How FDR Saved Capitalism (Lipset and Marks)

[YoungDemCA]

With the coming of the Great Depression in the 1930s, a sharp increase in protest and anticapitalist sentiment threatened to undermine the existing political system and create new political parties. The findings of diverse opinion polls, as well as the electoral support given to local radical, progressive, and prolabor candidates, indicate that a large minority of Americans were ready to back social democratic proposals. It is significant, then, that even with the growth of class consciousness in America, no national third party was able to break the duopoly of the Democratic and Republican Parties. [Radicals who operated within the two-party system were often able to achieve local victories, but these accomplishments never culminated in the creation of a sustainable third party or left-wing ideological movement. The thirties dramatically demonstrated not only the power of America’s coalitional two-party system to dissuade a national third party but also the deeply antistatist, individualistic character of its electorate.

Powerful leftist third-party movements emerged in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York. In other states, radicals successfully advanced alternative political movements by pursuing a strategy of running in major-party primaries. In California, Upton Sinclair, who had run as a Socialist for governor in 1932 and received 50,000 votes, organized the End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement, which won a majority in the 1934 Democratic gubernatorial primaries. He was defeated after a bitter business-financed campaign in the general election, though he secured more than 900,000 votes (37 percent of the total). By 1938, former EPIC leaders had captured the California governorship and a U.S. Senate seat.

In Washington and Oregon, the Commonwealth Federations, patterning themselves after the social democratic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of Canada, won a number of state and congressional posts and controlled the state Democratic Parties for several years. In North Dakota, the revived radical Nonpartisan League, still operating within the Republican Party, won the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat, and both congressional seats in 1932 and continued to win other elections throughout the decade. In Minnesota, the Farmer-Labor Party captured the governorship and five house seats. Wisconsin, too, witnessed an electorally powerful Progressive Party backed by the Socialists.

The Socialist and Communist Parties grew substantially as well. In 1932 the Socialist Party had 15,000 members. Its electoral support, however, was much broader, as indicated by the 1932 presidential election, in which Norman Thomas received close to 900,000 votes, up from 267,000 in 1928. The Socialist Party’s membership had increased to 25,000 by 1935. As a result of leftist enthusiasm for President Roosevelt, however, its presidential vote declined to 188,000 in 1936, fewer votes than the party had attained in any presidential contest since 1900. The Communist Party, on the other hand, backed President Roosevelt from 1936 on, and its membership grew steadily, numbering between 80,000 and 90,000 at its high point in 1939. Communists played a role in “left center,” winning electoral coalitions in several states, notably California, Minnesota, New York, and Washington.

If the Great Depression, with all its attendant effects, shifted national attitudes to the left, why was it that no strong radical movement committed itself to a third party during these years? A key part of the explanation was that President Roosevelt succeeded in including left-wing protest in his New Deal coalition. He used two basic tactics. First, he responded to the various outgroups by incorporating in his own rhetoric many of their demands. Second, he absorbed the leaders of these groups into his following. These reflected conscious efforts to undercut left-wing radicals and thus to preserve capitalism.

Conclusion:

The economic crisis of the 1930s was more severe in the United States than in any other large society except Germany. It presented American radicals with their greatest opportunity to build a third party since World War I, but the constitutional system and the brilliant way in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt co-opted the left prevented this. The Socialist and Communist Parties saw their support drop precipitously in the 1940 elections. America emerged from the Great Depression as the most antistatist country in the world.

Adapted from the book It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, published by W. W. Norton. Used by permission of W. W. Norton and Company.

http://www.hoover.org/research/how-fdr-saved-capitalism

[jwirr]

1. Much of the reason that FDR could get so much of his agenda passed was because the socialists

had the capitalists on the run. I live in NE MN and have met some of those older people who supported some of his opposition. Some of them were union supporters who help unionize the mines up here and some were Socialists who were in contact with other socialists in the Scandinavian countries that bordered the USSR. In fact some of them had relatives who had gone to the USSR to help fight for the cause. If he had not liberalized his message they would not have eagerly turned to support him in the mid 30s.

Us Democrats were the lesser of two evils in the minds of the capitalists.

In the 1980s we were remodeling and found old Socialist newspapers hidden in the wall. I also saw many artifacts when I worked at a museum on the North Shore.

I am going to try to read this book.

To bad our left leaning parties cannot combine efforts again.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― John Steinbeck

[wyldwolf]

3. I've read the book

part of his reasoning for co-opting the left was to prevent more liberal candidates from challenging him. The article mentions it:

(After Republicans won) 81 seats in the House, 8 seats in the Senate, and 13 governorships, the president noted that some good things had occurred: “We have on the positive side eliminated Phil La Follette and the Farmer-Labor people in the Northwest as a standing Third Party Threat.”

The book goes into much more detail on the tension between FDR and the Progressive movement.

[hifiguy]

4. Minnesotans who know their history

still revere Floyd B. Olson.