FDR was an economic moderate / centrist

[AZ Progressive]

Politics in America has moved so far to the right that FDR is considered a liberal, when otherwise he was actually a moderate.

I am the best friend the profit system ever had, even though I add my denunciation of unconscionable profits.

- FDR's letter to Frankfurter, 2/9/1937, http://newdeal.feri.org/court/fdr01.htm


Given that FDR was actually for saving capitalism rather than being against capitalism (which is what socialism would be) and in fact FDR ended up working with big business to prepare for WWII.

Roosevelt Is No Socialist, Norman Thomas Assures Al Smith
February 15, 1936

Attempts of Al Smith, in his Liberty League banquet speech, to read Roosevelt and the New Deal into the Socialist fold were emphatically rejected by Norman Thomas, Socialist leader, in a broadcast over the Columbia network.

Thomas said Roosevelt has not “carried out most of the demands of the Socialist platform—unless he carried them out on a stretcher.”

“There is nothing Socialist about trying to regulate or reform Wall Street,” Thomas said. “Socialism wants to abolish the system of which Wall Street is an appropriate expression.”

“There is nothing Socialist about trying to break up great holding companies. We Socialists would prefer to acquire holding companies in order to socialize the utilities now subject to them.

“There is no Socialism at all about taking over all the banks which fell in Uncle Sam’s lap, putting them on their feet again, and turning them back to the bankers to see if they can bring them once more to ruin.”

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/node/128718#sthash.FG1ln7Uq.dpuf


A response on Quora on the question "Can FDR be fairly described as as socialist?"

Capitalism had failed spectacularly during the stock market crash and
the subsequent depression. This wasn't the first time, nor as we have
seen recently, it wouldn't be the last time capitalism failed so
spectacularly. At the time, there was another new and competing economic
philosophy gaining credibility around the word, Socialism (real
Socialism where the government owned, operated and controlled whole
industries).

Rather than adopt Socialist policies by having government take over critical
industries, he simply spent a lot of tax payer money on temporary public
work projects like building dams and roads. In doing so, he was able to
bring capitalism back to life in the US. The money spent by the
government and the public value it created, helped to jump start the
capitalist system.

He also pushed forward a large volume of regulatory laws designed to prevent or
soften the kind of spectacular failures capitalism is prone to. It is
interesting to note that it was when we gutted the regulation of the
banks that began under Roosevelt that we began the march towards
Capitalism's latest implosion.

So, I'd say Roosevelt is rightly called the savior of Capitalism. Unrestrained,
unregulated Capitalism results in endless boom and bust cycles that
make a few people spectacularly rich at the expense of average citizens.
By controlling the worst excesses of Capitalism (sort of like damming a
raging river) we can make it work better for most people than it would
otherwise.

- https://www.quora.com/Can-FDR-be-fairly-described-as-a-socialist



FDR did adopt a lot of ideas from Socialists, but these were ideas that were not threatening to the capitalist system, and were actually helpful to FDR politically:

The new president did not adopt the whole of the Socialist platform. But, as historian Paul Berman observed, “President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted ideas from the likes of Norman Thomas and proclaimed liberal democratic goals for everyone around the world…” FDR’s borrowing of ideas about Social Security, unemployment compensation, jobs programs and agricultural assistance from the Socialists was sufficient to pull voters who had rejected the Democrats in 1932 into the New Deal Coalition that would sweep the congressional elections of 1934 and reelect the president with 61 percent of the popular vote and 523 of 531 electoral votes in 1936 — the largest Electoral College win in the history of two-party politics.

- http://www.thenation.com/article/75-years-ago-fdr-read-results-right-and-took-left-turn/



Moreover the notorious Military Industrial Complex actually originated with FDR. thus implying that FDR became cozy with big business.

In the formative years of the military-industrial complex, the public still deeply distrusted privately owned industrial firms because of the way they had contributed to the Great Depression. Thus, the leading role in the newly emerging relationship was played by the official governmental sector. A deeply popular, charismatic president, FDR sponsored these public-private relationships. They gained further legitimacy because their purpose was to rearm the country, as well as allied nations around the world, against the gathering forces of fascism. The private sector was eager to go along with this largely as a way to regain public trust and disguise its wartime profit-making.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Roosevelt's use of public-private "partnerships" to build up the munitions industry, and thereby finally overcome the Great Depression, did not go entirely unchallenged. Although he was himself an implacable enemy of fascism, a few people thought that the president nonetheless was coming close to copying some of its key institutions. The leading Italian philosopher of fascism, the neo-Hegelian Giovanni Gentile, once argued that it should more appropriately be called "corporatism" because it was a merger of state and corporate power. (See Eugene Jarecki's The American Way of War, p. 69.)

Some critics were alarmed early on by the growing symbiotic relationship between government and corporate officials because each simultaneously sheltered and empowered the other, while greatly confusing the separation of powers. Since the activities of a corporation are less amenable to public or congressional scrutiny than those of a public institution, public-private collaborative relationships afford the private sector an added measure of security from such scrutiny. These concerns were ultimately swamped by enthusiasm for the war effort and the postwar era of prosperity that the war produced.

- http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174959/chalmers_johnson_warning_mercenaries_at_work

[pampango]

1. Many have argued that FDR 'saved' capitalism in the US. Of course, Sweden, Germany and many other

progressive countries use FDR's policies (as the US did until the 1980's) to 'save' capitalism and produce societies with strong middle classes and world class income equality.

[AZ Progressive]

2. FDR was a moderate in that the extreme right would be either...

totally unregulated capitalism or fascism, and the extreme left is scrapping capitalism and private ownership. FDR was all for capitalism but with restraints. FDR borrowed many ideas from socialists in order to get the vote of Democrats who liked socialism (old fashioned politics.) And FDR saved capitalism but those restraints weren't strong enough to keep big business from one day controlling government all over again.

Also, FDR's involvement with the creation of the military industrial complex makes him look even to the right of a DLC Democrat.