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A Key to American Politics: Calhoun's Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Peter F. Drucker
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Extract

The American party system has been under attack almost continuously since it took definite form in the time of Andrew Jackson. The criticism has always been dircted at the same point: America's political pluralism, the distinctively American organization of government by compromise of interests, pressure groups and sections. And the aim of the critics from Thaddeus Stevens to Henry Wallace has always been to substitute for this “unprincipled” pluralism a government based as in Europe on “ideologies” and “principles.” But never before—at least not since the Civil War years—has the crisis been as acute as in this last decade; for the political problems which dominate our national life today: foreign policy and industrial policy, are precisely the problems which interest and pressure-group compromise is least equipped to handle. And while the crisis symptoms: a left-wing Thirl Party and the threatened split-off of the Southern Wing, are more alarming in the Democratic Party, the Republicans are hardly much better off. The 1940 boom for the “idealist” Wilkie and the continued inability to attract a substantial portion of the labor vote, are definite signs that the Republican Party too is under severe ideological pressure.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 1948 , pp. 412 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1948

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References

1 A perfect illustration was the outraged amazement with which most book reviewers greeted Edward J. Flynn's You're the Boss— a simple and straight recital of facts every American should really have known and understood all along.

2 A Disquisition on Government; and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States.

3 Calhoun's extreme legalism, his belief that everything had to be spelled out in the written Constitution—a belief he shared with his generation—is one of the major reasons why the importance of his thesis has not been generally recognized. Indeed it is of the very essence of the concept of “concurrent majority” that it cannot be made official and legal in an effective government—the express veto such as the UN Charter gives to the Great Powers makes government impossible.

4 Quotations from A Disquisition on Government, (Columbia, S. C., 1852), pp. 35 to 37.Google Scholar

5 The perhaps most profound discussion of the American ideological cohesion can be found in the two decisions of the Supreme Court on the compulsory flag salute, and in the two dissents therefrom, which deserve high rating among American state papers.