But we have assumed here that the labor party had
reached the point where its trials are the trials of a party in power or
nearing power. In reality, American labor parties are spared this sort
of trouble by trials of an anterior order residing in the nature of
American politics.
The American political party system antedates the formation of modern
economic classes, especially the class alignment of labor and capital.
Each of the old parties represents, at least in theory, the entire
American community regardless of class. Party differences are considered
differences of opinion or of judgment on matters of public policy, not
differences of class interest. The wage earner in America, who never had
to fight for his suffrage but received it as a free gift from the
Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democratic movements and who did not
therefore develop the political class consciousness which was stamped
into the workers in Europe by the feeling of revolt against an upper
ruling class, is prone to adopt the same view of politics. Class parties
in America have always been effectively countered by the old established
parties with the charge that they tend to incite class against class.
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