HIST
Abbera
GreatDepression1.pptxThe Great Depression
Instructor: Mindi Sitterud-McCluskey
Desperation
Great Depression America
The hardships of the Great Depression were not evenly spread and equally shared. The previously impoverished became more impoverished. Many middle-class white-collar workers became downwardly mobile and entered the working class, often as migrant laborers. Some people lost their fortunes, though, more often, the very rich remained very rich. Looking out for their own economic interests, big capitalists either shuttered their factories and stores or operated on a part-time basis.
Indeed, rather than invest in the job creation needed to renew the economy, industrialists and financiers mostly became disinvested in the American economy and let their savings sit idle. There was working that needed to be done, and people willing to work but without purchasing power among the public, the big business class reasoned it not in their interest to continue operations.
The Great Depression was not a total loss for big business. The most well-off took advantage of the crisis to expand their monopolies. The big banks absorbed failing small banks. Agribusiness purchased cheaply land abandoned by failed tenants and small farmers. The same can be said for other arenas of the economy
The collapse of the small banks allowed the big corporate banks to further consolidate power and wield a greater monopoly over the economy
Great Depression America
The hardships of the Depression also varied from city to city, and industry to industry.
By 1932:
25 % of the nation was unemployed, though unevenly.
80 % of people in Toledo, Ohio unemployed (high)
Farmers saw prices for crops and livestock fall by 60%
Industrial production had been cut in half. Many factories, mills, and mines either shutdown or operated only a few days a week.
Two million people had become homeless
As families became homeless and a growing number of people hit the road in search of a way to survive, shanty-towns called “Hoovervilles” or “Hobo Jungles” appeared in all major cities and along roadsides and train-tracks.
Protests and desperation were accelerating.
“Hoovervilles”
migrations
Millions of unemployed Americans joined the Dustbowl refugees from the Midwest, along roadsides and in railroad cars, searching for a way to survive…
Newly homeless families lived out of their cars, hopped railroad cars, and established shacks in hobo jungles.
Unemployed men left their families, following rumors of work somewhere in the nation.
Teenagers, many as young as 12-13, whose families could no longer financially support them, became abundant on the railroad migration circuit and in “the jungles.”
So many teenagers took to riding the rails in search of work that the government sponsored the production of propaganda films with the intention of terrorizing the youth into staying home. The films had the reverse effect. It put the idea into more heads.
Unemployed men appeared at the docks and factories every morning, hoping to be chosen from among the crowd to have the “privilege” of exchanging their labor for whatever the capitalist was willing to pay that day.
Coalminers and steelworkers awoke early every morning and turned on a local radio station to find out if the owner of the means of production had determined it to be financially prudent to operate. Full-time work became part-time and unreliable.
Riding the Rails: Teenagers in the Great Depression:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0umqV-DlQ8c
Great Depression
Food Riots
1931: The first (nonviolent) food riot occurred in Arkansas, as 50 desperate farmers unable to feed their children marched on the town of London. The crowd grew to 300-500:
“Our children are crying for food and we are going to get it. We are not going to let our children starve.”
1931: The second food riot saw several hundred men and women smash the windows of a grocery store in Minneapolis and seize food. As they divided the food according to who had the most children, the store owner went for his gun. He had his arm broken in the process of being prevented from killing the “food looters.”
The food riots subsequently expanded across the nation, as did hunger marches and the marches of the unemployed, demanding work.
3,000 people in Columbus, Ohio
15,000 in Lansing, Michigan
40 food riots across the nation during the summer of 1932, alone.
Irving Bernstein: “By 1932, organized looting of food stores was a nationwide phenomenon.”
Desperation
By the Great Depression, generations of working-class struggle had sustained a widespread understanding that governments are not just made to tax, police, and punish the people.
Declaration of Independence: Governments must earn the consent of the govern to govern by protecting and advancing the natural rights of the citizenry- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Put another way, the US government is supposed to function to sustain the lives, protect the people from domination, exploitation, and suppression, and remove artificial barriers to self-actualization.
Social Contract: The relationship between government and the citizenry of a republic is one of rights and obligations. The citizenry tacitly consent to be governed, pay taxes to this government, invest their labor and creative energy in society, and give the government a monopoly on violence, justice and enforcing law. In exchange, those who govern tacitly agree to govern for the benefit of the people and the nation and use its monopoly on state power to bring about justice, and otherwise generate security, stability, and economic health.
Republicanism: Government exists to advance public good and serve the well-being of the people.
Republic: Of the people, for the people, by the people
Yes, by the 1930s, the plutocrats had ascended into government and over government and made the nation an empire. Can it be redeemed or will the home-front become treated as another colony to be exploited, impoverished and suppressed?
Great Depression
In the context of a failed capitalist system, millions of American people challenged their government to function as it was intended to do and justify its own existence.
National Hunger March Day, December 7, 1931:
1,670 delegates, all races, left major cities, including those on the west coast, bound for Washington DC.
They were beaten and harassed by police along the way at the behest of mayors who did not want them marching through “my city.”
Ordinary people shielded the march, cheered it on, and donated food and supplies.
The first marchers to arrive at the White House were beaten and arrested under the pretext of not having a parade permit.
When the second wave of marchers arrived, they were met by 1,500 police armed with machine guns and 1.000 Marines, deployed to defend the capitol. Though the demonstration remained peaceful, marchers were arrested, beaten, and derisively labeled “communist agitators.”
Neither Republicans not Democrats responded to requests from the delegates for a meeting. Public attention and outrage over the treatment of the marchers, however, helped to push Congress toward at least discussing modest relief for the people.
Great Depression
Cox’s Army
Organized by Father James R. Cox
January of 1932
Started with 12,000 and expanded to 25,000
Partially financed by store owners in the Pittsburg area, hoping government relief would ease the desperation behind the food riots.
This time, congressmen met with delegates.
Bonus Army
43,000 marchers- WWI vets and their families
Demand: An early payment of the bonus promised in exchange for their military service (regular pay: $80). Many did not believe they would survive without it.
The march began on the west coast and swelled as it moved east
Ordinary people donated money as the veterans moved through their cities and small towns.
They built a Hooverville in DC. The police chief also offered them a building scheduled to be demolished.
The celebrated General Smedley Butler arrived to offer encouragement
For 3 months, they canvased and petitioned congress
Bonus Army- President Hoover ordered the US military, under future WWII generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Paton, to destroy and clear the camp- Would US soldiers attack veterans of WWI? Find out what happened….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSC1lbfXfRQ
All of you there, All of you there, Pay the bonus, Pay the bonus,
For the Yanks are starving
The Yanks are starving everywhere…
(sang to the tune of the WWI ballad, The Yanks are Coming)
Bonus Army
Great Depression
Ford Motor Company Massacre
In better days, Henry Ford polished his company’s public image by paying his workers higher wages, that they could afford to purchase one of the automobiles they helped to create.
Consequently, a job at Ford Motors became coveted employment even if employees were required to undergo Ford’s bizarre regime of square dance instruction. The man believed jazz (created by African-Americans) was a Jewish conspiracy and saw square dance as a wholesome alternative.
March 1932: 4,000 laid-off Ford workers marched on the Ford Motor Company in Detroit to request a meeting with Ford, who had previously positioned himself as a paternal figure.
Company “gun thugs” fired upon the unarmed men and women with tear gas, water hoses in sub-freezing temperature, and bullets.
About 60 were wounded and four were killed. Most were shot in the back.
A crowd of 70,000 turned-out for the funerals.
“A massive crowd, tens of thousands strong, took over the broad main street. Detroit police decided it was better to disappear. For several miles, throughout the downtown area, stopping all traffic and all businesses, the crowd escorted the victims to their graves.”
Great Depression
Meanwhile, President Hoover and business leaders such as Henry Ford continued to tell Americans that they just needed to work harder and be more virtuous, and everything would work out just fine.
These mantras had always been abhorrent among much of the working class, and now, they disgusted many previously prosperous true-believers.
For over a century, government had lavished big business with handouts, financial and legal protections, and diplomatic and military support in the pursuit of profit, at home and abroad.
It did this while accepting no such responsibility for the lives, liberty and well-being of the common citizenry.
The working class had long understood the negligence of the US government in upholding the social contract.
Now, the downwardly mobile middle class became privy.
Disenchantment
Great Depression
For millions of Americans, the system had failed on multiple fronts…
The American government had failed the people: It failed to properly regulate the capitalist system which had come to lord over the realities of daily life and literally hold life and death in its hands. It failed to ensure a healthy balance of production and consumption through reasonable wages. It failed to respond to the crisis of capitalism with a means by which the citizenry could sustain themselves.
The capitalist system had failed: It literally crashed. More broadly, it failed to meet human needs. The working class had grown use to this reality, but, now, even the basic needs of the middle class were not being met.
The inability of the capitalist markets to meet human needs was dramatic
While people starved, rioted for food, and demonstrated on behalf of relief millions of pounds of food went unharvested due to “low demand” and low prices. Millions more were intentionally destroyed. Why would food go unharvested and become destroyed amid starvation?
Low demand = The product is not in demand because the public lacks the money needed to purchase it. The need is there but the purchasing power is not.
Low prices = The result of there being more product on the market than there is a demand for it.
Cost/Benefit = Transportation costs from production site to market exceeded profits in the context of low prices due to low demand, due to a lack of money among consumers, due to a lack of jobs.
Great Depression
1933: Milk Strikes
The lack of purchasing power among the masses led to an overabundance of milk for sale on the market, cutting its market value (cost) by 50%
Tens of thousands of farmers in Wisconsin and elsewhere responded by collectively withholding their milk from the market and, thereby, raising its value and selling price.
The behavior of the farmers was not about greed. It was about looming foreclosures and poverty, resulting low milk prices and, thus, low profits.
In addition to destroying their own milk, the farmers stopped trains and trucks carrying the milk of other farmers and emptied the product into the earth. Success in raising the cost of milk by limiting the quantity on the market relied on broad participation in the milk strike.
Clashes with the National Guard and farmers ensued for months.
Farmers reacted to a 50% decline in profit with milk strikes, and the protests often turned violent. This is the scene after a crowd of pickets stopped a Soo Line freight train near the city limits of Burlington, WI by throwing ties across the tracks and firing shots. The pickets broke open seven cars and dumped the cans of milk along the tracks
Great Depression
Hence, people starved, not because of a lack of food, but because of a lack of money with which to purchase the food which existed in abundance.
A human-centered point of view and basic reason, ethics, and morality, the excess food would be used to relieve the starving rather than be allowed to rot or become intentionally destroyed.
The market-centered point of view, the food must rot or be destroyed, as to reduce the amount of food on the market, and, thereby, raise the selling price.
The market-centered point of view had no response for the fact that the cause of overabundance was not a lack of need/demand but a lack of purchasing power. Manufactured scarcity might raise the price of the good on the market, but it will not create the jobs needed to provide people with purchasing power.
A decent human would say give the excess food to those who cannot afford to buy rather than destroy it, but there is no business model or “market law” to justify that in a system entered narrowly on profits.
Thus, in the context of the crisis of capitalism, profound and disturbing realities became manifest. Indeed, if World War I had represented a crisis of legitimacy regarding war, the Great Depression represented a crisis of legitimacy regarding capitalism.
The suffering, starvation, and homelessness were not caused by a lack of food or housing.
It was due to a lack of purchasing power.
There was too much food on the market amid too little spending power.
People starved amid overabundance, rot, and the intentional destruction of food, because they could not afford to purchase what the farmer was selling, even at the market’s lowered price.
Many homes and apartments sat empty while the homeless population swelled and Hooverville shanty towns sprung-up across the nation.
People needed food and housing, and there was an abundance of food and housing. A great many people just simply did not have the financial resources needed to purchase food and pay a rent or mortgage.
Great Depression
The suffering, starvation, and homelessness were not caused by a lack of food or housing.
It was due to a lack of purchasing power.
There was too much food on the market amid too little spending power.
People starved amid overabundance, rot, and the intentional destruction of food, because they could not afford to purchase what the farmer was selling, even at the market’s lowered price.
Many homes and apartments sat empty while the homeless population swelled and Hooverville shanty towns sprung-up across the nation.
People needed food and housing, and there was an abundance of food and housing. A great many people just simply did not have the financial resources needed to purchase food and pay a rent or mortgage.
Disillusionment
Unemployment was not rooted in laziness or an unwillingness to work hard among the American people.
Prior to the Great Depression, the US had been the most productive nation in the world, despite 60% of its people already existing below the poverty line.
Perhaps the American people had worked too hard?
Perhaps the American people had been paid too little, too little of the wealth their labor made possible?
Perhaps a balanced economy could have been achieved with less production and higher wages (real spending power). This would have allowed consumers to afford what the capitalist was selling. Instead, the 1920s saw increased production and the expansion of credit to take the place of higher wages and real spending power.
Now, Americans begged for work.
The Depression was not a matter of too little work done or too little work ethic among the American people. It was largely a matter of too little compensation for work, leading to insufficient purchasing power within the public, leading to capitalist profits insufficient to justify keeping their factories and mines (etc.) open.
The great depression
The lack of jobs had nothing to do with a lack of useful and socially beneficial work that could be done and needed to be done. It was more accurately rooted in a capitalist monopoly on job creation.
With the rise of modern capitalism, the performance of labor had become increasingly tied, not necessarily to work needing to be done and beneficial to a community, but to a job created by a capitalist.
Human labor and the means with which to sustain oneself had become tied to a job that was created by a capitalist with the goal of generating as much profit as possible. Thus, capitalism gave the capitalist class a monopoly on determining how human labor would be utilized, what would be created, and what compensation/ benefit those who did the work would be receive. It bred dependency upon unreliable job creators.
Question: There is work needing to be done, such as electrification and road construction. Must we wait until members of the capitalist class decide to create jobs and thereby profit from our labor?
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Reminder: Even before the stock market collapse, 60% of Americans existed below the poverty line, especially in rural America.
The Crisis of capitalism
As the world descended into a steep economic downturn, nations throughout the world fractured between Left and Right impulses. The United States conformed with this pattern.
History shows that during a capitalist crisis, such as the Great Depression, societies will become split and lurch toward the extremes of Left and Right .
Left/Right: We are not talking about the Democrat and Republican parties, nor American notions of conservative and liberal.
In the US, we have socially liberal Democrats and socially conservative Republicans, but, in the international context, this does not represent the divide between Right and Left.
Historically speaking, Left and Right have been about one’s orientation toward capitalism: Shall we uphold and revive it by any means necessary or should we move toward a human centered system?
Hungry men lineup for free soup
The great depression
Left- Toward Socialism: Human centered; address the problems which created the crisis and seek to evolve humanity beyond the irrational and unethical capitalist markets into an order that is human centered and puts the means of production in the hands of those who labor therein. It looks forward idealistically into the unknown.
Right- Toward Fascism: Profit-centered; uphold or restore the capitalist system, production and profits by any means necessary. It looks backwards and tries to recreate a glorious past that never was.
Some Americans looked to Germany and Italy for answers, and gravitated toward fascism…
By the mid-1930s, Germany and Italy were both rapidly recovering from the crisis of capitalism through government handouts to big business and austerity for the masses. Some Americans believed that the US needed a Hitler or a Mussolini to restore capitalist health and cement “law and order.” Re
Nazi Youth burn books deemed “un-German.”
An “un-German” book might present a critical analysis of German history, society, the Nazi Party, or Hitler, or it might simply be written by a Jew and/or socialist. German books were to have ethnic German authors and imbue German history, society, and leadership with the most noble attributes and ‘feel-good’ inspiration.
The great depression
Those most inclined to see the US become a fascist military dictatorship proved to be members of the business elite and a middling class of “super-patriots,” fearful of a loss of status.
The Fascist Plot: America’s most powerful capitalists- JP Morgan, Dupont, the heads of GM and US Steel, among others, plotted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt to install a fascist military dictatorship
“Patriotic” societies such as the American Legion, business organizations, and chambers of commerce pushed toward fascism. American Legion leadership even invited Mussolini to speak at their annual convention and openly admired fascist paramilitaries in the execution and imprisonment of Leftists.
Pro-fascist rallies were held throughout the nation, including Madison Square Garden.
Pro-American (Nazi) Rally at Madison Square Garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxxxlutsKuI
“The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans…stars and stripes and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the Pledge of the Allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.” Chris Hedges
Fascist march down Broadway, ahead of a sold-out rally at Madison Square Garden
Fighting Fascism at Home
Super-Patriots: Groups such as the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan who merged nationalistic symbols and rhetoric with militarism and often “God” to claim some sort of moral authority.
The nationalistic and religious symbols and rhetoric aim to shield the “superpatriot” from critique and imbue their violence with righteousness, even as it is generally directed at the poor and working class, racial and religious minorities, or anyone who “gets out of their place.”
They position themselves as defenders but who do they defend?
They defended the status quo.
They defended business interests from a working-class that demanded a more just distribution of the wealth their labor makes possible and basic human rights and dignity.
They defended white supremacy from Black and Brown people who sought to claim their constitutional rights and human rights and exist with dignity.
American Heritage Dictionary, 1938: Fascism: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
Fighting Fascism at Home
They defended the war capitalists from conscientious objectors and those who questioned the merits of a certain war.
They protected “the family” from women whose personal inclinations might take her down a path other than housewife.
They wrapped themselves in the flag and called themselves defenders of “law and order” even as engaged in unlawful violence and even murder.
As opposed to the liberty and freedom enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the spirit of the nation’s founding, they oriented toward authoritarianism and defended this orientation by calling it “defense of nation.”
Their nationalism is not the mature, responsible, and honest kind. It’s a history only of their people (white, protestant, financially stable), and they prefer selectivity and invention to constructive critiques that might actually lead to improvement.
As with the fascists of Europe, the maintained a cult-like devotion to an ethno-nation premised upon a lot of “big lies,” and they were willing to break the laws, engage in violent suppressions, and exploitation to defend the nation they had imagined for themselves.
By the 1930s, the capitalist class, including the war capitalists, demonstrated a pattern of using “super patriot” mobs and paramilitaries as a club against laboring people demanding dignity, a just share of the wealth they create, and the right to not fight in “Wall Street” wars
Soviet Russia, 1930s
Many Americans also looked to Soviet Russia for solutions to the crisis of capitalism…
After the Russian Revolution, the new Soviet Russia sought to uplift the masses and modernize the nation through a mixture of socialism and capitalism, with a gradual abolition of the type of private property which allows some men to live off the labor of others (the factories, large estates, and banks of the owning and investing classes). A refusal among western nations to trade with Russia, persistent border attacks and infiltrations by saboteurs necessitated a rapid and sometimes messy drive for both the socialist ideal and economic self-sufficiency. Consequently, Russia largely side-stepped the global capitalist crisis and brought about some impressive results by the 1930s which attracted the attention of Americans:
Rapid Modernization: Heavy investment in modernization, including the world’s first hydro-electric dam, which provided electricity to ordinary Russian people for the first time.
Rapid Industrial Growth: Heavy investment in industrial development, which increased output by 800%, even as these industrial worksites became more democratized through legalized unions and cooperative structures, and pensions for retirees.
Social Uplift: By the 1930s, Russia had eliminated unemployment, homelessness, and illiteracy.
Soviet Russia, 1930s
Education: The government not only financed public education for both children and adults, it limited work hours and provided free childcare, that adults might have a real opportunity to attend classes.
Medicine: By the 1930s, Soviet Russia had opened new universities, with a strong emphasis on science and medicine. It deployed doctors of medical students into the rural hinterlands and urban working-class centers- populations previously without reliable medical care.
Life-Expectancy: By the 1930s, medical care and better nutrition had doubled life expectancy from 35 to 70.
Liberated Peasants: The socialist Russian government seized the large estates of the nobility and put this land into the hands of the peasants who had cultivated it for generations, that they might claim the fruit of their labor as cooperative farmers.
Agricultural Growth Although resentful estate holders burned the fields they were ordered to relinquish, causing famine, state investment in modernization, such as tractors, and the education of former peasants in agricultural science greatly helped to increase agricultural production well above what it had been.
The Arts and Sport: The Soviet classical education system aimed to cultivate the whole person, body and mind. Although Russia had long produced great artists and writers, training in these areas became democratized and theaters and concert halls became open and financially accessible to the working-class.
The Left
Observing the progress and uplift being achieved in Soviet Russia on behalf of the working class, a significant number of Americans joined the
Communist Party, USA.
It is hard to argue against the reality that this organization functioned in a far more constructive manner that the so-called “patriotic organizations.” Indeed, by tending to the needs and interests of the poor and working class, the CPUSA tended to the needs of the nation. In challenging the humanity of national leaders, the CPUSA helped to push the nation away from fascism.
American socialists and communists were at the forefront of creating strategies to navigate the economic crisis. They organized communities to work together on behalf of mutual interests and survival.
In lieu of a state welfare system for the poor, they provided assistance and relief networks such as soup kitchens, community gardens, clothing drives, food for protests, sanitation services, free milk for babies, free lunches for school children, free medical attention for the sick, free legal services for the poor.
The Left
CPUSA and various socialists organized collective resistance to evictions and the denial of essential utilities, such as heat, electricity, and water:
They created Community Unemployment Councils: Organized rent strikes, lobbying campaigns, and unemployment protests and hunger marches for jobs and relief. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets
Mobilizing early in the Great Depression, the communists and socialists prepared the groundwork for the labor movement to mobilize again and then surge, having been crushed in the reactionary “anti-Red” climate that followed WWI.
They also strengthened the working class through their rhetoric and activities related to issues of race.
Prior to the 1930s, the radical labor movement functioned as an interracial movement (IWW), but the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was segregated.
When labor resurges, the AFL will be racially integrated.
Three Point Program:
“Solidarity and aid to the struggles of striking and unemployed workers.
Fight against misery and starvation of working-class children.
Unite neighborhoods for neighborhood welfare.”
The Left
The socialists and communists brought poor and laboring people together across the color-line for collective action and mutual support.
The CPUSA (Communist Party) spearheaded the ultimately successful international campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black young men falsely accused of raping a white women and sentenced with execution.
These mostly young “agitators” also organized protests against films such as Gone With The Wind and campaigned for anti-lynching laws and desegregation in numerous arenas, including baseball.
Due to an unofficial agreement among team owners, no black player had taken the field with white players since the mid-1880s. Finally, in the fall of 1945, the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson, a college graduate and army veteran, to a contract
Young “communist agitators” picket Yankee Stadium before a game, demanding that baseball be integrated.
“…we did not become communists because of… Stalin. We wanted a better world, one in peace, and we admired the giant achievements of the Soviet people in overcoming illiteracy and building a giant industrial base which proved so vital in defeating the Nazis. We also admired an economy which suffered no joblessness while nearly the entire world groaned under the Great Depression.”
Victor Grossman
The Great Depression
The preponderance of ordinary American people declined to respond to the crisis of capitalism by leaning toward fascism. Although most did not become “card-carrying communists,” the political orientation of the average American (now more poor and working-class than ever) existed somewhere along the Left spectrum: Populism, progressivism, trade-unionism, the Christian Left, the social democrats, and, yes, the socialists/ communists .
The Left spectrum represented a call for people to be prioritized over profits, and a demanded that human needs be purposefully tended to rather than rendered dependent upon the whims of mysterious market forces, “invisible hands,” and accidental outcomes of self-interested profit seeking by the capitalist class.
Some lefties leaned extreme to ward wanting to see the capitalist system abandoned. Others sought to reform capitalism. Most Americans (thank-goodness) were not fascists.
May Day, 1930s, New York
American Left versus Right
The fight against fascism included cultural fronts at a time when most of the music Americans listened to, locally and on the radio, remained authentic and in the hands of the people rather than corporate industry.
A people-centered populist American culture played an important role in preventing the hateful, destructive, and delusional inclinations of fascism from infecting the greater part of American society.
The Resurgent Left
The Popular Front: A vigorously democratic, populist, and multiracial movement that dominated 1930s arts, entertainment, and activism.
*Populist: “Of the people”- about the people, from the perspective of the people, for the people.
Inspired some of the most iconic cultural productions of the 1930s & 1940s.
Film, music, and art celebrated virtuous poor and laboring people, quite in contrast with representations of the working class since the 1970s (Al Bundy, Archie Bunker, etc.)
Productions engaged important social and moral questions with intellectual sophistication, including fascism, wealth distribution, poverty, labor, racial segregation and racial violence.
Eclectic: Brought together the progenies of the Harlem Renaissance, rural working-class cultural forms, and intellectuals. “Americana”
The roster of writers, intellectuals, entertainers, and artists included: Billie Holliday, W. E. B. DuBois, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, Josh White, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Lena Horne, Woodie Guthrie, Yip Harburg (“Somewhere over the Rainbow”), Dorothea Lang, John Steinbeck, Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles, James Cagney….
Culture
The Popular Front culture included photographers, artists, writers, and academics, who set out to document the plight of the people, including the Dust Bowl refugees. Historians and writers gathered oral histories, including among people who had lived through slavery, and told America honest stories about itself, both the inspiring and the terrible. There is much to be proud of in America, especially among the people. There is also a lot of tragic stories borne by the people.
Most famous Great Depression photo: “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lang
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Grapes of Wrath
The great American author, John Steinbeck also set out to study and document the experiences of uprooted and migrant workers, primarily Dust Bowl refugees.
The result was the best-selling novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and a motion picture.
Plot: Uprooted from their land and home by ecological and economic forces they do not understand, the Joads set out for California in search a means by which to sustain themselves and dignity. Instead of a “land of opportunity,” they find an oversupplied labor markets, starvation wages, exploitation , abuse, authoritarian work camps, collusion among big landowners/growers and law enforcement, failed small farmers, injustice, and growing wrath among the poor and downtrodden. Along the way, Steinbeck calls attention to the sinister nature of impersonal market forces, the enslavement and alienation of man and nature on behalf of profits, and the network of anonymous decision-makers at the heart of corporate America who reason in financial cost/benefit rather than human need. They might save themselves if they could shift their consciousness from mammon to humanity, and “I” to “we.” But they can’t. They are “frozen” in “I” by a system that denies the rich the humanity and fullness of spirit in living for one another, as the poor must live for another because it is all they have got.
20:30-28:30: https://youtu.be/TaKy4hcb7kY
“How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him”
Culture: Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie : Dust bowl migrant and folk singer, wrote ballads of working-class struggle and experience during the Great Depression.
So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqiblXFlZuk
Hard Travelin’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfq5b1bppJQ&feature=related
Note guitar:
“This Machine Kills Fascists”
“It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold
I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind….”
Pastures of Plenty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDKYkvuRXik&feature=relate d
When Guthrie sang “This land is my land, this land is your land…,” it stood as a bold claim on America on behalf of the people. This land and its governance were not just made for the millionaires.
Culture
The Common Man Hero
The shifting consciousness and political inclinations of the American people during the 1930s were also reflected in the “heroes” they chose and people and characters they sought to emulate.
During the 1920s, literature, plays, films, etc., featured bankers and wealthy tycoons as people to be emulated.
During the 1930s, bankers and big-business tycoons became the villains and detested fascists
Across the 1930s, Americans tended to admire ordinary people who overcame the odds to achieve extraordinary things, including the extraordinary thing of just surviving with dignity and virtue.
Mainstream 1930s American culture emphasized virtue, morality, community, and mutual uplift rather than the superficial spectacle, wealth accumulation, corruption, and rigged individualism of the 1920s mainstream culture.
Jim Braddock (aka “Cinderella Man”)
Jesse Owens
Seabiscuit
Culture
Superman-
Created in the 1930s
Superman: An alien with superpowers who could dominate and enslave the world BUT he chooses to use his powers for good and in the service of humanity.
He goes about his daily life as a mild-mannered ordinary man, only busting out the superpowers when others need help.
Nemesis: Lex Luther- A man who uses technology to exploit and steal from ordinary people and pursue wealth, power, and domination.
Superman is the defender of the common man and the oppressed
He saves striking workers from evil bosses and company thugs
He fights racism and prejudice, even as segregation and racial violence were still in effect. He fought the KKK (“Knights of Fiery Cross”)
In The Great Dictator, Charley Chaplain openly mocked Hitler and delivered a monologue which epitomizes the vision of an alternative world that many Americans were coming to imagine as possible. It stands in overt opposition to the vision advanced by the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMKpYxhI2KI&feature=youtu.be
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor, That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible. Jew - Gentile - Black Man, White. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that…
And this world has room for everyone,
and the good Earth is rich can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate,
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives us abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More that cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost.
The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together.
The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men –
cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all.
Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world – millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people…
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!......”
Political Leadership
Huey Long
The most popular American politicians of the 1930s existed on the Left spectrum and offered sophisticated critiques of capitalism even as they refrained from openly embracing socialism:
Huey Long
Governor of Louisiana, 1928-1932 and US Senator, 1932-1935
Social conservative man of the Left (people over profits)
Governor Huey Long shielded the poor and working-class of Louisiana from some of the hardship of the Depression by investing in infrastructure development and, thus, creating jobs: If private business will not create jobs, maybe government should.
Long publicly attributed the Depression to the recklessness and greed of Wall Street- big business and big financiers, including the private bankers at the centralized bank called the Federal Reserve.
He told ordinary Americans that the crisis was not their fault. Government had failed them by empowering, rather than properly regulating and punishing, the excesses and recklessness of Wall Street. Government had served the private good of Wall Street, not the national good.
Long spoke the language of the “common man” and articulated issues of finance in ways ordinary people could understand.
He was beloved by the poor and laboring masses and hated by the rich, who labeled him the most dangerous man in America.
Huey Long
Long argued that the Depression and nation’s ongoing inability to get the wheels of the economy moving again were rooted in the concentration of the nation’s wealth- wealth derived from the labor of the nation’s people and become concentrated into too few hands.
The American people, through their productive labor within the factories and mines of capitalist investors, made extraordinary wealth possible, but the capitalist class had not paid this working class a reasonable share of the resulting wealth: The capitalist class took nearly the entire pie and left the people with crumbs!
In gorging themselves on the lion’s share of the profits, the capitalist class had not just behaved immorally, it had prevented the working class from engaging in a healthy level of consumption and, in so doing, inject dollars into the nation’s economy where they might nurture small business and create jobs.
The wealthiest Americans had hoarded the profits and then idled this wealth in banks and investment properties rather than allow it to circulate throughout the economy in the fulfillment of human needs through the purchase of a diversity of goods and services: Capitalist production requires consumption.
Tremendous wealth became concentrated in the hands of a few, who cannot possibly spend a reasonable share of it in their lifetime, or children’s lifetime; thus, the bulk of the nation’s wealth sits idle rather than circulates.
Side Note: Future Black Panther Party founder, Huey P. Newton, was named after Huey Long, reflective of Long’s appeal among African Americans in Louisiana
Huey Long
Long raised the point that 4% of the American people owned 85% of the wealth while 70% struggled with poverty.
Long compared the scenario to a BBQ: Would we allow four guests to take 85% of the food from the table and leave 96 guests to vie with one another for the scraps? “Put some of that food back on the table so everyone can eat!” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
It wasn’t just a matter of injustice or decency. It was a matter of 70% of the population being denied the ability to interject the wealth back into the economy. It was a matter of national good.
Share Our Wealth: Long’s proposal for structural changes within the American capitalist system were intended to revive the capitalist economy and render it more viable and conducive to national health and human well-being.
Long proposed legislation which would cap incomes at $1 million annually ($18 million a year, today) & personal wealth at $5 million ($80 million, today). He argued that wealth accumulation beyond this amount could not possibly be reinjected back into the economy. Moreover, it nurtured a generational aristocracy at odds with democratic republicanism.
Long argued that if the nation’s wealth was not allowed to concentrate in the hands of a few, there would be enough to supply every citizen with a comfortable standard of living. “Everyman a king but no one wears a crown!”
“We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and children's children can spend or use in their lifetimes, …such person has his share. That means that a few million dollars is the limit to what any one man can own.“
— Huey Long,
Share Our Wealth radio address,
February 23, 1934
Huey Long
Long’s observations of American capitalism reflected Karl Marx’s understandings of capitalist production as fundamentally reliant upon worker consumption.
Recall- Marx identified this as an inherent contradiction of capitalism
Long maintained that he was not a socialist. His goal was not to evolve beyond capitalism, but to do capitalism differently, as to make it more viable and conducive to nurturing national health and human liberty and well-being.
Long attributed his perspectives and programs to Christianity and the Declaration of Independence. These high ideals inspired American socialists as well as those who believed capitalism could be made to bend to humanity: “The man before the dollar.”
“Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.”
Huey Long
Huey Long was assassinated in 1935.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Amid the chaos and crisis of the Great Depression, Americans overwhelmingly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR came from “Old Money” and privilege.
He became a Wall Street lawyer, a New York senator, and then the Governor of New York.
As governor, he responded to the onset of the Great Depression establishing a state employment commission and publicly endorse unemployment insurance.
His presidential campaign called for aid to farmers full employment, unemployment insurance, pensions for the elderly.
Elected n 1932, he will be president until his death in April of 1945, just after his fourth election
A bout with polio left FDR crippled from the waist-down in 1921….
Elenore Roosevelt became FDR’s “legs,” in the sense of going into the community to interact with ordinary people and witness the plight of the poor & distressed.
She became a
progressive reformer
and an advocate
of civil rights. A sharp
departure from the
Wilson Admin. the
Roosevelts will invite
hundreds of African
American guests to
the White House.
Elenore became a powerful symbol of
female intellect, compassion, and moral strength. She set a precedent of public responsibility and engagement for future First Ladies.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR’s presidency was the product of the laboring majority of Americans becoming drawn to his vision of the nation and his vision of the role of the president. It was also a product of the Democratic Party developing a populist/progressive wing in the wake of the successes of the Populist Movement (Farmers Alliance, 1890s). Even as the Democratic Party remained infected with white supremacy and a business elite who benefitted from racial violence, it had become, since the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan, a vehicle for a lesser number of left-leaning candidates, increasingly in the north.
In 1929, three years ahead of becoming elected to the White House, FDR told a journalist it was time for “us Democrats to claim Lincoln as one of our own.” This statement is rather profound when one considers what Lincoln had set out to achieve:
The president does have a role to play in American society
Bring the nation and its constitution into alignment with its founding principles and promises of a government that protects and advances the “natural rights” of the citizenry: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The man before the dollar: People ahead of profits.
Nurture a republic of self-managing, self-sufficient, economically secure truly free people
FDR’s ambitions within the presidency could be considered, in part, the product of the Democratic Party’s evolution in a progressive/ populist direction since the 1890s. Since the Populist Movement (Farmer’s Alliance) succeeded in hoisting William Jennings Bryan into the presidential primary, the party had gradually developed a populist/progressive wing.
Many of FDR’s failures could be considered a product of the Democratic Party’s failure to more fully evolve and abandon its white supremacist/ big business wing.
In 1929, three years ahead of becoming elected to the White House, FDR told a journalist it was time for “us Democrats to claim Lincoln as one of our own.”
In making these claims, FDR alluded to dramatic changes within the Democratic Party which saw a progressive wing develop with the populist movement and push in the direction of Abraham Lincoln even as the other wing clung to the banner of white supremacy.
FDR and Lincoln
FDR entered the White House from Wall Street and “old money” privilege. Abraham Lincoln arrived from backwoods laboring origins. Even so, both men took the Declaration of Independence seriously and interpreted this document as tasking government with actively protecting and advancing the human rights of the citizenry.
Humanity has a natural right to live and be self-possessed, enjoy liberty- free from domination, exploitation and suppression, and exist in a position from which self-actualization can be pursued without artificial impediments
Government has an obligation to protect and facilitate these natural rights. Moreover, government must justify its own existence by actively cultivating conditions where natural/human rights can be realized.
The man before the dollar.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Both FDR and Lincoln took the Declaration of Independence seriously and interpreted this document as tasking government with actively protecting and advancing the human rights of the citizenry.
Humanity has a natural right to live and be self-possessed, enjoy liberty- free from domination, exploitation and suppression, and exist in a position from which self-actualization can be pursued without artificial impediments
Government has an obligation to protect and facilitate these natural rights. Moreover, government must justify its own existence by actively cultivating conditions where natural/human rights, including to self-actualization, can be realized.
Hence, FDR became widely regarded as a traitor to the class to which he belonged.
As a Wall Street lawyer and state politician prior to the Depression, FDR had become increasingly disgusted by the amount of authority which big business wielded over government policy-making and its sense of entitlement to the nation’s resources- financial, military, legislative, to advance its own profits and power ends.
FDR stood apart from the average Wall Street “creature” in being a genuine nationalist- prioritizing the health of the nation over private profit gains. He believed that it is the role of the government to prioritize the nation and regulate Wall Street in the national interest.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Perhaps the greatest challenge in office that FDR faced was navigating the Great Depression toward recovery without the “economic royalists” to hijack his efforts and mimic European fascism.
While the outgoing Hoover Administration had taken a hands-off approach, certain big capitalists and their political partners had become inspired by the economic recoveries of fascist Germany and Italy.
They sought to use government legislation and spending to move the nation into Nazi-like planned, state capitalist economy. As with Germany and Italy, capitalist markets and profits (for some) would be recovered by imposing austerity upon the masses and massive government spending on behalf of the big business.
In this context, the “economic royalists” and their political partners sought to use the National Recovery Act (NIRA) to institutionalize the kind of corporatism which then sustained European fascism if left entirely in the hands of the business elite and their politicians.
It intended to be “a means to create a common ground between government and industry.” Big business filled it with hundreds of codes to regulate prices, wages, work hours, etc. to restore profits and eliminate overproduction.
Clause 7a aimed to offer something to the working class amid the heavy business-hand in drafting the NIRA and the monopoly power it seemed to provide. Workers were offered the right to collectively bargain with employers. Without the stated promise of government support and enforcement, however, it seemed “harmless.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Following an extended period of inaction within the labor movement, the business and political class did not anticipate the explosion of union organizing that laboring people would ignite, capitalizing upon Clause 7A.
The working class renewed a discipline and vigor that not been seen since the post-WWI “Red Scare” crackdowns.
Existing unions increased their size many times over and membership jumped from 2.7 million in 1933 to 7 million by 1937.
Strikes peaked at nearly 5,000 in 1937.
Many of these entailed strikes against employers who refused to follow 7a.
General strikes took on an insurrectionary nature.
Next, came the Wagner Act It proposed to reign-in the accelerating labor movement and worker/employee strife by placing government at the center of relations as mediator.
The Act only inspired greater worker mobilization, in the context of a long history of government not pretending to take even a neutral position.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Through demonstrations of strength and numbers, the mobilized working class pushed the FDR Administration to align itself with the working class and use its mediation role to legalize labor unions and the right to bargain collectively with employers without fear of losing employment.
Every move by the corporatists to push the nation toward the type of arrangements established in Germany and Italy (austerity for the people, mass government handouts for big business) became countered by the mobilized working-class in the streets and through creative and informed planning in union halls.
Important Truth: The working class did not wait for FDR to save them. They took the initiative to capitalize on an opportunity (section 7a), and then they applied pressure to the president and his administration to act for the benefit of the people rather than just the big business interests that dominate Washington.
FDR, for his part, broke with every president since Lincoln in siding with the working class. Under intense pressure by the corporatists of big business and government to follow the example of Hitler and Mussolini, and violently crackdown on the mobilized working class in the street, Roosevelt pivoted and allowed himself to be pushed Leftward by the American people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
And then, FDR continued moving Leftward…. Recognizing that the Constitution, including its Bill of Rights, provides not for real freedom, including economic security and opportunity, FDR proposed an Economic Bill of Rights, or Second Bill of Rights.
Employment for all who want to work and a living wage for those who do work : Everybody should have a productive place in society and a means of subsistence, free from a dependency on the whims of the market.
Freedom from monopolies which destroy small business, artificially elevate prices, and rival the peoples’ government in influence and power.
Housing for all: Affordable housing, conducive to a living wage salary.
Medical care for all: A human right to live ought to require healthcare.
Social security- A guarantee of care in old age, sickness, and injury.
Education for all: The pursuit of happiness (self-actualization) naturally must include a human right to educational opportunities.
Thus, after decades of attempts to redefine freedom as “not being a chattel slave,” FDR moved toward resurrecting the “republican freedom” which the original Republican Party had advanced and the mobilized working class had carried forward. Of course, codifying this in law became blunted by the Supreme Court.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR and the Corporatists
For his departure from protocol, FDR became labeled a traitor to his class and a socialist.
Moreover, he became the object of a bourgeoning conspiracy which aimed to overthrow the elected presidency via a military coup. The plot included some of the nation’s most powerful oligarchs and members of the American Legion and other “patriotic” societies, with ties to Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Had these men succeeded, FDR would have been replaced by a fascist dictatorship
Was FDR a socialist? No. He was a capitalist capable of showing rational restraint and functioning without a narrow focus on personal profits.
FDR sought to save the nation from full-fledged fascism while also recovering capitalist markets.
He understood a very simple truth regarding capitalism: “Production requires consumption”- in order for the production of commodities to go forward (and, thus, job creation), the working-class must be able to buy back what it creates, or at least a healthy portion of what it creates. This requires jobs with reasonable wages.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Whereas the biggest and most influential American capitalists had proven narrowly determined to pursue and amass the greatest profits possible, partially by paying workers poverty wages, FDR believed it was the duty of government to mediate on behalf of the national good.
He regarded the national good as a healthy capitalist system, conducive to a healthy capitalist society. This, of course, required that the workers be paid at least living wage (not a poverty wage)
FDR shared with Huey Long an understanding of the Depression as rooted primarily in corporatist greed, recklessness, disregard for the national good, and the failure of the political class to regulate and ensure a healthy distribution of the profits created.
Writing in December 1932, Roosevelt blamed the continuing Depression on the “political failure to grasp the fact of economic interdependence.” Put another way, production requires consumption.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
If the private sector will not create opportunities for employment and wages, that people can sustain themselves and inject capital into the engine of capitalist markets, the task will fall to the government.
If the private sector, will not voluntarily provide those who labor with a living wage, that they might sustain themselves and inject a healthy dose of capital into engine of the system, government will need to mandate it.
If owners, investors, and other players in the market will not show restraint and regulate themselves, government will need to mandate appropriate regulations.
To keep fascism at bay, government must restore faith in American democracy and the virtue of liberty. It would also need to promote economic security and opportunity.
FDR fundamentally redefined the role of government. For the first time in American history, government accepted responsibility for the welfare (well-being) of the American people, not just the welfare of big business. Will it last?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The New Deal:
A series of domestic programs, public works projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by FDR. It aimed to hold the nation together, ease suffering, restore capitalist markets, and prevent another Great Depression. Although most of it has been rolled back and defeated by the consolidation of financial powers in Washington, it fundamentally changed the nature of the US government by articulating, for the first time, that government has an obligation to care for the well-being of the people, not just big business.
“Throughout the nation, men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… so, I pledge you,
I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people...
This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms.”
FDR committed himself to extending spending power to the public with the faith that recipients would spend it. The restoration of the capitalist economy demanded that money be spent, not saved.
“The only thing we have to fear
is fear, itself”
The New Deal
The three policy platforms of the New Deal:
“Relief, Recovery, & Reform”
Relief for the millions of unemployed and impoverished.
Recovery of the market toward a restoration of financial health
Reform the banking and financial system that had spun out of control, as to prevent such as crisis from reoccurring.
Relief:
FDR understood that citizens needed money and that the nation’s economy needed them to spend money. Therefore, the FDR provided citizens with “relief” in the form of direct payments and job creation.
Ease the suffering
Prevent full-scale revolution to topple the system.
Stimulate the capitalist economy by putting money in the pockets of citizens via both direct payment and job creation…. citizens who will interject that money into the economy in the process of meeting basic needs.
Pump Priming: An attempt to bring about the recovery of the economy through federal spending on job creation and stimulus checks.
The New Deal
Federal Emergency Relief Commission
Direct payments to households
Works Progress Administration (WPA):
Government job creation.
Mortgage relief for millions of farmers and homeowners facing foreclosure: Keep people in their homes and farms.
Federal Trade Commission
Established with the goal of protecting small business and consumers from big business monopolies which increase prices and lower the quality of goods by eliminating competition.
Emergency Banking Relief Act
Closed the banks for 4 days to assess viability
Reopened under federal supervision and federally insured deposits (FDIC- government insures deposits)
The public can now more confidently make deposits.
The New Deal
Glass-Steagall Act: In response to one of the causes of the Depression, it mandated a separation between investment banks and commercial banks, so bankers could not use consumer deposits on risky stock market investments
1999- Repealed: A long stretch of relative market stability came to an end.
Job Creation through Infrastructure Development:
Public Works Administration: The government allocated $3.3 million to be spent in various projects that would provide Americans with jobs, largely while building up the nation’s infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. The program also funded arts projects.
Tennessee Valley Authority: Government sponsored construction of dams and power stations in impoverished regions.
Civilian Conservation Corps: 250,000 young men employed on government funded, largely rural, infrastructure projects- built countless bridges and roads, planted 3 billion trees, established fire fighting infrastructure and provided job training.
The New Deal
Reform and Recover the Market
Agricultural Adjustment Admin: Attempted to raise the incomes of farmers by raising the price of goods.
Farmers were paid to destroy crops
Livestock raisers were paid to kill and destroy cattle and sheep.
Both were paid to take days off and refrain from producing.
Common sense might suggest that this food be used to feed the starving poor, but the purpose of the program was to restore capitalist profits (not transcend them) by making food less available on the market.
National Industrial Recovery Act: Sought to end cutthroat competition among businesses
Declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
Securities & Exchange Commission: Sought to regulate Wall Street
Mostly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
The New Deal
21st Amendment: Repeal of Prohibition- alcohol legal again for the purpose of collecting taxes on liquor.
Social Security Act: Aimed to be a form of insurance against old age, unemployment, and disability.
The gov. takes wages out of each paycheck and an equal amount from employers as a tax.
That money then goes into a fund from which people draw when unemployed, disabled, and retired.
Wagner Act (1936):
Gave workers the right to form unions, bargain collectively with employers over working conditions, and take part in strikes without fear of termination.
Established minimum wages and maximum hours required to work
The private armies of American capitalists became outlawed.
Did the New Deal Work?
The answer to the question- did the New Deal work?, depends upon what one expected it to do.
Did it relieve the suffering of the masses and sustain many Americans who might have, otherwise, fallen victim to starvation, malnutrition, or suicide? Yes.
Did the New Deal prevent the nation from descending into fascism or rising-up in a full-scale revolt to overthrow the capitalist system? Yes.
Did it hold the nation together, as the world lurched toward another world war which would require the unity and mass mobilization of the American people to defeat fascism? Yes.
New Deal job-creation further provided the nation with much needed infrastructure, modernization projects, and constructive contributions in the arts and sciences. In return, men and women received valuable job-training, a sense of dignity, and a paycheck in lieu of opportunities to earn one in the private sector.
It saw monumental and constructive regulations placed on big capital and markets that had spun out of control, even if many of these regulations have been since reversed.
It saw an extension of protections and guarantees benefitting ordinary Americans, even if the minimum wage is no longer a living wage and the ascendance of monopoly capital over Washington DC increasingly undermines public faith in these protections.
When the New Deal was over, “capitalism remained intact. The rich still controlled the nation’s wealth, as well as its laws, courts, police, newspapers, churches, colleges. Enough help had been given to enough people to make Roosevelt a hero to millions, but the same system that had brought depression and crisis–the system of waste, of inequality, of concern for profit over human need–remained.”
A People’s History of the United States, 394
Conclusions
Did the New Deal resolve the capitalist crisis, restore capitalist profits, and completely pull the nation out of the Depression? No.
But, maybe the full restoration of the capitalist economy was not the most important thing. It certainly was not the only challenge the New Deal aimed to overcome.
As with Germany, Italy, and Japan, the United States had to build a war machine to finally become restored to full economic vitality.
In creating a war machine, with which to fight the Axis Powers, Washington DC followed much of the pattern established by these fascist nations: Massive financial handouts to big business, protections, subsidies, bailouts, risk-free production ala contracts guaranteeing government purchase, etc.
Ironically, the corporatists and monopolists that FDR had battled to prevent a descent into fascism and to implement the New Deal, became even more empowered in the process of creating a war machine with which to fight fascism in WWII. This war machine was not dismantled after the war was won. It only became bigger. Consequently, the hold of the corporatist and monopolists on government also became bigger, as President Eisenhower warned the nation in his famous farewell address: “Beware of the Military Industrial Complex.”
