International Marxist Group Archive

Magazines, bulletins and booklets of the IMG and its forerunners, 1961–1984

Big Business Switch Over to Johnson

The Week Vol. 2, No. 9, c. 17 September 1964 · p. 10 of the scan · 305 words

The scan: The Week v2 no9.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Tesseract OCR) from a scan of a stencilled typescript and has not been corrected. Expect misread words; titles in particular are often garbled where the issue printed no contents list. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: capitals heading; heuristic; title from the OCR of the heading.

Fron 'The Militentt ",e.The declaration of support for Johnson by Henry Ford IT was at first considered just an individual gesture. Since then 4 considerable stream of big businessmen have swung over to Johnson, a number of them making their positions known publicly. This shift of capitalist support to Johnson became so marked in the weeks prior to the Democratic Convention that the Aug 17 New York Times ran an extensive feature article by M.J. Rossant describing the extent of the shift °2f businéss support to Johnson. Rossant writess.... ‘Support for President Jotmaca is particularly marked in'big' business circles- the nations major corporations and banking houses- that have traditionally backed Republican politicians and policies'. The Times cites a representative of the Business Council, which comprises some of the nation's top executives, to the effect that more than 60% of them will be backing Johnson solidly. Johnson according to the Times, has sought businessmen's support "and offered them a chance to make their influence felt". One executive is quoted; "He is the answer to our prayers". Senator Goldwater, saya the Times, will not lack financial and moral support from some business elements, "but the assumption that most businessmen will automatically rally behind the Republican Party no longer holds true."

e-ethe Sept 2 New York Herald Tribune, a traditionally Republican paper reported a "strange" development at a recent Minneapolis meeting of Republican "business: heavyweights": eight of 17 said they planned to vote for Johnson, only six for Goldwater, and three were undecided. "The Republican Party's traditional dependence on business for election year contributions...is threatened.... as never before in this centrry."

The facts cited above make it clear that any talk of the Democratic Party being labor's party is hokum. The Democratic Party is clearly revealed as a capitalist party bought and paid for by big business elements".

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