The Political Party: an American Invention

In honor of the 2024 US elections, a short history of the political party

The Library of Babel is an email newsletter exploring the wonders of literature, history and magic. All the installments are free. Sign up here:

---

Today my fellow Babylonians I wish to step back for a moment from our thinking of literature and the occult and instead, discuss a very important development in the history of politics: the formation of political parties in the modern era. For this, we need to travel back in time—not to the French Revolution, but to the early USA.

With the implementation of the federal constitution in 1789, George "My ragtag army kicked out the Brits" Washington was elected as the first president of the United States. Two terms were enough for the Father of the Nation to wake up from the illusion that, "We kicked out the Brits, and now we'll all live in harmony, eagerly awaiting the new season of House of the Dragon to redeem the last one." Washington quickly realized a fundamental truth about revolutions: at first, everyone is united against a clear enemy, but it soon devolves into revolutionary versus revolutionary.

Even after the constitution was ratified, that short document had at least two interpretations. The Federalists (the faction of Washington's successor, John Adams) saw the proposed system as a way to establish a centralized federal government that would tower over the individual states and promote a vision of an industrialized super-republic. Alexander Hamilton's vision, as a staunch Federalist, was to create a republic with a central bank, a standing army, and a mighty navy—an empire that would one day compete with the British on their terms. To make this grand vision a reality, the Federalists exploited the ambiguity within the constitution itself, arguing that, broadly speaking, everything was allowed for the federal government.

In contrast, an opposing party began to form—the Jeffersonian Republicans (named after their founder, Thomas "I crafted the Declaration of Independence because the Creator gave me an inalienable talent for writing" Jefferson). Jefferson and his allies viewed the new regime as a republic of republics. A goverment that would strip certain powers from the member states, but in no way subordinate them to Hamilton's grand vision. In modern terms, Jefferson wanted a limited central government, one that would manage foreign policy and mediate internal disputes between the states.

What’s amusing about this pioneering struggle is that both sides, soon to be full-fledged parties, operated within the same government. Today, it seems almost obvious, but at the time it was unthinkable to President Adams and his ideological supporters that Jefferson, as vice president, would act from within the government itself to promote his opposing vision and rally popular support for his emerging party.

This unique situation was possible because, according to the constitution, the candidate elected as vice president was the one who received the second-highest number of electoral votes. In fact, the creators of the constitution thought in outdated terms: they saw politics the way their ancestors had for centuries: loyalty to the state required loyalty to the legitimate and lawful government, whether it was under a king, an emperor, or a republican oligarchy—and disagreements were, at most, resolved by forming temporary coalitions in the legislature, almost never in the executive branch.

What the American revolutionaries didn’t understand was that the American Revolution created political possibilities that were unprecedented: with the extension of voting rights to the executive as well as the legislature—and once Washington’s unifying figure disappeared from the political scene—something revolutionary occurred. Already at the beginning of Adams' term, two parties began to form in a way reminiscent of modern party politics. And in the 1800 election, Adams lost the presidency to the Jeffersonian Republican Party. Thus, perhaps for the first time in modern history, one goverment was replaced by another without bloodshed or a "glorious" revolution, but through a democratic and open process (that is, for any white, property-owning man).

What the Founding Fathers didn’t anticipate, and what we see now, is the emergence of two alternative realities of facts and figures. It is almost (if not entirely) impossible to form coalitions or come to compromises when the lines are drawn in advance. In the early republic, Adams could deny Hamilton’s dream of interfering in European affairs, thus preventing a war with Napoleon. And Jefferson, a proponent of a small federal government, signed a treaty with the same French emperor that more than doubled the size of the U.S. in the Louisiana Purchase.

Back then, you could be a Federalist on some issues and support the Jeffersonian Republicans on others. The invention of social media, with its powerful filter bubbles, has made that past reality almost impossible to imagine today.