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The author of A People’s History of the United States presents the voices of the New Deal, a crucial period that continues to inspire activists today
Zinn’s work of historical memory, in an elegant new edition, offers an invaluable glimpse into a too often idealized period and reminds us that political will, not political nostalgia, is what will allow us to build a vibrant left in the present.
In his foreword to this new edition, scholar Gabe Winant looks back at how the New Deal has been understood and misunderstood over the past century, arguing that New Deal Thought is an essential repository for the voices of the period.
By situating the architects of the New Deal and its critics side by side, Zinn reminds us that the battles of the New Deal were as contested and controversial as those of our own time.
The anthology features New Deal proponents, such as Thurman Arnold, Henry Wallace, Rexford Tugwell, David Lilienthal, Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, John Maynard Keynes, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself; those who thought it went too far, among them Walter Lippmann and Raymond Moley; and those who understood, even then, that it did not go far enough, including John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Norman Thomas, Lewis Mumford, and Carey McWilliams.
“What New Deal Thought demonstrates so well is that the New Deal represented a space of political experimentation …. Zinn’s choice to present the New Deal as a cacophony rather than a unity serves us better now than it might have at any previous moment.”
—Gabe Winant
Foreword by Gabe Winant
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Selected Bibliography
Part One: Philosophic Setting
Charles A. Beard: The Myth of Rugged American Individualism (1931)
Upton Sinclair: Production for Use (1933)
Reinhold Niebuhr: After Capitalism—What? (1933)
Stuart Chase: The Age of Distribution (1934)
John Dewey: The Future of Liberalism (1935)
Thurman Arnold: A Philosophy for Politicians (1935)
Part Two: Expectations
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Every Man Has a Right to Life (1932)
Paul H. Douglas: The Roosevelt Program and Organization of the Weak (1933)
Robert M. MacIver: The Ambiguity of the New Deal (1934)
Edward A. Filene: Business Needs the New Deal (1934)
Henry A. Wallace: We Need a Declaration of Interdependence (1936)
Part Three: National Economic Planning
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Bold, Persistent Experimentation (1932)
Rexford Guy Tugwell: Planning Must Replace Laissez Faire (1932)
Gerard Swope: A Business Approach to Economic Planning (1934)
Walter Lippman: Planning Will Lead to Oligarchy (1937)
David E. Lilienthal: Planning Step by Step (1944)
Part Four: Giantism in Business
Ernest Gruening: Controlling the Giant Corporation (1933)
William O. Douglas: How Effective Is Securities Regulation? (1934)
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Stop Collectivism in Business (1938)
Thurman Arnold: The Rule of Reason in Antitrust Action (1939)
Raymond Moley: Roosevelt’s Refusal to Make a Choice (1939)
Temporary National Economic Committee: The Concentration of Economic Power (1941)
Part Five: Public Enterprise
Harry L. Hopkins: The War on Distress (1933)
Nathan Straus: End the Slums (1938)
Lewis Mumford: The Government Should Support Art (1936)
Hallie Flanagan: The Drama of the Federal Theater Project (1939)
Max Lerner: A TVA “Yardstick” for the Opinion Industries (1939)
Alvin Hansen: The Need for Long-Range Public Investment (1939)
Part Six: Organizing Labor
The Wagner Act: Unions of Their Own Choosing (1935)
Heywood Broun: Why Exclude Domestic Workers? (1935)
John L. Lewis: Industrial Democracy in Steel (1936)
Liberals Disagree on the Sit-Down Strike (1937)
Robert Morss Lovett: A G.M. Stockholder Visits Flint
Oswald Garrison Villard: A Letter F.D.R. Ought to Write
Philip Murray: How the NLRB Changed “Little Siberia” (1939)
Part Seven: The Farmer
Fiorello La Guardia: Urban Support for the Farmer (1933)
Henry A. Wallace: A Defense of the New Deal Farm Program (1938)
William R. Amberson: Damn the Whole Tenant System (1935)
John Steinbeck: The Torment of Migrant Workers in California (1936)
Carey McWilliams: Farm Workers and “Dirt Farmers” Need Power (1942)
Part Eight: Minimum Security
Hugo Black: For a Thirty-Hour Work Week (1933)
Stuart Chase: The Consumer Must Be Permitted to Consume (1933)
Frances Perkins: The Principles of Social Security (1935)
Henry Ellenbogen: The Social Security Act Is Only a Beginning (1935)
Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Fair Day’s Pay for a Fair Day’s Work (1937)
Samuel Lubell and Walter Everett: The Breakdown of Relief (1938)
Henry E. Sigerist: Government Should Also Protect “The Right to Health” (1938)
Part Nine: The Negro
Guy B. Johnson: Does the South Owe the Negro a New Deal? (1934)
John P. Davis: The New Deal: Slogans for the Same Raw Deal (1935)
Robert C. Weaver: The New Deal Is for the Negro (1935)
Walter White: U.S. Department of (White) Justice (1935)
Harold L. Ickes: Not “Special Consideration” But a “New Social Order for All” (1936)
W. E. B. Du Bois: Can Federal Action Change the South? (1940)
Part Ten: The Constitution and Social Progress
Felix Frankfurter: Social Issues Before the Supreme Court (1933)
Morris R. Cohen: Fallacies About the Court (1935)
Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Court Needs “New and Younger Blood” (1937)
The Supreme Court Retreats: Minimum-Wage Laws Are Constitutional (1937)
Part Eleven: Critiques and Perspectives
Francis Perkins: FDR Was “A Little Left of Center” (1946)
Benjamin Stolberg and Warren J. Vinton: The New Deal “Moves in Every Direction at Once” (1935)
Floyd B. Olson: A New Party to Challenge Capitalism (1935)
Norman Thomas: Socialism, Not Roosevelt’s Pale Pink Pills (1936)
John Maynard Keynes: The Maintenance of Prosperity Is Extremely Difficult (1938)
John Dewey: The Old Problems Are Unsolved (1939)
The New Republic: “Extraordinary Accomplishments” and “Failure in the Central Problem” (1940)
Index