Fantasizing about a rebirth of a progressive American liberalism -- which died of old age in 1917 -- @jbouie invokes in today's NY Times Roosevelt's New Deal as "the lodestar for liberals and the left alike, from Joe Biden to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez." 1/
This mythologized lodestar would be better described as an intellectual and political deadweight. As far back as the 1930s, John Dewey -- trying to adapt liberalism to economic realities -- understood enough to know that serious social reform was incompatible with capitalism. 2/
Dewey called attention to the basic flaw in Roosevelt's program: "Invoking the profit motive to provide employment is a confession of impotency, since the quest for profits -- as rent, interest and gains on invested capital --is the cause of unemployment and poverty." 3/
Though he absolutely rejected revolution, Dewey was sufficiently honest to write nearly 90 years ago, in opposition to Roosevelt's reformist hodge-dodge: "Only elimination of profits through socialization will prevent eventual chaos." 4/
Bouie's efforts to paint the Roosevelt administration in brilliant colors leaves out the entry into World War II, and the subsequent transformation of the United States into the National Security State, devoting massive resources to its global imperialist interests. 5/
Bouie's portrayal of Saint Franklin as the great Democratic Party benefactor, showering gifts upon the people, leaves out entirely any reference to the massive working class struggles of the 1930s. The advances made by the working class were achieved through struggle. 6/
The great progressive events in 1930s America were the general strikes in Minneapolis and San Francisco, the Toledo Auto-Lite strike (all in 1934), the founding of the CIO (in a rebellion against the right-wing AFL), and the sit-down strikes of auto workers (1936-37). 7/
During WW II, FDR's administration imprisoned the Trotskyists, waged war against the miners, upheld Jim Crow, and interned Japanese-Americans. US Imperialism's global interests, requiring vast military expenditures, brought liberal reform to an end. 8/
Bouie evades the issue of imperialism, as if American wars are mere distractions from the reformist enterprise. But the military disasters of the administrations of Truman (Korea), Kennedy-Johnson (Vietnam), and Clinton-Obama (Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan) prove otherwise. 9/
With a military budget approaching $1 trillion and war plans against China and Russia far advanced, the Biden version of the New Deal resembles Roosevelt's only as a reactionary caricature. Biden's "New deal" is not an "aspiration." It is a trap. 10/10
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