Table Of ContentSERVES THE RICH
World View Forum New York
Market Elections:
How Democracy Serves the Rich
Copyright © January 2000
World View Forum
ISBN 978-0-89567-201-8
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chapter within “fair-use” guidelines may be used without permission.
Edited by Deirdre Griswold
Cover design by Lal Roohk
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99—05 3590
Market Elections Table of Contents
EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE 2000 EDITION
Part I: From Washington to Coolidge
CHAPTER 1
Some notes on U.S. presidents
CHAPTER 2
A visit to Tammany Hall
CHAPTER 3
1828 The Jackson Democrats
CHAPTER 4
The Whigs and U.S. industry
CHAPTER 5
1864 War Democrats & Copperheads
CHAPTER 6
After Civil War, uncivil peace
CHAPTER 7
1876-1877 The great betrayal
CHAPTER 8
1876 Reform and reaction
CHAPTER 9
1884 Democrats return to office
CHAPTER 10
Monopolists take government
CHAPTER 11
1889 Blaine points imperialism south
CHAPTER 12
1896 The new parties
CHAPTER 13
The farmer-labor upsurge
CHAPTER 14
1896 Bryan Democrats rebel
CHAPTER 15
1896 The power behind McKinley
CHAPTER 16
1898 The Spanish-American War
CHAPTER 17
Imperialism grows at a gallop
CHAPTER 18
1900 Guns and butter
CHAPTER 19
1900 Mr. Imperialism
CHAPTER 20
Teddy Roosevelt and Wall Street
CHAPTER 21
1904 Aim at barn, hit bull’s eye
CHAPTER 22
1908 A new king-maker chooses Taft
CHAPTER 23
1912 The parties in disarray
CHAPTER 24
1912 The Wilsonian answer
CHAPTER 25
1912 Democrats on the 'right' track
CHAPTER 26
1912 King-makers, God and Wilson
CHAPTER 27
1912 Wilson as reformer
CHAPTER 28
The preparedness hoax
CHAPTER 29
1916 'He kept us out of war’
CHAPTER 30
The 'war to end war’
CHAPTER 31
The secretaries of state and defense
CHAPTER 32
1920 Harvey grooms Harding
Endnotes for Part I
Part II: Rigged Elections,1876 to 1976
CHAPTER 33
Why only 1876 to 1976?
CHAPTER 34
1876 Stuffing ballots, smothering Black freedom
CHAPTER 35
1880 God and Garfield
CHAPTER 36
1884 Grover Cleveland, the honest hangman
CHAPTER 37
1888 Benjamin Harrison, dark horse with a grandfather
CHAPTER 38
1892 The people begin to revolt
CHAPTER 39
1896 Whirlwinds of danger
CHAPTER 40
1900 Theodore Roosevelt, the not-so-accidental president
CHAPTER 41
1904 Trusts reelect 'trust buster'
CHAPTER 42
The undemocratic primaries
CHAPTER 43
1908 William Howard Taft
CHAPTER 44
1912 The three-ring circus
CHAPTER 45
1916 'He kept us out of war’
CHAPTER 46
1920 Harding, the senator who was discreet
CHAPTER 47
Debs and the Socialists
CHAPTER 48
1924 The Morgans run against themselves
CHAPTER 49
1928 'Who but Hoover?'
CHAPTER 50
1932 Depression and the rise of FDR
CHAPTER 51
1936 A semi-Bonapartist beats the bankers
CHAPTER 52
1940 War and the third term
CHAPTER 53
1944 Fourth term in a bonanza year
CHAPTER 54
1948 Time and Chase Manhattan get a surprise
CHAPTER 55
1948 Henry Wallace and the third Progressive Party
CHAPTER 56
1952 A scholar and a soldier
CHAPTER 57
1956 Affable general vs. would-be statesman (Round Two)
CHAPTER 58
1960 The last 'normal' election
CHAPTER 59
1964 The peculiar split
CHAPTER 60
1968 Another election by assassination
CHAPTER 61
1972 When Watergate wasn’t noticed
CHAPTER 62
1973 Nobody investigated the Watergate investigators
CHAPTER 63
1974 Not an election but a cold coup d’état
CHAPTER 64
1976 Reagan vs. Ford in the party of Lincoln
CHAPTER 65
Shedding a tear for Humphrey
Endnotes for Part II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE 2000 EDITION
How can democracy be at the service of the rich? Doesn’t the very word mean government by the people? This is certainly what we are all
taught in school. And yet the political system of the United States, which boasts of being the most democratic in the world, coexists quite
comfortably with the most undemocratic economic structure, in which a smaller and smaller group of millionaires and billionaires owns and
controls more wealth than the vast majority at the other end of the social spectrum.
Anyone who thinks must be struck by this seeming contradiction. But a closer look at how the U.S. electoral system has functioned over
the last two centuries shows that in fact there is no contradiction. The kind of democracy that exists here has been very well suited for
perpetuating the rule of a privileged few while giving the appearance of being at the service of all the people.
The word “democracy” in the title of this book refers to the kind of political system prevalent in much of the capitalist world today. It is what
the boosters of the United States in particular mean when they couple “democracy” with the “free market.” Together they stand for a form of
government that is as much for sale as the commodities around which economic life is centered.
As this book is being published, another of the quadrennial presidential elections is getting underway in the United States. Already, a year
before the voting, the tens of millions of dollars raised by the candidates from their moneyed backers make the earlier war chests described
in Market Elections seem like chump change.
As venal as this democracy may be, however, the process whereby the wealthy capture the votes of the many is not simple. History can
never be scripted, and life is full of surprises. While Vince Copeland shows that the candidates with the most money behind them usually
win, he also shows that there are exceptions to that rule. Mass struggles will impact on elections, even though these struggles are usually
resolved through other means.
The struggle over slavery, for example, was reflected in the electoral process for many decades. Both the Democratic and Republican
parties split and split again over the issue. It was resolved, however, not at the ballot box but in a bloody civil war. And even after that war
ended, the struggle over whether the Black people would win full democratic rights, and control the land that their labor had made bountiful,
continued to reverberate in the elections. But it was resolved by the back room acquiescence of the Northern money power to Klan terror.
Copeland’s book never loses sight of such broad historic trends, but it also gives due space to the quirks and oddities – some comic, some
puzzling – of those who enter the political arena, and how that may impact on events.
When meteorologists try to analyze a complex weather system, they need to know more than the prevailing wind and water currents. The
relatively small eddies and irregularities on the surface of the globe can produce significant storms. And while it takes no specialized
knowledge to predict that winter will be colder than summer, your local forecaster needs much, much more information in order to tell people
whether or not to carry an umbrella tomorrow.
So it is with politics. It is essential to keep the basics in mind at all times, and Copeland does that. Political movements are not just the
inspiration or playthings of individuals, but arise out of the struggle of classes over the basic necessities of life. But this struggle is full of
twists and turns, alliances are made and broken, and some leaders carry out the tasks assigned to them better than others. The interplay of
these two factors, the necessary and the accidental, is what makes this book as delightful as it is instructive.
The chapters herein first appeared in article form in Workers World newspaper. They come from two different series Vince Copeland wrote
about U.S. presidential elections. One series was written in 1976, the other in 1992-93.
The series that appears here as Part 1, “From Washington to Coolidge,” was written during and after the Clinton-Bush race of 1992. Its
story begins right after the victory of the colonists’ revolution against England, even though no real presidential elections were held for many
years in the original thirteen states. However, Copeland has much to say about those early political developments out of which grew the two
major capitalist parties with which we are so familiar.
Copeland intended to bring this narrative up to date. Had he been able to do so, that series of articles would have sufficed for this book. But
cancer and other illnesses cut his life short before he could finish. The last episode, which appeared in the Workers World of April 8, 1993,
was about the 1920 election of Warren G. Harding. Copeland died two months after its publication, on June 7, 1993.
It had been an enormous exertion of will for him to sit at the computer, his back bent with osteoporosis, his abdomen and chest
crisscrossed with scar tissue from several heart and colon operations. Just picking up the many books he made reference to was an effort.
You might expect to find at least a whisper of pain or pessimism in the tone he took to his material.
But there is nothing of the kind. The last chapter he wrote, on Harding, is almost light-hearted, if such a dull subject could ever lend itself to
levity. Copeland showed how this ho-hum politician had made it to the top because of the behind-the-scenes work of a Wall Street power
broker and “king maker.” Copeland let us know what the ruling class really thought of Harding – Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s famous
judgment that he wasn’t a bad man, “just a slob” – but he didn’t leave it at that. Because as interesting (or ludicrous) as the personalities
may be that march through this story every four years, their importance lay in their ability to employ politics – the art of deceiving the
masses – in the service of those who really put them in office.
But isn’t that the voters? Aren’t they responsible for which characters get elected and which don’t? Yes, the attitudes and moods of the
voters do have to be taken into account by the political parties in a capitalist democracy, but there are a million ways to manipulate that and,
ultimately, frustrate what the people really want.
We think the reader will agree that Vince Copeland’s writing makes history, with all its wrinkles and little and big ironies, come alive. And
that, while having a keen eye for personal foibles, villainies, and tragedy, he used them to illuminate the broader social and class struggles
that are engaged in every day by the millions, who are rarely in the spotlight.
Vince Copeland’s deep interest in politics and the class struggle was not a bit academic. He spent many years as a militant trade unionist in
Buffalo, New York. A welder at the big Bethlehem Steel plant in the gritty “suburb” of Lackawanna, he helped forge a caucus of Black and
white workers who successfully struggled against de facto segregation in hiring for the different departments of the plant. He vividly
described the conditions there in his pamphlet The Blast Furnace Brothers.
Vince edited the newspaper of his local of the Steelworkers Union, using it as a central organizing tool for the great steel strike of 1946.
That strike was a real battle of the classes at a time of great labor militancy. Spurred on by what became a daily paper during the strike, the
Bethlehem workers organized disciplined squads to turn back the company stooges and scabs who were threatening their jobs. Black and
white workers fought together.
In 1950 Copeland was fired from Bethlehem after leading a wildcat strike. Eighteen thousand Steelworkers walked out of the blast furnaces,
open hearths, coke ovens, and rolling mills to try and force the company to take him back. The newspapers were full of attacks on this
dangerous radical. It was the beginning of the witch-hunt period and the Korean War; despite passionate support from his fellow workers,
the firing stuck.
In 1959 Copeland became editor of Workers World newspaper, and co-founded the party of the same name with Sam Marcy and Dorothy
Ballan. He remained a leading light in the organization until his death.
Vince Copeland loved the good fight. He didn’t just analyze the U.S. political system and its presidents – he fought the system they chose
to serve. It would have been an insult to his memory to put out a book that ended with the bland presidency of Warren Harding.
Fortunately, he had written another series about presidential contests, this one entitled “Rigged Elections – 1876 to 1976.” It makes up Part
2 of the present book and overlaps the historical period covered in Part 1 by about forty-five years – 1876 to 1920. So there is some
redundancy in the cast of characters and events described here. Yet it is remarkable how much different material he employed and how
many new points he made when he took a second go-round at writing on the same general subject.
For that reason, and to maintain the historical threads followed in each series, both sets of articles are presented here in their entirety
without cutting.
– Deirdre Griswold, November, 1999
ALSO BY VINCE COPELAND
Expanding Empire (Workers World Press, 1968)
The Crime of Martin Sostre (McGraw-Hill, 1970)
The Blast Furnace Brothers (Center for United Labor Action, 1973)
Southern Populism and Black Labor (World View Publishers, 1973)
A Voice from Harper’s Ferry (World View Publishers, 1974)
The Built–in US. War Drive (World View Publishers, 1980)
