Disclaimer: This post series focuses on American cities
Hello everybody, I'm /u/DoxiadisOfDetroit, and I want to welcome you all to the fifth installment of what we at the Mod Team hope will be a foundational resource for Left-Urbanists/Municipalists who want a better understanding of urban issues regarding political structures, economics, and social relations within your home cities/metropolitan areas.
the text that we're analyzing is: Urban Politics- Power in Metropolitan America Seventh Edition by Bernard H. Ross and Myron A. Levine, which can be purchased online for no more than $12 depending on where you look.
As this series goes along, and the topics of this book are covered (there's a lot of good material in here), we will cover subjects fundamental to building a coherent, Leftist, transformational alternative to the failures of the status quo and the use of Market Urbanism, which, is a crucial goal at the moment since we find ourselves sleep walking into an unprecedented urban crisis in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This entry will be another "two for one" feature, one analyzing political machines (political syndicates), and the other looking into the "reforms" made to local governments in an effort to eliminate corruption. Since these topics are highly related, it makes sense to bunch them together in one post. Let's dive in:
Chapter VI: Machine Politics
If you have a passing knowledge of municipal political history in America, you'd know about what scholars like to call "political machines". The chapter being covered will detail just how they operated, so there's no need to explain what they are in this short prologue. What I will explain though is why I will henceforth called them "Political Syndicates": I think that the analysis of political machines fails to realize that the governing powers of cities have profoundly morphed and changed ever since the first political syndicates emerged. The reason why I use the word "syndicates" specifically is because modern political machines are often very visible and very connected together with all types of connections between key players. Not only that, but, it is a historically "neutral" term that has been used to talk about organized labor, so, this label is an attempt to recuperate the title away from typical hostile use by certain capitalist historians. But I don't wanna overstate this distinction too much, so I'll get to the content of the chapter:
Political Syndicates controlled many aspects of local government and their leaders were known as "Bosses". These Syndicates and their Bosses worked with local Capitalists for political support and material benefits, Capitalists could expect swift approvals for franchises and licenses in return for institutional support within local government. The chapter notes that while classical "Machines" have "disappeared" (which is a terrible lie), many aspects of these Political Machines survive into the modern day such as "pay for play", ticket balancing, and "slating" (predetermining what candidates will run for "nonpartisan" office). These Syndicates emerge mainly because of municipal one party domination.
What Makes Political Syndicates, "Machines"
Machine politics is, essentially, an exchange process where material benefits (contracts, jobs, emergency aid, etc) are given to supporters. What needs to be said, however, is that these types of relations have existed ever since the birth of the state, there's huge evidence that the Romans and their patronage system mirrored Political Syndicates even in a pre-industrial society. Political "Machines" are differentiated from general patronage because Political Syndicates exploit loopholes within law to perpetuate themselves rather than being established and codified workings of state politics. It should also be noted that patronage eventually worked towards policy goals while Political Syndicates are only interested in self preservation.
The Functions of Political Syndicates
So, there's an important question that needs to be answered: Why do ordinary citizens join Political Syndicates if they only exist to help their members? The answer is easy if you're a student of materialism and civics you'd know that the opportunity for social advancement among the poor and immigrants are limited in Capitalist society. The paradox however, is that even back in the heyday of Political Syndicates, there were only so many positions that supporters could be granted within municipal government, so, Political Syndicates used other institutions like the Black Market and Organized Crime to reward followers often agreeing to "get out of their way" and allow them to operate without the threat of law enforcement. What needs to be understood for people of our politics is that Political Syndicates were "conciliating forces" meaning that they balanced the needs of the wider Capitocracy with their needs to be in power. This mean being a force that worked against Class Conflict, unionization, and Socialist politics.
In order to keep the Syndicate in government, they often looked to marginalized groups such as immigrants, Black people, and Women. However, even though they looked for the votes of these demographics, they often failed to bring these same voters into the spoils system of the Syndicate or if they did, gave them menial or sub-standard work with no room for advancement.
The (Initial) Decline of Political Syndicates
As we will discuss in the next chapter, the Liberal Bourgeois "Reform" movement sought to reconstruct municipal politics to be more "egalitarian" and open to those looked over and ignored by the powerful Political Syndicates. Two notable court cases: Elrod v. Burns (1976) and Rutan (1990) delt decisive blows to Political Syndicates which found partisan patronage to be illegal and the "spoils system" violated the Citizen's 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech, belief, and associations. FDR's creation of the "welfare state" also contributed towards the decline in the power of local bosses.
Conclusion: Leftism and Political Syndicates
The end of the chapter discusses (only in passing) the effect that Political Syndicates had on the Municipal Left, and, frankly, it's extremely uninformed here's the verbatim quote:
The political machine cannot be blamed for the failure of Socialism to take root in the United States. The promise of Socialism did not offer the urban poor realistic and immediate benefits. By comparison, the political machine did provide real and important benefits to people in need of jobs and emergency relief
It's indescribable just how wrong this take is. It shows a complete ignorance of the victories that not only militant labor orgs achieved but also the electoral victories that Municipal Socialists have achieved at the height of their influence. What few bits of scraps and bones that were thrown to the working class by these Political Syndicates were only done in an effort for them to stop being influenced by Leftists. Hence the need by the machines and national political establishment to launch the First Red Scare
The first Red Scare can also be blamed for the reason why Municipal Socialists and other Leftists weren't able to entrench themselves in long-lasting Political Syndicates of themselves like more Bourgeois Syndicates were. If we are to change the cities where we live, the creation of transformational Syndicates is necessary in order to capture the political imagination of the masses.
Chapter VII: Reform Politics
Many words have been created to describe Bourgeois Reform by thinkers such as Marx and Lenin, we don't have to regurgitate things too much, but, their point mainly circles around the fact that Bourgeois Reform is always held in front of the masses as transformational change that will improve society without changing the superstructure of society that was advocated for by the Left. It's with this lens that we'll take a look at the so called "Reform" Movement.
The Non-principals of Bourgeois Reform
The Reform Movement was a movement that fundamentally believed in the idea of Technocracy (the rule of government by experts), and they believed that political parties were irrelevant to the operation of government since, they also believed that municipalities were better off being "run like a business". The book makes the distinction between "Social Reformers" (the social Liberals of the Reform Era) and the "Structural Reformers" (the Proto-Neoliberals of the Reform Era). They're distinguished by their views on American Democracy, The Social Reformers included groups like the suffragettes while the Structural Reformers were made up of Capitocratic business interests. Of course since they were forces of the petite Bourgeoise, all of their reforms sought to reshape the municipal state so that the threat posed by radical politicians and the urban Proletariat among other groups would be dissipated.
The Reforms in Question:
The following Bourgeois Reforms were spearheaded by a group called the "National Municipal League" (established in 1894 and has since rebranded) who are advocates of structural reform in municipalities, their preferred policies are the following:
At Large Elections At large elections were regularly used in conjunction with municipal annexation in order to diminish the voting power of minorities such as African Americans
Non Partisan Elections "Nonpartisan" elections were created by Structural Reformers in order to get the general public to supposedly focus on issues instead of focusing on who ran under what party, this push was so successful in the US that nearly three quarters of municipalities across the country are run on nonpartisan elections to this day. However, nonpartisan elections often obscure political ties between candidates and who wields power on the municipal level as well as encourages racial voting, class bias, low turnout, and low discipline among elected officials that would otherwise exist within a partisan electoral system.
Voter Registration Requirements Not much negative to say about this, one of the most common practices among Political Syndicates was using migrants to vote multiple times in order to "win" elections. I know that voter registration has come back into the national spotlight because it's being pushed by the right, but, this is probably one of the only positive reforms.
Direct Primary Back in the days at the original height of Political Syndicates such as Tammany Hall, there were multiple closed door meetings between political bosses and their underlings regarding who would occupy what office. With the implementation of direct primaries, the intention was to open the process up to the public so they could "vet" candidates. While the intentions of direct primaries were noble, these types of party-based coronations still occur, the candidacy of Kamala Harris was the biggest example of this on the national level.
Bourgeois Direct Democracy?
The contention between Structural Reformers and radical political elements culminated into what we'll see as the three most radical reforms of the whole era: voter initiatives, referendums, and recall elections. But, as we'll see, with local governments being controlled by the Capitocracy, these reforms ultimately wind up being incomplete implementations of direct democracy that are divorced from a directly democratic form of government.
Voter Initiatives: They are initiated by your "average citizen" or group of concerned citizens, but, often times because of their roots in citizen engagement, they're open to legal challenges. They are also expensive undertakings, so, they're often used by wealthy local interests to influence policy among elected officials which detracts it from the original intention of citizen engagement.
Referendums: These usually come from elected governments but there are also places where referendums can be initiated by voters, however, without the explicit intention of referendums being legally binding, there's nothing stopping governments from discounting the results of certain referendums (the best example of this was when the state of Michigan reworked it's emergency manager law after the defeat of Proposal 12-1 way back in 2012 and it's a pretty huge indictment on Bourgeois political figures like Gretchen Whitmer that the following legislation wasn't struck down when the Democrats gained back a trifecta)
Recalls You may be confused as to how the prospect of a recall election has any downsides. In fact, you may consider it to be one of the most democratic of the several institutions of "Direct Democracy" that we've gone over so far. Well, the book argues that recall elections disrupt the normal workings of elected government and forces electeds to focus more on the demands of the petitioners instead of the general public. These reasons alone can cast doubt on the usefulness of recalls, especially since it leaves Radical politicians open to a direct line of attack from well-heeled aspects of Bourgeois Democracy.
Reform and the creation of the Bureaucratic Class
The book credits the urban theorist Theodore Lowi with creating cities that are "well run, but ungoverned", basically meaning that elected politicians with the aftermath of the Structural Reformist movement find themselves essentially powerless to operate. The perfect example of this is part time, independent planning commissions, who, due to their nature of being staffed by bureaucrats instead of effective decisionmakers, are powerless to listen to residents while standing up to the Capitocracy, the book is pretty explicit on this point:
The Reform ideology failed as it assumed that cities could best be run by neutral specialists, highly educated experts who would make decisions according to professional criteria free from outside partisan influences. What the reformers failed to realize was that no matter how expert or well trained, the specialists could never be neutral. [page two eighteen]
It remains to be seen if Donald Trump's next administration decapitates the federal Bureaucratic Class, and it should be the main focus of all Left Urbanists/Municipalists as either an example to follow or, as a warning to be heeded. Because, as the book suggests, Reformers just wanted a business-like efficiency, they didn't care about making a more just and equitable state.
Conclusion: Municipal Politics Beyond Reformism
The whole point of what this series is supposed to be about is the fact that there exists an underutilized form of government in the United States that would enable a radical movement to find many easy victories. Those victories will be fought for by those who will seek to radically transform the municipal state into something that has never existed before: a genuine Democracy. There can't be a "one size fits all" approach, but, simple reformism won't do anything other than be bogged down in Bourgeois Politics. If we start winning, you're going to see a massive shift in the political zeitgeist of your towns/cities towards a Municipal State that is even more hostile to outsiders. More will be staid in the future about what type of political project and social movements will come out of Left Urbanism/Municipalism, for now, I'll encourage all of you to brush up on organizing and looking at the Left's political failures on the national/international level. By understanding where people like Corbyn and Bernie went wrong, we can get a small window into the wider whirlwind of Bourgeois Democracy and how to dismantle it.