Tammany Hall and Political Machines as Urban Democracy

Introduction: Weber and the Political Machine

When Max Weber gave his speech on politics as a vocation, he defined the political machine as a creation of the modern, pluralistic democratic state. A political machine, unlike a purely charismatic individual leader, was a functional bureaucracy that attempted — however imperfectly — to serve the popular interest through an institutional framework. A quick-voiced opponent of political corruption might protest the use of the political machine as a contemporary model for American democracy, as it has often been associated with corruption, specifically pork-barrel politics in America's urban past. Yet before the creation of political machines, the national apparatus of the state used physical force to ensure compliance with its actions, rather than bestowing any kind of favors to secure popular compliance.

In Weber's Europe, the result of aristocratic force was a form of political tyranny over the lower classes and, later, the industrial proletariat, imposed by a minority-led government. In Europe, government existed first to serve the interests of the higher orders and later to do the bidding of the capitalist class alone. The rough and democratic responsiveness of the political machine to the needs and concerns of the ordinary populace provides a lesson that modern California politicians have already learned from — through the use of popular initiatives and referendums — and could learn from further, in terms of the machine's institutional framework.

European Tyranny vs. American Patronage Democracy

Because America has traditionally allowed far less coercive forms of government than Europe, and because of America's sprawling size, governance of the burgeoning industrial populace was less cohesive from the beginning, and also less responsive in terms of social services — concerns that the machines addressed in a consistent fashion through their bureaucracies. Moreover, ordinary people like the fictional composite of real-life politicians George Washington Plunkitt could rise to power — through corruption, yes, but also through the dispensing of political favors and incentives to the disenfranchised — via the Tammany Hall political machine of the Democratic Party in New York City, becoming self-made men in government as well as in industry.

The political machine was an early form of urban, proletarian democracy whereby Plunkitt-style followers of Boss Tweed helped Catholics, immigrants, and industrial laborers with social welfare policies in exchange for votes. The modern political machine began as aspiring career politicians became elected leaders, attained control over their loyal political staff through the use of favors, and used the political apparatus to obtain material goods — securing their legitimacy from the will of the governed by dispensing such favors and goods to the populace. No longer was politics something that aristocratic gentlemen entered for a limited term; now it was a genuine career to be aspired to, even by those of the lower orders.

George Washington Plunkitt and Tammany Hall

Boss Tweed made politics his vocation by living for politics and living off what he could glean from his political power, functioning as a political capitalist entrepreneur — an entrepreneur who, he would add, behaved with more civic compassion toward his employees than many a factory owner. Tweed delivered votes for his machine in exchange for helping his constituency. Although these men enriched themselves, the Tweed politicians also helped immigrants gain a foothold in the American economic fabric. They called their workings patronage democracy — an "I'll scratch your back if you vote for me" arrangement, a form of what Riordan's composite creation Plunkitt called honest graft.

Honest Graft and the Ethics of Machine Politics

Plunkitt and his constituency shared common class and ethnic origins, and even while political bosses were lining their own pockets, the machine men did seem to feel and express genuine sympathy for those whom they served. Constituents often expressed local pride at a man who had made good on his humble beginnings through quick wit and savvy. Some machine politicians held themselves up as moral templates to the community — evidence that anyone could make it in America.