The New Deal and American Society

Political Alternatives

1. The Left• CPUSA & the Popular Front • Share Croppers Union• Upton Sinclair and EPIC (1934)• Farmers-Labor Party & Floyd Olsen

(MN); La Follette & the Progressive Party (WI); La Guardia in NYC

2. Francis Townsend’s Pension Plan

Political Alternatives

Political Alternatives

3. Father Coughlin and the NUSJ

Political Alternatives

4. Huey Long: “Share Our Wealth”

WPA posters

Labor Militancy

UAW sit-down strike, Flint, Michigan, 1937

1936 Election

-Liberty League-Republicans divided-Left marginalised-Long assassinated -consolidated new Democratic majority

1936 Presidential Election

The 1940 ElectionWendell Wilkie:Unlikely Republican,Internationalist

“Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign war.” (FDR, campaign speech in Boston)

Limitations of the New Deal

• Conservative Aims of New Dealers?– Saving free market capitalism– Fiscal orthodoxy (even parsimony?)– American nationalism– American Ideology? Property rights,

federalism, localism, self-help, … and capitalism.

– …Pragmatism not conservatism? (so would not take on fights they couldn’t win)

• Constraints:– Weakness of “state capacity”– Southern Block in Congress… racism– Federalism… state governors– Residual strength of right – especially

wealthy individuals and corporate interests

Assessment

• Failed to crack unemployment problem or kick start economy using consumer demand

• Huge areas not tackled: racial discrimination, housing

Assessment

• Farmers helped directly• Banking system stabilised• Conservation, culture, spirit of

optimism• Identified problems for the future• Legacy: social security, regulatory

state, “broker state”, public spending as economic tool

Assessment

Strands of New Deal thought:• Statist New Dealers• Anti-monopoly New Dealers• “Compensatory” New Dealers (fiscal

policy and welfare – an accommodation with capitalism)

J. M. Keynes to FDR

“You are the trustee for those in every country who seek to mend the evils of our condition by measured experiment within the framework of the existing social system. If you fail, rational change will be gravely prejudiced throughout the world, leaving orthodoxy and revolution to fight it out.”

Meeting for Group 1A students!

NEXT WEDNESDAY AT 9.45 IN THIS ROOM