For reasons best known to myself (if anyone asks I'll answer) I've read a lot of staff magazines from the 1920s through 1940s. It's actually more fascinating than you might think to read the gossip column from a company you don't work for from a time long before you were born. Aside from the enthusiasm for the Kodak moment that developed around 1922, and the discovery that one could be increasingly open about courtship and dating, another thing stands out: by 1940 the company picnic was pretty much dead.
And the company dance, and the company orchestra, for that matter. Though the company soft-ball team continued (and still does).
How is this related to U.S. politics? The company picnic has declined for the same reason that people don't vote as much.
On an individual level it always has, and always will be, irrational in a limited sense to vote.
Since the early twentieth century voting turnout has declined in the U.S. Similarly, involvement in political parties has diminished. None of this is an original observation. Robert Putnam turned this into a well-known book, Bowling Alone.
The reason so many people went to the company picnic was that there weren't as many alternatives entertainments in the early twentieth century. Companies also sponsored the picnics and dances, making them cheaper than other alternatives.
But the mass picnic and the mass dance with 3000 factory workers hanging out with their co-workers is a thing of the past.
The reason is that with higher wages and other things to spend them on the idea of going dancing with the women from the typing pool, and picnicing with the boys from the mail-room became less attractive.
For the same reason -- more forms of alternative entertainment, and the higher opportunity cost implied by real wages -- it is less attractive to follow politics closely or become involved in a political party than it used to be.
If you don't follow politics voting becomes less consequential. What we're seeing is the aggregrate of thousands of people's individual decision to watch a soap opera instead of read the newspaper, to go to the movies instead of listening to NPR, and then not knowing who to vote for.
The professionalization of even the lower reaches of politics in the United States is probably both a reaction to the drop in volunteer involvement, and a cause of continuing decline in volunteer involvement. It takes us further and further away from the historical republican ideal of a nation of citizens who all participate in the political life of the public and do so out of love for country.
I would also note that compared to other western countries, the continuing malign hold of the church on the minds of much of the American population, is another competitor to involvement in political parties. Nowadays with the born again churches promising spiritual growth and happiness without too much self-denial, why get involved in politics with its inevitable trade-offs and disappointments.
Posted by robe0419 at September 29, 2004 7:06 PM