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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 50, 13 December 1948, p. 3.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Philip Murray, Henry Wallace, Waller White, John L. Lewis, William Green, A. Philip Randolph, Norman Thomas and Leon Henderson have a lot of differences not only among themselves but with such spokesmen of Big Business as Ira Mosher, chairman of the influential finance committee of the NAM. Nevertheless, on certain questions affecting the whole future of the American workers, they all accept ideas advanced by Mosher and help to spread them far and wide. One of the most basic of these questions concerns the nature of the government and its function in society.
At the recent NAM convention in New York, Mosher put forward the conception of this question that Big Business wants the people to hold. The function of the Department of Commerce, he said, is to protect the interests of businessmen just as it as the function of the Departments of Agriculture and Labor to protect the interests of farmers and workers. (To strengthen the impression that capitalists hold this view themselves, Mosher even indulged in a little criticism of the Department of Commerce for not doing its duty as well as the other departments mentioned.)
The theory of government which Mosher was here trying to advance is all-too-familiar to most Americans. It is the theory of the government as an impartial body, devoted to the “general” welfare, mediating between contending economic and social forces and moderating their clashes in the interests of the “public.” The advocates of this theory do not pretend that the government always acts in accord with this ideal, but they insist that it can, and should.
We don’t know if Mosher personally, or any other individual capitalist, really believes in this theory. What we can say with assurance is that the ruling circles of the capitalist class certainly don’t believe it. They know better. Whatever they peddle for public consumption, they proceed on the basis of the knowledge that the government is the executive committee of the ruling class.
They know that the government always and everywhere seeks to promote the interests of the ruling class as a whole, even when for tactical political reasons it becomes expedient to don the guise of liberalism and even “anti-capitalist” reformism, à-la-Roosevelt. They know that the Department of Agriculture helps the farm corporations, and not the working farmers. They know that the Department of Labor gives nothing to the workers that they are not able to take by their own organized strength. They know that they have nothing whatever to worry about from the administration as, a whole, no matter how much anti-capitalist demagogy the executive head is compelled to spout in order to get elected.
While the capitalist rulers don’t believe in this fiction about the “impartiality” of the government any more than the Marxists do, they do want the workers to believe it. They want it because the belief produces false political ideas among the workers and strengthens not only the two-party system but the structure of class-collaboration without which the capitalists could not keep their power for long. Alone and by themselves, the capitalists could not maintain this deception of the workers. Unfortunately, they get powerful assistance in its dissemination from those very people to whom the workers look for leadership.
Take the whole lot of them – the leaders of the CIO, AFL, UMW, Progressive Party, Social Democratic Federation, Socialist Party, Liberal Party, ADA, NAACP, AVC, etc. Don’t they all echo the lie that the government is the representative of all classes? Aren’t they all responsible, therefore, for the pernicious effects of this lie, including the practice of class collaboration which always weakens the position of the masses and strengthens the position of the oppressors?
To be sure, they all at one time or another engage in criticism of the administration or Congress or even the Supreme Court. But that, they invariably point out, is because the administration or. Congress or the Court don’t measure up to the ideal of their theory about the “true” role of the government. Theirs is at most a criticism of personnel or detail, but never about the fundamental class character of the government as an agent of the ruling class, which they strive to conceal just as zealously as the capitalists.
If Ira Mosher came out for higher prices and lower wages and the leaders of the labor and liberal coalition endorsed this view, it would serve as a shocking revelation to the workers and would start them on the search for new leaders. But as the workers have had the occasion to learn during recent years, political problems are as important as economic problems and as a matter of fact cannot really be separated from them. Why should workers who wouldn’t tolerate leaders openly subservient to the economic policies of Big Business continue to tolerate leaders who are openly subservient to the political illusions and policies fostered by Big Business?
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