Constructed by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration and dedicated in May 1936, Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, S.D., aimed to capitalize on the tourists visiting Mount Rushmore. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress)
Culture » May 16, 2010
A New Day for the New Deal?
Tony Judt diagnoses America’s decline.
Judt stresses that when the state is the problem (Reagan) and when there is no society, only individuals (Thatcher), inequality flourishes and for masses of citizens life chances narrow.
Does anyone still read Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, a staple of my undergraduate education, or John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, a staple of my early years teaching undergraduates modern U.S. history? Or are they relics of my depression-era cohort, the farthest thing from the minds of today’s young people to whom Tony Judt directs Ill Fares the Land (Penguin), his jeremiad about the state of contemporary Anglo-American societies?
I ask those questions because reading Judt’s succinct book harkened back to ideas that I first encountered reading Fromm’s and Galbraith’s erudite yet clearly written indictments of the conventional wisdom as pronounced by advocates of the free market and the minimal state. Judt, one of our most distinguished historians of modern Europe, like Fromm and Galbraith, was born and bred outside the United States. Unlike the latter two who lived long and healthy lives, Judt is a victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), an untreatable and fatal illness. His ongoing physical deterioration has rendered him unable to write and type, yet it has seemed to sharpen his mind and prose, as anyone who has read his recent essays in the New York Review of Books has discovered.
Like Fromm and Galbraith, Judt disdains a society in which wealth alone is the measure of a person, individualism reigns supreme and the policemen’s baton represents the state’s primary purpose. Like Fromm but unlike Galbraith, Judt knows his Marx, de Tocqueville, Edmund Burke and the real Adam Smith, a philosopher of moral sentiments as well as an imaginary marketplace.
He writes from an unabashedly social democratic perspective, one that might be defined as conservative, for Judt lauds the policies and programs favored by social democrats that made the years from 1945 to 1973 the most secure, prosperous, and egalitarian in the history of Western nations. His social democrats encompass an array of politicians and thinkers from Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, the British, New Zealand, and Australian Labour parties, the Scandinavian and Continental European social democrats, and economist John Maynard Keynes.
“Social Democracy,” he writes, “does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past. But among the options available to us today, it is better than anything else to hand.”
For Judt, social democracy implies cultural and religious tolerance, space for vigorous ideological and political dissent and room for individual idiosyncrasy. Unlike liberals, however, social democrats believe in collective action for the common good; they support progressive taxation to finance public services and social goods that most individuals cannot provide for themselves as a function of a good society rather than as a necessary evil.
Like Galbraith, Judt insists that a society that allows public squalor to coexist alongside private affluence is one in which the state fails its citizens. Like Fromm, he believes a society that condemns too many of its members to lives of material insecurity is one in which the masses will flee from freedom into the embrace of Fascist or Nazi leaders who promise them security in return for obedience. That was why in Europe after World War II, those in political power sought to create public programs that guaranteed all citizens a secure and comfortable material existence, and avoid the mistakes of the interwar years that led to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. That was why in the 1930s European social democrats admired the New Deal and Roosevelt’s public works programs that built state parks, irrigated much of the arid west, electrified the Tennessee Valley, subsidized construction of colleges and universities, and provided employment for writers, artists and performers. That is also why the Kennedy and Johnson administrations should be admired for expanding the New Deal welfare state and establishing the National Endowments for Humanities and the Arts.
Judt is not a naïve admirer of state power. He remains quite aware of the evils that states may inflict and their tendency to abuse the power of surveillance. Yet he insists that there are many beneficial services that only the state and collective action can provide. He devotes an entire chapter to proving that mass transit can only be properly maintained through public operation and subsidies.
Judt stresses that when the state is the problem rather than the answer (Reagan) and when there is no society, only individuals and families (Thatcher), inequality flourishes, security vanishes and for masses of citizens life chances narrow. He pulls no punches in asserting that the policies implemented by Reagan and Thatcher, policies based on the ideas of the émigré Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek (and promoted by the Chicago “boys,” most notably Milton Friedman), made the United States and Great Britain the two most unequal societies, the two economies most dominated by an unregulated financial sector, and the two nations with the most dilapidated public sector in the advanced world. Judt indicts the Anglo-American exponents of rational unregulated markets–whose epigones in finance ran wild–for causing the economic collapse of 2008 and nearly bringing on a second global Great Depression.
Where Judt may go astray in explaining the triumph of free-market, neoclassical economics is in a brief chapter that castigates the student rebels and “new leftists” of the 1960s for precipitating the rise of a powerful counter-movement that took power and repudiated the legacy of social democracy. I share Judt’s belief that the 1960s youthful rebels, as beneficiaries of the social security state built by social democrats, took their security for granted and failed to appreciate the accomplishments of their parents’ generation. I understand Judt’s disdain for the individualism that underlay such banal sentiments as “do your own thing” or “the personal is political,” beliefs that led to a preference for “identity politics” rather than collective action that cuts across lines of ethnicity, race and gender. But the student rebels and leftists were not responsible for the economic contraction, the raging inflation and the soaring interest rates (stagflation) that bedeviled Western economies after 1973. It was “stagflation,” partly a result of policies pursued by Judt’s social democratic Keynesians and partly a result of temporary oil shortages–not hippies, yippies, druggies and Weatherpeople–that caused state fiscal crises, generated antipathy to public expenditures and resistance to progressive taxes and brought to political power the free-market exponents of deregulation, privatization and reduced taxation.
For nearly 30 years the advocates of the free market and privatization held sway, causing the most recent catastrophe in a long history of capitalist crises and leading Judt to ask, as Lenin inquired a century ago, “What is to be done?” For Judt the answer is for the social democratic left to write a new narrative that extols the virtue of collective state action for the public good, action that diminishes inequality and restores security to the neglected. And to do so, bearing in mind, as Edmund Burke wrote, that society is “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.”
In his final sentence, Judt reminds us of Marx’s epigrammatic thesis: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world … the point is to change it.”
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Melvyn Dubofsky is a Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology Emeritus at Binghamton University, SUNY, and the author/editor of numerous books, essays, and reviews in working-class and modern U.S. history. He is a member of the In These Times Board of Editors.
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Reader Comments
As a social democrat I agreed with the article and much appreciate the contributions of Tony Judt over the span of his illustrious career. I especially liked his rejection of the narcisism and individualism that has come to epitomise current political trends since the end of the so called “Fordist era (1945-73)” in which labor’s interests were deeply associated with society’s interests and the distribution of income in America was the most equitable in its entire history. It is the condition of the working masses that has determined the survival or collapse of states be they empires, monarchies or republics. Personal identity politics and individual decision making has never been a vital factor in historical outcomes but rather it has been collective action. As labor historian Robert Fitch contends;
“Left liberals need to understand they can’t have a Rawlsian social democracy on the basis of a lot of separate individuals making ethical choices that ensure decent minima for the least well-off. It takes workers’ power in civil society. The postmodern Left needs to recognize that organizing for micro power is not enough to establish a Left that’s worthy of respect. Diversity and cultural recognition are fully compatible with exploitation and domination in life’s material callings.”
I believe that this is the credo of the true social democrat. Individualism and inwardly focused political approaches cannot hope to reverse over three decades of the decline of the labor movement which built the US middle class. It cannot hope to reverse the upward concentration of income, the shredding of the social safety net, the lack of public goods like universal health care and educational opportunities or the degradation of the environment. It also cannot push us closer to the goal of full employment and an end to chronic economic stagnation. The collective action of the working and middle classes for progressive social democratic agenda is what is needed. Since a third party is unlikely, caucusing within the Democratic Party to push in the direction of progressive political party is our only hope to achieve these ends.
We have yet to witness a true organized left in this country. We need to do accomplish this now for we are on the brink of a choice between social democracy or the barbarism of fascism. The left must take its case to the American people and make that case powerfully. All the right has is fear, lies, hate, hysteria, cynicism and jingoism. The left can cobble together an effective agenda now to meet human needs. The time is ripe. All that is lacking is the confidence to go forth.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on May 16, 2010 at 2:57 PM
We have the conditions that we, ourselves, allowed. Really, why would we expect things to be any different? No matter what government has chosen to do since the Reagan admin., we passively accept it. OK, we might grumble a bit. Maybe.
It took a Democrat in office to begin dismantling the New Deal in earnest (Clinton/welfare “reform”). It’s been 14 years, and I’m still waiting for our esteemed ACLU to take a stand against the sections of these policies that eliminate certain fundamental legal rights solely because of economic status. I’m still waiting for America’s Progressives to begin discussing the impact of the sudden creation of a massive bottom-wage/no rights workfare labor pool impacts all of the working class (i.e., involuntarily “placed” workfare labor used to crush unions, suppress wages, wipe out workers’ protections and benefits).
Churches actually have been speaking up, but mainstream media has been disinterested (and if something’s not on the evening news, does it really exist at all?)
But mostly, we Americans are just deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck.
Posted by dhfabian on May 24, 2010 at 11:05 AM
Great article. :) Hotel in Manali
Posted by Rohit Anande on May 25, 2010 at 10:48 PM
” ... Marx’s epigrammatic thesis: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world … the point is to change it.”
So, hard Marxism changed the world by killing 100 million people, and condemned the survivors, excluding the nomenclatura of course, to the equality of poverty and servitude. Hard Marxism collapsed in 1991 due to the inefficiency and corruption of the Soviet state.
Soft Marxism is even now doing the same thing to old Europe, only substituting demographic collapse for actual genocide, and achieving the same results. Obama and the Marxists are now trying to impose their failed system on the United States of America.
Franklin Roosevelt gave us Social Security that is rapidly approaching bankruptcy, ably assisted by other cockamamie Marxist schemes such as the War on Poverty and Medicare.
Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty and Medicare. The War on Poverty cost $6.6 trillion over a thirty-year period, and collapsed in fraud, corruption, and inefficiency, not unlike the Soviet Union only bigger, though less damaging to the much more powerful United States. After wasting $6.6 trillion on the War on Poverty, the national debt was $5.9 trillion in 1995.
The Euros and the Democrats have borrowed multi-trillions of dollars to pay current benefits. This has worked well for the people who received the benefits, but how long will young people continue to impoverish themselves to pay for the care of elders who did not provide for themselves? This is the situation in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, not to mention California and Illinois and, increasingly, the USA. And the national debt has more than doubled since the end of the War on Poverty in 1995.
Now Obama and the Euros want the USA to contribute to the bail-out of the failed European states through the World Bank and the IMF, adding to our national debt to bail-out failed states that cannot pay their own national debts because they followed Marxist “philosophy”.
Besides, “Marx’s epigrammatic thesis” is false. The philosophers of the enlightenment changed the world for the better, giving us personal freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and free markets. This is why the United States has been the most socially and economically powerful nation in the world. The United States will have to overcome piss-ant Marxist obstacles to re-achieve their potential, but we can do it.
I fully expect that Obama and the Marxists among us will try to create maximum social and economic chaos, and use this chaos to justify complete takeover of the govenment. But that is why the philosophers of the enlightenment, in their infinite wisdom, gave us the right to keep and bear arms. We are not kulaks, and will not be treated and executed as the kulaks were treated and executed.
Bring it on, MF.
Posted by scorp on May 31, 2010 at 8:46 AM
You are a typical teabagger, threatening violence against a government trying to solve problems all the while screaming mindless, fanatical stupidity about Stalin and Marx which has nothing to do with our current situation or the policies of the government. Either you are mentally ill or just plain stupid and uneducated. Most people will probably ignore you. But try and realize this fact. Were it not for Obama’s stimulus policies, which were far too modest by the way, we wouldn’t have any of the job growth, stock market growth, GDP growth and recent rise in house sales we have experienced. Both the CBO and the President’s Council of Economic Advisors predict further growth, though at a modest pace. Furthermore, ARRA has nearly doubled national personal disposable income.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/14/council-economic-advisers-releases-a-new-report-recovery-act
The Economic Report of the President for 2010 makes this overall assessment on page 63:
“The direction of overall economic activity changed dramatically over the course of 2009. Figure 2-10 shows the quarterly growth rate of real GDP, the broadest indicator of national production. After falling at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter, real GDP declined at a rate of just 0.7 percent in the second quarter. It then grew at a 2.2 percent rate in the
third quarter and a 5.7 percent rate in the fourth. Such a rapid turnaround in growth is remarkable. The improvement in growth of 8.6 percentage points from the first quarter to the third quarter (that is, the swing from growth at a -6.4 percent rate to growth at a 2.2 percent rate) was the largest since 1983. Similarly, the three-quarter improvement from the first quarter to the fourth of 12.1 percentage points was the largest since 1981, and the
second largest since 1958.”
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/2010/2010_erp.pdf
Unemployment levels for 2010 will be high given that the workforce has grown, but then between 2011 and 2014, there should be a full labor market recovery. This is mostly due to the fiscal stimulus policies of Obama and other government spending. US capitalism has been in a crisis of chronic stagnation for the past thirty years and requires stimulus. Private sector non-residential fixed investment is low as is industrial capacity utilization.When the private sector won’t invest the federal government must take up the slack to restart the economy. The savings rate is high and growing so the danger of inflation and high real interest rates in non-existent. Only GDP growth will lower the debt and deficits. It is the only way to produce taxable income to service debt.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jun 1, 2010 at 12:15 PM
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