"Hi, this is my first post here, interesting discussion. I think boredatwork is projecting backwards an idea of what "progressive" means, and seems to be doing so from a neo-libertarian viewpoint. There is no Progressive/Conservative dichotomy, but a continuum of policies and ideologies."
Hello there boynamedsue-
I'm basing the Progressive definitions on what self-proclaimed progressives beleived (well, wrote, said, and did - I'm no mindreader) in the timeframe (1900-1940). Modern day progressives (or establishment liberals, as I refer to them) are different - their views (and historical impression) are pretty well encapsulated in black angel's post. As for myself, I've spent enough time in government and private industry to have a very... jaundiced view on the capability and intentions of anyone who claims to know how to fix the economy, or who wants to 'lead' (free people aren't led, they go wherever they please) the country. I could call myself a classical liberal, but that's being generous, I'm more of a moderately well-read cynic with an interest in history.
During the time period in question, conservative (as we understand the term today in the US) did not exist. The prominent streams of thought in the US were the classical liberals (the closest thing to modern conservatives), populists, progressives, regionalists, and some very odd combinations (know-nothings were still kicking around here and there, as were the Farmer's Party, and generalized machine politics).
"The 20s saw a concentration of wealth in the hands of an elite, while the boom lasted some ordinary people became richer, though it shouldn't be forgotten that many millions lived in poverty (this being a source of the high level of class struggle at the time). These years also saw indebtedness rise amongst farmers, as they were able to access credit easily using their land as collateral. All improvements on farms could be paid for this way, thus those farmers who took loans could charge lower prices than those who tried to save before implementing improvements. This forced many farmers to go into hock to be competitve. They hit crisis point a couple of years after the crash, as the depression bit.
You talk about the depression as if it were an act of God. It was, in fact, an inevitable result of an underregulated capitalist economic system, as is the crisis we are now entering."
Still not sure where you're getting this talk about class struggle from. This is the US we're referring to, not Russia or Spain. What uprisings, widespread violence, coups, or civil war are you basing this 'class struggle' on?
As for the Depression being the result of untrammeled capitalism, sorry, but it's pretty widely accepted even by leftist economists that the nationalist trade restrictions endorsed by progressives were responsible for transforming what would have been a run-of-the-mill recession into the Depression.
Disregarding your political opinion, which you state at the start ob the paragraph, America in the first 30 years of the last century was the scene of constant working class trade-union activism, based on Socialist, Anarchist and Communist principles. These people took a great deal of offence.
And as for feudal history, no country on Earth lacks a feudal history. America has a feudal history. Chattel slavery had been practised until 40 years before the start of the century, and indentured servitude was practised in the colonial period. America's roots are in the formerly feudal country of my birth, the UK. But that notwithstanding, Germany was never a completely feudal system, and had come a long way from it, as America had, and there was a failed communist uprising there.
The unions in the US weren't taking offence at the rich for being rich - look through the historical archives at their speeches. They were taking offence over working conditions, IE: engaging in collective bargaining, not trying to tear down the system.
And no, the US did not have a feudal history in the sense that Russia, or Spain (both of which actually had socialist take power during the timeframe, if only temporarily in the second case), or even the UK did. Chattel slavery was largely confined to one section of the country, and was excised in a rather definitive internal war. There was no hereditary class of titled priviledge, there were no historical laws (excepting slavery) that prevented large classes of Americans from seeking to rise above their station, from owning real property, from changing domicile without permission from their betters. There were no legally enforced class barriers. The lack of this infrastructure of feudalism meant that the US also lacked many of the wellsprings of class resentment which fueled socialist uprisings in Europe. Read the 'in house' publications of the communist and socialist parties in Europe during the time period - they refer regularly of the need to leverage class resentments into open struggle, and lament the Absence of the same in the US. -edited d'oh!
The depression was of a spectacularly different order of magnitude than previous crashes, and the country was a different entity altogether. I'm going to call your bluff on this one, given you are making unsupported assertations. Do you really believe freelance dogooders could have fed and clothed America's dispossessed for 10 years? How?
As for the Depression, I believe, and, as noted, so do most of the leading economists on the left & the right, that without the progressive interventions, the Depression would not have lasted 10 years. Instead we would have faced a short but severe recession, lasting at most 2-3 years, the same sort of economic turbulence that had been faced and overcome repeatedly in the past. Consider the actual policies pursued by progessives in the years leading up to and through the depression:
Restrict international trade
Increase taxation
Spread price controls
Increase regulation
Destroy food and crop land to artificially boost prices
Vilify private enterprise
Encourage the militarization of society
Ostracize (and assault) those who don't produce or buy in a suitably patriotic manner
These are the policies actually followed by Wilson, Hoover, and FDR. How these are considered likely to reduce the severity of a recession is difficult to comprehend. Any politician advocating such a policy mix to deal with a recession today would be roundly criticized from across the spectrum as an economic ignoramus. So why, precisely, is it believed that the same policies which are considered foolish today were somehow wonderful works of genious in the 30's and 40's?
Beyond that, I do believe that the 'freelance dogooders' could have cared for anyone who required care in a non-progessive environment. How?
1. Food would be cheaper, so the 'fed' part of 'fed, clothed, and housed' becomes a lot easier.
2. Lower taxes combined with America's historically high rates of charitable contributions results in an astonishingly large pool of wealth to direct to charitable efforts. Reduced overhead (private charities don't tend to spend nearly as much on headquarters, paperwork, and staff - even today) frees up more funds. Local knowledge of conditions (as opposed to relying on bureaucrats in offices in DC to know what's happening all across the country) helps minimize fund misallocation, rivalry between various civil entities helps ensure wider coverage and adaptablity to changing needs (also seen today).
Heck, if private charity did such a horrible job, how did it manage to reconstruct Chicago after the fire, San Francisco after the quake, or Galveston after the great hurricane? I guess those must have been taken care of by friendly ASBs?
See farmers above. The cyclical nature of capitalism means that when the economy is doing well the poor get a little richer and the rich get obscenely wealthy. At the end there is a crash and the poor go hungry and the rich are still obscenely wealthy.
I repeat, the 20s were a time of class struggle in America.
And I repeat, show me some evidence of said struggle. Where are the coups? Where are the socialists/communists/anarchists you refer to taking power? Where is the civil war? Where are the cities burning and the blood in the streets, to be crude about it. You assert class struggle, which only progressive measures headed off in a Bismarkian bargain. But you show... what? A few anarchist bombings against a progressive war (WW1), some union strikes intended to secure a larger part of the pie (not kill the pie maker and take ownership of the shop, as it were)? If that's the extent of 'class struggle' color me unimpressed.
Work standards and wages have risen largely because unions have fought for them and governments have legislated them. If this wasn't the case Chile would have better working conditions than Sweden. It doesn't.
If workers are replaceable the employer has no interest in increasing wages or standards, it is cheaper to sack anyone who complains, never mind tries negotiate (individually or collectively). Employers also tend to form cartels to reduce wages in situations of all but the direst labour shortages.
In times of economic hardship wages and conditions will be worsened by the presence of an exponentially swollen reserve army of labour.
Bosses are not a homogeneous mass but they are a class in, and for, themselves. They will compete for money, but they are not stupid, where they can gain more from concerted action than competition they work together to fcuk over the little guy.
First black angel treats bosses as a fungible mass, now you treat labour as a fungible mass. My wages and conditions have improved consistently over 20 years. No union was involved, no government regulations were involved. They improved through good times and bad. According to your theory, that's impossible. But it happened. It happened because my labor is not the same as your labor, labour is not fungible. There is not, and never has been, some grand reserve army (note the militarization of society implicit in that term, btw) of labor.
Check your history - wages began rising and conditions improving before unions came onto the scene - they did so because bosses (or capital, if you prefer (ya know ya do, dontcha :-D ) competed for labor. Unions accelerated the process - most certainly, but it was a process already underway. Government actions both helped and hindered unions. I note you've neglected to address the issue of Progressive led strike-breaking, the existence of which tends to degrade the Progressive = better life for 'labor' formula. Again, Progressive in the sense used 1900-1940, I strongly doubt that any modern 'progressive' movement would break strikes - unless, of course, it turned full-blown communist - for which, see Solidarnosk, banning of non-approved unions in Cuba, China, Soviet Union, etc.
The problems with assuming that bosses will collude en-mass against the 'little guy' are several.
1. In the absence of government regulatory barriers, the little guys can become bosses by starting their own business, so any conspiracy will be both continually expanding, and seeing their profit margin continually shrinking.
2. Collusion doesn't work in the long run because cheating pays. If everyone else is screwing over their employees, I can pay a pittance more, and attract all the best, brightest, and most motivated, leaving my competitors with the dregs. I will then proceed to clean their clocks in the market place and make millions. If you look at history, that's exactly what Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan and the rest did.
3. Wage depression collusion doesn't work in the long run because you're destroying the mass market, which means that there will be no-one to buy your stuff. No sales = no revenue = no profits. The successful capitalists figured this out on their own, without government prodding - Henry Ford being a great example. - No union involved, no government intervention.
4. Workers are not replaceable. Spend any time in any corporation and you'll realize how keenly aware management is of this fact. New workers have to be trained, integrated into the work force, indoctrinated in the local culture. Loss of an experienced worker is loss not just of one fungible unit of labor, but loss of human capital and skills.
5. The fungible labor model that you're working from falls apart once we move away from the most basic resource extraction, agricultural harvesting, or rote-work assembly line situations. Even in these instances, staff churn is costly - time and money is wasted identifying, hiring, training, and embedding resources. If I'm some EEEEBBBIIIILLLL blood sucking capitalist fat cat, why am I going to burn my "Vanderful Vanderful" profits in such a way? Sure, I'll automate the happy hell out of anything that will generate a sufficient return on the capital invested, but if you have an issue with that, then we're not talking progressivism (they were four square bang in favor of modernism and automation) but Luddites, who are quite distinct.
6. Another fundamental error of marxism (and that 'swollen reserve army of labor' line was lifted Das Kapital) is it's confusion on the role of capital investment in increasing productivity. A large part of why workers in Sweden have historically made more $ than their Chilean counterparts (but not their US ones) is that employers in Sweden, have, over time, invested more capital in their processes, allowing a 'generic lump of labor' to produce more. This was possible due to a large number of reasons - unions and government regulation not, sadly, being on the list.
Black Angel
Your AP teacher needs remedial classes. Social Darwinism (in the 1900-1940 timeframe) was the theory that the poor were poor because they were shiftless, lazy, and stupid. They were shiftless, lazy, and stupid because they were the product of inferior, mongrelized, genetic stock. (The parallels to racism here were well appreciated and openly accepted, in case you're wondering.) Over time, this inferior genetic stock would outbreed the 'superior' 'white' stock. <Apparently my ancestors were too lazy too work, and their ancestors were too superior to be bothered with the tediousness of children :-D> The commonly accepted and endorsed solution to this in progessive circles was eugenics, starting with mass-sterilization of inferior stock.
If you don't believe me, check the writings of Maynard Keynes, Justice Holmes, President Wilson, President Hoover, both Roosevelts, and period issues of the New Republic, New York Times, Washington Post, the Times (of London), the proceedings of the debate societies at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge.
It's a sad fact that the post Rousseau 'Romantic' passion of some folks for a pure and natural past, a historic bond to an organic community, or a reassessment of Man's relation to Nature often gets bound up with our evolved tribal instincts to want more of "Us" and less of "Them" for any given value of Us and Them. The ultimate outcome of this obviously depends alot on other factors (such as culture, technology, etc), and can range from clan loyalty, to racism, to "three generations of imbeciles is enough" to the darker nightmares of the 1940s.
When the same drive is divorced from tribal or 'blood' ties to ideological or class bonds, then we get the guillotine, the Terror, purges, cultural revolutions, and the black book of communism.
Take that drive and shift it to religion - and, well, the reformation wars, the purging of the cathars, the crusades, jihad, conversion by the sword, the bloody borders of islam (to quote huntington), intercommunal violence in India, even the Taiping rebellion.
Sorry for the vent, it's not that I consider progressivism (old or new) to be uniquely vulnerable to the impulse to tribal supremacy. It's just that it has succumbed more often, and with more widespread results, in recent memory than the others. Of course, with the way things are going in on the whole clash of civilizations front, we could well be on the way to far worse in the next few decades.
Have I mentioned that I'm an optimist? /sarc/