Did FDR and other mid 20th century Democrats do nothing more than cage the beast?

[AZ Progressive]

Did they cage the capitalism beasts with high tax rates and regulations, hoping that the beasts won't find a way to break out? If so it suggests a failure of regulated capitalism, because it assumes that the capitalism beasts won't find a way to break out from the cage that government put on them. Of course they did, starting about 40 years ago and we see the end result now.

[hifiguy]

1. They had faith in the electorate

at least enough to think they wouldn't fall for the transparent horseshit that the reichwing propaganda machine has been churning out non-stop for the last 35-40 years.

I don't think they could have ever imagine that even the many Nazi sympathizers among the oligarchy of the time would actually bring Goebbels' Big Lie to the US, and then perfect it.

They were wrong. I cannot begin to imagine what FDR, Truman, JFK or LBJ would think about the open-air funny farm this country has been deliberately transformed into.

[AZ Progressive]

2. Problem is that there are a lot of evil geniuses out there helping the rich to get richer

Many of them in the Republican Party, others in Wall Street.

[merrily]

7. And nowhere near enough geniuses fighting for the rest of Americans.

However, given New Democrats, I can't agree with your singling out the Republican Party.

[AZ Progressive]

9. They have all been infected with greed and work in the tech and finance industries...

Imagine if we had America's best and brightest on our side...

[merrily]

11. Thing is, the rest of America isn't willing, so far, to pool its pennies and hire anyone.

After Nader was beaten down and exhausted, he said our only recourse is to hire our own lobbyists. I don't even know if that will do the trick, but most of America would rather watch America's Got Talent than do anything about this stuff. Most of America is also beaten down and exhausted. It's no accident that over half of those eligible to vote don't.

[FreakinDJ]

30. It just doesn't pay as well as helping the corporatist

[F4lconF16]

22. I disagree.

FDR stated many times he was very pro-capitalist. He fought for the rich.

It's just that in his case, fighting for the rich meant tossing some scraps to the poor. Not the very poor, no, and certainly not those black people (yikes, we can't help them), or women...but he did help build an extremely effective middle class buffer that supports the ruling class!

He was a brilliant defender of the privileged, and his reputation today is very largely undeserved. Liberal icon, yes, but not a great man imo. But then, not many liberal icons ever were quite as great as they appear to be now.

[FreakinDJ]

31. Actually some of his best legeslation came from Captains of Industry

The Sherman Anti-Trust Laws came from a round table of industry leaders

[LiberalArkie]

54. Back then you had a lot of the big money people like Ford, who saw a problem with the workers

not making enough to buy the products. Now the capitalists see no problem with it. There are no American corporate leaders willing to step up and do anything. That guy that raised all the employees pay to $70,000 was just a blip. He was really putout on DU as someone who was putting his company out of business. Nope. Even the restaurants are proving that higher pay is good for business.

[jwirr]

27. ^^^THIS^^^

[leveymg]

3. The beast is now global and outside any nation"s cage.

But, it can still be defeated if nations work together.

[AZ Progressive]

4. The same nations that have been negotiating these trade deals?

The people have to kick out the establishments in these nations first for that to happen.

[leveymg]

10. Government and the economy are too important to leave to

Businessmen.

[Hortensis]

19. Yep. AND if electorates work together. New Deal conservative

progressives had a big role in caging the beast. In fact, the right kind of conservatives were instrumental in wresting power back from business throughout the Progressive Era.

If we reject those conservatives who also want to re-cage the beast, we should not expect to win by ourselves. We are too few.

[leveymg]

20. Good points. Shared principle is more important than party, sometimes. n/t

[merrily]

5. The FDR, Truman and LBJ administrations were the ones who acted most for the people.

More and more I am coming to the view that FDR/Truman acted as they did out of fear that Russian-type revolutions would occur in the US because of the havoc wrought by the combination of the Wall Street excesses and frauds and the Dust Bowl. LBJ, I think, acted out of fear of a revolution also, as forces for peace, civil rights and economic justice were coalescing and some of them at least seemed militant and capable of violence. (That lovely March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr made perhaps his most famous speech? They were ready to cut the mikes the second anything seemed militant and play recordings of Mahalia Jackson singing gospel (The only woman on the platform.)

IOW, I think we have met the beast they intended to cage and he is us.

The final dismantling of the New Deal? Done by New Democrats, who took their name to disassociate themselves from the Democrats who gave us the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society.

[AZ Progressive]

8. FDR's one and only role model was Teddy Roosevelt, which fought for the people

I don't think FDR's intentions were any less genuine than Teddy Roosevelt's...

[merrily]

13. I don't think anyone can be definitive about guessing motives. Both TR and FDR did a lot for

big business, too.

The reforms that FDR put into place--the FDIC, the SEC, the Bankruptcy Act of 1934 were intended to give people confidence in banks and Wall Street again. It wasn't all about giving artists jobs painting murals in courthouses. With the Russian Revolutions only a few years earlier, it's hard* to believe they were not even more in government's mind in 1929 than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.

*Scratch hard and substitute impossible.

[jwirr]

28. Regarding the Russian style revolution. I live in an area

where we still find "socialist" newspapers in the attics of old houses and collect histories from our older citizens who remember the family members who left the Iron Range to go to Russia to help with the revolution. This in middle of the country MN.

Working in the archives of our museums here we have a huge story regarding the socialist movement (in the true sense of socialism) - photos, newspapers, letters, histories, etc.

The movement in the 20s and 30s toward socialism was bigger than we think it was. And it was a real threat.

Our folk music history also tells us a great deal of what was going on back then.

It was very close to winning when FDR ran. And yes he saved capitalism. But anyone that thinks he did not do anything for the poor is forgetting a few universal programs that still exist that did help the poor: Social Security. That is the one program that helped us all.

What did not happen as a result of his programs was a universal recovery from the Great Depression. And that was not so much FDR's fault as it was the fault of those on the local level who took those programs and ignored whole segments of the population in intercities, the rural south and reservations. This happened just like it is happening today when states refuse to expand Medicaid in the ACA.

[merrily]

34. I would never say he did nothing for the poor. Doing nothing for the poor does not avert revolution.

Just ask Marie Antoinette and Tsar Nicholas.

And it was a real threat.

Yes, but to whom?

What did not happen as a result of his programs was a universal recovery from the Great Depression. And that was not so much FDR's fault as it was the fault of those on the local level who took those programs and ignored whole segments of the population in intercities, the rural south and reservations. This happened just like it is happening today when states refuse to expand Medicaid in the ACA.

Excellent point. Failure also came because of almost immediate cutbacks to a number of his programs.

[riderinthestorm]

6. K&R! and a boost for a valid question nt

[Cheese Sandwich]

12. yep that's right.

The beast is the big private banks and corporations and the super rich class.

You can't expect a genuine political democracy while you allow massive accumulations of wealth and resources by private individuals. You might be able to regulate capitalism temporarily but extreme wealth will always find a way to dominate the government.

[riderinthestorm]

14. K&R! and a boost for a valid question

[Hydra]

15. That's the conclusion I came to after studing as much of the evidence as I can find

Capitalism cannot be effectively regulated. Its entire purpose is to consume things to create other things, and it must do so at an ever increasing rate or it dies.

FDR made a mistake in saving capitalism all those decades ago- he paved the way for the Bush Family to come to complete power here in the US as they currently are. The great thing though is that we can say we honestly tried every way to make this work, and it simply cannot in a way that makes the world a better place and the people in it healthier, happier and more educated.

It's time for us as a country to grow up and embrace a real system.

[cantbeserious]

26. Roger That - The Beast Is Capitalism

eom

[jwirr]

32. One question. Capitalism and socialism are both economic

systems. Are any of these systems sustainable when they are subject to a democracy? When the people and the political system is responsible for sustaining them?

I would like nothing better to embrace a real system but isn't any system subject to the voters. FDR's system was established with voters approval. Unfortunately it is now being dismantled with R voters approval. If we get a better system how to we protect it from the voters?

[Hydra]

35. IMO, we're going to have to go to a more direct form of democracy

But that's becoming increasingly easier. Imagine if we were the ones voting on the TPP and allowed to post to the official discussion about it like we do here?

That was sort of my vision a few years ago here when someone asked me what I wanted to do with our economics if it were up to me. Change our currency to "work credits" and vote on projects in our area and nationally like we do now, but more often. To protect the gov't and the minorities, use constitutional rights to establish what can and cannot be voted on. Top down from the bottom up.

I don't know if we'll ever get there, but I'd like to see us have a better system to get everyone involved and make it safe for them to do so. We're all in this together.

[jwirr]

37. Direct voting is a good idea. However if I lived in an R state

I might not think that.

[Hydra]

39. It's a huge question as to what would happen if we really asked the people

But I have one point of hope on that- only about 1/2 the country votes right now. It's quite likely the ones who aren't would participate more if they knew their votes counted directly.

We'd need a better 4th estate though too- when people are being given the wrong idea on just about every policy, it's not likely the direct democracy thing would end well

[jwirr]

40. Yes, talk about caging a beast - rw religion and the media

are the means the beast uses to stay out of the cage.

I think this may be one of our ways to help create a new system and I think some of our upcoming problems like climate change, water shortages, food shortages etc. will force us to make the changes but that brings me to a big fear. Which way are we going to swing - toward fascism or toward democracy. Greed or inclusion.

[Hydra]

41. That's the big question right now

Will we let the beast(s) consume us, or will we figure out a better way? Climate change say: "You don't have much time to figure it out..."

[jwirr]

43. Yes.

[The2ndWheel]

42. Everyone is greedy

There's nothing not greedy about wanting people to have more. More education. More money. More stuff. More health. More food. More options. More energy. Individual greed, and collective greed. It's just life. Short term beats long term. Can't escape it.

[jwirr]

44. Not everyone faces the issues of need like Hitler's Germany

did. The Great Depression was world wide and every country did not end up killing their own citizens so TPTB could have more. There has to be an alternative.

[hifiguy]

16. The beast is capitalism,

which will destroy and exploit every thing and every person in the world in the name of making a profit. Capitalism is ultimately totally incompatible with the survival of both nature and humanity.

[jwirr]

33. Agreed. I have asked this question above. How do we protect

socialism from the voters. FDR's New Deal was approved by the voters. It is also being dismantled by the voters for the last 30-40 years. Do you see the problem I am talking about? Can any economic system be sustainable when it is left to the whim of the voters?

[quaker bill]

17. yes, and I don't think they suffered illusions about it

The intent was to cage the beast and make its excesses socially tolerable. The intent was not to end the capitalist system, but to preserve it in the face of social revolutions elsewhere that were bringing more radical change.

There was sufficient anger here in the aftermath of the Great Depression to support a much more radical change. The intent of full employment policies, labor laws, minimum wages, and the creation of the social safety net was to ease the tensions at the lower end of the economic scale, where radical movements grew in other countries.

The conservatives have forgotten this, released the beast, and may yet reap the inevitable result, a radical change that they will not be comfortable with.

I would prefer the intentional approach to change as generally fewer people are hurt and the result is more predictable. In the era of Fox News, a reasoned path seems unlikely.

[Recursion]

18. That's certainly what their critics on the left said at the time (nt)

[F4lconF16]

21. Yes they did.

And it's for that reason that almost every socialist I know (actual socialists, not Sanders' style welfare capitalists) is refusing to support Sanders.

It's pretty reasonable, imo. Sanders hasn't said a thing about the inherent inequality in the American political system. He still supports that system.

20-60 years from now, even if everything he wanted was passed, we'll be seeing the same problems we have now.

Again.

You can't regulate capitalism. It's a really stupid idea, honestly. Half the point of capitalism is that power accumulates (well, capital, anyways, which in a private property based society is power). Eventually, you will find yourself back where you begin regardless of all your good intentions.

The question is whether Sanders will be able to open up the general populace to a different system. So far, in my experience and evidenced by people like Kshama Sawant in Seattle, he has been able to begin that process.

Which is why at the moment I'm planning to vote for him. His value in getting people used to the idea of socialism, even if it has very little to do with actual socialism, is huge for me.

I very highly doubt he will change anything permanently. And he's barely talking about our racial caste system and the immense gender issues we still see today. He addresses a lot, but nowhere near enough.

I don't really expect that from him, though. That's a job for a later movement, possibly even one that springs from this run.

Best case scenario, he wins, and starts a viable third-party movement. I doubt that will happen, he's shown nothing but willingness to work with Democrats.

Worst case, he loses and tells everyone to vote for Clinton. It is very possible all of the current energy will be bled off into the Democratic party. Of course, that would also open up the opportunity for a third party movement after 8 more years of neoliberalism.

He might also win and pull an FDR, saving capitalism from itself. That's a very, very, very bad way to go. 50 years from now, when climate change, overpopulation and inequality all dwarf the same issues we face today, we're gonna be screwed if we try to change systems then. I have no idea what would happen. Other than I know we're going to have huge, violent, painful problems. We need to start that process as soon as we can, which means now.

As a socialist, if I am participating in Sanders' movement, I will be very clear that this is only the beginning. We cannot accept any form of capitalism except a temporary one as we move forwards.

[AZ Progressive]

24. I dunno why Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist when he's more of a Social Democrat

Look up the definition of Social Democrat, and that seems to fit FDR, progressives, left wing European governments, and Bernie Sanders.

[F4lconF16]

25. Branding, probably.

It's more than a mild annoyance. It's actually confusing people even more on what socialism means. We have enough people going around talking about democratic socialism meaning nice capitalism, which is a profoundly wrong concept. When the time comes when we're forced to socialism to survive, it's going to be more challenging.

A movement needs to be built on truth, and education. This is not a great start. Sanders made a bad decision, imo. But psuedosocialist identification is better than McCarthyism, right?

[Hydra]

36. I'm with you on most of this

I don't see Sanders being able to pull off a full FDR though- he'll just delay the collapse, and not by much. But as you say, he's revealing how many people really don't have a problem with actual Socialism, and is spawning a huge meltdown by the more rabid defenders of Capitalism. That second part is almost as important. The Capitalists have managed good PR to cover a horrible product for a long time.

With them continually having no answers for the problems they have created, and claiming no answer exists outside their system...you can't ask for better advocates for shutting their system down.

[Rex]

23. No. This all started with Reagan deregulating the markets and fucking up the social order.

Opening them up to foreign investors. Then came the special interest groups that completely bought out Washington D.C. Foreign and domestic.

And here we are...

[former9thward]

46. Carter started deregulation but I would not expect you to respect history.

Deregulation started with the airlines, where Carter-appointee Alfred Kahn told the public that the luxuries of that era’s air travel — roomy cabins, plush lounges, airline schwag and attractive young stewardesses — were products of exorbitant ticket prices that much of the public couldn’t afford. Deregulation would squeeze out those luxuries (unless the public really wanted them) — along with pilots earning $400,000 a year for 20 hours a month of work — but more people could afford to fly.

Other deregulations followed: Kennedy’s younger brother Ted held a blockbuster Senate hearing on trucking that led to its deregulation. Rail freight followed suit. Carter’s administration began work on telecommunications deregulation, though the final breakup of AT&T and the beginning of long distance competition happened during the Reagan years. Congress enacted several banking reforms and competition forced local banks to branch out, offer more services and better interest rates, and stop working “banker’s hours.” Health care providers and insurers experimented with different coverage models. Energy companies had to become more efficient at extracting, refining and distributing their product.


http://articles.herald-mail.com/2011-02-20/opinion/28614285_1_jimmy-carter-deregulation-peanut-farmer

[Rex]

47. Aww bless your heart.

[hifiguy]

50. Pains me to say it but Jimmy Carter was the first president

to drink the poisonous deregulatory Kool-Aid via one Alfred E. Kahn:

"In 1974 he became chairman of the New York Public Service Commission, and later served as Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, Advisory to the President on Inflation under Jimmy Carter, and Chairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability – Carter’s “inflation czar” – through 1980.

While serving under Carter, Kahn became known for his blunt and sometimes politically damaging comments. Convinced that certain administration policies would lead to a depression, but having been chided for using the term, he began saying that the economy would "become a banana." After banana producers objected, he changed his euphemism to "kumquat".[6] He explained inflation in one press conference by saying "Inflation occurs when everyone is trying to take a piece of the pie, but there isn't enough pie to go around." While President Carter tried to downplay the significance of certain economic figures, Kahn called them "a catastrophe." At one point, a frustrated Kahn offered his resignation, but Carter refused, to which he said "I don't know why the president doesn't fire me. Actually, I do. There's no one else foolish enough to take this job."

He served on many private boards on commissions addressing regulated and deregulating industries such as electricity, telecommunications, and transportation. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Kahn

[Rex]

53. Carter was a drop in the bucket. He did not deregulate the airlines industry

or destroy the unions. He did not bring in foreign investors nor give a nod to special interest groups. Carter did nothing really, he listened to the wrong people and it cost him. When he left office, unemployment numbers were low and inflation was starting to come down. When Reagan left office, there was a trillion dollar hole in the economy and we began experiencing hyper-inflation.

People can blame Jimmy Carter, but he didn't do much to impact the economy. Reagan OTOH destroyed our society with disasterous policies still being practiced today.

Again, Carter is nothing compared to those that came after him, to blame him for all the deregulation mess is wrong.

[Kalidurga]

29. Yes

And I don't blame them for not going further. First because it would be very difficult if not impossible to do in our culture of the myth of rugged individuality. Second because no one could foresee someone like Reagan coming along and then GW later. Or Citizens United coming along later to kill any hope of us finally becoming a Democracy.

[The2ndWheel]

38. Humans don't like limits

[pansypoo53219]

45. i read a lot of old books, a set of oration books from early 1900. 1891 encyclopedia britannicas a-f

history is PREDISPOSED to TYRANTS and royalty. only a few bright spots. like the french revolution that devolved. napoleon started out great, shit. ahkenatan(sp) in egypt, but we SHOULD KNOW BETTER. but it is also a pendulum, and we ARE swinging away from reagan + ayn rand. things are getting better. and no matter how hard the right tries, PROGRESS always happens. they can only DELAY it.

[moondust]

48. I think they knew

that "containment" of the beast for the common good of The People would require ongoing vigilance and, from time to time, corrective action. What they didn't know was how many Americans eventually wouldn't care or understand or have the commitment necessary to elect vigilant leaders with integrity who were willing and able to take the corrective actions necessary as time passed and circumstances changed.

[pampango]

49. I suspect they knew that every generation has to 'cage the beast'. The 'beast' (in one form or

another) never dies. They knew that their generation could not 'cage the beast' for generations to come. No one generation ever has nor ever will.

One generation cannot solve all the problems for future generations. Greed, fear, selfishness, hate - they will never disappear. They just have to be battled in every generation.

[randys1]

51. Land ownership is the pinnacle of capitalism, right? Think of how INSANE it is to

allow someone like the Koch Bros to push a pile of paper across a table and then till the END OF TIME be allowed to control who can and who cannot set foot on Waikiki Beach, Yellowstone National Park, and all of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Yet if the teaparty takes over, they will do just that.

Capitalism in it's very simplest form is a perfect example of insanity.

[Todays_Illusion]

52. Not enough of a cage to stop the assassinations.