[Marxism] A popular superstition

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/pdf/1892/1892-dec25.pdf
A Popular Superstition
By Daniel De Leon

Upon being asked last week, whether a third party was to come up, 
Senator John Sherman promptly and emphatically answered: “No, this 
country cannot afford more than two parties.”

An expression of this sort would not be surprising from people of less 
intelligence and information than Senator Sherman; indeed, it is a 
common one on the lips of a large number of ignoramuses, who inflict 
their opinions upon a patient public. That this opinion should be shared 
by Senator Sherman shows, however, the power of popular superstitions, 
and goes far to confirm the suspicion that even the ablest among the 
plutocratic politicians is an intellectual bankrupt.

The political history of our own country, as much as, if not more so 
than, that of any other, establishes the maxim that progress is due 
wholly to third parties and that, not only has this country ample room 
for such, but that its people have periodically raised such third 
parties into power; crowded both the old parties, in existence at any 
such time, out of the way; annihilated one of them; and maintained the 
quondam third party in power until it had run its course, and a new 
broom, representing an advanced idea, became necessary, when the old 
process would be renewed—each time despite the protests of the then 
existing parties that the country had no room for more than two parties. 
The most amusing feature of this recurring phenomenon is that the party 
most emphatic in the assertion of this dogma is always that one which 
itself rose from the “third party” stage to that of “one of the two 
great parties.”

Senator Sherman illustrates the truth of this statement. Thirty-seven 
years ago there was no Republican Party in existence in the United 
States. The Democratic and the Whig parties then divided, in the main, 
the political convictions of the country. The question of chattel 
slavery had forced itself forward. The Democratic Party, true to its 
moss-back, reactionary instincts, upheld slavery, the Whig Party did not 
dare to grapple with, and dodged the problem. The aspirations of the 
antislavery movement had to find expression in a new, third, political 
party; and in that way, and for that reason was the Republican Party 
born. It sprang up as a third party, in the teeth of the declarations of 
the Whigs— who had similarly sprung up before—that there was no room in 
the country for more than two parties; it put a quietus on the Whig 
[Party]; overthrew the Democratic Party; came into power, and there 
developed the class characteristics of the class that had called it into 
being—the capitalist class: it wiped out chattel slavery, the last 
vestige of feudalism in America, and introduced “free competition” among 
the working class.

The present situation is identical in all essential respects with that 
under which the Republican Party was born as a third party, destined to 
make an epoch in the history of the country. Not only had this country 
room for a “third party” it is now again ripe for one. All the signs of 
the times point positively to that conclusion. Indeed, that third party 
is now forming despite the chestnut protests from the defunct 
Republicans that there is no room for it. Its motto is “The Abolition of 
Wage Slavery— The Cooperative Commonwealth.” Its victory is assured; as 
surely as, 31 years ago, the Republican banner was raised over the ruins 
of the Whig and the Democratic parties; or, some 20 years before, the 
Whig banner was raised over the ruins of the Federalist and Democratic 
forts; so will the standard of socialism be triumphantly planted in the 
near future over the ruins of both the Republican and Democratic 
together with whatever other parties may enter the lists for capital and 
resist the absolute emancipation of the proletariat.

In the history of “third parties” in this country, the Socialist is the 
third in the line of succession. But its glory will eclipse the 
brightest pages of either of its predecessors, whether Whig or Republican.

The People, December 25, 1892
Socialist Labor Party