awake
02-23-2010, 05:40 PM
REVOLUTION and The NEW DEAL
"Never let a crises go to waste"
"Then from the point of view of scientific revolutionary
technic what would the problems be?
They set themselves down in sequence as follows:
The first, naturally, would be to capture the seat of
government.
The second would be to seize economic power.
The third would be to mobilize by propaganda the
forces of hatred.
The fourth would be to reconcile and then attach to
the revolution the two great classes whose adherence
is indispensable but whose interests are economically
antagonistic, namely, the industrial wage earners and
the farmers, called in Europe workers and peasants.
The fifth would be what to do with business—
whether to liquidate or shackle it.
(These five would have a certain imperative order in
time and require immediate decisions because they belong
to the program of conquest. That would not be the
end. What would then ensue? A program of consolidation.
Under that head the problems continue.)
The sixth, in Burckhardt's devastating phrase,
would be "the domestication of individuality"—by any
means that would make the individual more dependent
upon government.
The seventh would be the systematic reduction of all
forms of rival authority.
The eighth would be to sustain popular faith in an
unlimited public debt, for if that faith should break the
government would be unable to borrow, if it could not
borrow it could not spend, and the revolution must be
able to borrow and spend the wealth of the rich or else
it will be bankrupt.
The ninth would be to make the government itself
the great capitalist and enterpriser, so that the ultimate
power in initiative would pass from the hands of
private enterprise to the all-powerful state.
Each one of these problems would have two sides,
one the obverse and one the reverse, like a coin. One
side only would represent the revolutionary intention.
The other side in each case would represent Recovery—
and that was the side the New Deal constantly held up
to view. Nearly everything it did was in the name of
Recovery. But in no case was it true that for the ends
of economic recovery alone one solution or one course
and one only was feasible. In each case there was an
alternative and therefore a choice to make.
What we shall see is that in every case the choice was
one that could not fail:
(a) To ramify the authority and power of executive
government—its power, that is, to rule by decrees and
rules and regulations of its own making;
(b) To strengthen its hold upon the economic life
of the nation;
(c) To extend its power over the individual;
(d) To degrade the parliamentary principle;
(e) To impair the great American tradition of an
independent, Constitutional judicial power;
(f) To weaken all other powers—the power of
private enterprise, the power of private finance, the
power of state and local government.
(g) To exalt the leader principle.
There was endless controversy as to whether the acts
of the New Deal did actually move recovery or retard it,
and nothing final could ever come of that bitter debate
because it is forever impossible to prove what might
have happened in place of what did. But a positive
result is obtained if you ask:
Where was the New Deal going?
The answer to that question is too obvious to be debated.
Every choice it made, whether it was one that
moved recovery or not, was a choice unerringly true to
the essential design of totalitarian government, never
of course called by that name either here or anywhere
else.
Garet Garrett, The Peoples Pottage (http://mises.org/books/pottage.pdf). Highly recommended reading.
"Never let a crises go to waste"
"Then from the point of view of scientific revolutionary
technic what would the problems be?
They set themselves down in sequence as follows:
The first, naturally, would be to capture the seat of
government.
The second would be to seize economic power.
The third would be to mobilize by propaganda the
forces of hatred.
The fourth would be to reconcile and then attach to
the revolution the two great classes whose adherence
is indispensable but whose interests are economically
antagonistic, namely, the industrial wage earners and
the farmers, called in Europe workers and peasants.
The fifth would be what to do with business—
whether to liquidate or shackle it.
(These five would have a certain imperative order in
time and require immediate decisions because they belong
to the program of conquest. That would not be the
end. What would then ensue? A program of consolidation.
Under that head the problems continue.)
The sixth, in Burckhardt's devastating phrase,
would be "the domestication of individuality"—by any
means that would make the individual more dependent
upon government.
The seventh would be the systematic reduction of all
forms of rival authority.
The eighth would be to sustain popular faith in an
unlimited public debt, for if that faith should break the
government would be unable to borrow, if it could not
borrow it could not spend, and the revolution must be
able to borrow and spend the wealth of the rich or else
it will be bankrupt.
The ninth would be to make the government itself
the great capitalist and enterpriser, so that the ultimate
power in initiative would pass from the hands of
private enterprise to the all-powerful state.
Each one of these problems would have two sides,
one the obverse and one the reverse, like a coin. One
side only would represent the revolutionary intention.
The other side in each case would represent Recovery—
and that was the side the New Deal constantly held up
to view. Nearly everything it did was in the name of
Recovery. But in no case was it true that for the ends
of economic recovery alone one solution or one course
and one only was feasible. In each case there was an
alternative and therefore a choice to make.
What we shall see is that in every case the choice was
one that could not fail:
(a) To ramify the authority and power of executive
government—its power, that is, to rule by decrees and
rules and regulations of its own making;
(b) To strengthen its hold upon the economic life
of the nation;
(c) To extend its power over the individual;
(d) To degrade the parliamentary principle;
(e) To impair the great American tradition of an
independent, Constitutional judicial power;
(f) To weaken all other powers—the power of
private enterprise, the power of private finance, the
power of state and local government.
(g) To exalt the leader principle.
There was endless controversy as to whether the acts
of the New Deal did actually move recovery or retard it,
and nothing final could ever come of that bitter debate
because it is forever impossible to prove what might
have happened in place of what did. But a positive
result is obtained if you ask:
Where was the New Deal going?
The answer to that question is too obvious to be debated.
Every choice it made, whether it was one that
moved recovery or not, was a choice unerringly true to
the essential design of totalitarian government, never
of course called by that name either here or anywhere
else.
Garet Garrett, The Peoples Pottage (http://mises.org/books/pottage.pdf). Highly recommended reading.