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FDR Wasn't FDR ... Until His Hand Was Forced By Civil Disobedience
Progressives are disappointed that - contrary to the hype - Obama is no FDR.
But FDR himself wasn't who we think of as FDR until he was forced by protests, strikes and other forms of civil disobedience.
As historian Howard Zinn wrote in March 2008:
In
1934, early in the Roosevelt Presidency, strikes broke out all over
the country, including a general strike in Minneapolis, a general
strike in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile
mills of the South. Unemployed councils formed all over the country.
Desperate people were taking action on their own, defying the police to
put back the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help
organizations with hundreds of thousands of members.
Without
a national crisis—economic destitution and rebellion—it is not likely
the Roosevelt Administration would have instituted the bold reforms
that it did.
Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party,
unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two
leading Presidential candidates [i.e. Obama and McCain] have made it
clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq
War ....
They offer no radical change from the status quo.
They do not propose what the present desperation of people cries out for ....
They
do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or the radical
changes in the tax system that would free billions, even trillions, for
social programs to transform the way we live.
None of this
should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with its historic
conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only
when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and
the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in
November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental
illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.
***
For instance, the
mortgage foreclosures that are driving millions from their homes—they
should remind us of a similar situation after the Revolutionary War,
when small farmers, many of them war veterans (like so many of our
homeless today), could not afford to pay their taxes and were
threatened with the loss of the land, their homes. They gathered by the
thousands around courthouses and refused to allow the auctions to take
place.
The evictions today of people who cannot pay their rents
should remind us of what people did in the Thirties when they
organized and put the belongings of the evicted families back in their
apartments, in defiance of the authorities.Historically,
government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats,
conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until
forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of
black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies
and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting ... is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.
Similarly, Zinn said in 2008:
The
obstacles are a kind of resignation that things will go on as before.
That's always the obstacle to change. The obstacle to change is not
that people don't want change. People want change. But most of the
time, people feel impotent. However, at certain points in history, the
energy level of people, the indignation level of people rises. And at
that point it becomes possible for people to organize and to agitate and
to educate one another, and to create an atmosphere in which the
government must do something. I'm thinking of the 1930s; I'm thinking of
Franklin D. Roosevelt coming into office not really a crusader.
Roosevelt
came into office, you know, with a balance-the-budgets history. It was
not clear what he was going to do, and I don't think he was clear
about what he was going to do, except that he was going to be different
from Hoover and the Republicans. But when he came into office, he
faced a country that was on strike. He faced general strikes in San
Francisco in Minneapolis. He faced strikes of hundreds of thousands of
textile workers in the South. He faced a tenants movement and an
unemployed council movement. And he faced a country in turmoil, and he
reacted to it, he was sensitive to it, he moved. That's what we will
need.
We will need to see some of the scenes that we saw in the '30s.
Liberal Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig pointed out last week that - instead of mocking the Tea party - progressives should emulate it's energy:
Many
of my friends have been puzzled that I have not been a strong critic
of the Tea Party. Indeed, quite the opposite, I stand as a critical
admirer.... I am a genuine admirer of the urge to reform that is at the
heart of the grassroots part of this, perhaps the most important
political movement in the current political context.
My
admiration for this movement grew yesterday, as at least the Patriots
flavor of the Tea Party movement announced its first fight with (at
least some) Republicans. The Tea Party Patriots have called for a GOP
moratorium on "earmarks."
***
This disagreement
has thus set up the first major fight of principle for the Tea Party.
As leaders in the Tea Party Patriots described in an email to
supporters,For two years we have told the media and
the rest of the country that we are nonpartisan and that we intend to
hold all lawmakers to a higher standard.This, they
insist, is their first chance for that stand with the new Republican
Congress. And the Tea Party Patriots have now mobilized their list to
pressure Republicans to support this first and critical reform in the
new Congress.
***
Earmarks are ... an essential element
in the corruption that is Congress today.... they have become the key to
an incredible economy of influence that effectively enables lobbyists
to auction too many policy decisions to the highest special interest
bidder. That economy won't change simply by eliminating earmarks. But
eliminating earmarks is an essential first step to starving this
Republic-destroying beast.
***
We do face a common enemy.
Special-interest-government is anathema to both the true Right and the
limping Left. Progress would be to work together to end it.
Lessig is not alone.
As I've previously pointed out, progressives such as Dave Lindorff, political science professor Peter Dreier, economist Dean Baker, Daniel Ellsberg, Jonathan Capehart
and many others say that we should be emulating the protest energy of
the Tea Party, because we have to raise some hell before anything will
change.
In fact, as I've repeatedly
noted, the whole left-versus-right thing is just a distraction trick.
It's really the American people versus the giant bankers, captains of
the military-industrial complex, and handful of others who are benefiting by shafting the average American.
Remember that one of the founders of the Tea Party - Karl Denninger - has slammed
the current Tea Party (which was quickly co-opted by the mainstream
GOP) for serving the rich and the Republican party instead of fighting
against the giant banks, and is calling for non-partisan, Gandhi-style nonviolent resistance to take on the banskters.
And remember that "liberal" George Soros is paying a top aide to "conservative" Sarah Palin.
Of course, some have argued that there are more effective methods of disobedience than protests and strikes such as this or this. I will leave strategy to those who have better tactical sense than I have.
But one thing is for sure: unless we make the lives of those in power a little more uncomfortable, nothing will change.
Note
to conservatives who dislike FDR: Glass-Steagall and other regulations
against fraud wouldn't have been passed unless the public had raised
hell through protests and strikes.
- advertisements -
Max, fair enough ...
I consider you a fair person.
However, there are some things that will never be agreed on.
A starting point could be...the individual is superior to the state.
the only way an individual can be guaranteed his rights is to form a union/govt that enforces democratic law uniformly on everybody...without a govt with power to stop thugs and crooks, thugs and crooks take power...so give power to govt and say, only bother those harming others, taking other people's liberties
the individual has a corporeal existence and the state
does not. they occupy different realms. etc..
and there is a cognitive overlap area where identity
exists as an idea. so we have jumped back into the
funny business again.
you could say that the state has a corporeal existence in
the architecture of the PeOpLe. the infrastructure, public
works ,etc. but, all this just transforms the potential
of the individual for better or for worse depending on
how you see it, would like it to be or not to be. that
becomes the collective question after all these years.
i wonder if w. shakespeare foresaw this day?
anyway. the individual is, wondering what that is. the state
is always just an idea carried in the minds of those wondering
what can i, or can't i, do? or what "should" i do? or what must i
do?
so "the state" is the result of the actions of the collection of
individuals and the results or effects and affects of what they do.
how they do it and how they perceive what they have done, do and
"will" do.
or the individual is the cause, the state is the collective effect. ?
connected by choice. collective. when the individuals lose their
power, their sense of importance, individuality then the state
will also wither as it is just the combined energy of the cause
transformed and publicly recognized. when the state becomes
overbearing , the effect nullifies the cause that creates it, it must
just die / remanifest. physics? the state will always represent
the individuals that compose it. if you don't like it you must
change it which means you must change, yourself.
I agree that the individual is superior to the state. But
A Free Market Is Not Possible Without Strong Laws Against FraudWe HAVE strong laws against fraud. How about saying it's not possible unless strong laws against fraud exist and are enforced.
Both are right. Please remove the boot from my neck...this would apply to both thoughts.
Right, GW. A free market requires a legal framework. Even Bartertown had one, kind of.
Good.
I also believe in law...I also believe in justice...even more so than law. Two different things when contemplating "law".
Not to rehash the whole subprime debacle..."but"...it is a microcosm, from my view anyway of what we are discussing...a law was passed (CRA), it was enforced (Janet Reno springs to mind, redlining etc.), the law was regulated (banking being one of the most highly regulated activities in the market), crony capitalists sprang up around it...it is what "capitalists" do...they seek a profit...the difference here was "crony"...a rigged game...that is, financial fraud, instituted/allowed by law.
What the Austrians are saying is correct.
In a balanced financial world FNM & FRE could not exist. They are/were aberrations. Just like solar, they are unprofitable without taxpayer subsidy...by definition not capitalism as capitalism seeks to destroy waste and reward efficiency.
And what you are saying is also correct...in this aspect, to my way of thinking...the more complex an issue becomes...the more regulation is needed.
So to who's benefit does complexity fall to? Not the individual I would say. I would say regulators, lawmakers and crony capitalists.
Warren Buffet and Charley Munger are two more examples off te top of my head. They made themselves rich by investing wisely, shrewdly being true capitalists...but like water seeking it's lowest point...they went crony because it really is easier when the deck is stacked in your favor by law...but it can still be morally reprehensible.
You don't even need perfectly free markets, you just need mostly free markets. The US residential mortgage market, as it has existed for at least the last two decades, isn't even close to being free and there certainly isn't a market on earth with more regulations.
One could bore oneself silly simply reading the names of all the mortgage regulations enacted in 1989/90 alone. And I may have to give it some more thought but when the government sets up absurd and idiotic incentives like that I'm not sure it's even unethical to take advantage of them.
"And I may have to give it some more thought but when the government sets up absurd and idiotic incentives like that I'm not sure it's even unethical to take advantage of them."
I think I see what your saying...but I don't know how rested I would feel sleeping with the enemy ;-)
Prove it. A free market is impossible if you have laws against fraud. Because the ruling elite will mould these laws to benefit themselves. These laws will be applied unevenly, in ways which benefit the elite. By a judiciary that they will control as well.
The only way to prevent fraud is one: have no laws besides private property protection. Two, each individual must learn to protect themselves. Nothing else has ever worked.
When power is surrendered to others, it will be used to enslave you.
ah yes, the alan greenspan, no need for fraud legislation argument. worked like a charm.
" have no laws besides private property protection."
Strong laws against financial fraud are nothing else but private property protection. The whole point of financial fraud is to rob without using a gun.
No, they are laws against process. There is a big difference. Private property merely protects a claim against assets. A person, land, structures. You cannot rob me of my property without a gun or my permission. Private property laws protect against the gun. I protect myself by reserving my permission.
Yet, you can STILL be hoodwinked into supplying your permission! I too believe in limited Govt, limited to what the US Constitution MANDATEs that they do, and chained by what the Govt is FORBIDDEN to do.
Exactly. We have the center-right party versus the far-right party. Both of whom have fascist tendencies and are owned by the same ruling class.
Maybe the Shadow Gvt on the RIGHT is into National/Socialist policies,and bent.But I guarantee you, the citizens (who are members) damned sure do not.
No, we have this, now.
Use of the term Left became more prominent after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 when it was applied to the "Independents".[4] The term was then applied to a number of revolutionary movements in Europe, especially socialism, anarchism[5] and communism. The term is also used to describe social democracy and social liberalism.[6][7]
According to Barry Clark,[8]
“ Leftists... claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated. According to leftists, a society without substantial equality will distort the development of not only deprived persons, but also those whose privileges undermine their motivation and sense of social responsibility. This suppression of human development, together with the resentment and conflict engendered by sharp class distinctions, will ultimately reduce the efficiency of the economy.Leftists... claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated. According to leftists, a society without substantial equality will distort the development of not only deprived persons, but also those whose privileges undermine their motivation and sense of social responsibility. This suppression of human development, together with the resentment and conflict engendered by sharp class distinctions, will ultimately reduce the efficiency of the economy.
COMMUNISM...........pure and simple.
GW is buildingFiring that first shot may well prove a big deal.
Howard zinn is a great historian but, with a one sided viewpoint. what's missing is the john Steinbeck viewpoint. everyone is a special interest, called "factions".
http://covert2.wordpress.com
FDR was Satan is disguise.And his wife was a Black Arts follower.
The reason we have limited POTUS to 2 terms, is because FDR passed so much crap, and acted like a damned fascist.(everyone feared him).
He wanted to put German Americans in the internment camps like the Japanese.
Except there were too damn many of them.......( just what he needed another SHTF ), he was a bastard.
He and Wilson, were besides one we have now, will go down is history as the worst we ever had.All 3 Progressives Socialist/Marxists.
And Teddy was a damn Progresive to, just in a earlier time frame.
If you look at hte Commie Manifesto, EVERY plank in it, is IN place in the US now except ONE.
FDR caused the depression because he was Helicopter Bens Great Grand Daddy......they BOTH did, are doing the same crap.
Coolidge had the Depression of 29, and he refused to bail anyone out, or even help the staes, save Mississipi(worst flood ever),had no choice in the end.
With his fiscal sanity, that Depression was over in less than 18 mos.
As an aside, LETS STOP calling these Commie bstds Progressives.........The EXtreme Left loves to change handles when they get too hot to handle.
Like Taxes, that Investment,etc.
How about keeping your rants at least compatible with basic chronology. The depression of 1929 started 6 months after Coolidge left office. Hoover was president. The depression of 1920-21 was split between Wilson and Harding, before Coolidge took office. Coolidge had two tiny blips.
FDR was elected in 1932, when the depression of '29 was already at its worst. His previous job was governor of New York. You can plausibly claim that he prolonged the depression, but blaming a worldwide collapse the governor of New York strains credulity.
If you can't keep track of who was president when, it casts great doubt on any other thesis you may advance.
He was in disguise?
FRD managed to prolong the depression and overturn a good part of the Constitution. Anyone who has any doubts should read Wickard v. Fillburn. And FDR didn't act like a fascist, there was no acting. Funny how most also have no problem with his internment camps. But then winners are never prosecuted for their crimes. Same as today and the financial coup of 08.
Ah yes - because left to its own devices, the free market will eventually reach an equilibrium of prices, interest rates, wages, and unemployment where market actors will take a look at the scene and decide to jump back in. How long were they planning to wait? A 70-80% drop in share price of blue chip stocks should have been an inducement to investment but it didn't happen. Nor did loose Fed policy prevent the overall money supply from dropping 15% from Summer 1931-32 alone. Nor did huge unemployment, with people willing to work for fucking table scraps induce rehiring. The "clearing price" Austrians and classical liberals wait for is as mythical as the invisible hand. Even if it did exist, you can't simply put 25% of the workforce on a shelf for years on end waiting for it.
Even if it did exist, you can't simply put 25% of the workforce on a shelf for years on end waiting for it.
Why not? FDR did. In 1939, unemployment was still over 20 percent. The Depression would have ended a lot sooner without his socialist agenda.
Flat out wrong. Bernanke and others like to say that employment wasn't really addressed til WWII but unemployment was at 10% by 1941, down from 25%. The 1939 figure you give is wrong.
I seem to recall that a crapton of unemployed folks were sent to Europe and the Pacific in green clothing, starting in 1941 -- think that had anything to do with reducing unemployment?
You either don't know what you're talking about or you're trying to make points by being just barely, technically right while being wrong with regard to the intent of the argument.
Unemployment exploded again from 1937 into 1939 thanks to fat, arrogant middling intellect FDR's policies. The unemployment rate was 19% in 1938 and 17.3% in 1939. No, not 20 you seem to blithely portray the rate as have moved steadily down from 25% to 10%. It didn't. Until rearmament came along FDR had no clue how to get things better after he'd screwed things up in '37 to '39.
One, you have to have a free market. When government intervenes in markets, price discovery becomes impossible.
Two, FDR encouraged and furthered the policies of Hoover: the development of cartels within all industries, price fixing, enhancing employment levels and public works. FED monetary policy created credit contraction- allowing banks to buy properties at pennies on the dollar and removing previously productive farmers.
Price discovery happens everyday-in every transaction.It is not "mythical". Three, take the time to research the great depression and you will find that free markets were nowhere in sight-just like the last 1000 years. Intervention has always been part and party to government.
The Austrians had a solution for the depression and Von Mises was available, but the FED bankers wanted Keynes. FDR was a tool. Keynes was a tool. Just like every presidential puppet since Washington.
"Price discovery" - to me this is really the heart of the whole issue and the reason why I will never be on the same page as the Austrians. Austrians and other classical liberals equate economic value with market price, as determined by consumers' marginal utility and ability of producers to service it. To me, economics is about the ability to sustain human life (and qualitatively enrich it.) Saying that the demands of consumers is the measure of truth is like saying Obama must be the best candidate because he got the majority; once you abolish the notion of truth and intrinsic value from economics, we are adrift. Before the New Deal, the market hadn't seen fit to replenish the soil or water tables of our nation, to electrify our farms, to build any significant industrial base on the Pacific Coast, and many other things.
Honest price discovery is when in an open market, two parties meet, exchange, walk away happy with the result of the exchange. In more complex situations, bourses and clearing houses were designed to facilitate exchange and payment, created as a go-between, for distant parties.
When clearing house members and their associates (bankers) become traders and market makers themselves, their influence over price via position size, muddies the simple act of fair exchange and price discovery. Their influence is powerful enough to control price, and creates advantages over the two parties they are representing. That is price fixing by protected cartels, not discovery.
Regulators were put in place to police the markets but today's Keystone Cops are only capable of suing the Martha Stewarts of the world, and only charge an insider when the case is forced into their domain and the culprit makes a public announcement of guilt. (I bet they asked Madoff if he was sure he was guilty)
Price discovery on bourses such as Globex and Crimex, is a thing of the past. They seem to be coming back but that is a point of conjecture.
Price is either being forced on them in the gold and silver physical markets, or by the loss of confidence in markets over the Fail To Deliver debacles. On the other hand, they have such persuasion that, they are deliberately letting the metals re-price debt. You will know the latter is the case if these guys are still in the saddle when it all plays out.
Well, what page are you on? economic value and market price in individual moments of discovery is how it works. Otherwise exchange would not happen and trade would disappear.
Economics is a measure of our success in sustaining life. Sustaining life is a function of work and production. It is enriched through the expansion of trade-a function of monetary substitutes of sound value acceptable to all parties.
As for soil, the soil that is now recklessly poisoned by chemical treatments from collusion with chemical manufacturers during the new deal? Prior to 1939, the USDA made it painfully clear to all farmers that all the nutrients they needed were in the soil ALREADY and merely required good husbandry of the soil.
If you had ever farmed, you would know that electricity is rarely used on a farm except for creating finished goods. Most farmers just need diesel, a tractor, some implements and seed.
As for industrial bases, economics will encourage entrepreneurs to establish opportunities where profits are available. Government spending is waste and consumption only. There is no production in government spending. Just because they put it in the GDP, does not make it so.They are spending taxes, therefore it is consumption.
Marginal utility, producer and consumer surplus, the "deadweight loss" due to gov't interference and all the other tenets of neoclassical economics have nothing to say about human life; it is a purely relative system of valuation. Our American System of economy asserts that value is not relative, and that the gov't should intervene in areas where private industry cannot or will not undertake certain necessities. Nobody on this blog has yet squared the results of the New Deal in terms of increased employment, real wages, capital investment, and so on, with how it "must have failed" for violating the brilliant theories of Hayek, et al.
.
Although it is clear you have no idea what you're talking about, i will just suggest that if the New Deal was so great, why do we call it the Great Depression?
Hold on... a minute ago you asserted it was Austrians who had a problem, now it's the neoclassicals. Which is it? ...On second thought, never mind. There are so many things wrong in your past few posts, it's like trying to untangle a bowl spaghetti, and at the end of it, just as pointless. Drone on, my witless friend, drone on.
On the points of theory I was discussing, the Austrians have the same views as Jevons and Marshall (did Menger and his disciples not believe in marginal utility, supply and demand curves, etc.?); distinguishing between the two in this matter is nominalist nonsense.
Funny how you blame the "free market" but in the same argument point out the central planners couldn't get it right. Having a coterie of central planners does not make an economy free. Do you also blame the fall of the Soviet Union on the free market not delivering goods and services to the people of the USSR?
"Central planners" is a phrase you emply to equate a private money monopoly (the Fed) to the elected government of the U.S. Our gov't has been centrally planning through national banking/financial regulation, tariffs, and public works since 1789; it was from the 70's to the present that tariff barriers were lowered, exchange rates were allowed to float, infrastructure and the financial system were deregulated. The U.S. economy of my lifetime, ironically, is closer to the free market system than the robust American economy of the pre-Nixon era.
It is also interesting that, among other things, he tried to pack the Supreme Court by increasing the number of Justices by 6 to a total of 15, a 2/3 increase, and also conducted a policy of "farm parity," wherein valuable crops, ag products and livestock were simply trashed, increasing scarcity to maintain price levels. Some folks feel he facilitated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, making Admiral Kimmel a sacrificial lamb.
The Supreme Court had already been enlarged twice before FDR by the President proposing a bill to Congress to do so. As for farm prices: the AAA policy of destroying crops to drive up price is often cited as though those crops would otherwise have been on their way to market if not for gov't intervention but farm prices had dropped so radically by 1933 that farm products were already being allowed to rot because the cost of transporting them to market was greating than the sale price. Frankly, AAA was a creation of Baruch minions Peek and Tugwell and FDR stalwarts like Wallace groaned under it till it was dropped in favor of better programs. Does anyone dare contend that farm income, output, and productivity were not much higher after FDR's programs of 1935-45?
Workers today are too afraid to strike for fear they'll have no job to return to.
You think they weren't afriad to lose their jobs in 1934?
The difference is that America really was the home of the brave back then. Today its the home of the cowards. The government says "Boo!" and we rush to give up our civil liberties. The boss says "piss in a cup" and we rush off to do it.
Americans are getting what they deserve: a royal screwjob by the ruling class, and both conservatives and liberals are guilty. The liberals are guilty for being more cowardly than the rest, and the conservatives because they identify with the people who are screwing them.
True that.
Personally I'd rather be a coward then the "self-identifiers" (hypocratic stockholm syndromw, faux populist bullshit) that almost passed the Proletariat ass-wrangling, known as HR 3808, over the coward's objection votes and executive veto.
"The difference is that America really was the home of the brave back then. Today its the home of the cowards"
No. The difference is that Americans are not yet desperate, like they were in early 1934. Back then, there was no unemployment check, no EBT cards, no Social Security, no nothing. There was real hunger, real despair.
Before long, the international market for U.S. Treasurys will realize that the Fed has become the buyer of last resort for U.S. debt, and is prepared to monetize to the horizon. When they wise up, the Fed will be forced to monetize not just the deficit, but the entire federal budget, plus state deficits.
That is when the federal govt defaults on its promise of a painless recession and debt discharge. Then you will see Americans hungry, despairing and very angry.
Don't get in a rush to see it happen. A lot of people will not live through it.
agreed.
Gott mit uns.
go long fingerless gloves
Tend to agree.
+1000
So GW,
When are you and or Karl gonna set a date for the Big DC protest?
After the new Congress begins and before State of the Union should be perfect.
Put Up or Shut Up.