Socialism - American Style

As Franklin Roosevelt came to the White House in 1933, Americans were suffering through the greatest economic crisis in history during the great depression. Almost half the nations banks had failed and at least 15 million Americans were unemployed. The official unemployment rate was over 24% and with a lack of basic social services or relief, the situation for American workers and families was desperate.

In his inauguration speech, Roosevelt promised American a new deal and under pressure from Unions and radical parties that enjoyed popular support he began a series of reforms and incentives that would ultimately allow America to take a dominant economic role in the world and create an era of wealth, equity and optimism that is probably unprecedented in human history.

1933 was the beginning of a radical new approach to economics. The first steps included a National Industry Recovery Act that enhanced bargaining for labour and allowed for effective price controls.

Roosevelt's brilliant if controversial Agricultural Secretary, Henry Wallace, who would later become VP, instituted agricultural reforms that subsidized farmers income and allowed slaughtering of standing stocks and plowing under fields or leaving fallow in order to boost prices and stabilize farm incomes which had collapsed.

A series of bank regulatory reforms was created in order to outlaw speculation with cash from private accounts without sufficient capital reserve. A compete review of the nations banks which allowed the government emergency powers over regulation followed by legislation such as the Glass Steagall Act which separated commercial from investment banks.

The Emergency Relief Administration was created to oversee use of government funds to help the most desperate and new deal work agencies were enacted to put people to work on public projects such as highways and national parks.

Social Security and Pensions as well as aid to mothers with children helped to put money back into the system and raise income for people who had near to none.

Public works organizations such as the Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority put both public and private funds to work in creating major public projects such as dams and infrastructure.

As the new deal progressed during the 30's, the government created massive housing projects and provided assistance to homeowners. I created fair social and labour standards and put funds into regulating and modernizing trade, finance, transportation and communication.

By the time America entered WWII in 1941, it's industrial capacity and labour standards enacted by government investment and oversight were such that it allowed the country to go into full production for war and to allow it full employment of the work force in the war effort.

Wallace became Roosevelt's Vice President in 1940 and Wallace became a tireless worker for social and worker rights declaring the near future to be the "age of the common man."

Today many of the reforms undertaken by Wallace and Roosevelt would be considered the height of socialism yet many of the reforms they brought in remained an enduring and popular feature of American political and economic life for decades after WWII. The GI bill and funding for education made America an innovative leader in technology and science and labour standards were the envy of the world.

Together with the Marshall Plan which pumped billions into reconstructing Europe and Japan, America's former enemies would see much of the largess, the New Deal created the social prosperity economic power that literally created the American Empire as we knew it until perhaps just a decade or so ago.

Far from being a force that debilitated American progress and prosperity, Socialism working together with private industry as a restraint to unfettered Capitalism that had existed before the depression, allowed for the era of greatest prosperity, industry, achievement and equality that the world has probably ever seen in it's long history.

Yet today, these same democratic socialist principle are almost a heresy in the modern political landscape. Is it time to readdress the New Deal era in this time of great inequality and social tension to see if there is something there we can learn from?

 

I think they are almost a heresy today because capitalism can't afford to grant such concessions to those who work and live in this society. Capitalism around the world is in crisis and to preserve their historical annually compounded growth of about 3% going, they are pulling out all the stops and digging up profits where they have nothing to do with production and earnings, like stock buy-backs and speculative investments in assets like real estate.

At one time US capitalism was able to make it possible for working class families to have two cars, TVs, education, opportunity for advancement, opportunity for a family's children to have it better than what their parents had, manageable debt, affordable healthcare, expectation of a decent retirement, and satisfaction with continually improving lifestyle. I know because I'm one of those who lived through it and benefitted from it. But most of that is gone for the average person today. And this is the collapse of capitalism to which I refer.

We can't go back any more than capitalism can revert to it's conditions as they were in 1950. And the path forward for world capitalism is bleak for the public as well as for the capitalist.

 

Unfettered Capitalism is definitely in crisis - again.

There is this unfortunate tendency for Capitalism to create these vast inequalities in wealth and political power over and over again. It was true in the 1890,s, it was true during the gilded era and the great depression and it is still true today. In fact, the history of Capitalism has been about riding these great waves of boom and bust that create wealth and innovation and then on the downside destroys any stability or social/political cohesion that may have arisen in predictable cycles over and over again.

I think that the era we lived through was quite unique in that we really benefited from the best of a Capitalist model tempered with democratic social policies that mitigated the worse excesses that always arise out of Capitalism's inherent contradictions.

Unfortunately, over the last 40 or 50 years, we have allowed those same democratic social policies to be so eroded and misguidedly demonized that there is nothing left to mitigate the runaway transfer of wealth and political power from the last of the middle and working classes to the very wealthiest of society and all that that implies.

This is a system that no longer serves the people or the political stability of the nation. This is what empires in decline do. The wealthy elite class cavorts in tawdry spectacle and copious consumption and wealth while the vast majority labour under austerity as the state bankrupts itself on foreign wars to try to maintain the illusion of it's power.

 

The New Deal was ultimately conservatism. Bernstein summed it up nicely: "The New Deal failed to solve the problem of depression, it failed to raise the impoverished, it failed to redistribute income, it failed to
extend equality and generally countenanced racial discrimination and segregation. It failed generally to make business more responsible to the social welfare or to threaten business's pre-eminent political power. In this sense, the New Deal, despite the shifts in tone and spirit from the earlier decade, was profoundly, conservative and continuous with the 1920s". America needs something a tad more radical!!

 

To be fair you can't really compare what FDR did to anything.

He faced a serious, very serious problem, and himself admitted that he would throw anything and everything at the problem until it was fixed.

Its why the Court ruled about half of his policies unconstitutional.

Ultimately he realized that war would be the only thing that would save us, as bad as that is.

But he was right.

At the end of the day he got the job done....sloppily and at a great cost and with a lot of help from lady luck.

Still, I don't believe that FDR actually stood for any policy other than what worked.

It was a rare moment in our history that will never be repeated again.

 

FDR had a chance to break free of the conservative shackles, both in terms of socialism and Keynesianism. He failed. Change was forced on the US through war. Ironically, the US now uses war to maintain the status quo...

 

Translation: Gimme free ****.

 

Translation: "I gots me no answer."

 

Do you have an answer then?

 

Good discussion. The New Deal was in response to a national emergency the lakes of which this nation has never faced. Much of the New Deal lingered in the form of the national "safety net" we take for granted: FDIC, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, banking regulations, public works projects, and more. It was the first time we applied Keynesian economics to pump up the economy. It didn't work as well as hoped. Rosevelt accused Keynes his programs were insufficient. 'I had to finance a World War to get the economy going!' Indeed the economy was ignited for all, for a while.

The complexities of America's rise to superpower are staggering. One thing never mentioned in our national pat-on-the-back is that God created two oceans to isolate the U.S. from European and Asian wars. Even today's massive naval and air power don't completely negate that advantage. Suffice it to say that for thirty and perhaps forty years after the war, everyone in the U.S. prospered. So far, so good until the thing started to unravel c. 1980's. Enter big tax cuts, elimination of progressive taxation, trickle down or supply economics and erosion of many safety net policies through deregulation and lack of funding.

The rising ocean no longer raised all boats, just the luxury liners. Medicare and Medicaid added significantly to the national safety net and to the budget. They were never really paid for due to the public aversion to any "new" taxes. Aggressive tax cutting and deregulation, especially for the upper classes and business, just pushed the deficit higher while doing little to raise the rest of those small boats.

So, here we are. Another economic calamity that mirrored the one of 1929; irrational exuberance, massive speculation, the "ownership society," and reckless deregulation spurred it on.
The 2007-2008 "Great Recession" collapsed most sectors of the world economy. Worse, the American piggybank was empty after all those tax cuts. This time the deficit spending went to propping up the banks, the auto industry, unemployment insurance, the financial community at large, and tax cuts to spur growth!

The National Debt now stands at 21 trillion dollars, an unimaginable amount. An unfunded tax cut aimed at corporations and the wealthy pushed the annual budget deficit to 1.5 trillion dollars. It did little or nothing to elevate the "common man." This created an income disparity of historic proportions. America is lucky, we roll over our government every two years. Historically, without this safety valve, bloody revolutions were the cure.
More and more, economists see us headed down a familiar path to perdition.

Unrestrained capitalism is the culprit. As former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, noted "It doesn't work." It only exasperates income inequality. Thankfully, for America, there are reliable options to bloody revolution. It depends on our elective process, tax reform, education, public works, and smart, well informed American voters. That latter has been in short supply lately. Perhaps the 2018 elections are a harbinger of things to come. One can only hope.

 

Hate to disagree but the New Deal did a lot and it was hardly conservative as it was fought tooth and nail by conservatives of the era. It was only after Roosevelt threatened that their could be another revolution if they did not do something radical that the conservative power structure bent to some of the more radical policies.

The New Deal accomplished bank reforms that regulated the sector and separated investment banks from saving institutions - a reform that successfully lasted until Clinton did away with Glass/Steagall.

The New deal put millions back to work and saved families from destitution as well as uplifting the labour movement which led the way to much of the prosperity of the 50's, 60's and even 70's.

The New Deal made huge investments in public works such as bridges, dams, hospitals, theaters, libraries, post offices as well as creating the National Park Service and the modern Highway System.

I would argue that the New Deal investment in human capital and modern infrastructure, as well as leading the way to American economic power in the world created probably the most prosperous, egalitarian and optimistic era in human history - and all this was done in spite of steep opposition from conservatives and capitalists including Supreme Court Challenges and anti-labour action.

Looked at with unbiased eyes, you could argue that the New Deal along with the Marshall plan were the most successful, forward thinking ideas in American history and together led the creation of the American Empire from the Philippines to Germany and beyond.

 

I am borrowing from Hedges here but FDR famously said that his greatest accomplishment was not defeating Germany or Japan but in saving Capitalism from itself. There is nobody on the political horizon today with that type of insight or competence.

I agree that it was a rare moment in history and as often happens the right person seems to be there at the right time.

Interesting to consider what would have happened in the '44 election of Wallace had been allowed to stay on as VP instead of Truman. Wallace was a true socialist visionary who despite his flakiness had a proven track record both in Agriculture and as an activist VP.

Likely, there never would have been atomic bombings of Japan or a cold war as Wallace was a pacifist and described the post war era as that of the "common man." Of course the corporate/military wing of the Democratic Party would just not stand for such a man to be President so they worked behind the scenes to sabotage Wallace and put Truman in place - a man they could control. Very similar to what happened to Bernie in 2016.

Wallace and Eleanor Roosevelt would have been a force in the world and it is quite possible that it would look nothing like it does today.

 

You could be right but if the economy heads south the way some are predicting, we may have no choice but to embrace radical ideas again. I agree that the challenges we face today are far more complex than they were even in the pre-war depression era which was probably the twentieth centuries most challenging time.

They did not face the kind of environmental or refugee issues we are going to face as the crisis deepens.

 

I can only go by the economic historians. That time was one of immense new insights, as illustrated by the worl of Keynes. That was all ignored by the US at the time, as orthodoxy was maintained.

 

Even LW economists and historians today agree that FDR socialism extended the Depression. Many of the nonleft have identified all the FDR collectivism as either quid pro quo or future vote buying, not even sincere collectivism, just Democrat machine politics as usual, Tammany Hall to federal scale.

In order, as analyzed by the able net historians of the future, FDR, Wilson and LBJ will go down as the three worst Presidents in U.S. history.

This thread is a laff riot exercise in wishful malthinking in the relatively healthy status quo. But if times change for the worse, surely the remedy to problems central government indisputably causes is more and more central government. Lulz.

 

Try and quote one! You'll only find that they reject that the New Deal is socialist and that Keynesianism, which was successful, was forced on the US.

 

There is no American style of socialism, there is just socialism. Socialism is the transitory and temporary step to tyranny.

 

Amusingly it's the right wing, known for their authoritarian personality, that say such things...

 

Was Stalin "right wing"? Was Marx and Lenin and Mao and Castro "right wing"? The political spectrum is not linear, you should get some education on the subject.

And your ignorant comment has nothing to do with the fact that socialism no matter what prefix you give it is just a transitory step to tyranny.

 

I stated a fact. The authoritarian personality is connected to the right wing. Don't like facts? That unfortunately is also often linked to the right.

 

The amusing aspect is that your response just shows that you're unaware of the research into the authoritarian personality. Might not want to accuse folk of ignorance when making such error!

 

Not having an answer is better than sitting in the peanut gallery blubbering out idiocies. Better than to be silent and thought of as a fool.....

 

Nonsense. American socialism will be shaped by American conditions. And tyranny is out of the question if the question is socialism.

 

I agree. Do you think that being part of the religious right (authoritarian fundamentalists on steroids - an ideology that lends itself to development of authoritarian tendencies) has something to do with this or is it perhaps that authoritarians are drawn towards religious fundamentalism because it is a good outlet for authoritarian tendencies. - or perhaps a little of both ?

 

I don't get why you continue to harp on this obviously flawed claim. Socialism - if not inherently tyrannical - lends itself to Tyranny.