Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/86

 72 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

elections, thus socializing the parties. It gives, as far as it goes, a preponderance to the persuasive principles rather than to the mere organization of parties, and so tends to bring to the front in party leadership those who stand for principles rather than mainly for shrewdness and manipulation. It finally puts both parties on a higher level of competition by eliminating from party strife the factitious elements of bribery and intimidation, depending as these do upon private control of the machinery and material of election, and so increases rather than lessens devotion to party by giving the voters more confidence in their leadership.

The next step following the official ballot is in the same direction : the further legal recognition of parties as belonging to the structure of government, and the further assumption by the state of certain merely mechanical incidents of party organiza- tion. Having legally incorporated the party machinery into the system of government, the law must now more carefully define what is meant by a party. A party is not its general com- mittee nor even its party convention as the official ballot law assumes ; it is primarily all the voters who support its principles. The election law leaves this definition to those in control of the organization an instance of the suppression of the individual citizen by the conquering power of monopoly. Having legalized parties and made them a constituent element in the organiza- tion of government, it follows that the individual citizen has a moral right to be a member of a party just as he has to be a citizen. By this is meant that his right to party membership must be defined and enforced by the same power as that which defines and enforces his right to citizenship, namely, the law of the land. Just as the state does not leave the definition of citizen- ship and the machinery of naturalization to the private interests of any body of men, so it cannot leave the definition of party membership to even the party organization. Political parties are no longer private concerns organized for agitation, but they are public institutions organized to name the officers of government and so to control the government itself. They are now constituted by law precisely for this purpose. The