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The Optimistic Leftist
Why the 21st Century Will be Better Than You Think
By Ruy Teixeira St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2017 Ruy Teixeira
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-08967-0
CHAPTER 1
The Left in History — How and Where Has the Left Succeeded?
Before mapping out the left's future, it is first necessary to consider its past. This past, as we shall see, is widely misunderstood. When understood correctly, it helps bring the left's future into focus — a future far more promising than most currently believe.
What is the left? Historically, the term goes back to the French Revolution, when those who supported the absolute monarchy sat on the right in the National Assembly and those who supported change sat on the left. Through many changes and permutations, these terms have stayed with us to the present day, with similar, if updated, connotations. The right today generally defends the class structure and economic outcomes of the current system (capitalism) as fair and efficient, sees traditional norms and social structures as fundamentally positive and does not believe that the scope of political and economic democracy needs to be expanded. The left generally believes the class structure and economic outcomes of the current system need to be significantly changed, sees traditional norms and social structures as negative constraints on human potential and does believe that the scope of political and economic democracy needs considerable expansion.
This is a pretty broad definition. But it is appropriate. There is no sound reason to confine one's definition of the left to those who believe capitalism is fatally flawed and must be replaced with something different or those who believe, more generally, that the current system must be radically restructured to achieve any modicum of justice. Socialists and radicals may choose to conceptualize themselves as "the left," categorizing those who believe significant reform within the system is both desirable and feasible as props to the system rather than part of the left. No one can stop them from doing so. But this is an arbitrary distinction we need not accept. Instead, the left should be defined on the basis of commitment to change, rather than on a single preferred strategy for achieving change.
Thus the left, broadly conceived, certainly includes socialists, social democrats and radicals, but also greens, liberals, progressives and generally left-of-center parties like the Italian and American Democrats. Defined in this way, how and where has the left succeeded historically? And by "success" I don't mean struggled valiantly or had large demonstrations: where have they actually achieved reforms that made people's lives better?
By and large, the left has achieved much more success when times were good than when times were bad. Hard economic times and rising inequality, rather than generating broad support for more democracy and social justice, more typically generate pessimism about the future and fear of change. In contrast, when times are good, when the economy is expanding and living standards are steadily rising for most of the population, people see better opportunities for themselves and are more inclined toward social generosity, tolerance and collective advance.
THE POST–CIVIL WAR ERA AND THE LEFT
Take, for example, the post–Civil War history of the United States until the Great Depression. The second industrial revolution gathered force right after the Civil War. A wave of technical innovation created or transformed the chemical, electrical, petroleum and steel industries. And massive infrastructure development knitted the country together into a powerful world-class economy. Growth was particularly strong in the 1870s: real per capita income went up almost 3 percent per year. Parallel to this economic advance, the first shoots of the American welfare state came into being. Spending on poor relief in the states increased tenfold, and the postwar pension system for disabled veterans and veterans' wives — American's first national anti-poverty program — was dramatically expanded in 1879. Public spending on education ramped up all over the country. And until the latter part of this period, significant progress was made on improving the condition of blacks, both legislatively and materially.
But this tremendous growth and climate of social advance did not last. Income growth in the post–Civil War era, which had started out so well, ran into severe problems in the 1880s. In that decade, per capita income growth fell to just 0.6 percent per year. The situation worsened in the first half of the 1890s, as the recession of 1893 saw increased unemployment, from 4 percent to 18 percent, and sharply reduced incomes. By 1895, per capita income growth had stagnated for 15 years, punctuated by numerous economic dislocations, leading to bitter resentment among the working classes. The gap between the rich and poor — already a problem — worsened over this period, with the wealthiest Americans amassing fabulous fortunes, while workers, particularly immigrant workers, lived in appalling conditions in the cities.
Then there were the farmers. This group was isolated from the urban-industrial life that was beginning to dominate the country, promoting a sense of relative economic decline and obsolescence. And with the declining farm prices initiated by the 1873 recession, they were suffering materially as well. By the end of that decade, wholesale farm prices had declined by 28 percent. By the mid-1890s, they had fallen another 43 percent. Between the early 1870s and the mid-1890s, the price of wheat fell from $1.12 a bushel to 50 cents or less, while the price of corn decreased from 48 cents a bushel to 21 cents a bushel.
Finally, the rising "new middle class," especially its professional component, felt deeply aggrieved by the country's failure to make more progress. Despite the expert tools that were now at this class's disposal, there was little scope to apply those tools, as status quo interests fiercely resisted any kind of meliorative agenda. Thus, despite the fact that their economic situation was typically far better than the workers and farmers, their sense of frustration was as deep or deeper.
So by the time the 1890s rolled around, no one in America was really happy with the state of the country save the wealthy. Dissatisfaction was concentrated in three general areas: the evils of bigness, the evils of corruption and the evils of injustice. The concern with bigness was centered on the super-rich and the monopolies they controlled, which were believed to rig the economic game in their favor and impoverish the workers and farmers. The concern with corruption reflected the public's perception that the political parties were under the control of the big interests, who were using government to enrich themselves and fix elections, not to try to solve social problems. The concern with injustice included everything from the raw economic facts — workers' low wages and falling farm prices — to urban living conditions to racial oppression and the lack of women's suffrage. The solution, broadly speaking, was to break up and regulate bigness, reform government and elections to root out corruption and utilize expertise, and direct this reformed government toward the goal of social justice. The stage was set for a more progressive politics.
The middle class had numerous organizations and projects working on various aspects of these problems in the 1880s and early 1890s. Included here would be movements for political reform in the cities, for helping the poor (e.g., Hull House in Chicago) and for women's suffrage. And workers did have some success in self-organization through union leader Terence Powderly's Knights of Labor, which peaked at 700,000 members in 1886. But first out of the gate in terms of real political impact were the farmers. Starting with the Grange movement, then the Alliances and finally an actual political party, the People's (Populist) Party, organized farmers pressed an ambitious reform agenda focused on limiting the power of big banks, brokers and merchants and reforming government to make it more democratic. The Omaha Platform adopted at the People's Party convention in 1892 called for the abolition of national banks, a graduated income tax, direct election of senators, civil service reform, a working day of eight hours, and government control of all railroads, telegraphs and telephones. It also called for replacing the gold standard with free coinage of silver, a provision designed to combat the deflation of farm prices and make it easier for farmers to repay their debts.
In the election of 1892, the People's Party did well — extremely well for a third party in America. They pulled over a million votes, 8 percent of the total, and carried five states: Kansas, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. This strong showing raised the political profile of serious reform. But the party itself would not last long, due to the embrace of their free silver idea (though little else) by the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan in 1896. This led the People's Party to make Bryan their presidential candidate as well and essentially ended their role as an independent political force.
The result was a disaster for both the Democrats and the Populists. Both parties were indelibly identified with the economic interests of the farmers in the countryside that, in this case, were in direct conflict with the economic interests of the workers in the cities. Free silver would certainly help the farmers but workers would wind up with paychecks that bought less, thereby lowering their standard of living. Moreover, William McKinley and the Republicans defended high protective tariffs, while the Democrats/Populists opposed them. Again, this counterposed the interests of workers in the cities, who benefited from protection of the industries in which they worked, to those of farmers in the countryside.
In short, the election of 1896, despite Bryan's efforts to invoke a coalition of the "toiling masses" in the cities and countryside, pitted the interests of a declining class, the farmers, against those of a rising class, the urban workers. Moreover, Bryan's impassioned pleas were to voters who had experienced 15 years of stagnant living standards. This meant that, despite the very real discontent, voters were too fearful and unsettled to support a bold reform agenda.
All this was a recipe for defeat and defeat duly followed, driven by uniformly sharp Democratic losses in urban areas like Boston (19 percentage points), Baltimore (19 points), New York (17 points) and Philadelphia (16 points). While some of this vote would come back to the Democrats in future presidential elections — and remain there for many state and local elections — the Republican claim on a significant share of the urban working-class vote would remain.
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
But if the Populists were dead and Republicans ascendant, progressive reformers were still very much alive — in fact, they were just beginning a period of tremendous success. There were several reasons for this.
First, very little progress had actually been made in addressing the evils of bigness, corruption and social injustice — as indeed is generally the case when times are bad. Despite the efforts of Populists and reform activists, not much had changed since 1880. There were a few exceptions — the secret ballot had become widespread and a number of state legislatures had passed safety and workers' compensation laws. But this was very small beer compared to the problems progressive reformers were trying to remedy. So their agenda was, if anything, more relevant than ever.
Second, a key effect of the realigning election of 1896 was that reform sentiment was spread more uniformly across the two parties — a paradox, since the common interpretation at the time was that conservative Republicans had overcome radical Democrats. Ex-Republican urban reformers, or "Mugwumps," who had joined the Democrats in the 1880s, returned to their original party and promoted successful reform mayors like Hazen Pingree of Detroit and Golden Rule Jones of Toledo. Ex-Republican agrarian reformers who had joined the Populist Party also returned in large numbers to their original party. These returned Populists joined forces with agrarian reformers who had never left the party to create an insurgent reformist strand of Republicanism in states like Wisconsin (Robert La Follette) and Iowa (Albert Cummins).
Third, and critically, McKinley's election ushered in an era of strong economic growth that benefited all classes. Poor harvests in Europe increased demand for American farm products, while the availability of gold suddenly increased (Alaska and Yukon gold rushes, increased production from South Africa), loosening credit and the money supply. That eliminated the deflation problem that had particularly bedeviled the farmers, while American industry was boosted by the rise of mass production in sectors like auto and steel. As a result, the intense conflict between free silver and tariff protection swiftly faded into irrelevance. Between 1896 and 1913, the economy more than doubled in size and real per capita income rose by 2.5 percent per year. Unemployment, which was still 14 percent in 1896, fell to 4 percent by 1901 and stayed near that level until World War I, when it fell even lower. Manufacturing workers did particularly well, with their annual earnings rising steadily, including a spurt from $550 to $900 between 1908 and 1917.
This concatenation of factors produced an exceptionally favorable climate for progressive reform after 1896. A far-reaching reform program had already been popularized. Reform now had a powerful presence within both parties, in each case spreading far beyond the ranks of middle-class activists, who were particularly exercised by the corruption issue, to workers and farmers concerned with social and economic justice. Indeed, even within the Democratic Party, where ethnic, working class–based "bossism" had played such a central role, reformers like Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner of New York and David Walsh of Massachusetts emerged and played prominent roles. And the improved economic situation ended the conflict over free silver, which had divided workers and farmers and diverted political energy from the central parts of the reform program. This prosperity also, as we would expect, toned down nativist and other intolerant, backward-looking sentiments that always lurked at the edges of populism and promoted an optimistic orientation toward change and the common good.
In McKinley's first term, most of the reform victories were at the state and municipal level. While these victories were gratifying, reformers nevertheless felt frustrated because they knew many of their most important issues could only be addressed at the national level. But with McKinley's death through assassination in 1901 and his succession by Teddy Roosevelt, reform suddenly had the national-level advocate it needed.
In Roosevelt's first term, he moved cautiously, looking toward 1904, when he could be elected president in his own right. But he did move to establish the power of the federal government to expose and act upon monopolistic corporate practices. In 1902, he initiated a suit against a new and powerful railroad combination, the Northern Securities Company. And while the traditional Republican approach had been to favor capital, Roosevelt moved to make government more of an impartial regulator of labor and capital. In the 1902 United Mine Workers (UMW) strike, he actually threatened to seize the mines if employers did not agree to impartial federal arbitration. Eventually, the UMW won a nine-hour day and a 10 percent wage increase. It was no coincidence that such labor victories took place in this era and not during the hard times that preceded the election of 1896.
Roosevelt promised a "Square Deal" for everyone in the 1904 campaign and won re-election with a thumping 57 percent of the vote, losing no states outside the south. He then proceeded to move more authoritatively in a reform direction. In 1906, the Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act was passed, giving the Interstate Commerce Commission — whose purview had been strictly limited by the courts — the right to inspect the books of railroad companies. Also in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Acts were passed, getting the federal government into the business of protecting the people's health. In 1907, he proposed even bolder reforms, including the eight-hour day, broader worker compensation, inheritance and income taxes, and regulation of the stock market. He also vastly expanded the national forest system to take millions of acres out of private development hands.
Roosevelt had promised not to serve more than two terms and did in fact face serious opposition from conservatives in his own party who were outraged by his "radical" actions and rhetoric as president. He elected not to run for president in 1908 and instead designated his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, to carry on the progressive cause as the Republican nominee. Taft ran as a reformer, even adding some of his opponent William Jennings Bryan's reform ideas to the portfolio he inherited from Roosevelt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Optimistic Leftist by Ruy Teixeira. Copyright © 2017 Ruy Teixeira. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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