Communists on Nixon’s 1974 resignation: ‘Partial victory’ for the people

Daily World, Aug. 9, 1974. | People's World Archives

This article is part of the People’s World 100th Anniversary Series.

Fifty years ago, Republican Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign from office, a move taken to avoid impeachment and conviction for the Watergate conspiracy.

Nixon’s vice president and successor, Gerald Ford, had been appointed to that office after the resignation of Nixon’s previous vice president, Spiro Agnew, in 1973. This meant Ford became president without ever being elected as part of a presidential ticket. He was the hand-picked commander-in-chief of the corporations, GOP ideologues, and the military-industrial complex.

The following two articles present assessments of Nixon’s resignation made at the time by the editors of Daily World, People’s World’s predecessor, and Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. Both articles appeared on the front page of the Daily World on Aug. 9, 1974, the morning after Nixon quit.

The two pieces argue that while Nixon’s resignation was a partial victory for the people, it would be foolish to think that the danger was over.

The Daily World editors and the CPUSA leader alike emphasized that the conspiracy against democracy and the working people of this country did not end with Nixon’s departure; in fact, they make the case that his resignation was reactionaries taking the easy way out. By tossing Nixon overboard, they hoped to continue implementing their agenda of attacks on working people and their support for exploitation and racism at home and war abroad.

With another conspiracy aimed at undermining democracy looming today in the form of
MAGA and Project 2025, the warnings that Daily World and Hall issued a half-century ago are still relevant.

Just as the problem in 1974 went beyond Nixon, the problem in 2024 goes beyond Trump. A defeat of Trump in November, however, would mark a partial victory in the people’s struggle to block fascism and open the way toward progress.

The New Cover-Up

Daily World Editorial Board

Daily World | Aug. 9, 1974

Repudiate any deals made with Nixon! Demand “no immunity!” No honeymoon with Gerald Ford! Full exposure of the Watergate conspiracy against the people of the United States! Stop evasion of the Constitution!

This is the only way to overcome the effects of Nixonism and start to strengthen democracy. Big business-inspired calls for “national unity” in this “time of crisis” are a continued coverup of the Watergate conspiracy.

This is not a time of crisis for the people! They demanded Nixon’s impeachment and were ready to welcome his conviction and ouster from office.

The crisis is all on the side of big business and the two-party system politicians. Theirs is the gloom and tension because Nixon was indubitably their man, and Watergate an expression of their system.

On the people’s side, there should be confidence and greater reliance in the power of mobilized public opinion. The ouster of Nixon, even by the resignation route, is a partial victory for democracy.

The Nixon resignation deal big business and the politicians of both major parties worked out is a cynical fraud on the public. Don’t let them get away with it!

So is their stage-managed “orderly transition” to a Ford administration. Ford was Nixon’s choice as his carbon-copy successor. Bipartisan calls for the country to unite behind Ford are calls for business as usual, for more of the policies of plunder of the public by the monopolies, $100-billion military budgets, gouging by the trusts, anti-labor legislation, and legislation against the poor, the aged, the oppressed.

AFL-CIO President George Meany’s declaration that labor will join in national unity in support of Ford has no real support among the rank-and-file of labor. It is an expression of the class collaborationist line which Meany applied in helping Nixon’s re-election by enforcing a spurious “neutrality” in favor of Nixon and by joining the bipartisan big business offensive to freeze wages.

The time to trim ugly duckling Ford’s wings is now.

Whoever Ford names as Vice President—and former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, also known as Gov. Attica and Gov. Death Penalty is reputed first in line—it means that for the first time in U.S. history, the government will be headed by non-elected officials.

This is an additional major reason for the holding of a national election as soon as possible for the people to choose their own democratically-elected officials.

Big business and the political bosses claim Nixon’s resignation was undertaken in the “national interest.” That is a blatant lie. The national interest could be served only by the impeachment and conviction of Nixon and the fullest exposure of the conspiracy against democracy.

But that exposure is precisely what big business and the political bosses fear. They fear it because it would expose too clearly their complicity in Nixon’s crimes, the corrupt nature of the political system, and governmental-big business collusion under state monopoly capitalism.

They want to take the easy way out and to cover up the whole complex of Watergate crimes. The criminal complicity of the big business and political forces who joined in the resignation deal must be exposed and condemned!

The doubt of even Nixon supporters concerning his guilt had been dissipated as by a lightning bolt by his Monday confession and the new White House tapes. But those who in the past had connived at his crimes came again to his support, instead of continuing the Constitutional process of impeachment.

Their evasion of the Constitutional guarantees of democracy is a measure of the corruption of the political system of the United States, not only of the Nixon administration but of the unity of the two-party system with big business against the people.

Nixon is not a convicted criminal, but he is guilty in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the public of high crimes and misdemeanors which have cost the U.S. people untold suffering and hardship, as well as many lives.

His resignation is another step in the conspiracy against the people. It must be exposed and countered by the people’s organizations, above all by the working class, and a new course set for independent political action and an anti-monopoly coalition.

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Hall Calls for People’s Unity

Daily World | Aug. 9, 1974

NEW YORK, Aug. 8—Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party, today called Nixon’s exit a “positive step” but warned that the forces behind the Nixon conspiracy are still in power.

Hall, who was the CP candidate for President in 1972, called for a people’s unity, a unity of all democratic forces, to “turn the country around.”

Hall’s statement follows:

The exit of Nixon is a historic step in the right direction. An evil, anti-working class, racist, bigoted force has been discarded into the garbage can of history. This is an important victory for the democratic forces of our land.

It is of critical importance to place this unprecedented event in its proper perspective. The leading conspirator stands exposed and condemned. But the forces behind the conspiracy remain in their positions of power.

Nixon’s exit is a most positive event. But to believe that Nixon and his political henchmen in the executive branch and in the United States Congress acted alone as a narrow group without a power base and therefore to conclude that Nixon’s leaving the scene would solve the serious problems facing the country, or to think that the danger to the democratic rights and institutions is now in the past is to have dangerous illusions.

The Nixon conspiracy operated behind the shield of a “strong presidency.” The forces operating behind the concept of a strong presidency are the financial industrial military complex. It is the very top circles of monopoly capital which gave the hundreds of millions of dollars that financed the conspiracy. It is the people from the big corporations who staffed the conspiracy.

We must not now forget that it was the leading people in the Democratic and Republican Parties who gave their support either openly or by their silence, to the Nixon conspiracy as long as that conspiracy was directed against the working people, the people who are the victims of class and racial oppression.

In fact, they continue to support the Nixon policies of taxing the poor, of runaway inflation, racism, and the $100 billion military budget. And at this very moment, it is these same forces of monopoly capital, the corporate kingmakers, who have supported Nixon, who are making the decisions about his replacement.

The people must not be fooled by the last-minute fascist and ultra-right jumpers on the bandwagon. Like rats, they are jumping off a sinking ship. They want to use the crisis to turn the country into even more fascist-like channels.

The people must be alerted to the new conspiracy that is being spun by the Cold War gang who are trying to use the exit of Nixon to turn the country back into the Cold War channels with its policies of tension and nuclear brinkmanship.

The exit of Nixon must be a new beginning. It is a moment for a people’s crisis alert.

This is a moment when the people must take a deeper look at the questions of who runs our government, our economy, and our lives. What is the source of the corruption, of the endless crises?

The fraudulent 1972 elections were a definite part of the Nixon conspiracy. The forced resignation of a president is without precedent.

The election fraud can be undone only by an immediate new mid-term presidential election. Without such an election, we will have a corporate-appointed, non-elected president and vice president

Only a militant people’s democratic movement can safeguard the democratic rights and institutions of our country. Only a united people’s movement can turn the country around by destroying the grip the big corporations have on our country.

Only a fighting people’s movement can guarantee that the United States will move toward detente Only a people’s movement can fight to cancel the $100 billion war budget.

Only a people’s movement can end the disastrous course of inflation. Only a people’s movement can end the rise of racism.

As long as the monopoly corporations are the masters of our land, there will always be the danger of reactionary, anti-democratic conspiracies. There will always be the ugly pressures of racism, escalating prices and taxes, and economic crises.

This can be a new beginning if it results in a new unity, a unity of all democratic forces, a unity of all working-class forces, a unity of the racially oppressed, a unity of peace forces, and a unity of the young generation.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Special to People’s World

People’s World is a voice for progressive change and socialism in the United States. It provides news and analysis of, by, and for the labor and democratic movements to our readers across the country and around the world. People’s World traces its lineage to the Daily Worker newspaper, founded by communists, socialists, union members, and other activists in Chicago in 1924.