The New Deal and the Fifth Party System, Part II

However, as time went on, the fortunes of the anti-New Deal coalition rose, and the fortunes of the pro-New Deal coalition waned. The Republican Eisenhower was replaced by the Democratic JFK, who basically ran like Reagan before Reagan did: more missiles, lower taxes, grrr commies bad. They were both demonstrations of the dialectic at work, of parties silencing their id and cutting red meat out of their political diet in order to win over persuadables from the other side. Political theorists of this era swooned for a book by Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology, which declared the passing of Marxism and of the old ideologies generally. Richard Nixon himself proclaimed "We're all Keynesians now," dropping his conservative beliefs during an economic crisis to shovel money down the economy's gullet.

DiStefano argues, correctly in my estimation, that this was not itself a realignment. He sees in the 1960s an analogue of the Great Awakenings; and in the anti-war, anti-segregation protests, there may indeed have been something of that. But among the establishment intelligentsia that actually ran the empire, it seems to me more like a rerun of the Era of Good Feelings.

In that era, after the War of 1812 but before Andrew Jackson, the Federalists had just fallen apart as a political organization. The Democratic-Republicans had swept federal office and, having acheived their long-awaited final victory against the Federalists, dissolved themselves in order to banish "party spirit" from America and heed Washington's warning against political parties. The resulting "Era of Good Feelings" resulted in widespread drift, grift, and malaise. The nation had nothing dividing them, it had no way to discipline politicians, and no great causes for politicians to serve. As a result, America's politicians became the most openly corrupt of bloodsuckers until Andrew Jackson was elected to deal with it, creating a new party system revolving around his platform.

Of course, though the establishments of both parties were becoming blandly indistinguishable, there were demands from below, in what DiStefano characterizes as another "Great Awakening," albeit a mostly secular one. The struggle against the Vietnam War coincided with the March on Washington and the hippie counterculture. After initial resistance to these things from the establishment, the boomers began exercising the power of their numbers by the 70s, electing candidates with their New Left cultural and economic views.

This was a hollow triumph of this 60's Great Awakening though; the establishment gave way on cultural issues to their respective bases to preserve their economic interests, upon which they remained converged. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were emblematic of this shift, both of them embarking on a neoliberal economic program while playing up their corners of the emerging culture wars to deemphasize their fundamental agreement on economic issues. Paul Volcker was nominated by Jimmy Carter and retained by Ronald Reagan, and broke the back of 1970s stagflation at the cost of spiking unemployment levels for the working class. Bill Clinton negotiated an agreement with Mexico and Canada to hollow out our manufacturing sector and their agricultural sector, and the Gingrich Republicans voted for it.

So the New Deal represents this labor aristocracy bargain that's only gotten worse and worse over the years. In exchange for not asking too many questions about imperialism, the workers and the middle class get a cut of the plunder to stave off a revolution here at home. But the workers kept asking questions about imperialism; every time they did so, this New Deal model broke down some. It wasn't long after the withdrawal from Vietnam under Nixon that the underpinnings of the neoliberal era were laid. And the conservatives themselves getting tired of the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was when the opioid epidemic and inflation came roaring back and the veneer of responsive bipartisan government broke down. None of this is proximately related, but it's all reflective of the fact that if the American bourgeoisie cannot extract value from abroad, they'll extract it here at home one way or another.

What is a communist's proper orientation to the New Deal? Well, this question was answered by Stalin himself, in an interview conducted by the science fiction novelist H.G. Wells. The interview itself is a forerunner of the current debate within the American left between middle class socialism, as represented by Wells, and working class socialism, as represented by Stalin. Wells presented him with his rosy view of the possibilities of the New Deal leading to socialism, and Stalin offered this in response:

"But what will this "socialism" be? At best, bridling to some extent, the most unbridled of individual representatives of capitalist profit, some increase in the application of the principle of regulation in national economy. That is all very well. But as soon as Roosevelt, or any other captain in the contemporary bourgeois world, proceeds to undertake something serious against the foundation of capitalism, he will inevitably suffer utter defeat. The banks, the industries, the large enterprises, the large farms are not in Roosevelt's hands. All these are private property. The railroads, the mercantile fleet, all these belong to private owners. And, finally, the army of skilled workers, the engineers, the technicians, these too are not at Roosevelt's command, they are at the command of the private owners; they all work for the private owners (emphasis mine). We must not forget the functions of the State in the bourgeois world.

The State is an institution that organises the defence of the country, organises the maintenance of "order"; it is an apparatus for collecting taxes. The capitalist State does not deal much with economy in the strict sense of the word; the latter is not in the hands of the State. On the contrary, the State is in the hands of capitalist economy. That is why I fear that in spite of all his energies and abilities, Roosevelt will not achieve the goal you mention, if indeed that is his goal. Perhaps, in the course of several generations it will be possible to approach this goal somewhat; but I personally think that even this is not very probable."

Onwards to the finale!