CLASS ACT: CASTING BALLOTS FOR A CHANGE
Piven, Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox
Class Act: Casting Ballots For a Change BY RICHARD A. CLOWARD AND FRANCES FOX PIVEN Why has the United States, one of the most industrialized nations in the world, never seen the emergence of a...
...literacy examinations, cumbersome registration requirements, and residency tests (demanding residence of a year or more) became law and practice across the country...
...And the opening of the electoral system could presage the birth of a party structure that reflects the interests of America's poor and working-class citizens...
...In every region of the country, many boards of elections continue to refuse to deputize volunteer voter registrars, or refuse to give out more than a few registration forms at a time, or discard completed forms that contain some trivial error...
...To be sure, the absence of class-based political parties in the United States did not entirely smother the expression of class-oriented popular politics...
...In addition, the Democratic Party took on the character of a labor party for a brief period...
...Moneyed interests have always loomed large in American party politics, but the need to win popular majorities acts, at least in theory, as a check on the sway of the dollar...
...Most of the drop occurred in the ranks of blacks, poor farmers, and industrial workers...
...The substantial dis-enfranchisement of poor farmers and poor workers, and the almost total disenfran-chisement of blacks, meant these groups no longer had a voice or a presence in party campaign strategy, in party policy, or in party projects...
...Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven are the authors of "Regulating the Poor," "Poor People's Movements, "and "TheNew Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences...
...It also helps explain why social welfare programs to provide assistance to the disabled, the unemployed, and the aged were not initiated in the United States until half a century after such programs had been established in Europe...
...It marked the first major effort by business interests to dominate electoral politics, and the effort succeeded: The Populist challenge was crushed...
...And turnout among minorities in the municipal elections of 1983—and in the recent Presidential primaries—was spectacular...
...By the onset of the Great Depression, this pinching of enfranchisement had reduced voter turnout from 75 per cent of the eligible electorate to little more than 50 per cent...
...They "reformed" state election laws so that another challenge from below could not be mounted...
...The new voters, galvanized by President Reagan's ruinous policies, came for the most part from the ranks of the unemployed, blacks, government workers, and women...
...In the flush of victory, industrial and financial interests in the North and planter interests in the South solidified their hold...
...The bulk of the states had removed property qualifications by the early 1830s, at least a half century earlier than most of Europe...
...Without access to party politics, workers and the poor had few national organs to articulate their grievances and few means of propagating a broader ideological outook that could give those grievances scope and coherence...
...In the 1930s, economic catastrophe spurred the poor and the working class to protest in the streets and factories, and this period also witnessed a modest increase in working-class voting...
...Ironically, white working men in the United States won the franchise before workers in other nations...
...Many scholars suggest it is because working people in this country did not develop the kind of class consciousness that flowered in Europe...
...The electoral arrangements instituted in the aftermath of the election of 1896, and the peculiar party system that emerged from those arrangements, stifled the development of working-class consciousness...
...This helps explain why, at least until the 1930s, the United States averaged the longest working hours among industrial nations, the highest rates of injury and death in factories, mines, and mills, and the most brutal record of violence by police, militia, and Federal troops against striking workers...
...These measures disenfranchised not only blacks, but also the poor whites who had been the foot soldiers of southern Populism...
...American voter participation had taken on the contracted and distorted shape that persists to this day...
...However, there are renewed signs of efforts to hurdle such barriers...
...But another, neglected factor may have been equally responsible for stunting the growth of class consciousness: Almost 100 years ago, in response to the growing challenge of the Populist movement, the U.S...
...But the enforcement of voting rights is still far from vigorous...
...In 1896, they made a serious bid for power by entering into a coalition with the Democratic Party and segments of the industrial working class...
...business elite changed the ground rules of political battle by partially disenfranchising the bottom half of the electorate...
...They are currently helping social service and health agencies set up voter registration projects for low-income and minority citizens...
...Voter turnout in the 1982 mid-term election swelled to sixty-four million, up ten million from 1978...
...Making our system of voting truly democratic may, in the long run, engender class-oriented political parties...
...The civil rights protests of the 1960s represented a similar challenge, and they prompted passage of the Voting Rights Act...
...Today, measures blocking access to the ballot box are finally being removed...
...The 1890s were the crucial years—a time when railroad and steel workers engaged in violent strikes and family farmers joined in the great protests of the Populist movement...
...At the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, as class conflict on the farms and in the factories was coming to a boil, state governments curtailed this basic right by erecting obstacles to voting...
...In response to Populist pressure, a number of states passed legislation regulating railroad and granary fees...
...Indeed, litigation and demonstrations to ensure access to the polls have already begun...
...This electoral surge directly confronts the exclusionary measures inherited from the Nineteenth Century, and a movement to see that they are eradicated is emerging among civil rights organizations, labor unions, churches, women's groups, and associations of human service workers...
...But the Supreme Court quickly reversed these legislative victories, and the Populists sought redress in national politics...
...Throughout the South and West, usurious interest rates and exorbitant railroad and granary charges goaded farmers into action...
...Our "exceptionalist" political culture is said to derive from such American features as ethnic heterogeneity, which blocked class solidarity, and the existence of a frontier, which lured dissidents out of the mainstream...
...The so-called System of 1896 introduced poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses throughout the South...
...Class Act: Casting Ballots For a Change BY RICHARD A. CLOWARD AND FRANCES FOX PIVEN Why has the United States, one of the most industrialized nations in the world, never seen the emergence of a labor or social democratic political party...
...The System of 1896 greatly weakened this check...
...So threatening was this nascent formation that the ruling class leaped into action, pouring money into one of the most vitriolic campaigns in American history...
...And the backlash was not confined to the South...
...Restrictive schemes undercut the electoral base for class-oriented politics...
...But continuing disenfranchise-ment of the base that could have nurtured a labor party rendered the challenge ephemeral...
Vol. 48 • June 1984 • No. 6
