Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer

In 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt identified "four essential human freedoms." Three of these—freedom from fear, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion—had long been understood as defining principles of liberalism. Roosevelt's fourth freedom—freedom from want—was not. Indeed, classic liberals had argued that the only way to guarantee this freedom would be through an illiberal redistribution of wealth. In Freedom from Want, Kathleen G. Donohue describes how, between the 1880s and the 194...