The Integrity of a Two Party System
Consistency from voter appeal to legislative action.
It seems to me uncontestable that people living in any society have significantly different economic interests. Among these is surely the conflict that has been at the center of societies since the industrial revolution. How will we divide the “spoils” of work? On one side we have the factory workers and on the other the people who supplied the capital to create the operation. And, in the middle of course many levels of “white collar” workers.
There are, of course, many other categories of workers, in social services, government, agriculture and the professions. But for all of these we can generally recognize that their wellbeing is determined by laws, private choices and circumstances that give them different returns in material and social rewards.
Let put aside any debate over how we got this way. My point is simply that we can largely identify different economic interests, over which rational men and women are likely to come into conflict.
Now, if politics in any society is, in part, a way to manage these conflicts, we might expect that political parties would represent different sides in these conflicts. And, in fact, that is not a bad overall description of the nature of past politics in industrial societies.
Success for such politics would seem to be peaceful policy adjustments that temporarily satisfy one or the other side, while offering hope that the next battle will result in a different distribution of benefits. “We will live to fight another day and may well have more success next time.”
Such an outcome seems to follow from the fact that the representatives of different issues (the political actors) take and advance coherent positions with respect to these issues.
But what if they don’t? What if one or both of the parties claims to represent one group of economic interests, gains their support, while fundamentally representing the interests of their economic “enemies,” or simply the preservation of the status quo?
This leads to chaos, loss of respect for the system as a whole, and a high level of unfocused discontent and violence.
When large blocs of voters have economic interests that are not successfully addressed by the elected representatives of either party, this throws the whole system out of balance. And fuels a rising discontent that threatens the system itself.
"On one side we have the factory workers and on the other the people who supplied the capital to create the operation. And, in the middle of course many levels of “white collar” workers."
What if I told you workers are the source of most capital and that so called capitalists were actually using wealth of the workers for their own means? It's not so radical really but the drumbeat of so-called capitalism drowns out all other sounds. And nobody listens to Cassandra though, do they?
I've had conversations about corporate capitalism and I've been told more than once, and this is supposed to be a defense, that stocks are owned by school teachers, and policemen, and workers all about. Think about that. And the (not so) funny thing is, it's true! The controlling ownership of corporation in this country is owned by institutional investors using money from the people above. So, that time once a year, when it's time to vote, or when it's time to call the boar or the CEO, do workers get a ballot, private phone line, a sit down conversation? No. The institutional investor does all that thanks to workers and the money of others.
There are politicians proposing bills to make woke investing illegal for institutional investors. Never mind none of our employers force choose a woke institutional investor to take our money. My employer, for instance, chose an incredibly right wing self avowed Ayn Rander group for it's workers. It's a joke and a scam. Employees already own the companies, the system is just rigged so they don't control them.