Review: Not Everyone Liked the New Deal

Amity Shlaes anthologizes Franklin D. Roosevelt’s critical contemporaries.

New Deal Rebels, a new anthology published by the American Institute for Economic Research, is an antidote to the idea that there ever was a consensus behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempts to end the Great Depression by, among other things, forcing farmers to destroy crops the government deemed "surplus."

A long, illuminating introduction from the volume's editor, Amity Shlaes, is followed by 53 short selections from the New Deal era. Some are a bit tedious for bedtime reading, but many are jewels. These include "One From One Leaves Two," a spunky poem by Ogden Nash from the perspective of a farmer wondering how to make his cow and hens stop "overproducing" milk and eggs (concluding lines: "I pray the Lord my soul to take/If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake"); several exasperated Garet Garrett columns for The Saturday Evening Post; the text of the Supreme Court's Schechter Poultry Corp. decision, which unanimously found the National Recovery Administration to be unconstitutional; and an editorial from the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper, celebrating that ruling as a vindication of "the wisdom of the founders of the Republic."

Best of all is a 1936 essay by Winston Churchill, not yet prime minister of the United Kingdom, who did not hold back in excoriating Roosevelt's disdain for the U.S. Constitution. The piece begins by imploring readers to decide, first and foremost, whether they "value the State above the citizen, or the citizen above the State? Does a government exist for the individual, or do individuals exist for the government?" His answer was clear. Ours should be as well.

Comments

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[rbike]

So history has proved them wrong and Roosevelt correct? Or are we about to find out otherwise?

[B G]

Some would say that history has proven Orwell to be the most correct.

A huge portion of people who believe they venerate the New Deal also despise a lot of what the New Deal actually did, such as ensconcing housing "redlining" into Federal Law for nearly half a century via the FHA (and its flow-down into programs line GI/VA Mortgages which were built on that boilerplate after WW2); doublethink helps a lot with that.

Churchill's dichotomy is probably too subject to interpretation to be useful in the modern debate. "Progressive" believers (at least in the USA where their pols have them convinced that a handful of people can be forced to pay for everything indefinitely) see widespread entitlement programs as "the State serving the individual", while people who can do math or who have looked into what current economic/tax policies are in place in "scandanavian" countries can generally connect the dots on how much the costs of funding those programs lead to most individuals devoting more than half of their lifetime's productive activity to serving the State.

Ironically, if someone were to lay out a proposal to enact something like the regime of immigration, tax, education, and social services policy that actually exist today in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, or Denmark to any crowd of US voters and "organizers" who claim to want to "emulate" one or more of those countries (but only for their social services and college tuition policies, without the other aspects that make all that possible), the rush for the exits could potentially result in a body count as the people in the front rows trample those in the back rows in their rush to escape "triggering" ideas like school choice, closed borders, and 60% marginal tax rates affecting 50% of taxpayers instead of 1% PLUS a 25% national VAT which collects 1 in 5 of people's "take home" pay "dollars" when they spend it.

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[damikesc]

Does David French know you feel this way?

He would likely be quite upset with you.

[Dillinger]

lol

[Mickey Rat]

Remember that Mussolini compared the New Deal favorably to his Fascist theory of government, saying there were many commonalities.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

FDR admired Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin for having the authority he only aspired to.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

The New Deal tended to ape and copy Mussolini's policies.

[Alan Vanneman]

Here's a news flash, Stephanie (and Amity): You're still living in Franklin Roosevelt's America. Get used to it and get over it.

[Zeb]

So no one should talk about it ever again?

[TheReEncogitationer]

So it's "To a detention camp, go!" for anyone who even looks like they are Japanese?

Phew! What a complete asshole you are!

[Mike Hansberry]

Good to know there are still some actual libertarians at Reason.

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[JFree]

This seems like a useful anthology for combating the idea that there was a consensus behind the New Deal. But that's a bit of a strawman. Of course there was opposition to the centralization of policy that became the New Deal. The reason it disappeared into true irrelevance is because none of that opposition had anything WORTH saying. Not then. Not now either since most of what is being said now as economic opposition about that era is circular reasoning not 'uncovering history'. It assumes the conclusion that the Depression ends and therefore assumes that a different choice could have been made with some reasonable certainty that the Depression would end because of that choice.

FDR himself changed his mind during the Depression. From an early 1930 radio address -
On this sure foundation of the protection of the weak against the strong, stone by stone, our entire edifice of Government has been erected. As the individual is protected from possible oppression by his neighbors, so the smallest political unit, the town, is, in theory at least, allowed to manage its own affairs, secure from undue interference by the larger unit of the county which, in turn, is protected from mischievous meddling by the State. This is what we call the doctrine of "Home Rule," and the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution is to carry this great principle into the relations between the National Government and the Governments of the State... It must be obvious that almost every new or old problem of government must be solved, if it is to be solved to the satisfaction of the people of the whole country, by each State in its own way

Indeed, when you look at his notion of federalism and home rule, it becomes clear that that New Deal centralization is not centralization for its own sake but centralization for the goal of ensuring the strong don't simply crush the weak. Politically - electorally during a crushing Depression - it makes complete sense that that policy might appeal far more than some alternative policy called 'laissez-faire'.

[TJJ2000]

"the strong don’t simply crush the weak"

Self induced perspective by [Na]tional So[zi]alists (i.e. Zero-Sum resources) which is directly related to their criminal mentality that nothing is created/earned only a zero-net-sum of resources to STEAL.

The only nightmare in which the BIG-THEFT could possible 'crush the weak'. Your entire train of thought is the BS of the New Deal just as it was in Venezuela and countless other THEFT supporting nations.

[TheReEncogitationer]

Ah, but Laissez-Faire was not, is not, and never was the cause of either The Great Depression or any other. It was caused by both the easy extension of money and credit by the Federal Reserve created in 1913 (which made the ‘Boom’) and restriction on foreign trade (which created the ‘Bust.’)

[JFree]

Laissez-faire was the proposed RESPONSE to the Depression by say Andrew Mellon, Sec Treasury from 1921 – 1933. In Hoover’s memoirs, Hoover writes that Mellon’s advice was –Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.

To folks like Andrew Mellon, who inherited a bank, the depression itself is a combo of an extended orgasm and a teaching lesson. And as is always the case, those who advocate that laissez-faire response in the aftermath of a bust also advocate policies that help create the bubbles and boom before the bust. Keynes also describes those types - quite positively even though he thinks they were stupid - as the sort who have the 'animal spirits' that drive the banking/investment system into booms/bubbles.

In Mellon’s case, an excellent proxy for ‘decision-maker’ during the 1920’s and crash part of the Depression, he lowered marginal income tax rates from the top (78% to 25%); advocated a switch from dependence on income tax (which most people didn’t pay anyway) to excise/tariff revenue (see Smoot-Hawley); strongly advocated the bubble/interest rate policies of the early 1920’s (which created a Florida land bubble, the farmland bubble that skewered farmers when ag prices, and the corporate utilities/electric expansion in the 1920’s that turned a stock market crash into an unemployment problem).

So when the crash happens (he also advocated higher interest rates then rather than Fed pressure on banks – to ensure better control of prices by banks), he and his ‘class’ are able to control the bust so that others become the object of liquidation.

As I said – there is good reason that the post-bust prescriptions of these folks are viewed with disfavor. The pre-bust and bubble-inflating policies that create the bust are still quite popular – and the advocates of those now advocate bailouts for the Mellon-class instead.

[TJJ2000]

Wow… Your are just chuck full of BS.
Funny how all that BS never happened before the Federal Reserve.

...The never ending amount of BS excuses the Nazi's and their faulty ideology can serve up.

[MWAocdoc]

"Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you’re given,
The less you lead, the more you’re driven,
The more destroyed, the more they feed,
The more you pay, the more they need,
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake."

[TheReEncogitationer]

Great poetic words from the author of: "Candy is dandy./But liquor is quicker."
🙂
😉

[MWAocdoc]

"Does a government exist for the individual, or do individuals exist for the government?" - Winston Churchill, 1936

In England, at least, the individuals exist for the government. In most of Europe "the good of the group" trumps "the individual" almost every time. They try to disguise it as "the good of the group IS the good of the individual" but astute citizens recognize that the two principles are mutually exclusive.

[TJJ2000]

Well Said. "Roosevelt's disdain for the U.S. Constitution"
The very definition of the real USA instead of a Nazi-Empire.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Best of all is a 1936 essay by Winston Churchill, not yet prime minister of the United Kingdom, who did not hold back in excoriating Roosevelt's disdain for the U.S. Constitution.

Ironically, that was one of George Will's criticisms of Theodore Roosevelt as well. That family always has been, at its core, self-righteous champagne socialists.

[Public Entelectual]

All is well with the New Deal in Progressive bastions like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Anthropological Association. There's nary a Republican, let alone a Libertarian, to be found on their editorial boards, but they still catch flack from old school Scientific Socialists

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[Beezard]

schlaes’ “the forgotten man” and “the great society” were both pretty good. She comes off as balanced, because she lets you feel all the giddy excitement of the reformers suddenly having control over the levers of power. But then lets you know, what ever the intentions, they mostly pretty much fucked things up for a lot of people and still do.

You also get a sense of how much of this shit is the continuation of ye old patronage system, and how literally everything in politics is about the next election…

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

The irony of Churchill bloviating against FDR in 1936 is that when Churchill had the chance upon regaining power in 1951, he and his Conservative Party did *nothing* to dismantle the welfare state which had been implemented by Attlee and Labour during the previous five years. Seventy years later, the NHS is *still* there and *still* an embarrassment.

[Vampire]

There should have been a revolution against Woodrow wilson before he even signed the federal reserve act and began the new tradition of protracted conflict funded by monetary inflation.

Surely the people would have revolted against FDR when he issued the executive order in 1933 to steal people’s money via threats of violence against anyone not in compliance.

The people unfortunately stood quiet. The people’s money was stolen and every political wet dream, to include war, economic intervention, the progressive agenda, corporatism, and so on was funded via the creation of money out of thin air and the central planning and control of the economy.

FDR was horrible. His own friend and confidant admitted so…

“ We have tried spending money. We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job, I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot!”
Henry Morgenthau, Jr.