Increased state authority kills socialist movements, can’t solve the second advantage

Constitutional federalism has worked almost precisely as was intended by the founders. It was designed to work its influence on American politics in at least four ways: (1) Governmental pluralism- many states but no one state; (2) The specialization of functions between state governments and national government, with states retaining most of the important functions; (3) The special place of city governments in the system; and, (4) The specific type of positive role the national government was designed to play.

(1) Governmental pluralism: Many states, no one state. Charles de Gaulle once complained that nobody can hope to govern a country that produces 265 different kinds of cheeses. But a republic of 265 cheeses is not the same as a republic divided up into 13, or 25, or 50 different governments. In France there is no Republic of Brie or a Republic of Camembert or a Republic of Roquefort, but in the United States there is a Republic of Alabama, a Republic of New York, a Republic of California. This separation of sectionally based interests into separate governments with constitutional guarantees of separate- ness does indeed produce a form of balkanization. This distribution of governmental powers into separate governmental units was appreciated at the time of the founding as a way of permitting the prevailing interest in any section of the country to be dominant in its own section without being able to impose itself by majority vote on other sections. This feature of federalism becomes better appreciated as the other features of federalism are introduced.

(2) Functional specialization and the place of the states. Funda- mental to the theory of the American constitution is the principle that the national government exercise only powers that are "expressly delegated" (Article I, Sec. 8) and that all other powers are reserved to the states or the people. The national government was not expected to be an important force in the everyday lives of American citizens. Conse- quently, for nearly a century and a half-the "traditional period,"-the national government concerned itself almost exclusively with subsidies, land grants, private claims, tarriffs, and certain public works generally referred to as "internal improvements."

Even a cursory review of the policies of state governments in the nineteenth century will quickly demonstrate that the "reserve powers" amounted to virtually all of the important government in the United States. The state governments were responsible for all of the laws that were fundamental to the economic, community, and family life of Americans. There is, for example, no national property law, only state property laws. There is no national corporate law or national code dealing with professions and occupations. In brief, capitalism does not now nor did it during the nineteenth century exist in national laws-it exists only in the state laws. Those features of capitalism about which a proletarian consciousness presumably develops-such as the laws against trespass and obstruction, laws against any interference with individual contract, laws against labor's efforts to move above sub- sistence wages-were state laws. Laws justifying legal violence were state laws. The states were the bastions of conservatism, including the defense of property and the defense of community religious and moral values.

It is thus no coincidence that nineteenth century social movements focused on the state capitals, not the national capital, whenever demands or frustrations focused on public objects. It was not accidental that national politics was very stable throughout the first century and a half. Even the Civil War failed to alter national political patterns for long. As Samuel Huntington observed,

The institutional framework established in 1787 has . changed remarkably little.... [The] American political system of the twentieth century still bears closer approximation to the Tudor polity of the sixteenth century than does the British political system of the twentieth century [Huntington, 1968: 98].

Within that stable national context, each of the states was a dynamic political and economic arena. And even as the economy became national, the states remained the source of government and therefore the main focus of politics. There was, in effect, no national pattern of law, legitimation or repression to confirm a socialist critique.

(3) The special place of cities. Local governments do not exist in the constitution of the United States. Local govenments are mere conven- iences of state governments. Counties, cities, villages, and the like were chosen as the local units of state administration, for the implementation of state regulatory laws, state public works, and so on. Moreover, as agents of the states the local governments were given considerable discretion to adapt state laws to local needs. As a consequence, local governments operated under considerable advantages in that their city councils and county legislatures were spared the burden of making fundamental social choices but were left relatively free to adapt general state laws to local demands. State regulations became patronage in the hands of local officials. If some particular conduct-such as using a private home as a boarding house or operating a restaurant or cab- were forbidden or resticted under state law, these could be handed back as a matter of privilege through local licensing. By definition, a license is a permission by a government to do something that is otherwise illegal. Licensing was an almost never-ending source of patronage in the hands to local governments. Other patronage included the letting of contracts for public works and the granting of access and rights-of-way in the use of public and private property.

Out of this emerged the local political machines. Local political machines formed very early in industrializing cities, and these machines were widely accessible to people of all classes and ethnic groups, even to immigrants not yet citizens. Machines therefore had a fundamental effect on the formation, or lack of formation, of distinct class lines and class consciousness, especially in industrializing cities. Machines cut across class lines and provided a channel of intermingling, geographical, and vertical mobility, and, most of all, direct personal access to what would otherwise have been a remote government. Machines also localized government-not only in the sense of personalizing it but also in the sense of pulling the focus of government closer to home, farther and farther away from the national capital.

This is not to say that class conflict and class consciousness were absent. It is to say, however, that with the state governments as the source of legitimation for repression and the source of protection against the most egregious offenses against capitalism, and with the cities functioning together as a strongly localizing and crosscutting agent, there was simply no common political experience that would lend much plausibility to a socialist analysis of American society as a whole or a socialist critique of American capitalism as a whole.

(4) Absence of national government. As observed earlier, the constitution did not provide a place for a large national government, and the national government developed fairly closely along the lines anticipated by the framers of the constitution. Until the 1930s, there are very few departures from the traditional pattern. Such cases as the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act and the several laws of the Wilson administration were exceptional, and the political leaders of the day were quite aware these were exceptional. There was, for example, doubt on all sides that the constitution even permitted these departures. It was therefore not until the 1930s that the departures were so frequent as to create a new rule, both statistically and constitutionally. National government did not merely grow larger during the 1930s, it took on some entirely new functions-new, at least, to the national government. An examination of the New Deal programs will show that they were not merely an expansion of the traditional national government programs of subsidies, land grants, and public works but were regulatory and redistributive policies that looked a lot more like traditional state government than national government.

This meant that the national government would begin to attract the attention, the fears and the expectations of the masses of Americans. But even though the national government did at last become a strong, common national political experience, it differed from the state governments in one very fundamental respect. Whereas state govern- ment policies had traditionally been the creators and protectors of capitalism, national government policies were rather frequently antago- nistic to capitalism, some in real impact as well as stated purpose. This meant that as organized labor belatedly expanded and refocused its attention on the national government, the national government itself proved to be closer to a social democratic than to a repressive or a laissez-faire regime. The state governments were and remained the repository of conservative policies. The national government became the source of a number of significant liberal, even social democratic policies-at least enough to keep labor centrist.

Most theories about the non-occurrence of socialism in the United States grow less plausible the closer they are examined. This is not because they are irrelevant but because they fail to take government and political structure into account. Cultural and sociological explanations for what are essentially political phenomena, such as socialism as an ideology or a party, are so remote from the occurrence itself that such explanations can explain almost anything, even opposite outcomes. For example, something as important as repression-and repression is as real a factor in the United States as anywhere else-will inhibit the emergence of radical opposition in some contexts and will encourage radical opposition in other contexts. In the American context, Madison, not Marx, seems to be having the last word.

This, of course, can change. The American national state has expanded, and federalism in economic matters has all but disappeared. This means that one of the conditions that seems systematically to have inhibited socialism is no longer present. Consequently, a socialist movement or socialist or labor party becomes a great deal more likely than in the past. Although there are no signs of any such occurrence at this time, it is undeniable that Marxist writings have become a great deal more attractive inside the universities. Theories may never be translated into political action, but theory is a necessary precondition