RE: Re: Re: Re: Nader

["michael pugliese" <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

   fROM A WEBPG. ON aLAN bRINKLEY
Michael Pugliese

>...The End of Reform discusses the erosion of the New Deal after
the 1937 recession and the experience of World War II. Brinkley
notes how FDR, a consummate pragmatist, had held no design for
recovery but rather relied on "bold experimentalism" to carry
the day. Under this rubric of experimentalism, many different
ideologies got their time in the sun, including budget-balancers,
"New Freedom" decentralization, "New Nationalist" federalism,
and Hoover-style associationalism. When the 1937 recession hit,
destroying what little recovery had occurred since the Great
Slump, FDR finally began to rely on what we now consider the
New Deal's prime legacy - Keynesian fiscal spending. This emphasis
on pump-priming [a.k.a. throwing money at problems, with no underlying
civic mission] was set in stone by the financial necessities
of the war effort.

By the time the dust had settled in 1945, all other strands of
progressivism had been discarded and forgotten, leaving only
the convenient yet strangely disempowering monolith of "postwar
liberalism" on the political landscape. Step by unfolding step,
Brinkley relates the men of various philosophies who crafted
the New Deal, and how they all ultimately came to embrace the
tenets of the liberalism now floundering in our nation's capital.
>--- Original Message ---
>From: Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Date: 3/31/02 9:07:49 AM
>

>There were two lines in the New Deal.  The corporatists were
not dominant
>at first -- the Thurman Arnold, trust-busting line, was.  The
idea was
>that corporate power caused the Depression by keeping prices
high and
>curtailing output.
>
>On Sun, Mar 31, 2002 at 02:29:55PM +0000, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>>
>> Actually the old New Deal (pre 1937) was opposed to competition
and very
>> much in favor of corporativist planning. The New Dealers were
very impressed
>> by the successes of the WWI War economy and the apparant successes
of the
>> USSR in those days in avoiding the ravages of the Great Depression,
and if
>> you read the histories of the period, they utterly rejected
the invisible
>
>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>