Running Commentary: Hart Attack (1984)

The Running Commentary from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hart Attack

Senator Gary Hart's primary campaign is looking rather like an old Mickey Rooney movie, with its message that money doesn't matter and that what does matter is being young, honest, humane . . .

Hart claims to bring the very stuff of youth—freshness, vitality, courage—to the election and he is not too abashed to admit that, compared to the overflowing coffers of Walter Mondale, his is an impecunious campaign. If the early primary results are any guide, workers all over America may be about to fall for this, and perhaps in November make a choice between Hart and the wrinkled, somnolent Reagan.

Of course we have seen this all before, many times and in many countries. It is very often a profitable political tactic, to promote a candidate on personal characteristics which mark them out from the person they are to challenge and to assert that these characteristics are a virtue in themselves. Thus the ageing, aristocratic land owner Douglas-Home was challenged by young, ex-grammar schoolboy Wilson. After Eisenhower, Kennedy was able to make his promise to "get America moving again" sound like a battle hymn of American youth. And what myths have been fashioned, and have lived on, about Kennedy's time in office.

It is to be expected that Hart should be compared with Kennedy; he is not the first American politician to try to gain from those myths. But workers who are seduced by such propaganda might take pause to recall what happened to Kennedy, and to Wilson, when the realities of capitalism overcame their posturing. They might remember how the ambitions turned sour, the promises were forgotten, the wizard was exposed as a tawdry trickster.

There is no reason to believe that if Hart makes it to the White House he will succeed where Kennedy, Johnson and Carter failed. He can offer nothing new; he must deal in the same outworn policies which have time and again been discredited, even if they are offered with his own gloss of striving youth.

No politician, whatever their age or other attributes, has ever been able to control capitalism. None has been able to cajole, or charm, the system's problems into abolishing themselves. That can come about only through a social revolution, for which society will need a working class invulnerable to all political seduction.

Ring down the curtain, not just on Hart but on everything he represents.

On the Move

One of the most revered names in the Labour Party is that of Noel-Baker. The patriarch of this clan was Philip, a frail embodiment of pacifist humbug, a spectral figure whose performance at party conferences often went some way to reassure unhappy delegates that Labour's heart was in the right place, and so reconcile them to accept the most bellicose of policies.

So it was predictable that Philip’s son, Francis, should also join the Labour Party and carry the honoured name into the Commons in the bright young intake of 1945, who outraged parliamentary customs by singing The Red Flag in the House and who were sure that they would set Britain's feet on the road to the new Jerusalem.

The rest, as they say, is history — the disillusionment with Attlee and his crew as they steered British capitalism through the early post-war years; then the long wilderness of opposition: then the heady euphoria of Wilson, which ended miserably as Callaghan was beaten by Thatcher. Labour was not just defeated, they were also in despair.

So at some point Francis decided that he, and his dad, had got it wrong. He took himself off to the Ecology Party, a well-meaning bunch who survive through an ability to observe the problems of capitalism as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Then he moved again, to the Liberals and the SDP, who survive through a stubborn refusal to admit that the problems exist to be observed. This, it seemed, might be a natural resting place for a Noel-Baker, exhausted by the demands of a heritage of self-delusion.

But the clan is made of sterner stuff and Francis is on the move again. Fed up now with the Alliance because it has no joint policy on nuclear weapons, he has switched to the Conservatives who he says, he finds "more credible". It is tempting to speculate on the "credibility" of a government which presides over three million unemployed, which has launched a harsh assault on workers' living standards and which proudly puts its name to the jingoistic blood-letting in the Falklands. Tempting too to wonder about Noel-Baker's “credibility”; by easy stages he has moved from Labour Party to Tory and there is, as they say. no place much for him to go now.

Slip-Up?

Many colourful metaphors have been used to depict the process in which a government fails to master the problems of the social system which they all claim to be able to control.

Like being caught, in the thirties, in an economic blizzard. Or, in the sixties, being blown off course. These are prime examples of the art of deception through language, in which metaphors can be especially effective. For in these cases they gave the impression that the problems were temporary and surmountable; like the weather they will eventually clear up and meanwhile there is the strong, clever political leader at the helm able to provide shelter for us all.

The art of the metaphor composer has never been better displayed than in the current fondness for describing the Thatcher government’s difficulties as a tendency to slip on banana skins. What could be more temporary than that? It needs only a new political broom, to clear away the carelessly discarded debris, and all is well . . .

Unemployed workers—many of them being told that never again in their lifetime will capitalism find a profitable use for their abilities—will have some feelings about being compared to a banana skin—slimy, undermining and discarded. Those whose discomfort is being accentuated by cuts in hospitals or social services may also have some questions to ask about the usefulness of the phrase, as well as its sensitivity.

In fact it is never useful to regard the problems of capitalism, and the difficulties which governments experience in trying to control and reform the system, as temporary, easily remediable matters. This social system inexorably produces poverty, war and a vast range of other social ills, none of which can be eliminated unless there is a fundamental social change—a revolution to replace capitalism with socialism.

The political metaphor-maker exists to obscure that fact and to divert attention from that reality to fantasy. Governments do not slip up; even if at times they become accident-prone that is beside the point. What matters is that as long as the working class are prepared to accept the fantasies and the obscuring they will remain, metaphorically speaking, flat on their backs.

Making of a candidate (1984)

From the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) is widely credited with having democratised American politics. Reforms initiated about this time led to party conventions taking over as the vehicle for the selection of presidential candidates. Each state sends delegates, mostly pledged to vote for a particular candidate although some are uncommitted. In fact this was not as successful as had been hoped. Control of state delegates fell into the hands of party bosses, the most notorious of whom were those who ran Tammany Hall, the headquarters of the Democrats in New York. This put into a key position another class of professional politicians who expected and received patronage from political hopefuls whose path to power they smoothed. A major reason for the advance of the primary system was that it struck a blow at these state bosses.

The primary system varies from state to state, with a number still mandating their delegates through a party caucus. Others hold closed primaries where the voter is required to register as a member of the party before voting. Some have open primaries where the voter selects the primary ballot for and then can choose candidates from that list only. In a few, however, the names of all candidates from all parties are printed on the ballot and the voter can cross party lines. This gives the process the trappings of democracy. However the graft, corruption and scandals of the heyday of the party bosses are still remembered.

Very little has been heard this year of Republican primaries, as Ronald Reagan has finally decided to stand for re-election. Not since 1912, when William Howard Taft dispensed patronage ad lib to beat off a challenge from Theodore Roosevelt, only to be beaten out of sight when Roosevelt stood as a third party candidate, has an incumbent president had any real difficulty in securing the nomination of his party. While recent opinion polls have shown Gary Hart running ahead of Reagan, these are still early days. Comparison with the British election last June shows what a difficult task the Democratic hopefuls face this year. It has even been suggested that this is the reason that Edward Kennedy has opted out this time. While the upturn in the American economy is extremely modest it is a weapon that Reagan will use for all he is worth. Although in earlier times relative unknowns arriving at the convention with little support sometimes were chosen as compromise candidates when deadlock between the main contenders could not be resolved, this again hasn’t happened for some time. Now that they no longer follow an isolationist policy, American capitalists are much more concerned with their image abroad. They do not want a repeat of the Teapot Dome scandal which finished Warren Gamaliel Harding, the last of the old-style compromise candidates to reach the White House. Their recent "bad luck” with Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew is still fresh in their memory.

The Democrats’ choice to face the president in November thus appears to boil down to three, one of whom is already looking like an outsider. He is the demagogue Jesse Jackson, who draws attention to the disadvantages which negro workers suffer even in comparison with their oppressed white fellow wage slaves. Jackson claims that the election of a black president can fundamentally alter this situation. This is dangerous nonsense. The special problems of the negroes arise from their being an easily distinguished minority within the oppressed class of the capitalist system. Ignorant workers pick on them as scapegoats for the evils they experience which are in fact an integral part of the system itself. Jackson in directing his appeal to such a degree to negro prejudices, however understandable these may be, risks inflaming these passions, thus doing the class a considerable disservice. The votes he has collected thus far have come almost entirely from black areas and his appeal seems too narrow to give him a real chance. He might just acquire some bargaining power if it is a close call in the San Francisco convention this summer.

Walter Mondale is the candidate most favoured by party workers and those city bosses still with influence, such as those who control the famous Cook County in Chicago. This in itself is no guarantee of selection. The darlings of the faithful are not necessarily the best winners of uncommitted votes. One of the reasons for the existence of the more open type of primary is to gain some indication of the winning potential of the candidates. The system is not fool proof in this respect, as was shown by the candidacy of the backwoodsman Barry Goldwater for the Republicans in 1964. However it would be incorrect to class Mondale as the Democrats’ 1984 equivalent of Goldwater. Mondale's association with the Carter administration has led to insinuations that he is a “yesterday's man”, and he has made no real attempt to dissociate himself from the former president. While the Democrats have never claimed to be a socialist party, since the era of Franklin Roosevelt they have performed many of the functions the Labour Party carries out in Britain. Like Labour, the Democratic Party has relied to a large extent for its vote on the less well off sections of the working class, and most American cities vote Democrat just as they usually vote Labour here. Mondale realises the need to hold on to this traditional support. As The Times reports (22 March 1984):

Mr Mondale won the Illinois primary the old fashioned way by piling up a big margin in white working class areas of Chicago, and then performing better than expected in the suburbs and down state. He also won a majority of the Hispanic vote and held on to those blacks who were not mesmerized by Mr Jackson’s vision of a "rainbow coalition”.

Mondale has also widespread support inside the trade unions. It is of little importance whether in achieving this working class support he has acted as a conscious deceiver or as an honest but rather ignorant individual. Either way it is the stuff of which presidents are made.

Gary Hart burst onto the scene a few weeks ago, apparently from nowhere, promising sweeping new' deals both inside the Democratic Party and in the USA at large. When this “new" approach is examined much of the cosmetic glitter fades. The Times (10 March 1984) had a feature article on “What Makes The Maverick Hart Tick". In this we read:

   Arguing that "the pragmatism of the new deal has become doctrine”. Mr Hart says the US must find a way to move from the economy of the past to the economy of the future, an economy not only expanding but which can meet the challenges of increased international competition and rapid technological change.
  He is an advocate of an "industrial policy" in which the Government would take the lead in bringing business and labour together to work out the nation's industrial strategy.

and later:

   He believes that the burgeoning cost of social entitlement programmes, such as Medicare and Medicaid, must be restrained, not simply through cuts but by putting more emphasis on preventive medicine and home care.
   On most economic issues Mr Hart has tried to emphasize the need to examine how government money is spent rather than how much. He believes the economic debate between Republicans and Democrats has become bogged down between those who favour fiscal generosity and those on the side of frugality.

This is just a sample of what Professor Samuel Beer of Harvard calls Hart’s "ideological mishmash". This is the confused groping of the politically ignorant, distinguished only by the inevitable concern for capitalism’s welfare. Hart fails to distinguish the old from the new in politics. Indeed we have now reached the stage when there are no new options for capitalism to try, only regurgitations of old, and Hart scarcely seems the best equipped to find the least sickly mixture. No wonder Hart’s star is now emitting a much dimmer light.

Nevertheless, barring real surprises, either Hart or Mondale will win through to oppose Reagan in the autumn. Certain Reagan is far from invincible. His track record on welfare, the US term for social services, is callous even by capitalist standards. The soup kitchen and the church mission, both of which many though had gone for good, have made a big comeback in the wake of the cuts imposed by the Reagan government. But could the Democrats take advantage of this? It would scarcely suffice merely to promise redress, as everyone knows that increased "public expenditure” (actually taxation on the capitalists) would be required. In the present climate few dare to advocate this. Still fewer will advocate a serious reduction in the US arms arsenal. No wonder voting in American elections is so low, particularly in deprived inner city areas. While many have fallen prey to apathy and despair a sizeable number are through with voting for capitalist parties, period.

E. C. Edge