The Endurance of New Deal Liberalism (original) (raw)

Old Deal, New Deal, Raw Deal: The Evolution of the Liberal State in the Modern United States

Labour / Le Travail, 1993

HAVING FAILED FOR MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS to synthesize United States social and labour history effectively or to make the often recondite findings and interpretations of the "new" history accessible to a larger reading audience, many scholars have resorted to "bringing the state back into" their narratives. Historians, especially, seem eager to write stories that have a plot and that develop sequentially and chronologically. Not for them a postmodernist sensibility that denies the validity of central truths, omnipotent authorial voices, and real historical times; not for them the cacophony of multiple voices contesting historical reality or telling competing narratives. At least that appears to be the case among younger historians whose consciousness was formed in the student protest movement and counterculture of the 1960s and who have written some of the best of the "new" social and Melvyn Dubofsky, "Old Deal, New Deal, Raw Deal: The Evolution of the Liberal State in the Modern United States," Labour/Le Travail, 32 (Fall 1993), 269-77. 270 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL labour history, if the recent books edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle and written by Alan Dawley portend trends in current scholarship. Dawley, Fraser and Gerstle consider the New Deal to be the central event in 20th-century United States history. They also insist that any meaningful narrative must explore and explain the evolution and devolution of the New Deal state or order, terms that they use interchangeably to characterize the style and form of governance that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers created. Dawley's narrative spans three-quarters of a century and moves relentlessly toward the New Deal years as the climax of modem American history. The collection of essay s edited by Fraser and Gerstle begins with the New Deal and moves ahead to dissect its dissolution. Both books have an almost elegiac quality, simultaneously praising the New Deal for modernizing the American state, enabling working people to build new forms of power, and constructing an embryonic welfare state, yet mourning its inability to purge the temple of "money changers" permanently, liberate the nation from racism and sexism, and, in the case of Fraser and Gerstle, to survive as an effective political reform movement. Subtextually, the books lament the failure of workers, radicals, and intellectuals to free themselves from the shackles of a New Deal order that sold them a cornucopia of consumer goods instead of a more frugal, virtuous, egalitarian, cooperative, and perhaps even socialist order. The tale told, then, is of a capitalist system and a state that survived the crisis of the Great Depression of the 1930s through treatment in the healing waters of the New Deal. Although Dawley, Fraser and Gerstle cut their academic teeth as practitioners of the new social and labour history, these books, despite an almost reflexive homage to the discursive styles of the new history, are state-centered and, in Dawley's case, old-fashioned narrative in form. Yet if they have returned to the subject matter so dear to more traditional historians-politics and the state-Dawley, Fraser, and Gerstle nevertheless write political history with an exceedingly modern, if not postmodern, touch. No heroic statesmen bestride the books' pages; here history is made by vast impersonal demographic, social, and economic structures rather than human actors, whether high-born or low-bom, reactionary or radical. Few real people trod Dawley, Fraser, and Gerstle's historical stage, although in Dawley's case, that new holy trinity, class, race, and gender, serve as frequent and wondrous deus ex machina. Because Dawley narrates how history produced die Roosevelt regime and reforms of the 1930s while Fraser and Gerstle explain the decline as well the rise of die New Deal, let me begin this discussion with the former. All his references to the new social and labour history as well as the "holy trinity" notwithstanding, Dawley constructs his narrative of the creation of an active, interventionist modern state in America conventionally. His principal story asserts that "the crux of American history from die 1890s to the 1930s was the imablance between a bustling society and the existing liberal state." (4) "Along every front and fault line of American life," writes Dawley, "there arose a contradiction between the society's needs and die existing political system." (2)

The New Deal and American Society, 1933–1941

2021

The New Deal and American Society, 1933-1941 explores what some have labeled the third American revolution, in one concise and accessible volume. This book examines the emergence of modern America, beginning with the 100 Days legislation in 1933 through to the second New Deal era that began in 1935. This revolutionary period introduced sweeping social and economic legislation designed to provide the American people with a sense of hope while at the same time creating regulations designed to safeguard against future depressions. It was not without critics or failures, but even these proved significant in the ongoing discussions concerning the idea of federal power, social inclusion, and civil rights. Uncertainties concerning aggressive, nationalistic states like Italy, Germany, and Japan shifted the focus of FDR's administration, but the events of World War II solidified the ideas and policies begun during the 1930s, especially as they related to the welfare state. The legacy of the New Deal would resonate well into the current century through programs like Social Security, unemployment compensation, workers' rights, and the belief that the federal government is responsible for the economic well-being of its citizenry. The volume includes many primary documents to help situate students and bring this era to life. The text will be of interest to students of American history, economic and social history, and, more broadly, courses that engage social change and economic upheaval.

The 1980 and 1984 U.S. Elections and the New Deal: An Alternative Interpretation

International Journal of Health Services, 1985

This article has three sections. The first discusses the hegemonic interpretations of the 1980 and 1984 U.S. elections that are being reproduced on both sides of the political spectrum and that are presented as justification of current federal health and social policies. This section presents evidence that questions those hegemonic interpretations. Section II presents an alternative explanation of current political realities rooted in the class practices of the current federal administration and the Republican Party and in the abandonment by the opposition party—the Democratic Party—of the class practices of the New Deal. It discusses the reasons for that situation and analyzes its consequence for social policy. Section III presents evidence that questions the ideological arguments that are put forward by the Right (and are uncritically accepted by large sectors of the Left) and that sustain current federal economic and social policies. This section concludes with a discussion of al...

Lessons from the political economy of the New Deal

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2010

The New Deal produced a fundamental change in the structure of American government. The national government came to play a much larger role in the financing of social welfare programmes, while administration of the programmes was largely located at the states. Both the purely national and the shared 'federal' parts of the welfare system were characterized by impersonal rules. The political economy of how the rules came about and how the New Deal experience may have contributed to Americans changing their views on the danger of dealing with the national government is the primary focus. The paper closes with speculations about the possible effect of changing views on American participation in the Second World War after 1939.

At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930-47

Historical Journal, 2010

It is often suggested that the earliest theorists of neo-liberalism first entered public controversy in the 1930s and 1940s to dispel the illusion that the welfare state represented a stable middle way between capitalism and socialism. This article argues that this is an anachronistic account of the origins of neo-liberalism, since the earliest exponents of neo-liberal doctrine focused on socialist central planning rather than the welfare state as their chief adversary and even sought to accommodate certain elements of the welfare state agenda within their market liberalism. In their early work, neo-liberal theorists were suspicious of nineteenth-century liberalism and capitalism; emphasized the value commitments that they shared with progressive liberals and socialists; and endorsed significant state regulation and redistribution as essential to the maintenance of a free society. Neo-liberals of the 1930s and 1940s therefore believed that the legitimation of the market, and the individual liberty best secured by the market, had to be accomplished via an expansion of state capacity and a clear admission that earlier market liberals had been wrong to advocate laissez-faire.