Refer to my comment bellow for a more expanded discussion, but specifically talking about the New Deal:
The voter participation in this period was comparable to what we have today. Minus all the people excluded, but the comment I’m replying to was talking about people deciding to vote, so those without that option, these people aren’t included in the asserted culpability for the success or failure of democracy.
The New Deal happened with significant context outside of the electoral system. A massive war with another looming on the horizon. A global financial collapse that threatened to incite people against the ruling class. Militant union organizing against violent state and private repression. The rise of the Soviet Union as a counterweight to capitalist hegemony and an example to show workers what was possible.
The goal was to placate workers enough to preserve the power structure. Far from being a democratic revolution, it was a stalling tactic that kept power concentrated and allowed those in power to slowly dismantle outside power structures like unions until such time as they could claw back those gains. The later end of the Keynesian government programs can be better attributed to the weakening of unions than the failure of people to vote or vote correctly at the ballot box. Government policy obviously had a big hand in this attack on unions, but there were also the material factors of automation and globalization that greatly reduced union bargaining power.
The goal was to placate workers enough to preserve the power structure.
Nice revisionism.
There wasn’t any chance of a massive class struggle like the USSR happening. There was more of a chance that the richest would have kicked FDR out and put in their own junta. That attempt only failed because Smedley Butler wasn’t having any.
I was lucky enough to meet some old school Communists who’d been in the Spanish Civil War. They would have laughed at the idea that the US was on the verge of a Socialist takeover in the 1930s.
It certainly wasn’t as extreme or successful as the soviet union, but there was a lot of unionization going on during the industrial revolution that was more radical than the tamer bargaining unions we see in the post-war era. And then the depression happened and things got really bad. It’s not hard to see how elites would have looked out at what was happening in the world, looked at the bad economic situation at home, and concluded that something had to be done.
FDR even said that they were trying to reform capitalism to save it.
1933 “It was this administration which saved the system of private profit and free enterprise after it had been dragged to the brink of ruin.” President Roosevelt, on how his emergency actions in 1933 prevented a revolution and saved capitalism.
It certainly wasn’t as extreme or successful as the soviet union,
So we agree that there was no way there was going to be a Socialist uprising in America in the 1930s, which is what you were trying to imply.
Also, the idea that FDR’s plans weren’t radical is ludacris. The only evidence you can come up with is a cloying speech he gave to settle the nerves of people who feared an actual revolution.
My point is that something like the New Deal doesn’t just happen because everyone decided to get out of bed and vote one day. There’s a context to understand and that context is that outside pressure and extraordinary events were necessary for it to happen.
Things didn’t get better because just that many more people decided to vote and things didn’t get worse because people stopped voting. The numbers just don’t bear that out. We’ve been stuck in the band of our modern voter turnout rate since before the New Deal. So if the claim is that Democracy works when everyone votes and the example is the New Deal, then it doesn’t support that claim. So if differences in voter turnout can’t explain that outcome, you have to look at other factors.
As for how radical it was. Sure, capitalists didn’t like it. But fundamentally it left power in the hands of those capitalists. The quote is just providing insight on how the people involved thought/talked about it. The evidence is all the history that followed that. They kept their money, their influence over the political system, and given time, they used that to dismantle even something as reformist as the New Deal.
Well at this point it seems like half this thread is just people not being clear what they mean or misunderstanding someone else.
I was responding to the assertion that there was some time when most people voted and participated in the system and that time was good because of that. You offered the New Deal as an example of this. I was showing how that didn’t really match up to the voter participation rate.
It’s not like I was trying to say ND programs were bad. Just that they weren’t the product of mass voter mobilization and didn’t change anything fundamental about the relationship between workers, capital, and the state.
That’s all. I’m pushing back against the idea that American democracy itself has somehow fallen from grace from some mythical period of mass democratic participation. That’s just never been what the country was. If you want to get to that point, you have to start by acknowledging that the old system wasn’t what you wanted to preserve. Otherwise you just keep ending up in the same place.
Refer to my comment bellow for a more expanded discussion, but specifically talking about the New Deal:
The voter participation in this period was comparable to what we have today. Minus all the people excluded, but the comment I’m replying to was talking about people deciding to vote, so those without that option, these people aren’t included in the asserted culpability for the success or failure of democracy.
The New Deal happened with significant context outside of the electoral system. A massive war with another looming on the horizon. A global financial collapse that threatened to incite people against the ruling class. Militant union organizing against violent state and private repression. The rise of the Soviet Union as a counterweight to capitalist hegemony and an example to show workers what was possible.
The goal was to placate workers enough to preserve the power structure. Far from being a democratic revolution, it was a stalling tactic that kept power concentrated and allowed those in power to slowly dismantle outside power structures like unions until such time as they could claw back those gains. The later end of the Keynesian government programs can be better attributed to the weakening of unions than the failure of people to vote or vote correctly at the ballot box. Government policy obviously had a big hand in this attack on unions, but there were also the material factors of automation and globalization that greatly reduced union bargaining power.
Nice revisionism.
There wasn’t any chance of a massive class struggle like the USSR happening. There was more of a chance that the richest would have kicked FDR out and put in their own junta. That attempt only failed because Smedley Butler wasn’t having any.
I was lucky enough to meet some old school Communists who’d been in the Spanish Civil War. They would have laughed at the idea that the US was on the verge of a Socialist takeover in the 1930s.
It certainly wasn’t as extreme or successful as the soviet union, but there was a lot of unionization going on during the industrial revolution that was more radical than the tamer bargaining unions we see in the post-war era. And then the depression happened and things got really bad. It’s not hard to see how elites would have looked out at what was happening in the world, looked at the bad economic situation at home, and concluded that something had to be done.
FDR even said that they were trying to reform capitalism to save it.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Transwiki/American_history_quotes_New_Deal
1933 “It was this administration which saved the system of private profit and free enterprise after it had been dragged to the brink of ruin.” President Roosevelt, on how his emergency actions in 1933 prevented a revolution and saved capitalism.
So we agree that there was no way there was going to be a Socialist uprising in America in the 1930s, which is what you were trying to imply.
Also, the idea that FDR’s plans weren’t radical is ludacris. The only evidence you can come up with is a cloying speech he gave to settle the nerves of people who feared an actual revolution.
My point is that something like the New Deal doesn’t just happen because everyone decided to get out of bed and vote one day. There’s a context to understand and that context is that outside pressure and extraordinary events were necessary for it to happen.
Things didn’t get better because just that many more people decided to vote and things didn’t get worse because people stopped voting. The numbers just don’t bear that out. We’ve been stuck in the band of our modern voter turnout rate since before the New Deal. So if the claim is that Democracy works when everyone votes and the example is the New Deal, then it doesn’t support that claim. So if differences in voter turnout can’t explain that outcome, you have to look at other factors.
As for how radical it was. Sure, capitalists didn’t like it. But fundamentally it left power in the hands of those capitalists. The quote is just providing insight on how the people involved thought/talked about it. The evidence is all the history that followed that. They kept their money, their influence over the political system, and given time, they used that to dismantle even something as reformist as the New Deal.
Well, since I never said that the New Deal just happened out of nowhere, everything you’ve written is moot.
I said the New Deal was a great place to start. Try dealing with that.
Tell me why we shouldn’t have a CCC and a WPA as a start.
Well at this point it seems like half this thread is just people not being clear what they mean or misunderstanding someone else.
I was responding to the assertion that there was some time when most people voted and participated in the system and that time was good because of that. You offered the New Deal as an example of this. I was showing how that didn’t really match up to the voter participation rate.
It’s not like I was trying to say ND programs were bad. Just that they weren’t the product of mass voter mobilization and didn’t change anything fundamental about the relationship between workers, capital, and the state.
That’s all. I’m pushing back against the idea that American democracy itself has somehow fallen from grace from some mythical period of mass democratic participation. That’s just never been what the country was. If you want to get to that point, you have to start by acknowledging that the old system wasn’t what you wanted to preserve. Otherwise you just keep ending up in the same place.