Howard Zinn: Beyond the New Deal

[marmar]

from The Nation:



article | posted March 20, 2008 (April 7, 2008 issue)
Beyond the New Deal
Howard Zinn



We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative, cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers, migrants or domestic workers, they didn't qualify for unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies.

Still, in today's climate of endless war and uncontrolled greed, drawing upon the heritage of the 1930s would be a huge step forward. Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past the limits of FDR's reforms, especially if there were a popular upsurge that demanded it. A candidate who points to the New Deal as a model for innovative legislation would be drawing on the huge reputation Franklin Roosevelt and his policies enjoy in this country, an admiration matched by no President since Lincoln. Imagine the response a Democratic candidate would get from the electorate if he or she spoke as follows:

"Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office. At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs, decent housing, protection in old age. They needed to know that the government was for them and not just for the wealthy classes. This is what the American people need today.

"I will do what the New Deal did, to make up for the failure of the market system. It put millions of people to work through the Works Progress Administration, at all kinds of jobs, from building schools, hospitals, playgrounds, to repairing streets and bridges, to writing symphonies and painting murals and putting on plays. We can do that today for workers displaced by closed factories, for professionals downsized by a failed economy, for families needing two or three incomes to survive, for writers and musicians and other artists who struggle for security. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/zinn

[MISSDem]

1. What an exciting idea. I think Barack Obama could do this.

It makes me think of the little girl who called in to the Felder Rushing gardening show, the Gestalt Gardener, this morning. Her name is Morgan and she is nine years old and she said when asked by Felder why she likes to garden, "cause it's fun". She and her mother were going to get out in the sunshine today and move some flowers from the back yard to the front one. How utopian! If only all children were thinking like this and just being happy instead of coming upon a gun and shooting another child. I don't know why the article you posted made this come to mind but it did. Our country should be doing good things instead of making war.

[Donnachaidh]

2. John Edwards proposed something like this.

Of course, the whole idea plummeted from view when he suspended his run. It's doubtful either of the contenders now would have the political gumption to pull it off. :shrug:

[Peace Patriot]

3. But FDR was "divisive"...that's not nice...that's not win-win...that's not corporatespeak...

He said: "Organized money hates me. And I welcome their hatred."

Class warfare!

He tried to "pack the Supreme Count"*--to keep millions from starvation and homelessness, cuz the fascist Supreme Court, appointed by those who caused the Great Depression, kept ruling his programs "unconstitutional." They called him a "dictator."

The super-rich, the global corporate predators, the rightwing nutballs hate him to this day.

So, mentioning the "New Deal" is like throwing down the gauntlet. It would mean that Democrats have spine. It would mean that they understand that the class war is VERY one-sided, waged by one class, the rich, upon its victims, the poor, and the poor are not waging war on anybody.

What a strange, disturbing, leftist idea--that we have the right to fight back, that our representatives should be fighting on our behalf, that, when you start a $3 trillion war, and give tax cuts to the rich, you are not only declaring war on millions of innocent people in a foreign land, you are declaring war on your own people in your own land--and we have a right to call it what it is--class warfare that we didn't start, but that, by God, we can fight and we can win, with New Deal II (--if we are able to restore transparent vote counting, the basis of our power as a people--which virtually all leftist commentators, even the brilliant ones, mysteriously omit from their analysis).

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*(Something to tuck in your back pocket--if we ever get a president with balls again (male or female). The Constitution does NOT specify the number of Supreme Court justices. Nine is an arbitrary number. Congress can change it--for whatever reason it chooses to--and can, for instance, ADD liberal justices to balance out the court, and make it more reflective of majority views. This would be the easiest way to deal with the fascist Bush court. It does NOT require a Constitutional amendment.)

[trthnd4jstc]

4. That's a fact Jack!

If Congress had a spine, and if we win the White House, they can legislate to have more Supreme Court Justices.
Of course protecting the People, and the Constitution, has not been Congress' forte lately. We need to have a majority of Progressives in the House and the Senate. Then we can move ahead. Please stay involved, and if you are not involved, get involved. If we do not fall into a depression at this time, the dollar is weakened, the middle class is weakened, and the working class is weakened. The few could do something about it, but look at Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, et al, and we can see that a large number of them could care less what is happening to the majority.