Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/88

 74 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

absorbing on the part of the state, which is the common repre- sentative of all parties and all citizens, the machinery of the pri- mary itself, such as the enrollment of party members, the printing and handling of the ballots, the appointment of officials, inspec- tors, and judges, instead of leaving these tc the representatives of the organization. These all belong to the coercive side of the party. Just as the control of the ballot paper constituted the party leaders the dictators of the party, so the power to appoint, remove, promote, and reward the party workers, who in turn have charge of the enrollment, the registration, the marshaling of the member- ship at the polls, has constituted the boss the private proprietor of the institution. The state here, with its official inspectors, judges, registrars, et al., constitutes itself the structure within which the party operates. The state becomes a larger institution, by deepening its hold on a subordinate institution which had grown up as private property under the law of survival and centralization, until it reached the point where organization tended to suppress the free movement of the persuasive principle animating its members. But the state in thus enlarging itself does not suppress parties. It enlarges itself by merely incorporating their coercive structure and throwing itself about them in order to free them from the capricious coercion of the leaders whom natural selec- tion had constituted the private proprietors. This, of course, is a further guaranty of the rights of the individual voter to a place in the party membership, by protecting him in the enrollment and counting of his vote and the certification of the result. It introduces into party organization the two attributes of sovereignty, order and right, by first extracting coercion from it. This, like the official ballot, is also a subordination of the machinery of organization to the principles of the party. Party success, then, depends not so much upon control over the mechanical details as upon enthusiasm for common principles. And these principles, therefore, become broader and more patriotic, because they must be broad enough to hold together the various factions and minor interests which must be combined to get a majority. Patriotic principles rather than shrewd organization are the banner of party success.