Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great Recession

by Gary Gerstle (Editor), Nelson Lichtenstein (Editor), Alice O'Connor (Editor)

Overview

Ever since introducing the concept in the late 1980s, historians have been debating the origins, nature, scope, and limitations of the New Deal order—the combination of ideas, electoral and governing strategies, redistributive social policies, and full employment economics that became the standard-bearer for political liberalism in the wake of the Great Depression and commanded Democratic majorities for decades. In the decline and break-up of the New Deal coalition historians found keys to understanding the transformations that, by the late twentieth century, were shifting American politics to the right.

In Beyond the New Deal Order, contributors bring fresh perspective to the historic meaning and significance of New Deal liberalism while identifying the elements of a distinctively "neoliberal" politics that emerged in its wake. Part I offers contemporary interpretations of the New Deal with essays that focus on its approach to economic security and inequality, its view of participatory governance, and its impact on the Republican party as well as Congressional politics. Part II features essays that examine how intersectional inequities of class, race, and gender were embedded in New Deal labor law, labor standards, and economic policy and brought demands for employment, economic justice, and collective bargaining protections to the forefront of civil rights and social movement agendas throughout the postwar decades. Part III considers the precepts and defining narratives of a "post" New Deal political structure, while the closing essay contemplates the extent to which we may now be witnessing the end of a neoliberal system anchored in free-market ideology, neo-Victorian moral aspirations, and post-Communist global politics.

Contributors: Eileen Boris, Angus Burgin, Gary Gerstle, Romain Huret, Meg Jacobs, Michael Kazin, Sophia Lee, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joe McCartin, Alice O'Connor, Paul Sabin, Reuel Schiller, Kit Smemo, David Stein, Jean-Christian Vinel, Julian Zelizer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812251739
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	12/27/2019
Series:	Politics and Culture in Modern America
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Gary Gerstle is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present and American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. He is coeditor, with Steve Fraser, of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980. Nelson Lichtenstein is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is editor of American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century; coeditor, with Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, of The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination; and coeditor, with Richard Flacks, of The Port Huron Statement: Sources and Legacies of the New Left's Founding Manifesto; all of which are available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Alice O'Connor is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History and Social Science for What?: Philanthropy and the Social Question in a World Turned Rightside Up.

Table of Contents

Introduction Gary Gerstle Nelson Lichtenstein Alice O'Connor 1

Part I The Nature and Limits of New Deal Reform

1 From the Labor Question to the Piketty Moment: A Journey Through the New Deal Order Romain Huret Jean-Christian Vinel 17

2 State Building from the Bottom Up: The New Deal and Beyond Meg Jacobs 36

3 The Making of "Liberal" Republicans During the New Deal Order Kristoffer Smemo 54

4 The Unexpected Endurance of the New Deal Order: Liberalism in the Age of Reagan Julian E. Zelizer 71

Part II Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender

5 To Live Decently: New Deal Labor Standards, Feminized Work, and the Fight for Worker Dignity Eileen Boris 93

6 Rights in the New Deal Order and Beyond Sophia Z. Lee 110

7 Containing Keynesianism in an Age of Civil Rights: Jim Crow Monetary Policy and the Struggle for Guaranteed Jobs, 1956-1979 David Stein 124

Part III A New Order Takes Shape

8 Market Politics in an Age of Automation Angus Burgin 143

9 Regulation and the Collapse of the New Deal Order, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Market Reuel Schiller 168

10 Environmental Law and the End of the New Deal Order Paul Sabin 186

11 The Rise and Fall of Internationalism During (and After) the New Deal Order Michael Kazin 204

12 An Embattled New Deal Legacy: Public Sector Unionism and the Struggle for a Progressive Order Joseph A. McCartin 213

13 In Search of "Forgotten" America Alice O'Connor 233

Part IV Coda

14 America's Neoliberal Order Gary Gerstle 257

Notes 279

List of Contributors 367

Index 371

Acknowledgments 381

Editorial Reviews

"As both a historical and historiographical marker of persistence and transformation, this outstanding volume invites readers to consider anew the New Deal's legacies and successors. Offering inventive analytical reflections that illuminate recent decades of the American experience, the book's bracing essays prompt fresh thought about periodization, historical causation, the scope of possibility, and a good deal more."

author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Or Ira Katznelson

"An ambitious and exciting collection. After twenty-five years of reflection, do historians believe there was a 'New Deal order'? If there was, and it ended, what replaced it? How have understandings of the postwar period changed to accommodate a fuller sense of what the New Deal accomplished and what its limits were? Each essay is compelling and the various questions they address are deeply important."

author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis Kimberly Phillips-Fein

"If we want to understand the driving forces and the scope of the wide-ranging shifts in our societies on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, it is essential, then, to be more precise about neoliberalism as an analytical concept and as a tool to grasp historical change. This is one of the goals of Gary Gerstle, Nelson Lichtenstein, and Alice O’Connor’s recent look at the New Deal order and its transformation. Refining the earlier claim of a radical shift brought about by the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the authors instead point at an accumulation of changes which, ultimately, signaled the inception of a new ‘neoliberal order.'"

Reviews in American History

"[An] important synthesis of twentieth-century US history with [a] much-needed framework for the ‘Neoliberal Order’ which could be said to have defined the US political-economy from 1980 to 2016… [A]n extremely valuable book for anyone looking to understand the limits and unfulfilled promise of the New Deal state."

The New England Quarterly

"A timely book that will appeal to anyone interested in American politics from the New Deal to the present. Every chapter, without exception, is excellent."

author of Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Re Daniel Geary

An ambitious and exciting collection. After twenty-five years of reflection, do historians believe there was a 'New Deal order'? If there was, and it ended, what replaced it? How have understandings of the postwar period changed to accommodate a fuller sense of what the New Deal accomplished and what its limits were? Each essay is compelling and the various questions they address are deeply important.

"As both a historical and historiographical marker of persistence and transformation, this outstanding volume invites readers to consider anew the New Deal's legacies and successors. Offering inventive analytical reflections that illuminate recent decades of the American experience, the book's bracing essays prompt fresh thought about periodization, historical causation, the scope of possibility, and a good deal more."—Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time

"An ambitious and exciting collection. After twenty-five years of reflection, do historians believe there was a 'New Deal order'? If there was, and it ended, what replaced it? How have understandings of the postwar period changed to accommodate a fuller sense of what the New Deal accomplished and what its limits were? Each essay is compelling and the various questions they address are deeply important."—Kimberly Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics

"A timely book that will appeal to anyone interested in American politics from the New Deal to the present. Every chapter, without exception, is excellent."—Daniel Geary, author of Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy

From the Publisher