Apr 4, 2008

A Leftist Against the New Deal

by Liberty and Power

Over at Counterpunch. I haven't had time to read the whole thing but this paragraph certainly struck my fancy:

Indeed, the New Deal did not even work in rescuing capitalism, which was Roosevelt's stated goal; it took the total militarization of the U.S. economy to accomplish that. However, even before entering the war, nearly every New Deal economic recovery and development program enriched already existing corporations, such as Bechtel and Brown and Root, as well as creating new ones. The ground was set for rapid militarization through contracts with these new corporate giants and massive employment through the military draft and wartime production. The military-industrial complex is the essential result of New Deal policies.

Hat tip Jesse Walker.

More Comments:

Tim Sydney - 4/6/2008

I like Mark Skousen's comment (see here)that Friedman and Schwarz demolished the whole anti-capitalist anti-laisser faire "cause" for the Great Depression in a single sentence. To wit, "(F)rom the cyclical peak in August 1929 to a cyclical trough in March 1933, the stock of money fell by over a third."

Maybe we should get that printed on a tee shirt with a profile of FDR in the centre of the No Symbol.