early 1900's ideological what if

boredatwork

Banned
What if some turn of century POD causes Progressivism / Pragmatism to never catch hold / lose all popularity in the US. Nothing replaces them per se, but they are discredited in popular & elite imaginations.

I wonder what the impacts would be.

Within the US, from 1900-1934, some guesses can be made:

Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, FDR - none are elected president, or reach high office (at least, not in a recognizable fashion) as their core belief structure is repudiated.

No prohibition (temperance & progressivism were closely tied) => no war on drugs?, weaker/poorer mafia (no ready made smuggling market), poorer Kennedys (no smuggling money).
No WW1 (No WWilson pretty much ensures this?)
No Palmer raids or wartime socialism (progressivism justified these, with out it...)
No Panama canal (no teddy) and less early 1900 interventionism.
No wartime socialism => stronger free speech rights.
No teddy => no/less trust busting => longer robber baron age => more intense industrialization, higher economic base
No teddy => no/less national parks
Idea of anti-americanism as internal political charge (created/manipulated by CPI during WW1) doesn't become virulent McCarthy fodder?
Fewer/different dams/highways in US?
No Empire State building?
Smaller US military?
No presidential fitness medals?
Dramatically smaller/different federal government?
Less imperialism/interventionism=> more isolationism => earlier phillipines independence? => ??? no war w/ Japan?
Smaller fed gov=> lower taxes?, smaller military?

Apart from the obvious (no panama, no / later panama canal, earlier phillipine indep, no WW1 involvement) does the change to US internal politics/policies have an appreciable impact on the rest of the world? After all, at the start of this time period, we had substantial growth and inventions, but minimal world presence.
 
No Wilson means no WW1? Or do you mean just no US involvement in WW1?

Didn't robber barons foster unionism and socialism as a backlash? So with more robber barons won't you get more unions and stronger socialist political movements?
 
without trust busting and with unchecked robber barons and no protection for unions, the USA would be a risk of Socialist/Communist Revolution.
 

boredatwork

Banned
d'oh

yes, sorry - most (if not all) of the potential impacts that I came up with are US centric (hence the comment about not knowing what impacts 'overseas'. So the no WW1 should have been -> No US participation in WW1.

As for the socialism - I may be missing something - but pragmatism & progressivism were, from my understanding, the American incarnations of socialism.

Unionism is a separate issue - unionism (or syndicalism) had kicked off long before pragmatism (aka progressivism) gained strength in the US as a movement. We conflate them nowadays because the progressives adopted many of unionism's policies. Then again, when the unions took action against progressive policies, the feds were sent in to break the strikes. If anything, I would expect that unionism/syndicalism would gain more influence without the competing/subsuming presence of progressivism. How that would manifest without progressivism is exactly the sort of thing I'm trying to think through. However, I think just taking the talking points of progressives (or their classical liberal opponents) of the time period and accepting them as inevitable alternatives is... dubious. After all, politicians are always predicting that horrible things will happen if they don't get their way - it's just what they do.

other impacts:
Upside (from an american-centric viewpoint)- less economic nationalism (a major progressive plank) may mean weaker/no smoot hawley.

Downside (" ") much smaller military available if/when WW2 breaks out. Lack of groundwork from WW1 wartime socialism for propaganda, censorship, draft, etc.

Mixed (for anyone's viewpoint, really) radically different development of movie / music industry in the US - without the support provided by propaganda spending, things will develop differently - I assume.
 
I agree, with no Progressivism (which acted as a vent for radical viewspoints) there would be no alternative for a Communist/Socialist Uprising.

The only reason the western world didn't suffer the fate as Russia was because the workers were treated decently (well....kinda). Basically extreme conditions (pure laissez-faire capitalism and/or authotorian regimes) would lead to extreme polar conditions (Communism).

With T.R. and Wilson's reforms mostly somewhere between those extremes, they managed to keep the poor and rich decently happy.

Also, with no Progressivism, it simply leads to economical failure. One of the main underlying reason for the Great Depression was the lack of demand for certain goods. With 70% of the population below the poverty line in the 20s, the poor simply could not afford to buy anything. That causes buisnesses to fail, which leads to more people going below the poverty line, which causes serious dissent, which causes socialist idealist to come out (inevitable), and eventually revolution.

FDR saved the US from this problem by giving jobs to the unemployed through the New Deal, which paid them, which they bought goods, which made more jobs, which made the economy jump start, and so on.

This might be a little extreme, but considering that workers were forced to work 6 days a weak, 12 hours a day, no holidays, no safety arragements, etc., someone would break under the strain.


Haha, sorry got a little carried away there. US history AP test is coming up so....:rolleyes: Also being forced to read the Jungle and the Grapes of Wrath:mad:
 

boredatwork

Banned
No alternative? Sorry but your history teachers have been feeding you tosh E.A.

1. The 20's were called the "Roaring" twenties for a reason, the economy (at all levels) was booming. The depression (which I assume you're referring to?) didn't kick in until after 29. WHat made it a depression (as opposed to a severe but short recession, of which the US had been through about 1 per decade since the Civil War) was a combination of the economic nationalism driven trade wars (smoot hawley) and some pretty daft government policies which actually worsened the issue (we'll prevent hunger by slaughtering livestock and cutting back on farming... right...)

2. A communist uprising in the US was never in the cards - simply put, the uS lacked the deep class schisms from a feudal past which provided the wellspring of hatred and frustration that drove true radicalism in Europe. US history of union / radical violence in the last three decades of the 19th century is far milder in both absolute and relative terms to that of any of the european states.

3. There were extensive support networks (beneficial societies, brotherhoods, religious charities) in the US fromt he 1870's onward that simply did not exist to anywhere near the same extent in Europe.


4. FDRs policies, by placing artificial restraints on the economy, and warping production toward military output actually slowed recovery from a 'Depression' largely caused by earlier progressive actions. US economic growth did not recover until AFTER WW2 ended, when FDR's wartime restrictions were lifted. Heck, do a time series comparison of growth rates 1870-1900 vs 1910 - 1945 (and in doing so, bear in mind that you're getting the benefit of the laissez faire 1920s - so to really run the compare, back those out). You see that growth rates feel measurably under progressive policies.

5. As for forced... No one forced workers (outside of war-time socialism, when 'slackers' were jailed under the blue eagle program authorized by WWilson.

6. On the other hand, prior to the progressives, workplace safety, conditions, etc were points of negotiation (much like perks, benefits, and vacation days are today) between employer/employee. So you could easily see a wider variance in practice today.

7. Odd point - corporate paid health care plans are a result of progressive control in WW2 - companies were not allowed to give raises to staff, because the govt bureaucrats felt that would 'steal' labor from more valuable (in their view) activities. So instead, companies began offering to pay for medical care as a form of hidden raise. As time passed, this rapidly became the norm in an era where everyone was encouraged to work for such large institutions. Of course, this situation drastically reduced the impetus for a nationalized healthcare system...

So, perhaps, we might have a more rational, employee driven &/or national system today without the WW2 distortion?

Mind you, forcing anyone to read the jungle and grapes of wrath should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment. Disney movies may be full of crap as well, but at least they're not thinly veiled political tracts designed to override rational thought with explicitly anti-rational passion. That's actually what I find most repellent about the entire progressive/pragmatic movement - the obsession with doing something/anything - so long as "Action" is being taken on behalf of the "Street". It's an embarrassment that supposedly rational and civilized societies were swept up in such... ranting idiocy.
 
No prohibition (temperance & progressivism were closely tied) => no war on drugs?, weaker/poorer mafia (no ready made smuggling market), poorer Kennedys (no smuggling money).
No WW1 (No WWilson pretty much ensures this?)
No Palmer raids or wartime socialism (progressivism justified these, with out it...)
No Panama canal (no teddy) and less early 1900 interventionism.
No wartime socialism => stronger free speech rights.
No teddy => no/less trust busting => longer robber baron age => more intense industrialization, higher economic base
No teddy => no/less national parks
Idea of anti-americanism as internal political charge (created/manipulated by CPI during WW1) doesn't become virulent McCarthy fodder?
Fewer/different dams/highways in US?
No Empire State building?
Smaller US military?
No presidential fitness medals?
Dramatically smaller/different federal government?
Less imperialism/interventionism=> more isolationism => earlier phillipines independence? => ??? no war w/ Japan?
Smaller fed gov=> lower taxes?, smaller military?

ok now that i have time i'll take this point by point
prohibition: prohibition had been around a lot longer then progressivism and was more Christian based then anything. although progressivism and WWI help make prohibition a reality, it's real fuel was the Third Great Awakening so Prohibition may come late but i think it'd come.
No WW1: maybe not maybe i'll make a point to this latter
No Palmer raids: well if there's no WWI then yes however the base for Espionage & Sedition acts and all that was Lincoln's suspended the writ of habeas corpus
No Panama canal: without Teddy the Canal wouldn't be made by the USA, but the Canal was/is needed. the French already tried to make a canal in 1880, hell people had been trying sense 1698 and the idea has been around from 1534
No wartime socialism: like i said Socialism was around and all that
no/less trust busting: covered very well by Emperor Akahito
no/less national parks: very very true, i think this could be very bad for us, this would mean there's no conservation of national resources the USA may run out of trees and oil and kill off a ton of Species.
Idea of anti-americanism: the idea of change as bad is very old and not new to America at that time
Fewer/different dams/highways in US: very likely that there would be no interstate dams or highways, because the presidency would be so much weaker and the Government would be run by Congress
No Empire State building: um i don't know
Smaller US military: maybe yes maybe no
No presidential fitness medals: true i don't think the President would have any medals to give out.
Dramatically smaller/different federal government: yes very much so the federal government would look much as it did in the late 1800's weak President largely corrupt Congress running things and a Supreme Court that doesn't really protect the Constitution
Less imperialism: Imperialism has nothing to do with Progressivism it's just the fact that Teddy was a Progressive and an Imperialist
Smaller fed gov: weaker yes.
 
1. The 20's were called the "Roaring" twenties for a reason, the economy (at all levels) was booming. The depression (which I assume you're referring to?) didn't kick in until after 29. WHat made it a depression (as opposed to a severe but short recession, of which the US had been through about 1 per decade since the Civil War) was a combination of the economic nationalism driven trade wars (smoot hawley) and some pretty daft government policies which actually worsened the issue (we'll prevent hunger by slaughtering livestock and cutting back on farming... right...)
the economy was booming, but that doesn't mean people were getting rich, farmers were not making any money through that 20's and were taking loans out to keep afloat, thus the need to cut back on farming to drive up the costs and save American farming.

2. A communist uprising in the US was never in the cards - simply put, the uS lacked the deep class schisms from a feudal past which provided the wellspring of hatred and frustration that drove true radicalism in Europe. US history of union / radical violence in the last three decades of the 19th century is far milder in both absolute and relative terms to that of any of the european states.
oh? when John Rockefeller made 318.3 billion dollars when most people lived on cents. 6 on the 10 richest people ever were americans from the 1880-90 also a lot of nations have had communist uprisings that had no feudal past.

3. There were extensive support networks (beneficial societies, brotherhoods, religious charities) in the US fromt he 1870's onward that simply did not exist to anywhere near the same extent in Europe.
they were all overwhelmed in a year after the crush

4. FDRs policies, by placing artificial restraints on the economy, and warping production toward military output actually slowed recovery from a 'Depression' largely caused by earlier progressive actions. US economic growth did not recover until AFTER WW2 ended, when FDR's wartime restrictions were lifted. Heck, do a time series comparison of growth rates 1870-1900 vs 1910 - 1945 (and in doing so, bear in mind that you're getting the benefit of the laissez faire 1920s - so to really run the compare, back those out). You see that growth rates feel measurably under progressive policies.
as i said before just because the Economy is good doesn't mean people made money.

5. As for forced... No one forced workers (outside of war-time socialism, when 'slackers' were jailed under the blue eagle program authorized by WWilson.
when it's work or starve, thats being forced.

6. On the other hand, prior to the progressives, workplace safety, conditions, etc were points of negotiation (much like perks, benefits, and vacation days are today) between employer/employee. So you could easily see a wider variance in practice today.
are you joking? there were no negotiations because the bosses could fire anyone for anything, striking could get the cops or even troops.

So, perhaps, we might have a more rational, employee driven &/or national system today without the WW2 distortion?
more likely we'd have social-darwinistic capitalism.

Disney movies may be full of crap as well, but at least they're not thinly veiled political tracts designed to override rational thought with explicitly anti-rational passion. That's actually what I find most repellent about the entire progressive/pragmatic movement - the obsession with doing something/anything - so long as "Action" is being taken on behalf of the "Street". It's an embarrassment that supposedly rational and civilized societies were swept up in such... ranting idiocy.
that ranting idiocy got woman the vote, started civil rights, gave America a minimum wage, ended child labor, started Ballot initiatives, Direct election of U.S. Senators, Direct primary, Referendums, Secret ballots, and ballot Initiative, started social work, and in the end may well of saved the world.
 

boredatwork

Banned
(I've got to learn how to insert quotes - ah the tribulations of being a newbie)

"the economy was booming, but that doesn't mean people were getting rich, farmers were not making any money through that 20's and were taking loans out to keep afloat, thus the need to cut back on farming to drive up the costs and save American farming."

There's quite a few generalizations there - farmers (all farmers?) were not making any (at all, really?) money through the 20's? Check your timelines - Agriculture & farming didn't hit any crisis point until the 30's. There had been several boom and bust cycles frrom the civil war period onward - farmers had managed to survive those without the government deliberately monkeying with the economy. As for 'save American farming.' If those policies saved it, why, over 70 years later, are we spending billions trying to keep the same industry afloat?

"oh? when John Rockefeller made 318.3 billion dollars when most people lived on cents. 6 on the 10 richest people ever were americans from the 1880-90 also a lot of nations have had communist uprisings that had no feudal past."

Envy may be an understandable emotion, but it's hardly a basis for policy. So what if some Americans were rich? There is precious little historical record of other Americans taking much offense at the matter. Which nations had communist uprisings from 1900-1930 with no feudal past? I've taken the liberty of trawling Wiki (admittedly, not the most robust source on the planet) and none were listed. If I'm mistaken, I'll happily admit it, but I would prefer to see some examples to back up that claim.

"they were all overwhelmed in a year after the crush "
I have to assume that you're referring to... 1930? After three progressive administrations had spent over a decade of combined time in office attempting to replace such structures with government programs? The same prior structures that had dealt with the prior crashes satisfactorily (no uprisings, no anarchy, no-one starving in the streets or the other bugaboos that are raised)? Possibly... might you have some evidence of that statement, (again, happy to admit I'm wrong if there's proof) or are you quoting your high school social studies teacher? Because the latter would constitute an attempted argument from authority - which only works when said authority is credible...

'as i said before just because the Economy is good doesn't mean people made money.'

Um, yeah, it actually does. The rich didn't get rich by printing money in their basements. They got rich buy providing goods and services that other folks bought - in massive quantities. That could only happen when those other folks were making enough money to purchase said goods. Which, since they were purchasing them (that's the whole economy thing), they obviously did have such money. Did they have as much as the 'robber barons'? No. But they had more money then their parents, and more than folks in similar situations elsewhere had. How that translates into no money is... hard to follow.

'when it's work or starve, thats being forced.'

I call BS here. There are several issues with your contention. 1. The option was not starve - beneficial socieities & charity - poverty yes, starvation, not so much. 2. If avoiding starvation is the issue, why, a few items above, were progressives deliberately /raising/ food prices. Food prices dropping & starvation don't normally go together. 3. How is this different then, oh, I don't know, today? If I decide not to work, I make less (no) money, and end up poor. As long as I can drag my lazy but to a soup kitchen, I'm not starving though.

'are you joking? there were no negotiations because the bosses could fire anyone for anything, striking could get the cops or even troops.'

Ah, confusion of masses. 'Bosses' are not a homogenous mass, but multiple different actors with competing interests. That's why I make more money today than I did when I started work - different employers were willing to pay more for my services, so I changed jobs. If one 'boss' has horrible conditions AND horrible pay, then workers will move to other jobs, with other firms - who will have an incentive to provide slightly better conditions to attract the more motivated workers. In a competitive market (which laissez faire capitalism certainly was) this process will (and historically has) lift wages and work standards over time. As for force being used to break strikes - it was actually during the administrations of progressive presidents that Federal forces did most of their strike-breaking work. So I'm not clear on how removing federal backing of strike breaking is supposed to lead to more broken strikes.

Again, I could be wrong, but I'm not seeing the logical chain of cause & effect that would lead to the results you're positing.

'that ranting idiocy got woman the vote, started civil rights, gave America a minimum wage, ended child labor, started Ballot initiatives, Direct election of U.S. Senators, Direct primary, Referendums, Secret ballots, and ballot Initiative, started social work, and in the end may well of saved the world.'

Wow - that's alot of claims - let's look at them in order.
1. Women's sufferage movement started in the 1880's. Not sure how that gets wiped out by no progessivism/pragmatism in the 1900's to 1940's.
2. Started civil rights? In the original sense of the word, you'ld have to go back to the magna carta, or the bill of rights. In the modern sense, I think the 13th, 14th, and 15th ammendments had some impact, maybe it's all those court cases citing them, who knows? Or maybe it's the fact that it wasn't until the 60's, well after progressivism/pragmatism had morphed and mutated into establishment liberalism, that civil rights made any progress under strong religious prodding from one Rev King and others.
3. Minimum wage - yep, but I don't see how setting an artificial price floor for a good, thus reducing demand, is helpful.
4. Ended child labor -perhaps - but child labor was already declining before the laws were passed (true - check the statistical history), so I'm not sure if the legal changes ended it, or merely gave official imprimatur to a change in practice that was already underway. Of course, that would imply that there is no child labor anywhere in the US today... which seems doubtful based on criminal records.
5. Ballot initiatives were on the books long before progressivism. I think you're getting your populism and your progressivism mixed up (neither is my cup o' tea, but they are distinct).
6. Direct election of US senators was a horrible idea, and seriously damaged the consitutional framework by weakening what were intended to be separate sovreignties and reducing a much needed check on mob passions - so that's not a plus.
7. Direct primary is neither here nor there - as we can see in the present contretemps in the democratic party today, there's still a lot of indirect activity (super delegates, caucuses) today.
8. Referendums: A. already existed at the state and local level. B. Generally a poor idea - if the elected officials are doing such a poor job, elect better ones. The idea that they (and the electorate) can be absolved of their responsibilities by some end run seems to weaken the entire foundations of representative democracy.
9. Pretty certain that secret ballots were already in place - yep, that they were. Perhaps you meant to refer to the end of poll taxes & literacy tests for voting? Eliminating those was a good thing, though it did open the door wider to our present problems with ballot fraud ("Bury me in Chicago so I can keep voting").
10. Ballot Initiatives - see above , see also comments on referendums, for all intents and purposes, they have the same implications for a constitutional order.
11. Social work - funny, history shows that beneficial societies, and charities (religious and other) were going strong long before progressivism made it's mark in the US. Considering that religious & secular charities still perform the majority of all social work in the US, not sure what benefit you're trying to refer to here.
12. 'saved the world' Ah, of course, I should have realized, you were joking. Ha-ha, good one.

Nae-the-less, reading and thinking through your responses has reinforced my belief that the modern worldview and attendant political order have been shaped so dramatically by the 'flowering' of progressivism/pragmatism in the early 20th that things would be very different (for good and for ill) in their absence.

Once I finish this bleepin restructuring at work, I shall have to buckle down and make an attempt at timelining (is that even a word?) what such an alternate could look like. To combat my natural US-centric focus, I should definitely ensure that non-US viewpoint's are represented. Now I need to work out which 'forn' countries were most and least affected by the change in US policies in OTL for an ATL comparison.

Thanks for the responses, they've been... intriguing, and pleasantly well mannered.
 

boredatwork

Banned
whoops missed one:

Social darwinistic capitalism? Nice phrase. Not sure that it means what you think it does though. Social Darwinism was a pretty distinct theory. One that, sorry to say, was enthusiastically endorsed and supported by progressives in the US until the atrocities of the National Socialists in Germany came to light. Check through what Wilson, Teddy, and FDR had to say about eugenics, races, and breeding. Very unpleasant stuff. They were in favor (Wilson to the greatest degree) of government policies to support & purify some 'American (IE: white) race'. In addition, they were all ardent militarists in both senses (IE: society should be organized along military lines, and warfare is a refining process which brings out the best in society). I'm not clear how removing the most prominent supporters of Social Darwinism in the US will lead to Social Darwinistic Capitalism.

Finally, many of your responses (though I am only getting around to bringing it up in relation to this one) seem to overlook the impacts to society and policy of the pre-existing strains of religiousity, charity, and civil society. Why the presumption is made that without progressivism all these positive influences will evaporate, giving spontaneous rise to a national of amoral atomised wannabe nietschean ubermenschen is boggling. Is there any basis for the supposition, apart from repeated assertion, that the fundamental characterstics of American society would rewrite themselves overnight, ignoring centuries of ingrained practice, just because one new political fad failed to make headway?

Hm... then again, perhaps that's a good arguement that the innate social... inertia, if you will... would result in a world today more like ours than I posited under a more 'butterfly-centric' model.

See - that's a great thing about this forum, it's food(snack or other) for thought when you're waiting for PMs to report on their deployment schedules.
 
whoops missed one:

Social darwinistic capitalism? Nice phrase. Not sure that it means what you think it does though. Social Darwinism was a pretty distinct theory. One that, sorry to say, was enthusiastically endorsed and supported by progressives in the US until the atrocities of the National Socialists in Germany came to light. Check through what Wilson, Teddy, and FDR had to say about eugenics, races, and breeding. Very unpleasant stuff. They were in favor (Wilson to the greatest degree) of government policies to support & purify some 'American (IE: white) race'...

Hmm... can't really comment on much of your preceding post, as I'm no US specialist. However, yes, you're dead on here. c.f. the various state-level eugenics programs, under which thousands of 'defectives' were sterilised.
 
Social darwinistic capitalism, is a term my American History teacher came up with it refers to the idea that the Rich are rich because they work harder then those who are poor, and the poor are poor because they don't work hard and there's nothing anyone can do because thats the way the world works, and trying to help people only makes them lazy and reliant on your help.
 

Deleted member 5719

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.

There's quite a few generalizations there - farmers (all farmers?) were not making any (at all, really?) money through the 20's? Check your timelines - Agriculture & farming didn't hit any crisis point until the 30's. There had been several boom and bust cycles frrom the civil war period onward - farmers had managed to survive those without the government deliberately monkeying with the economy. As for 'save American farming.' If those policies saved it, why, over 70 years later, are we spending billions trying to keep the same industry afloat?

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.

boredatwork said:
Envy may be an understandable emotion, but it's hardly a basis for policy. So what if some Americans were rich? There is precious little historical record of other Americans taking much offense at the matter. Which nations had communist uprisings from 1900-1930 with no feudal past? I've taken the liberty of trawling Wiki (admittedly, not the most robust source on the planet) and none were listed. If I'm mistaken, I'll happily admit it, but I would prefer to see some examples to back up that claim.

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.

boredatwork said:
I have to assume that you're referring to... 1930? After three progressive administrations had spent over a decade of combined time in office attempting to replace such structures with government programs? The same prior structures that had dealt with the prior crashes satisfactorily (no uprisings, no anarchy, no-one starving in the streets or the other bugaboos that are raised)?

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?

boredatwork said:
The rich didn't get rich by printing money in their basements. They got rich buy providing goods and services that other folks bought - in massive quantities. That could only happen when those other folks were making enough money to purchase said goods. Which, since they were purchasing them (that's the whole economy thing), they obviously did have such money. Did they have as much as the 'robber barons'? No. But they had more money then their parents, and more than folks in similar situations elsewhere had.

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.

boredatwork said:
'are you joking? there were no negotiations because the bosses could fire anyone for anything, striking could get the cops or even troops.'

Ah, confusion of masses. 'Bosses' are not a homogenous mass, but multiple different actors with competing interests. That's why I make more money today than I did when I started work - different employers were willing to pay more for my services, so I changed jobs. If one 'boss' has horrible conditions AND horrible pay, then workers will move to other jobs, with other firms - who will have an incentive to provide slightly better conditions to attract the more motivated workers. In a competitive market (which laissez faire capitalism certainly was) this process will (and historically has) lift wages and work standards over time.

Ha ha ha ha.

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.

Thanks for listening
 

boredatwork

Banned
"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/
 
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.

So Scandinavian Social Democracy has nothing to do with the high living standards and wealth present there? It was just lucky the fungible mass of employers invested more? Nice to see you can switch on that point when you want to.

I'm not arguing either for collectivism or your classical liberalism but the agrarian and worker movements born out of Scandinavia's economic hardships in the 19th century helped massivly to democratise Sweden, Denmark etc., leading on to the 'soft socialist' trend present on both the left and right, leading to higher safety regulations, better education, welfare systems etc. while still maintaining relative affluence. It was a combination of things including of course employers and businessmen.

I'm no Anti-Capitalist, indeed I own a small business, but I don't see much difference between a Manifesto-thumping Marxist and a Libertarian who views 'the Market' as the basis for happiness
 

boredatwork

Banned
Jape -

I'll freely admit that I never considered Scandinavian history post Vikings to be interesting enough to read up on ;-). So I'll defer to your knowledge there until I've remedied my ignorance.

However in general terms:1. Scandinavia had established independence, rule of law, and generalized respect for private property & enterprise of the general populace long before Chile (what with being a colony and all that). 2. Scandinavians were/are very fortunate to have a society and culture that seems to place a high value on peaceful dispute resolution. 3. 'Soft socialism' sounds a lot like present day liberalism, or what in the US 1900-1940s would have been a mix of unionism, classical liberalism, Farmer-Populism, and socialism. But, as noted, I would have to read the platforms and publications of the period, as well as study the economic and legislative history to be sure.

As for the 'Market' providing happiness. Sorry - that's not me. My opinion is simply that of all the potential models that we've come up with to date for having humans interact en masse, free market (or in other words, minimal government, and letting people do as they please as much as possible) combined with a generally decent and moral populace seems to produce the best results in terms of: maximized material wealth, minimized corruption, minimized oppression, maximized freedom (of belief, of speech, of communication, of association, of movement, etc), and minimized violence.

Happiness is a far different thing - that's a psychological/spiritual state. Some people will/won't be happy no matter what happens to or around them. Others react in differing ways to innumerable factors. So I don't concern myself with other folks happiness - what would be the point? I just try to let folks pursue happiness (however defined) in their own way (however daft I may think it is) to the maximum extent possble, provided they extend the same consideration to the rest of us (and myself & mine in specific).

In any case, this discussion has long sense lost even tangential relation tof the oh-so-distant point of the original post - trying to imagine how the US would have developed under a different political environment, and what, if any, impacts that would have on the rest of the world. Then bringing that thought process forward to today.
 
I think it is unreasonable to talk about one Swedish model. The Social Democrats and the wider workers movement, which have dominated Swedish politics, have been able to change over time. I will not use the terms for better or worse because it was both.

It could be argued that the biggest improvments happened during times with a very free market acctually, just after the turn of the century. But I think the relative sucess of the Swedish brand of socialism comes down to creative distruction. It was never opposed.

The early socialists thought that prices where to high but they didn't do the ordinary socialist thing and destroy shops or even take over them. Instead they set up their own shops to put the expensive ones out of buissness. (The irony, their compaies are the old, expensive shops that new companies put out of buissness.)

Another example was the the method the unions used decide their demands when negotiating for wages. They basicly set their wage demands high enough to drive bad (unprofitable) companies out of buissness and accepted some unemployment when going from one job to another (and the unemployment benefits are designed to help). Most systems tend to focus on keeping the old companies.
 

Deleted member 5719

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?

Revolutionary Anarchism/Libertarian Socialism was quite a strong current in the US trade union movement at the time, especially the IWW (wobblies). There were lots of incidences of violent conflict between strikers and Pinkertons strikebreakers/police in the 20's, though the good economic conditions meant that it was less severe than the periods immediately after and before.

Of course, the situation was not as violent as in other places, but during the depression it probaby would have got very nasty if it hadn't been for FDR.

boredatwork said:
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.

I said the CRASH was caused by the excesses of capitalism, it's probable that the depression was lengthened and softened by protectionism, but the trigger was the financial madness of the 1920s.


boredatwork said:
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.

Ok, I agree heriditary privilege was less prominent in the US (not so now, US has the lowest class mobility of any developed country. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton anyone?). Careful with the word "feudalism" it describes a very specific set of class relations that had died out even in Russia by 1900.

The Roosevelt New Deal was necessary to prevent real human suffering that was happening at the time, the problem with your economic analysis is that it doesn't factor in the fact that people can't live for years without food, which is what they would have had to do. Perhaps charity could have fed some, but you can't have your cake and eat it. You can't say that the state should do nothing to feed it's citizens and then claim that somebody else will automatically do so. It is vastly improbable that charity could feed millions for years in the US, and even more improbable that the poor would tolerate this situation without a backlash. Where there is mass hunger in the midst of plenty there is revolution.

boredatwork said:
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.

I'm happy you're doing alright for yourself. It is of course possible to improve terms and conditions due to the fact your type of labour is so scarce that you are in a position to negotiate individually.
One of Marx's errors was to assume that the trend towards deskilling he had seen in his lifetime would continue inevitably until all labour was interchangeable.

However, during the depression (as now) a massive number of jobs required skills that could be learned in a couple of days, and many others involved skills that 1000s of unemployed people possessed. If you don't want to use Marxist terminology, fair fux to you, but the purpose they serve is the same. They depress wages by removing the individual worker's ability to negotiate, indeed some right wing economists are in favour of maintaining some enemployment for precisely this reason.

boredatwork said:
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.

Quite correct, wages rose due to the increased productivity which industrialisation brought. But they rose a damn sight faster when governments legislated minimum wages and workers organised to demand better wages.

Conditions were improved by campaigning, do gooders, union struggle and legislation. Again, competition for labour exerts a slight upward pressure on conditions, but government laws and workers strikes got the job done a lot quicker. Good though your terms and conditions are, I doubt a frenchman would get out of bed for them.

Have a look at this :)
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...s-forced-to-work-30-hours-a-week-20080125680/


boredatwork said:
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.

Agree, but economies of scale mean that the new company will find it difficult to produce more cheaply than its larger competitors and pay higher wages.

boredatwork said:
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.

Agree, but depends how interchangeable labour is. These guys worked hard to make labour VERY interchangeable, so they paid a pittance more, but only a pittance. If there is mass unemployment and no welfare, then this falls down, you could pay biscuits and people would bite your hand off.

boredatwork said:
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.

Agree, which is why governments intervene to maintain capitalism by curbing its excesses in times when it has forgotten this. The roots of social democracy in Europe were a post-war deal between enlightened capitalists and non-revolutionary sectors of the labour movements.

Capitalists periodically forget this, which is why we are entering another systemic crisis of capitalism today.


(I talked about 4 above, some labor is more fungible than other labour).

boredatwork said:
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.

Include in that the entire service sector, most admin, HR and a lot of sales.

These jobs can be done by anyone the state has educated for you. Of course the capitalist factors in training costs when making decisions, but the labour of most INDIVIDUAL workers is fungible in these industries. Of course, when the workers stand together it's a different story...

6. See Jape.


Re Social Darwinism: You're both right.

I see two strands.

Eugenicist and Non-Eugenicist.

The first was discredited utterly by the holocaust, but was found on both the left and the right. It argued that the improvement of the human "breeding stock" was of paramount importance. The left supporters (such as Virginia Woolf, HG Wells and Marie Stopes in the Uk) advocated its use to eradicate poverty. I find these characters more than a little sinister. Well-spoken upper class English gentlefolk clearing the tracks for the death-trains at genteel Fabian Society coffee mornings.

Post-war Social Darwinism is the theory that in society the fittest triumph financially and socially, and that they shouldn't have to support the less fit. It is something that, generally, one accuses someone else of rather than admits to being oneself.
 
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