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Ever since Time ran its cover of Barack Obama as FDR, pundits have been chattering about the idea of a "new New Deal." But as the idea of the New Deal comes back in style, so does opposition to the vision of activist government, everywhere from the pages of magazines such as National Review (which is once more running anti-Roosevelt essays) to the Republican opposition to the stimulus package. Backpedaling from the culture wars, today's conservatives are hoping to rescue their movement from the debacle of the Bush presidency by presenting themselves as the enemies of big-government dogma. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin put it to the Washington Post, by resisting Obama's plan to help the economy by boosting government spending, "We're beginning to find our voice."
But although they're trying to make it seem like a new direction, these contemporary conservatives are simply going back to their movement's roots. Although today it is a commonplace that modern conservatism is a reaction against the radicalism of the 1960s, a movement of pro-lifers and opponents of gay marriage, the real origins of today's conservative movement can be found in the backlash against the economic liberalism of the depression decade and afterwards.
And what's more, although today's conservatives speak the language of populism, in the past businessmen were always at the forefront of the fight against the New Deal. In the 1930s, business leaders campaigned against many of the leading pieces of New Deal legislation. Wall Street brokerages resisted financial regulations. Executives from DuPont organized the American Liberty League, a group that claimed to welcome "every citizen, man or woman, in the shop, in the field, in the mill, in the counting house, in the business world, in the home or in any walk of life" -- as long as they were opposed to the "ravenous madness" of the New Deal. But in reality, the League was devoted to the principle that "business, which bears the responsibility for the paychecks of private employment, has little voice in government," and most of its funding came from a tiny circle of top executives. Some even felt that the League didn't go far enough. "I want to mobilize a group of business leaders in this country who will start shouting from the house-tops and the cellars and every other place where they can obtain a hearing...that we are approaching disaster," said one Southern California utility executive, who proposed to create a network of "militant alarmists" in the business world to protest the New Deal.
In 1936, these politicized executives backed FDR's opponent Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas, in his bid against the Democratic incumbent. Believing that (as one campaign memo put it) "the government of the United States has been placed by a dumb, unthinking populace in the hands of notorious incompetents," the Industrial Division of the Republican Party even distributed special pay envelopes to employers that contained a warning that the new Social Security Act would result in lower paychecks.
The scare tactics failed, and Roosevelt won by a landslide. But the people who fought the New Deal during the 1930s never gave up. Later in the twentieth century, these business conservatives helped bankroll think tanks and anti-union campaigns, as well as political candidates such as Barry Goldwater. They built the infrastructure of today's conservative politics and helped to shift the intellectual climate of the country against labor unions and government programs toward an unthinking celebration of the free market. Intellectuals such as Friedrich Hayek benefited from the financial largesse of DuPont Company executives, think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute grew with the contributions of members of the "remnant" of anti-New Deal executives, and even Ronald Reagan learned about economics while working at General Electric during the 1950s, when the company embraced market ideology in order to combat its unions. The free-market businessmen saw the New Left and antiwar activists as threats to the power of business, and they were therefore able to make common cause with cultural conservatives in the 1970s -- a project made easy by leaders such as Jerry Falwell, whose newspaper denounced unions and whose early books quoted enthusiasts for capitalism like Milton Friedman.
Ultimately, many politicians from both parties accepted these old anti-New Deal ideas. And when Ronald Reagan was elected, tax cuts, deregulation, and an acceptance of economic inequality became the new orthodoxy -- and remain so in some ways even now, despite the role of such policies in creating the current economic mess. Which is why -- to paraphrase Karl Marx -- it seems not so much tragic as it does farcical to see today's congressional conservatives trying to revive their old faiths.
In the 1930s, the opponents of the New Deal failed. Everyone knew that the blind confidence in laissez-faire had helped to drive the country into the depression, and the business conservatives and their political allies were never able to regain the support they'd lost with the stock market crash. Today, there's no popular uprising on the scale of the early 1930s. It remains to be seen how serious the Obama administration is about progressive economic change; his cabinet seems largely sympathetic to the business lobby and to free-market beliefs, and the rhetoric of bipartisanship doesn't seem likely to yield broad transformations. There's a conservative network and a business lobby far stronger than anything that existed during the 1930s, one sign of which is that business groups are split on the stimulus package -- the Chamber of Commerce, for example, says it's happy to support some version of the bill. Still, if there's any real movement toward a "new New Deal" -- for example, if the Employee Free Choice Act ever gets off the ground, or if there's a push toward true universal health care -- it seems likely that the businessmen will be back in force, doing what they've done ever since the 1930s: trying to build the conservative movement by crusading against the New Deal.
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Funny that conservatives routinely oppose the New Deal, which contained some of the most popular legislation in history and laid the foundation for our future prosperity. Where would the country be without a social security program, unemployment insurance, and depositary insurance on bank accounts? Who would want to see the elderly end up as homeless after an entire life of hard work?Conservatives do not realize there is often nothing rational about markets and a society without a safety net, like in Victorian England, provides only a standard of living for the wealthy which they can attain anyway and no place for the dispossessed.
Good article.
Hopefully Obama will wise-up and either kick Geithner (sp?) to the curb or get him in line...
If this does become a protracted down turn you can kiss the Rs goodbye. The 2010 elections are likely to put the Ds in a truly commanding position that even Harry Reid can't screw up...
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Harry Reid could "screw up" an iron ball!
Are you that naive? Obama picked Geithner because he believes in his approach to the problem.
How comforting. If we slide all the way into a depression, we just need a fearless leader with a new deal (and world war III) to get us out.
The new deal kept my parents alive.
It literally saved my family.
Excellent piece.
Great article. Even more amazing than the Republicans' illogical arguments in today's debates is their tendency to re-argue past debates as though events had not already proved the folly of their arguments. I understand that Republicans didn't invent revisionist history, that each generation reinterprets historical events from its own perspective, but they're not using a new perspective. They're using the same arguments that history has already discredited. It's as if they're forecasting (post-casting?) yesterday's weather, insisting that nobody should have used an umbrella, when everyone now knows it rained buckets.
Larry278 is right. Forty-odd years ago, when I was in college, our Economics professor told us there could never be another Great Depression because of the safeguards that were enacted as part of the New Deal. He went on to explain them all to us. But over the past 30 years, I've watched as the New Deal was dismantled piece by piece, and now we're again headed in a steep downwards spiral. I sure hope President Obama gets the gumption to fix the situation, but lately I'm not as confident as I was during the campaign.
Times are tough right now, no question. But we've got a long, long, LOOOONNNNG way to go before they get as bad as things were during the Great Depression.
The new deal should be fought. It made the depression last for years longer than it should have and started us down the road of spending money we don't have on programs that don't work.
The stimulus bill is 1075 pages. Have you read them all? If not, how can you even begin to analize whether or not it is good or bad.
revisionist nonsense..
yet another GOPer that slept through history class.
Where's your proof, profproof? The recession of '37 happened because FDR listened to his advisors and tried to balance the budget. To do so meant that he had to reverse field on some of his New Deal acts, which brought about said recession. He learned his lesson, and stopped listening to those people. He then proceeded about laying the groundwork that transformed this nation into the world's foremost superpower, financially, as well as militarily.
The New Deal is TAKING BACK the RIGHT TO JOIN A UNION Withou FEAR and Intimidation From The Employer!
Since 1935, the law has provided two ways for employees to express the choice to be represented by a union: majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board election.
Employee sign-up was legal even before the National Labor Relations Act was passed. When a majority of employees had signed cards or petitions designating a union as their representative, the employer could legally negotiate with the representative. The act was interpreted as giving the company the right to decide whether the employees would choose a union through majority sign-up or through an election conducted on the company's premises.
The process of forming a union with or without the Employee Free Choice Act would remain the same.
The only difference would be if the Employee Free Choice Act should be passed is that:
The EFCA would give employees, rather than the company, the right to decide which method to use.
For More Information on EFCA please visit our website and blog
http://www
http://www
http://efc
http://www
You mean they are fighting for the right to extract union dues from employees and then use that money to cozy up to the democratic party.
So, who's paying YOUR dues, buddy? (No need to ask which party.)
Prof, you keep denying that bosses abuse workers until a union or a government makes them stop. Not all bosses, not all workers - but in a time of global economies feeding on sweatshops and virtual slavery, workers have a right to organize and fight back. The Bush administration did its best to deliver death blows to whatever union was at hand. Remember, we didn't even get a department of Homeland Security until Bush had scuttled the union. The democratic party attracts workers because the republican party seems out to get them.
uh huh. Yeah prof, if only you could go back in time and prevent any unions from ever forming, and prevent the forty-hour work week and overtime and workplace safety and child labor laws. And while you're at it, kill Social Security, Medicare, etc.,. And why fund public school at the high school level? Child factory workers will be deprived of the right to earn an income.... Yes, prof, there's no denying that you're a real genius. Why don't you run for Congress in a red state?
The successors of the dead 1930's opponents succeeded in destroying the New Deal & few, if any, remainders of New Deal inspired legislation remain in effect. The repeal of New Deal legislation created the conditions which led to 9/15/08's meltdown & the continuing economic conditions which has created a recession & will lead to the mother of all depressions in the future.
Pres Obama & his supporters will need to up-date legislation of the New Deal Era & create new legislation & policies to foreclose the arrival of the mother of all depressions. The US Congress has the task of enacting Obama & Co's proposed legislation sans 'bi-partisan' ammendments & changes. If the 111th Congress fails to make BHO & Co's proposed legislation into law, PDQ, as in now, say hello to the mother of all depressions. It will be around for a long time. All of us will get to know it soon & the majority of us will feel it once.
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