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World Hotels - The End Of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
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List Price: $16.00
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 338
EAN: 9780679753148
ISBN: 0679753141
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 1996-01-30
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1996-01-30
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Reviews:
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Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was a turning point in the role of the federal government and in the expectations of American citizens. Now, Alan Brinkley, whose Voices of Protest won the American Book Award for History, shows how New Deal liberalism was transformed into a new beast during and after World War II--and why it is faring so poorly in the 1990s.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: What is American Liberalism?
Comment: Professor Brinkley attempts to answer this question in this excellent recapitulation of liberalism's development from the late 1930s to the end of World War II. That period began with the so-called "Roosevelt Recession," an unwelcome development for liberals and progressives who had, despite other differences, put their unwavering faith in the political and economic leadership of President Roosevelt.
Brinkley borrows from Ellis Hawley's The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly and other first-rate treatments of the New Deal to show how previous splits in liberal thought were further aggravated by Roosevelt's recession. Liberals wanting statist control of the economy; liberals wanting governmental-corporate-labor "associational" agreements on production and pricing; liberals stressing anti-monopoly governmental efforts as a way to increase consumption --- all these guys fought for Roosevelt's ear as the President vacillated maddingly on the proper response. The upshot was a decision by FDR to mix anti-monopoly policy with modest Keynsian fiscal pump-priming as a hopeful solution to the recession.
Keynsianism represented the triumph in liberal thought of concerns over the consumer (governmental spending increases jobs and wages, which fattens the wallet and pocketbook) over systemic changes in capitalistic production. The latter, Professor Brinkley argues, would represent a true attempt to reform the economy. Brinkley shows that during and after World War II, with a booming economy and the defeat (or proved moral bankruptcy) of threats to our capitalistic way of life, the consumer ethic established further beachheads in liberal thought. Also, conservatism in Congress, the business community, and the American public further limited the chance for real reform and the attractiveness of capitalism as a way to stuff our refrigators and garages.
By the end of World War II all the components of liberalism more or less bought into the consumerist gambit to keep the economy booming. All that was o.k. so long as the boom continued. Mainstream liberalism, Brinkley argues, proved its inability substantively to help its constituencies, however, when economic tough times returned in the mid-1970s.
Brinkley's book represents a great critique of American liberalism from the left. He shortchanges the constraints under which Roosevelt worked in World War II -- after all, he wanted to win it -- but this is still good stuff. Oh yeah, he needed more analysis of the Supreme Court -- after all one cannot understand post World War II liberalism without grappling with the role of the federal judiciary. How did FDR and his liberal advisors contribute to that when they put "liberal" judges in the federal judiciary?
Still, buy this book if you want an understanding of how liberalism got to where it is today. Kudos Professor Brinkley.
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Summary: Insightful
Comment: This book is really fundamental for understanding both the New Deal and the Liberal tradition it engendered. The book's title evokes two prior famous books; Hofstader's The Age of Reform and Lowi's End of Liberalism. Brinkley positioned this book as a bridge between Hofstader's description and analysis of the Progressive movement and Lowi's analysis of the disintegration of Liberalism. Brinkley begins by emphasizing the Progressive heritage of the New Deal. After the conservative reaction accompanying the First World War and the 20s, the election of Roosevelt and the crisis of the Depression brought Progressive influenced Democrats (some former Progressive Republicans)to power at a time when the American electorate was willing to try more radical and statist measures. The New Deal, however, was an improvisation and what evolved was a gradual diminution of Progressive skepticism about the institutions of capitalism. The interest in somehow reforming capitalism in any fundamental way gave way to an essentially meliorist framework with (by European standards at any rate) a modest social welfare system, Keynesian macroeconomic management, some regulation of important markets such as the activities of the SEC, an empahsis on civil rights in the legal and political sense, and a basic acceptance of the importance of consumerism and large corporations. This book is written unusually well and documented superbly. As commented by a prior reviewer, this book is a worthy successor to Hofstader's Age of Reform and that is high praise indeed.
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Summary: Insightful Analysis of Roosevelt's Men
Comment: Brinkley successfully blends away the mask of a liberalist approach to the New Deal in this work. He chronicles in insightful detail the various alphabet soup programs and their roles in the Roosevelt administration. Yet, his main focus is the continued deintensification of liberalism in subsequent administrations and the nature of liberals and their movement from anti-big business and pro-worker to less hostile to big business as many liberals moved from one side to the other. Brinkley follows his discussion of New Deal liberalism with a discussion of the progressive degeneration of liberalism in the age of Truman and Eisenhower and subsequent efforts to foster some kind of rebirth in that time period. In sum, Brinkley's work is rather exceptional. He covers the material without tipping the reader off as to his liberal nature.
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Summary: Good book, gets borning after the beginning of WW II
Comment: Too often the New Deal is portrayed as one coherent plan FDR and his administration had for getting the United States out of the depression. The End of Reform is a wonderful correction of this historical myth. Not only did FDR and his advisors have no set plan going in, much of what was accomplished reprisented compromises and backroom political dealing. Brinkley most interestingly details the indecision and political rangling in the FDR White House and with Congress after the beginning of the 1937 recession. Brinkley proves that really FDR didn't know what to do after the beginning of the recession and also after his National Industrial Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional. He also conclusively proves that much of the 1937 recession can be attributed to FDR's agreement with conservative Democrats to balance the budget which resulted in many cuts in social spending.
Also an interesting aspect not discussed in many other books concerns FDR's response to domestic issues after Pearl Harbor. After the beginning of WW II FDR all but ignored domestic issues, largely sitting silent as Congress rolled back many pre-war New Deal reforms. His discussion of the attitude of many people inside the adminsitration wanting to turn to more of a socialist economy with Federal intervention is also quite good.
With so many high school history courses and textbooks portraying the New Deal as a coherent plan that FDR and his advisors knew would bring the US out of the depression.
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Summary: Lucid
Comment: From the changes in assumptions of economists to the conception of today's miltary-industrial complex, Alan Brinkley explains in this one volume clearly and concisely what so many other authors of multi-volume tomes try but never quite put their thumb on.
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