Translation of excerpts from Robert Heinlein’s book, Take Your Government Back - part 15

How to distinguish a political party from a Trojan horse

In any city or settlement where a long-standing political mafia has ruled for many years without a break The opposing party will also have its own organization, perhaps not so strong, but regularly presenting candidates for elections, and also regularly losing these elections. Thus, we have two organizations - one from the Democrats, the second from the Republicans. Some of them will belong to the ruling party and will be known as the political mafia. However, almost certainly, the mafia are both organizations, publicly pretending to compete, and in fact cooperating, and getting along well together. Every year they hold deliberately loud election campaigns, which are essentially a game with a previously known result, exchange accusations, conduct investigations of each other’s activities, convene conventions, but they have a contractual match, the results are known in advance, and the prize is pre-divided between the parties.

In addition to these official organizations, there will be several informal reform organizations from each party in the city, which may not even be recognized by the party committee. Thus, there will be four political fights in the city, or rather three, if you count two official organizations for one side - the political mafia. The other two participants are engaged in a fair political struggle - each other, and from the political mafia. Pretty confusing, isn't it? But this is still relatively simple compared to the party systems of some other countries, with their many parties.

To whom should an honest citizen join in such a situation? This is indeed a difficult question, because the reformist wings of both parties usually suffer from a lack of funding and attention from official party committees, which do not see in them either the Republican or the Democratic half of the American Eagle, but rather the wings of a dwarf Falcon flying far below. Therefore, in places where the political mafia rules, honest citizens usually do not engage in politics at all, limited to voting on party lists in national elections.
But so we will never get out of the political swamp!
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If you live in such a place and began your political career, following the advice from the second chapter of this book, then you will most certainly get into the organization of the political mafia, no matter whether the ruling party or their decorative rivals. I hope, because of such a regrettable event, you did not hesitate in your convictions and principles, but only gritted your teeth and were ready to strike back. The six months you spent with political mafia taught you a lot more than the same six months would have taught honest politics. Now - join one of the reformist organizations, become one of its leaders, and nominate your candidates for the primaries. It will take from six months to three years.

And let your organization achieve the removal of political mafia from power in the next city election. After that, in order to secure the victory, do everything to choose the governor, prosecutor, and state judge that suits you. Is it all too hard? Remember what our first people who overcame the endless prairies said: “The cowards were afraid to go, the weak ones died on the way.” Do not despair, you will not be alone in your path, you will have colleagues with you. It is unlikely that you will have to lead your political army, rather, you will be a sergeant or lieutenant in it.

To remove the political mafia from power is a very real task, I know for sure, because I saw with my own eyes how it was done. Quite a few American cities have successfully carried out such reforms, it is not too difficult. Harder to save is conquest. A typical reformist organization is falling apart after the very first successful campaign, and their typical candidate, falling into power, often turns out to be almost more corrupt than the professionals before him. The properties and pathologies of reformers and their organizations will be discussed in more detail in the chapter “Notes on Democracy”, and the choice of a candidate worthy of a nomination - in the next chapter.

Many professionals do not pay attention to the reformers participating in the elections because they are confident that they themselves will fail their reforms, and philosophically refer to their removal from power for a year, doing this all year, strengthening their organization, earning their daily bread with bribes, or living on savings. But you, I hope, have already understood that politics is a continuous process, and you don’t think that all you need is just to win one election and rest further on our laurels. Therefore, we will consider how in the situation described above to choose a field for your activity, and what you need to do.

First, choose companions by conviction, and not on the basis of expediency, otherwise you will not be happy. If you believe in the ideals of the Republican Party, then go to the Republican reformers, even if the Democratic reformers organization seems to be better suited to achieve your goal — victory over political mafia. And do the opposite, if you are in the shower - Democrat.

According to the laws of some cities, the local government should not declare their membership of any of the parties. This changes the name, but does not change the essence: the head of a “non-partisan” municipality (behind which there is a political mafia) will always be the local leader of one of the parties, who is helped by several errand politicians nominally listed in the rival party. The “non-partisan” nature of these figures facilitates the creation of an inter-party coalition in order to remove political mafia from power for some time, but complicates the preservation of the victory won, due to the lack of coherence in actions of members of the coalition, as well as long-term common interests and beliefs.

In general, the “non-partisan” approach to the organization of local governments appeared in our country thanks to a handful of enthusiastic political theorists who confused the appearance of ideas with their inner essence. They saw the political mafia conquer local power and decided that they could stop it by banning the participation of party organizations in local politics. But political mafia didn’t prevent this at all: although they were forbidden to mention party affiliation, they weren’t forbidden to make business out of politics (I wonder why theorists haven’t thought of it before?). But now, corrupt officials can do their corruption affairs, leaving no fingerprints at the crime scene in the form of a party name.

If you are allowed to participate in the city in the work of local authorities, in any case do not prohibit it, otherwise, when the political mafia steals the building of your city council, those who did it will not only be found, you will not even know their party affiliation.

And now, turning to practice, consider a specific example. If you have a slightly different case, then change the actions described below according to the situation, but the general principle will remain the same. Suppose you are in a local party organization and your party is not in power. The last condition makes only the difference that in order to be in power, you will need to win both the primaries and the main elections. If your party is in power, then the political mafia acting on behalf of your party is in power, and then the most difficult task for you is to win the primaries, after which it will be quite easy to win the main elections.

So, here are your actions in the proposed situation. To begin with, you and your friends become the head of the organization of the reformers of your party. This is no more difficult to do than to catch a butterfly with a butterfly net: you need to join an organization and begin to engage in political work, as described in this book. You are accepting new members into existing political clubs, where necessary - you organize new political clubs. In general, you behave as if the old, sluggishly working political organization does not exist: you are forming a new organization and are preparing for the primaries - the first fight with rivals, these are your actions. Aloud you say something else. The old dying organization has its own leadership and its elders. Almost all of them will seem to you to be self-satisfied idlers and political masochists: not accustomed to an energetic struggle for success, they easily give up with the slightest resistance from the opponent. Do not hurt their feelings. These elders may be completely useless to you, but they have enough influence to harm you.

There is a bearded anecdote about the newly-made member of the Masonic Lodge, immediately after the entry, who received the title of "Supreme Ruler and Lord of the Universe". No, the novice did not immediately become the Master of the Lodge: in that bed the lowest degree of initiation was called. For elders, do the same. Flatter them and obey them. Ask them for advice — in such a formulation as to get exactly the advice that you follow, otherwise they will be offended that their advice is not considered. Invite these honored workers to give speeches to new members of political clubs. Elect them to the presidiums, honorary committees, and delegations that meet celebrities coming to you. Never withdraw them from political clubs and other political organizations, unless they themselves want to resign. You can always create for them the honorable position of an executive or general “someone out there” that does not give them any particular trouble. If one of the venerable elders is the chairman of the organization, being unable to adequately manage the meetings, you can always entrust the meetings to a “committee-all-in-the-world”, the head of which will be the person you choose, or You can, through the executive committee, appoint a commission on parliamentary regulations, or even if you are well versed in parliamentary regulations, train him this very nominal chairman. You, with his kind permission, will be the informal leader of the audience. However, working in this capacity, do not give your chairperson any surprises from the audience; always warn him in advance what you are going to do. And do not dismiss the chairman until he himself resigns, and even then reward him with a title like the “Supreme Lord and Lord of the Universe”, like “Senior Advisor”, “Chairman of the Commission for the Admission of New Members”, others in the same spirit.

I remember once, at a meeting of a decrepit old man, similar to the one I described above, for twenty minutes I told the audience that “young and early” did not reckon with his opinion during the just-concluded election campaign. The only reason for his dissatisfaction was precisely as stated: the campaign itself went "perfectly well", he did not deny it, as a result of the elections, a whole gang of crooks was removed from power, and our people took posts in the state government. But with all this, no one consulted with him, the elder of the party reform movement, which upset him utterly. The claims of this old man were absurd, as a reforming politician he was a complete incompetent. But he was an excellent and very convincing orator, and he managed to convince the audience that they did not do well with him. With this, the organization began a split, from which it soon fell apart.

I will not give the name of this figure, he is known all over the country, for many years, he is hung with awards, and in his youth he won many gallant political victories. I remembered him only as a warning to you, reader. Some of the politicians of the old school are still good workers now, so don’t cut them all together, but choose people to work with. The rest - gently remove from cases, without affecting their feelings.

Suppose you won the primaries (how to win them is written in Chapter 10), and now the fate of the power of party political mafia is in your hands. You yourself now represent your party - you and your colleagues. From a legal point of view, state and country party committees are now required to interact with you. However, those people who were in power, and whom you removed from there, will still give you trouble!

Suppose these people are members of your party not by conviction, but are masked by your party for the convenience of trade in politics. Such subjects do not even possess a bit of honesty sufficient for a typical professional politician; rather, they are professional traitors, they cannot be trusted under any circumstances. This situation is fundamentally different from the usual situation described in Chapter 10 after the primaries, when your task is to settle resentment and disagreement between the factions that have been removed from power, but in general, are loyal to the party. It will be extremely difficult to expel the aforementioned crooks from the party. You cannot forbid them to attend public party meetings, and in any case, some of them will be elected to the district committee of the district, and it will most likely be impossible to smoke them out. Do not go with them to any compromises. Do not allow them to take any posts, if able to prevent them. If you allow at least one of them to take at least the post of honorary deputy chairman in the subcommittee, he will walk there: he will print on his own behalf a pile of paper campaigning for his friends - political merchants, looking very much like your organization’s campaign, thanks to the use of large print What you need to highlight, and small - for what you need to hide.

Their other favorite method, which, in addition, is absolutely impossible to prevent is the creation of a fake "political club", under the official sound of the name, such as "Official Republican Club of the 12th District" or "Assembly of Democrats of the Uryupinsky District". You can, of course, sue them in court demanding to prohibit the creation of organizations with similar names, but this does not often bring a positive result. I do not know any reliable ways to counter such organizations. All I can advise is not to let in your personalities from these organizations, do not trust them, and do not provide any opportunities. Some people from these fake organizations are lost sheep, sincerely loyal parties and willing to carry out reforms that will benefit the parties. If there are any, first check them out, for a long, long time, instructing them to do volunteer work at lower posts, and push them out only after making sure that their intentions are clean.

All this you need to take into account, because as soon as you create your organization, political merchants will certainly try to take control of it, under the pretext that they are “real” Democrats (or Republicans), and then you will want to go with them to compromise, especially because you will be subjected to strong pressure, using leverage in the capitals of the state and the country where the supreme party bosses are interested in settling party differences, without delving into the situation on the ground.

Do not compromise. If you know for sure that the restructured official party organization has had dark joint affairs with the political mafia that opposes you now, then this is exactly the case when you cannot make compromises, even if the capital party boss calls you, and starts asking for it.

Now that you have tamed the political mafia, and you have your own political organization - time to go to victory in the elections!

Part 1, where there are links to all other parts