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366       THE COMMUNIST

content usually having swallowed all the liberal and futile reforms cooked up by petty bourgeois leaders such as Jerry Simpson, Bryan, La Follette, et al., who have all attracted with "progressive" bluster against the big bourgeoisie a following they have led around in a circle back to the corral of the big bourgeoisie.

2. The National Grange, in the '70's of the last century, quite definitely functioned as a political party, nominating and electing candidates on a program of denunciation of monopoly capital, directed chiefly against the railroads. But although its program for railroad "regulation" has been long since "won," being adopted by finance capital itself, the farmers are more than ever at the mercy of the railroads. The illusion fostered by such nonsense is that the government is "neutral" and not a class government, owned by and functioning for the big capitalist class. Hence the folly of demanding that a privileged ruling class "regulate" away its privileges in this or any other respect. The Grange also went into business, starting factories to produce agricultural implements at lower prices than the implement monopoly--the factories naturally going bankrupt. When, as is the case invariably with so-called "producers' co-operatives," the Grange tried this also, their co-operatives were either so insignificant as to have no effecton monopolized marketing (and hence were no benefit to small farmers as a class) or, by attaining some size, they became subject to the credit power of the banks and fell under the sway of big capital--again to no benefit to the farmers.

3. The Greenback Party was another attempt in petty bourgeois politics reflecting the historic struggle over "cheap money" between debtors and creditors. The Greenback Party had the patent nostrum of inflation of the currency. Big capital resolutely vetoed it at the time, but, though it has inflated the currency since then, the farmers cannot say they have gained anything by it, but quite the opposite (post-war deflation). The Greenback Party expired, to be followed by the Farmers' Alliance, which repeated the program of the National Grange in general, with all manner of noisy but empty reforms, around which, in a period of depression, was built up the Populist Party of 1892. With no more than economic absurdities such as the "free and unlimited coinage of silver at the rate of sixteen to one," a call for government ownership of railways and expression of "sympathy for labor's demand for shorter hours, immigration restriction and direct election of U. S. Senators," the Populist Party swept in a million votes on its tickets, which was "independent" of other capitalist parties, but not independent--opposed to--capitalism itself. The result was that Bryan, in 1896