tariffs. They can only be corrected by the adoption of
a new
international finance architecture to eliminate dollar hegemony which
forces
weak economies to seek export-led growth at the expense of domestic
development; and to adopt global labor standards that aim at equalizing
wages
to make cross-border wage arbitrage unprofitable, not by pushing down
wages
everywhere, but by pushing wages up in the new exporting economies.
Further,
free international movement of capital must be accompanied by free
international movement of labor. Until then, free trade is just another
name
for economic imperialism that exploits working people everywhere for
high
corporate profits.
The 1912 Democratic platform also decried the
high cost of
living as a serious problem in every American home caused by the
Republican
protective tariff and “from trusts and commercial conspiracies fostered
and
encouraged by such laws” and asserted that “no substantial relief can
be
secured for the people until import duties on the necessaries of life
are
materially reduced and these criminal conspiracies broken up.” The rise of cost of living in 2009 comes not
from high tariffs, but from high corporate profits derived from low
wages that
failed to keep pace with inflation.
Against Monopolies
The 1912 Democratic platform asserted that “a
private
monopoly is indefensible and intolerable” and called for “vigorous
enforcement
of the criminal as well as the civil law against trusts and trust
officials”
and demanded “the enactment of such additional legislation as may be
necessary to
make it impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United
States.” Until the collapse of the
debt
market in August 2007, easy and low-cost credit was the force behind
the
mergers and acquisition mania in the corporate world that inevitably
led to layoffs
of thousands of workers to produce the needed profit margin to repay
the
leveraged buyout loans.
The 1912 Democratic platform declared its
support for the
declaration by anti-trust laws upon which corporations shall be
permitted to
engage in interstate trade, including, among others, the prevention of
holding
companies, of interlocking directors, of stock watering, of
discrimination in
price, and the control by any one corporation of so large a proportion
of any
industry as to make it a menace to competitive conditions.” In 2008,
Anti-trust
is in a sham. Every sector of the economy is now dominated by less the
five,
frequently only three major corporate players.
The 1912 Democratic platform condemned “the
action of the
Republican administration in compromising with the Standard Oil Company
and the
tobacco trust and its failure to invoke the criminal provisions of the
anti-trust law against the officers of those corporations after the
court had
declared that from the undisputed facts in the record they had violated
the
criminal provisions of the law.” In 1980, oil companies have been
re-merging
into giant corporations to “improve efficiency.”
The 1912 Democratic platform expressed “regret
that the Sherman
anti-trust law has received a judicial construction depriving it of
much of its
efficiency and we favor the enactment of legislation which will restore
to the
statute the strength of which it has been deprived by such
interpretation.” The
current Supreme Court cannot be described as a liberal court by any
stretch of
imagination.
On the issue of anti-trust, there is little progress between
1908 and 2008. The progress made during the Progressive Era and the New
Deal
Era has since been erased by neoliberal market fundamentalism of the
past two
decades. Corporate monopolistic gigantism is now controlling the US
economy to an extent comparable to the age of robber barons.
Government Protection
of the People from Injustice
The 1912 Democratic platform insisted “upon
the full
exercise of all the powers of the Government, both State and national,
to
protect the people from injustice at the hands of those who seek to
make the
government a private asset in business.” The
populist tone of the 2008 presidential
campaign seems to echo the
1812 Democratic platform.
Income Tax and
Popular Election of Senators
The 1912 Democratic platform called
authorizing an income
tax, and the Constitution amendment providing for the popular election
of
senators, legislation in each State which will permit the expression of
the
preference of the electors for national candidates at presidential
primaries,
the enactment of a law prohibiting any corporation from contributing to
a
campaign fund and any individual from contributing any amount above a
reasonable maximum. These demands have since been realized by the Wilson
administration. Yet the progressivity of the income tax has been
diluted by all
Republican administrations since.
Railroads, Express
Companies, Telegraph and Telephone Lines
The 1912 Democratic platform called for “the
efficient
supervision and rate regulation of railroads, express companies,
telegraph and
telephone lines engaged in interstate commerce. To this end we
recommend the
valuation of railroads, express companies, telegraph and telephone
lines by the
Interstate Commerce Commission, such valuation to take into
consideration the
physical value of the property, the original cost, the cost of
reproduction,
and any element of value that will render the valuation fair and
just.”
The 1912 Democratic platform called for “such
legislation as
will effectually prohibit the railroads, express, telegraph and
telephone
companies from engaging in business which brings them into competition
with
their shippers or patrons; also legislation preventing the overissue of
stocks
and bonds by interstate railroads, express companies, telegraph and
telephone
lines, and legislation which will assure such reduction in
transportation rates
as conditions will permit, care being taken to avoid reduction that
would
compel a reduction of wages, prevent adequate service, or do injustice
to
legitimate investments.”
Banking Legislation
The 1912 Democratic platform opposed “the
so-called Aldrich
bill or the establishment of a central bank; and we believe our country
will be
largely freed from panics and consequent unemployment and business
depression
by such a systematic revision of our banking laws as will render
temporary
relief in localities where such relief is needed, with protection from
control
of dominion by what is known as the money trust.”
The platform further stated that “Banks exist
for the
accommodation of the public, and not for the control of business. All
legislation on the subject of banking and currency should have for its
purpose
the securing of these accommodations on terms of absolute security to
the
public and of complete protection from the misuse of the power that
wealth
gives to those who possess it.”
The 1912 Democratic platform condemned “the present methods
of depositing government funds in a few favored banks, largely situated
in or
controlled by Wall Street, in return for political favors, and we
pledge our
party to provide by law for their deposit by competitive bidding in the
banking
institutions of the country, national and State, without discrimination
as to
locality, upon approved securities and subject to call by the
Government.”
Progressive opposition to central banking has
been
vindicated by the recurrence of financial crises over the 85 years of
Fed
history. The 1912 Democratic platform was prescient in that the central
banks
can be counted on to fund debt bubbles but cannot be counted on to
deliver
price stability. The debt bubble of the 1990’s and the subsequent
collapse of
the debt market in 2007 can be traced directly to the door of Federal
Reserve under
the 19-year-long chairmanship of Alan Greenspan.
Next: A
Panick-Striken Federal
Reserve |
