The American Three-Party System: Hidden in Plain Sight

By W. D. Wright

W. D. Wright has identified and provided a provocative discussion of the existence of the Corporate Political Party and a national three-party system, comprised of the CPP and the Republican and Democratic parties. Both the CPP and the three-party system have existed unknown to the American people since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hidden in plain sight.

The Corporate Political Party promotes the politics of deception, secrecy, and corruptionin short, anti-democratic politics. The CPP has two major objectives. The first is to establish a national one-party system by gaining control over the Republican and Democratic parties, turning them into shell institutions and functioning through them; this would be done, as it is presently occurring, by helping to get Democrats and Republicans elected to office who would be that in name only, while actually being Corporate Political Party candidates and elected officials wearing two labels.

The second major objective is to control the national, state, and local governments and their treasuries through the two shell parties, in order to be able to shift large amounts of taxpayers money on a continuous basis to its constituenciesrich and powerful individuals and financial, industrial, and commercial corporationsthereby seeking to create a large discrepancy of wealth on a continuous basis between its constituencies and the American population.

There is an urgent need for the American people to learn about the Corporate Political Party and take action against it for the sake of their own future, wealth, prosperity, and freedom in this country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477232323

W. D. Wright

W. D. Wright, a Connecticut resident, obtained his PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He taught Black and American history, and the impact of racism on both, for several decades at the college level. Additionally, he has published six books, providing provocative discussions on these subjects.

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Published by AuthorHouse    02/20/2014

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1:   Establishing The Two-Party System

Chapter 2:   Establishing The Corporate Political Party

Chapter 3:   The Three-Party System In America

Chapter 4:   Deepening The New Deal

Chapter 5:   The Three Political Parties And Reactionary Politics

Chapter 6:   The Tale Of Three Political Parties

Chapter 7:   President Barack Obama And The Three Political Parties

Conclusion

Notes

Conclusion

About The Author

Acknowledgement

Appendix

Endnotes

Crisis of the Black Intellectual

Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography

Critical Reflections on Black History

Black Intellectuals, Black Cognition, and a Black Aesthetic

Racism Matters

Historians and Slavery: A Critical Analysis of Perspectives and Irony in American Slavery and Other Recent Works

INTRODUCTION

T here is the common and traditional understanding in this country that America has a two-party system, and that a third party cannot succeed. The failure of third-party bids has been provided as evidence to substantiate this view, such as the failure of the Bull-Moose or Progressive Party as well as the American Socialist Party of the early 1900s, the Progressive Party of the late 1940s, the American Independence Party in 1968, and the bids of Patrick Buchanan in the 1980s, H. Ross Perot in the 1990s, and Ralph Nader’s effort in 2000.

There are some political pundits who think that Independents could establish a successful political party and establish a three-party system, inasmuch as there are more registered Independents than either Democrats or Republicans—and perhaps more than the two combined. But those who are termed Independents, and who accept the term, do not seem to want to establish a political party of their own. Instead, they become Independents because they do not want to belong to either the Democratic or Republican parties. They seem to prefer remaining as a swing vote in elections within what they, like other Americans, believe and understand to be the country’s two-party system.

But this belief and understanding needs to be challenged, as well as the notion that a three-party system cannot be established in the country. The simple truth is that there is a three-party system in this country that has been in existence since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when that political structure was planted in the country on a national basis, although not in a strong or fixed manner, or on a legal basis. The three-party system still does not have a legal basis, but it has a strong, fixed position in the broad, American political system. The third party being hinted at is what I call the Corporate Political Party, or the CPP, which has existed in this country since the latter half of the nineteenth century, hidden in plain sight.¹* It has been talked about and written about since its inception with no perception or recognition of its reality, not even on the part of people who are most knowledgeable about America’s political party system: historians, political scientists, sociologists, politicians, political pundits, and journalists. The participants in the CPP themselves, the corporate elites and their institutions—the Fortune 500 corporate financial, business, and industrial corporations—do not know of the existence of the CPP, either.

This has to seem utterly strange and even outlandish: an entire political party can go unnoticed—even by people who professionally analyze government, politics, and political parties—or that economic institutions can be considered political institutions and engage in politics. Although the professional analysts do know that corporate elites and financial, business, and industrial corporations engage in politics, they seldom call it politics; instead, they use terms such as lobbying, interest group activity, pressure group activity, or political campaign fundraising. Even that last term does not set off any bells, indicating to such people that they are talking and writing about a political party, the Corporate Political Party, and the way it conducts its politics.

What is a political party? Political scientist Theodore J. Lowi defined a political party in his textbook American Government.

In the United States scholars usually distinguish between parties and interest groups on the basis of policies versus personnel. According to this view, interest groups are oriented toward the policies of the existing government, accepting it as it is and attempting to shape its decisions. In contrast, parties are believed to seek control of the government itself; control of elections is a means to that end simply because elections determine the top personnel.¹

Lowi also talked about the organization of a political party, focusing on the organization of the Democratic and Republican parties, which is roughly the same.

Party structure follows a simple rule: For every election district, there has to be some kind of party unit … for most of the history of the United States, the two major parties have offered candidates in the overwhelming proportion of districts in the United States at all levels.…

By almost universal practice, the party organization in each election district is a committee. The best-known examples are at the national level—the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. Each of the two major parties also has a state committee, or state central committee, because the state is the most important electoral district in the United States. Even the presidential elections are conducted at the state level, where the contest is fought over which candidate will receive a plurality of the popular vote and 100 percent of the electoral vote in each state.

Below the state level the situation varies a bit. Almost without exception the parties have county committees. In some cities the parties try to organize committees at a city level; but more frequently the county (which includes most cities anyway) and the ward are the important levels around which parties attempt to organize committees. But there are other practices as well. Each congressional district, each state senate district, and each district in which judges are elected qualifies as a unit around which parties might set up committees.²

Although these committees are distinct and separate at Democratic and Republican party levels, they overlap in their boundaries and exhibit interlocking memberships, as a party member at one committee level can belong to a committee at another party level, facilitating the two-party organizations working together. In an unorthodox manner, political scientist James MacGregor Burns suggested that America had a multiple party system, and in his book Presidential Government he suggested that there were four parties: a presidential party, two congressional parties, and a presidential party out of office. Burns complicated this unorthodox political party portrait by talking about the regular national party, which is subordinate to the presidential party,

The strong President today considers the national chairman his own man. It has become definite practice that the newly nominated presidential candidate chooses his own national chairman, who then takes over the whole national party. It is odd that the organizational apparatus of a great, historic national party, with its own wide interests and obligations, should so completely subordinate itself to the man who is able to win the nomination … But this situation illustrates the relation between the presidential candidate’s personal organization and the regular national party.³

So if there are four parties, plus the regular national party, that means there is a five-party system in America. But the party system includes more than five parties, as per Burns’s discussion in his book. There are two regular national parties, and each of them would be associated with the four parties as described. That makes for a ten-party system in America. If Burns had used the phrase faction (or political group) to identify what he called parties, his analysis and discussion of the American party system would have been more comprehensible, showing the internal complexity of the Democratic and Republican parties, which would evidence even greater complexity when the broad structure of each party, as discussed earlier, was drawn into the picture. But Burns did not say political faction or political group within each of the national parties, so his discussion of the American political party system was rather confusing, denying the national two-party system while at the same time basing an analysis and discussion on it. His discussion said nothing about the Corporate Political Party, because this was not something that Burns perceived.

But if one put Burns’s discussion of the American party system (using terms like political faction or political group instead of parties) together with Theodore J. Lowi’s discussion, one can easily see that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party, as a national party, is monolithic. This idea can be further demonstrated by the fact that these two national parties have regional manifestations, or sectional manifestations, often referred to as wings of a party. Each section not only represents geography but also social and economic constituencies, meaning that a national party has a multitude of different constituencies that can make it difficult for a national party to cohere, and even to function as a national party. In the history of the Republican and Democratic parties in America, a section of a party was stronger or more powerful than the party as a whole, even functioning as if it were the national party itself; textbook examples are the northern wing of the Republican Party and the southern wing of the Democratic Party.

The Corporate Political Party is as much in the American Party system as the Democratic and Republican Party, and it has interacted with them on a national scale since the late nineteenth century. The reality of the CPP and its functioning in the country has been and continues to be covered up by a lack of understanding and misunderstandings about the corporation itself regarding what it is and how it functions, and the related lies and myths about the national government’s relationship to the corporation and the American economy. All of these factors function as a shield for the CPP to enable it to exist hidden in plain sight. A statement as simple as the following one (which would seem to the overwhelming number of Americans to be true) is predicated on the things that prevent an understanding of what a corporation is and its relationship to the United States government, which has to be understood truthfully to help account for and to be able to see the Corporate Political Party.

One of the inherent characteristics of the U.S. system of government (and that of all Western nations) is the tension that exists between the political system (majoritarian) and the economic system (free enterprise).⁴

One gets the view from this simply phrased statement that government is one thing and that the economy is another, that they are separate and should be, and this is how a free enterprise and a free market are able to exist and be maintained. The statement offers no understanding that the American economy is made up of corporations and non-corporate, privately owned enterprises, because it functions from the (false) assumption that a corporation that sells shares is a private enterprise. The simple statement was also predicated on the false understanding that a political institution is simply political, and an economic institution—even the corporation—is simply economic; that a political institution has no financial or economic capabilities or functions, and that an economic institution, including the corporation, has no political capabilities or political functions.

An inroad can quickly be made into the latter fallacy by indicating that the corporation that sells shares to the public is organized on a political basis, which is imposed by the state or national government charter that enables it to exist and function. Such a corporation is required to have a constitution or bylaws, as well as annual meetings or specially called meetings for shareholders who would be permitted to vote on issues, policies, or proposals for corporation actions. The public corporation has to have a board of directors whose members are elected or appointed by shareholders. The board then appoints the management team consisting of the CEO, president, chief financial officer, and other management officials. There are behind-the-scenes and public campaigning for board seats and for management positions; these are the internal politics of the corporation that sells stock to the public. The biggest of these kinds of corporations—those that are today classified as Fortune 500 institutions, embracing financial, commercial, and industrial corporations, and those near that status in these areas, that fall under the wider Fortune 1000 bracket—engage in external politics at all levels of the American government.

As to the political institution having financial and economic capabilities and functions, one only has to look at the United States government to see this reality. The Founding Fathers who drew up the US Constitution invested the national government with these capabilities and functions, which will here be demonstrated.

There are clauses in the Constitution that refer to the financial or economic power and responsibility of the national government. Section 7.1. reads, All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the house of Representatives. Section 8 reads:

The Congress shall have the power 1) To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, excises, to pay the debts … 2) To borrow on the credit of the United States; 3) To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; 4) To establish a uniform rule … and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States; 5) To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; 12) To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; and, 13) To provide and maintain a navy.

Section 9.1. states, No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. The Constitution does not spell it out, but in the comments about the Treasury, in effect it says that the executive branch of the national government would also be engaged in financial and economic activities. Congress gained another financial power with the Sixteenth Amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. The Constitution also has other clauses in it that imply that Congress can engage in financial and economic activities, such as the following clause in Section 8.18: To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or any department or officer thereof. The Treasury is one of those departments, and it comes under this clause, which means that the executive branch of the US government is brought under it as well.

There is no way to read these statements in the Constitution and then conclude that the US government is supposed to keep its hands off the American economy. Quite the contrary, the investment of financial and economic powers in the government reflected the mercantilist conception of political economy in a modified form, which Alexander Hamilton, as the first treasurer of the United States, would implement and shape, establishing what can be called Hamiltonian political economy, under which the country has always functioned since its inception. This reality has been ignored and buried under many lies, and particularly the myth that the country has always operated on the basis of a laissez-faire conception of political economy, which was implied in the quotation that opened this broad discussion.

The Constitution, as the provisions show, invested the United States government with the power and right to supervise and regulate the American economy, and to help finance its activities. In short, the document indicates clearly that the US government and the American economy should engage in partnership, which reflected the modified mercantilist thinking of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, which Alexander Hamilton implemented.

Those who keep saying that the United States government is not to regulate the economy, and indeed today’s large-scale Fortune 500 corporations, are going against the Constitution and its provisions on this matter. Law professor Gary Lawson thought he was reading the Constitution properly on this subject when he argued that the Constitution did not allow any branch of the national government to create new and permanent instruments of public control. As to the commerce clause, he said, That clause provides for congressional oversight of interstate commerce but is not a standing invitation to establish agencies.⁵

Lawson was showing his adherence to the strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution, a conservative interpretation—indeed, a fundamentalist interpretation—that what is possible to create and what can be regulated is only what the Constitution explicitly says can be done. This kind of interpretation of the Constitution literally wipes out the ability of Congress to pass legislation, which could only be passed if it was explicitly authorized by the Constitution. This makes the Constitution itself a dead document that has no flexibility, no ability to adapt to changing times or to deal with the unforeseeable when it ultimately materializes.

The Founding Fathers were concerned that specific things could and could not be done, such as saying clearly that the Congress could tax, or that No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any duty on tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit delay. Not only are there constitutional specifications here, but the regulatory power of the Congress is also implied, and in a very strong manner—and not just over commerce, but over state action. There are also other clauses putting regulatory restrictions on states, and even on the national government itself, such as the Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

What American historians, political scientists, political philosophers, and political theorists have not been able to fathom is that the Constitution itself is a supervisory, regulatory document that establishes the national government’s considerable oversight and regulatory powers and responsibilities over the state governments—precisely what the Articles of Confederation had not done, and that the Founding Fathers (who were actually the second group of Founding Fathers) consciously and deliberately sought to correct with the document they wrote.

Political scientist Sotirios A. Barber is one in his academic field who has recognized the general political supervisory and regulatory powers and responsibilities of the national government, particularly the supervisory and regulatory powers of the Congress.:

I see no good reason for less than the generous construction of Congress’s regulatory powers. The commerce clause and Congress’s powers over bankruptcy patents and trademarks, and the monetary system, together with restrictions in Article IV on the power of the states to impair contractual obligations—all point to, make sense in view of, a general economic prosperity as a responsibility of the national government.⁶

Barber’s remarks indicate that he also knew that the United States was operating under a modified mercantilist doctrine of political economy that Alexander Hamilton had shaped up for the country, who based much of his argument and action on the general welfare clause of the Constitution, which supplemented Congress’s regulatory powers.

The Supreme Court, following Alexander Hamilton, has long construed this clause as a power through which Congress can influence policy in areas thought to be reserved to the states. Against critics of his proposals for a national bank, protection for domestic manufacturers, and federally funded canals and other internal improvements, Hamilton argued for a liberal construction of the Congress’s regulatory powers and for a construction of the general welfare clause as a power to tax and spend for any project conducive to the people’s welfare, whether or not embraced by the enumerated regulatory powers.

The Constitution endorsed this liberal or loose constructionist interpretation by the numerous vague clauses regarding national government responsibilities and the needs of the country. The document could actually easily be interpreted from both the strict constructionist and loose constructionist standpoints, because there were things that the second group of Founding Fathers wanted to remain permanent in America, as well as the need for the ability of the Constitution and the national government to be able to adapt to changing times and requirements, thus remaining innovative and creative.⁷

This idea is contrary to Ronald Reagan’s slander of the United States government being the problem for the American people because it engaged in regulation of the financial, business, and industrial corporations, and it promoted the rights of American citizens that others in the country wished to deny. The problem has always been the lies and myths told about the Constitution, the national government, and the latter’s relationship to the economy. The Constitution promotes a partnership between the government and the economy, and thus it rejects the argument that one can bear so readily today: that government involvement with the economy amounts to intervention, or something that it is not supposed to do. Invariably the reference to intervention is made synonymous with government regulations in the economy, as if this was the only way that the national government was involved with the economy.

The national government is always involved in the economy, directly or indirectly. It is directly involved when it prints the money that is used in the economy, when it regulates enterprises or production processes and packaging, when it purchases services or materials from enterprises, or when it gives tax cuts or tax incentives to enterprises. It is indirectly involved when it grants a charter to allow a corporation to exist and function in the economy, when government employees spend money in the economy, when it finances public colleges and universities that graduate people who enter the workforce, or when it builds or repairs infrastructure that facilitates the movement of goods and services in the country.

The American capitalistic system has never been free from the US government to help it be the successful entity it has become in this country and in the world. Economist Jeff Madrick has written, As odd as it is to have to say this, without effective government, America would be a poor country.⁸ But this is a general argument to be made about the success of the capitalistic economy itself, which economist Joel Magnuson made in Mindful Economics.

Capitalism has never required a self-regulating market system that is free from government intervention in order to succeed in making profits for investors. In fact, businesses generally find unbridled, Darwinistic competition on markets to be intolerably self-destructive, and have sought to create a controlled market system rather than a free-market system.

In practice, the anti-government rhetoric of laissez-faire, was not used to create smaller government, or to reduce the profile of government in economic activity. The rhetoric of laissez-faire was used to strip the capitalist economy of regulatory aspects of government that interfere with profit making such as state controls of corporate charters, corporate income taxes or taxes on wealthy investors, pro-labor legislation, or government laws.

Government has always played a central role in building capitalist systems, and capitalism could not have come into existence without it … laissez-faire ideology aside, it was not that class of capitalist entrepreneurs, but government that shaped the development of the modern capitalist system.⁹

Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs echoed these assertions in his book The Price of Civilization. He wrote that free markets by themselves are not able to provide certain goods, such as highways, that markets by themselves will either not or not provide to the right scale.¹⁰ He also said, Free markets … need governments to help regulate market places when information between buyers and sellers is ‘asymmetric.’ When sellers have inside information available to buyers, fraud and waste are rife.¹¹ Sachs indicated that famous economic thinkers, to which free market advocates turn to talk of laissez-faire political economy, saw a role for government in the economy, as a partner.

It’s worth recalling that all great promoters of the market economy, including Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Paul Samuelson, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, were fully aware of the reality of public goods … and therefore the need for the government to be deeply engaged in public education, road building, scientific discovery, environmental protection, financial regulation, and many other activities. None ever denied a major role for government in a market economy.¹²

Steve Fraser made some candid remarks that dispelled the myth that the late nineteenth century was the golden age of laissez-faire political economy in America, allowing for the great development of American capitalism and the country becoming an industrial and financial power:

No myth about American history has demonstrated greater durability than the belief that the late nineteenth century was the golden age of laissez-faire. It was then, so the story goes, that a hands-off policy by the government allowed the impersonal operations of the free market to work their magic and turn the United States into an industrial goliath. But actually all branches of the federal government were deeply implicated in the process. Not only did they actively promote the development of a national capitalist economy; they did so in a way that favored the interests of the industrial and financial corporations. Thus, the rise of big business was due less to impersonal economic laws and more to man-made laws.¹³

Though corporate elites seek to make use of laissez-faire doctrine to avoid or seriously mitigate taxation of their incomes and the corporations they dominate and control—which leads to calling them their corporations in this book—they simultaneously seek to get huge government tax cuts for themselves, their families, and their institutions, as well as other kinds of national and state government financial subsidies. Laissez-faire is double-talk, deception, and manipulation, but it is also corporate politics, which point to the existence of the Corporate Political Party, of which they all are a part and who help to make the party function in the country.

Let’s turn to the CPP. First one must understand what the corporation is that sells stock, which is what most of the Fortune 500 corporations do (though there are a number in this bracket that do not). When a corporation sells stock, it becomes a public institution and not a private institution, and it fosters a public economy, not a private economy, and the phenomenon of corporate capitalism and a corporate capitalistic economy. This is in fact what some brave souls, from time to time, have been willing to say to the American people; they knew that Americans lacked knowledge and understanding of this, and that they were steeped in the myths and lies about corporations and the national and state governments’ relationship to them. They were aware of the sources of the American people’s ignorance: historians, political scientists, economists, journalists, politicians, political pundits, and others.

One of the brave souls first to appear to debunk the myths and lies was John P. Davis. In 1896, when the corporation had become the dominant economic institution, and the corporate economy had become dominant in the country, and dominating the private economy, Davis published a book about corporations called Corporations: A Study of the Origins and Development of Great Business Corporations and of Their Relations to the Authority of the State,¹⁴ in which he said a private corporation was a contradiction in terms. Davis’s book was re-issued in 1963. Two years later Adolf A. Berle, legal financial expert and an advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Depression, remarked in his book The American Economic Republic that as long as an incorporated economic institution did not sell stock, it was a private enterprise—but once it sold stock to the public, it became a public enterprise. These days, one frequently hears the phrase going public, and it is a reference to a corporation that will be seeking to sell stock, thus converting a private enterprise into a public enterprise.

But the person making that move would not likely understand the transition that occurred, owing to being steeped in the myths and lies about the corporation that sells stock to the public: that despite going public, it remains a private enterprise. Berle wrote in his book, For practical purposes, the line can be drawn when a corporation … ‘goes public,’ that is, has distributed securities and, particularly, shares of its stock to the investing public through the open financial market. When this takes place, the management of the corporation automatically changes both position and point of view.¹⁵ In 1976, Arthur Selwyn Miller wrote, America is characterized by huge collective organizations, which are private in that they are not actually owned by government but which in fact are instruments of governance and should be considered public.¹⁶ In Miller’s view, the huge corporations were public institutions, because they were engaged in politics, in governing.

Economist William G. Roy wrote, As public entities, corporations were created by what is known as a special charter, an act of a legislature … to create a corporation.… As public entities, corporations had both privileges and responsibilities.¹⁷ He extended his remarks, saying, The public nature of the corporation was … a justification for corporations.¹⁸ Legal historian Kermit Hall stated in the late 1980s, All corporations are public in the sense that the authority of the states creates them.¹⁹ Lawyer and public advocate Jeffrey Clements wrote in Corporations Are Not People, A corporation is a government defined legal structure for doing business. A corporation is created and defined by state legislatures to advance what the state deems to be in the public interest. Corporations as entities are government policy tools; only government makes incorporation possible … Corporations are not … mere ‘associations of citizens.’ Corporations exist only because states enact laws defining exactly what a corporation is, what it can do, and what it cannot do.²⁰

Senator Eugene McCarthy was worried about the power of the large centralized corporations in America. In a writing from 1975 he remarked:

The corporation has developed into a separate center of power. It is one, which was not anticipated or provided for in the Constitution. It is one which has not been subject to the general laws of dealing with business and financial practices. And it is one which has assumed functions that go far beyond its original economic purposes.²¹

It was now, as Senator McCarthy indicated, extensively engaged in political activity, in governance, as Arthur Miller had it; in short, in sharing power and governance with the United States government with no constitutional restraints on its size, power, and activities, even political activities. Those activities are exercised through the Corporate Political Party, which is also outside the Constitution.

But that does not amount to being an unusual thing, because the Republican and Democratic parties function outside the document and state constitutions, although not state laws. The CPP functions outside of state laws and regulations regarding recognized political parties. While state governments (like the national government) do not recognize or acknowledge the existence of the CPP, they nevertheless help to establish it and guide its functioning by state charters and corporate law. Thus, the first basis for understanding that the Corporate Political Party exists is to recognize that the public corporations that are a part of the party are themselves political institutions, put in this organizational form by the requirements of government charters and corporate law. This induces the leadership of these institutions to think and act politically.

The public corporations, with their political organization and political functioning, engage in financial and economic activities in the way that Congress and the executive branch of the national government, as political institutions, engage in financial and economic activities. Internally, the corporations of the CPP function politically according to their charter and bylaws or constitution; externally they function vis-à-vis the Democratic and Republican parties and the national, state, and local governments. The CPP has a national structural form and is a national political collectivity, which is also true of the Democratic and Republican parties, and like them, the CPP functions on a national basis in the country.

The Fortune 500 corporations are the core of the Corporate Political Party. Most of them are public institutions. There are a number of privately owned corporations in this group just as rich and powerful that are part of the CPP and are also part of the country’s national corporate economy. The elites who