Beginning to look at what people now referred to as the liberal consensus of the 1930s and 1940s. See what is happening in terms of what is happening is terms of the main through four of american politics. What is possible in terms of action and the way people are thinking about politics in the forties and fifties. You also had three readings, all of which in different ways, deal with the idea of political ideology and all which share a set of political assumptions about the way ideas matter to politics. We will sort of be thinking today about how they kind of frame those ideas. This is a transition class where we move from discussing the geopolitics of the cold war and the red scare into discussing sort of what else is happening in america in the 19 forties and 19 fifties. Shall we start with daniel bell . Everyones favorite reading from today. I assume there are very few questions about this one. Yes . Is he essentially saying that the political ideology are not worth it anymore. And the new kind of like focusing on Economic Issues and the government and taking that one country to be the best that he could possibly be the best way to go . That is a nice summary of a complicated argument. Hes basically saying that the big political ideologies of the 19th century in particular, have kind of run their course. They are out of steam and politics now is really about management. The adjustment of things within a kind of general consensus. It is worth thinking about the argument a little bit. It is an argument that people have made in various times of history. In another course, he makes an argument in the 1990s. If you will make those types of arguments 1950s are not a bad place to do it. He was born daniel polonsky, child of jewish immigrants in new york. Goes to City College New York back when it was free which is a nice thought. Because it was free, a lot of people would sit around the cafeteria discussing politics. You are not talking about socialism and the spanish civil war probably the white bell and his friends were. He constantly frames issues in these large sweeping historical frames. That is what he says. The big ideologies of the 19th century have sort of run out of steam. What is an ideology again . And ideology for him . Remember the section. Yes . The conversion of ideas into social levers. Great. What the hell does that mean . I dont know. You dont know. Great. That is exactly the quote i have for you. What does that mean is an interesting question . I thought it was interesting where he starts off on how to get competing social movements and simplify your ideas. You cant be up in the clouds, something they cannot grasp, it has to be real. Establishing a claim to the truth. Not just something that is an idea, it is the truth and reality. Again the commitment to action. Getting people to participate is kind of my take on the philosophical side. Getting them on board. Terrific. These are the two concepts we need to flesh out what ideology is. You turn ideas into action. Its the kind of mechanism and lover the does that. The way you do that is three steps that was just pointed out. You need to simplify the idea, you need to make a claim about it being truthful to the world and then using that simplified idea, it provides a framework to then go and act in the world and make decisions about what to prioritize, what to emphasize, what deals you can make, what compromises are allowable and what are not. Does this make sense . So in this framework. He also says it has to appeal to an emotion. Its not just purely about rational sitting in a room. It has to speak to you where you live on some level to get you to move. On this framework, what is an example of an ideology . Any of the big isms will probably help. Communism, capitalism, fascism, environmentalism, socialism, feminism, you can run through all of those and wonder where they are in the 1950s . Theyre not very present in the 19 fifties. Communism and fascism are not very popular in the 1950s. There were american fascists, the silver shirts, in the 1930s. They have been completely discredited by the 1940s. Feminism, where isnt feminism in the fifties . Its in a kind of lol. We will talk and later classes about what is actually going on. People traditionally talk about feminism as a first wave about Voting Rights nearly 20th century. And then second and third wave in the seventies and nineties. Its actually a kind of lull here in some ways. What about religion . Is religion and ideology . Hes kind of slippery about where religion fits in that whole thing. Its where the language gets less simple than in other parts. In some ways, to him and ideology is secular and about action in the world. You take the ideas and work out how to act in the world on the basis of them. Wheres religion, due to his account, what are you supposed to do with the ideas . You are supposed to change the world . What are you supposed to do with religious ideas . Prepare for the inevitable. So who do you change . Yourself. For him, religion is a kind of framework that encourages adaptation of the self to eternal truths rather than change the world in the vision of how it should be better. Make sense . He in some ways, says the big 19th century philosophies are what take the place of religion when religion goes away. And then, there is a kind of lingering version of the gst which is much more like an ideology because it is much more about changing the world. I dont think he can basically decide what to think about religion. I think the reason for that is the big framework he has got is sort of a secular one. Religion has gone away. That will be replaced by secular ideologies but then he is confronted with a bit of a problem in america in the 19 fifties which is america is becoming more religious in the 19 fifties. About 49 of people belong to a church and goes up to 69 by 50 1959. Trying to figure that out is a sort of difficult question. It has an impact on politics. Most notably, in god we trust is added to the pledge of allegiance in 1954. In 1955, and god we trust is added to the currency which had not previously been in the currency but is now being mobilized as a symbol of a new respect for really g. O. A. T. In the heart of political culture. If you have to take a guess why there is more religion in the political culture of the 1950s . Why would that be . Because communism is an atheist state. Good. To distinguish american liberalism from atheistic communism. There is a sort of clash here going on. The problem with the argument, i think it is when a lot of historians have made, is if you are someone who believes in religion. I am very secular. But if you are someone who is believes in religion. You dont believe theres a higher power to help fight the communists. He has this idea that the big ideologies have gone away a little bit and what is left is kind of a consensus around a bunch of technical, managerial kind of issues. What are those . What is the center for him . Section on three 73 when he talks about the welfare state, the mixed economy, and political pluralism. I want to spend most of todays class talking about the issue of the mixed economy. You know this phrase . The mixed economy. Now is a financier to the question if you dont know. Not particularly . I think to understand what he is talking about, you need to think a little bit about how people thought about the economics in the 19th century. Bear with me a little bit. I know when we talk about economics, its never the favorite part of this class. But economics is interested in you even if you are not interested in economics. I will give you a bit of a gloss about what is happening. In the 19th century, how is the economy supposed to work . And what is called the classical era. How many of you have done micro economics . How does the class start . In micro, what do you look at first . Years ago. Here is ago . A chart that looks Something Like this, does that sound familiar . Yes. What is that . Supply and demand. What is the supply and demand chart measuring. How many goods there are in the price of goods and the relationship between the two. Good. Where they intersect is where the supply and demand work each other out and that will determine the price and how those things will be distributed in an economy. This roughly your understanding of how supply and demand works . The idea of it is that it is self regulating, what adam smith calls the invisible hand of the economy. Supply and demand maybe cheddar and should balance itself and become sustainable and optimize the economy in general for everybody. Through the 19th century, that is considered liberal economics or fair economics. For economics. The only problem is that there are repeated crashes and depressions in the late 19th and early 20th century. 1890s, obviously the 1929 great depression. A lot of economists who think of themselves as liberals begin to question the assumption of how the economy should work. The most significant of them for our purposes is john maynard keynes. Who in the inter war period really begins a series of explorations about how economies work in real terms. Instead of focusing on macroeconomics, he develops macroeconomics and focuses on the system as a whole and how it is supposed to work. If you were taking a macroeconomic course in the 1950s or sixties, you would not start with supply and demand. Which is how microeconomics starts. You start with the how does the price mechanism work in isolation . The macroeconomic approach starts with the idea that a lot of things need to be in place before you can have a meeting full supply and demand relationship before a supply system can work. You sort of need to set that up before you can have capitalism. Operating on the traditional theory. The big intervention that canes makes, general employment theory of its to say what matters most of the economy is aggregate demand. How much demand overall there is. Not how individual consumer exercises, this is more easily understood with 1940s air political cartoons i think. The top is an economy where there are very few wages being paid to workers. People who are selling products are taking high profits, not paying any wages, which means there is the tank of purchasing power is low. People do not have the money to buy the products and therefore there is a smaller market to sell two and the entire thing begins to slow down and you produce lest. In the bottom image, more wages are being paid out so you can tip those wages into the tank for purchasing power, there are more people with more money to buy more things which means you can put more money back into production and the entire economy can speed up and grow and everyone can get more. Does this make sense . This is a similar representation of the same idea. Right. You have to spend to kind of kick things into operation. Whats people are spending, it will flow back to the worker and become a kind of virtuous circle. Questions about this . Any questions . The key challenge then is how do you make sure there is always enough purchasing power in the economy. On the one hand, you need to kind of regulate the market a little bit to make sure that workers are being paid sufficient wages. Theres no disequilibrium in the economy so that enough people can spend. The second thing that you realize is that the government can actually act to stimulate demand when there is economic downturn. At moments when there is less demand because people are getting forced out of work, the government can act to spend, to create jobs. This is the kind of intervention of the new deal. You do not balance the books, you do not let the markets fix itself. You spend aggressively to kick this process into motion. This will become the kind of orthodoxy of economics in the 19 forties and 19 fifties, to the point that by 1965, Time Magazine will put canes on the cover and write a lead article that we are all canes now. This is kind of the consensus. Does this make sense . There are some reasons to think that bell is kind of on to something when hes focusing on this idea of the mixed economy. Mix because it is neither a state run economy or free market economy. But an economy in which the state intervenes. How does the state get its money to then spent and intervene in the economy . Taxation. Taxation. Right . This is a chart of the amount of americans who are paying federal income tax every year. Right . It is massive. The top line gives us a percentage of the workforce, the bottom line is the percentage of the population. Theres a massive spike there during world war ii. Okay. 26 of the world workforce filed income tax, 87 in 1946. It stays after the war as the kind of norm. The other thing is these are the top marginal tax rates in the period. So the top owners in the 19 fifties are paying 90 cents on the dollar. It is not that many people but it is a high tax rate to redistribute to take the wealth and put it back into general circulation. The big drop that happens in two steps comes in which decade . The 80s the reagan tax cuts that really drop the marginal tax rate. If you are taking history courses the chances of you being in the top marginal tax rate are not as high as i wish they were. I want you to focus on these details. It is the middle. If you look at the kind of 5000, 8000, 10,000 dollar range in the middle income in these years, spikes as well in 1942, up from kind of eight or 9 to 30 or 40 tax. So the top is getting tax a lot more but the middle is being taxed a lot more. So the map of tax that is being gathered and spent is one key indicator that there is much more of a mixed economy in the u. S. In the 1950s. The second is that in many ways, we have had a long period of working class agitation that we have talked about in the course already. Right . Violent strikes leading through the 1930s. In 1946 is actually another wave of strikes at the end of the war. Something like 4 million workers go on strike in 1945 1946. So the militancy of the Labor Movement looks as it will continue as people demand higher wages. My favorite example of this is actually the tugboat workers in new york city they go on strike in 1946 which shuts the city down because no fuel can get into new york so the subway needs to get stopped. Which is the image of new york totally dependent on top workers that we do not usually have. By the late 1950s and 1960s then your bill will comment. But the working class is pretty happy. They do not go on strike anymore. They sort of come down. Its more among intellectuals. Part of the reason for that is because of changes to labor law that we have discussed already. And then because of a group of agreements that are made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A working class or offered better terms for work. The key example for this is called the treaty of detroit in 1950, which is an agreement between automobile workers and General Motors and across the automobile sector which is a leading segment of the economy. The deal is basically, and exchange for guarantees to go on strike less frequently and to recognize the needs need for production, the union will get cost of living adjustments so the wages will increase with inflation. They will get Pension Plans and they will get Health Insurance and kind of looked after as part of the middle class. At that point, militancy comes down and the workers have the kind of Consumer Power that they needed in order to keep the economy rolling. The idea is lets have a bigger pipe for everyone and then we will need less conflict. The third example i will give you to sort of shot there is an emerging consensus around this idea of a mixed economy is the fact that the Political Parties are really confusing to people in the 19 fifties. This is a cartoon from 1957. The joke is what . How are you supposed to tell what the difference is between a republican and democrat . This feels like he came in from outer state outer space at this point given polarization. But the parties are actually very complicated in the 1940s. Which party has an internal Division Within it. The democrats have a kind of northern wing, urban based on working class votes and African American votes. In the south, the Democratic Party is the party of white supremacy. So they are very opposed on a lot of issues and do not work very well together. The republicans are also divided between what we will call liberal republicans, progressive republicans in the northeast and more conservative republicans particularly in the south and west. And so voting does not happen in the way you think it would happen in the 19 fifties. There are weird coalitions forming. The key sign that politics is a lot closer together than the parties in the period than they are today is that in 1952, both the democrats and the republicans go to eisenhower and ask them to be the president ial candidate. With the partial exception of bloomberg, its very difficult to have a candidate where both parties say hes pretty good. No real difference to them. Eisenhower continues a lot of new deal programs around Government Spending and the economy and gets some flak from conservatives on his right flank. He writes a famous letter back to them and says, should any Political Party attempt to abolish social security, Unemployment Insurance or eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you will not hear of that party again in our political history. The idea that the new norm is the mixed economy and we have to continue some of these programs. Does this make sense . There is actually a famous american Political Science article written in 1950, a big report, that says that the american political system is really falling apart because the parties are not polarized enough. We need to make the portuguese more polarized so voters have a clear indication when they go to the polling booth about which party they are voting for. I guess a careful what you wish for is the answer to that one. Any questions about this . Are we doing all right . Yes joe . Does the government have a lot more money, during the war i mean, with all these extra people working and a lot of taxes coming in, but a lot of that government money was being spent on war goods. Ships and tanks and stuff. As soon as that was over, they had a pot. Was it easier for government to intervene when they had all of that money . Yes. It is something i want to develop in the next part of the class but the key question is all we have done so far is talk about the fact that the government should intervene in the economy in various ways. Weve said almost nothing about in what forms they should intervene. Theres a lot of different ways and places government can spend when it to stimulate the economy. In the war, for obvious reasons, it was in wartime. One of the reasons, military purposes, one of the reasons that kingston economics is really good during the war is because you cannot produce too much. The thing about producing bombs and planes is that they keep getting themselves broken during the war. You need to keep reducing the. You cannot have an overproduction. What that will look like during peacetime is a more difficult question. We will turn to that now, its a good question, where is the money going . Lets turn to slash injures peace which will be a little easier for you to make sense of it. Though he did well with bell. Schlesinger is writing in 1948 and is arguing that there is a sort of consensus forming in the heart of american politics. He calls the vital center. That is where we need to be. Not to write and not to left. He makes a helpful argument i think that we normally think of politics on a left right spectrum. He actually tells us in the beginning of this piece where that comes from. Where does that idea come from . Calling conservative parties right and progressive parties left. The french parliament, its just where people were sitting during those discussions. Those who informed our left right idea then we carry to this day. He says it makes no idea it makes no sense to conserve this idea nowadays . He argues it is more of a circle. But you cannot really define communism and fascism on a traditional left and right scale. And that the left right scale non fascist right and non communist left. He says if you keep going too far to the left, you end up taking away Property Rights and stepping on individual liberties. If you go too far to the right, you do the same thing. Right . So you also end up if you go too far on either end of the spectrum, you come back around it forms a circle and you end up at the bottom. Does this make sense . This is an argument you should be familiar with. A lot of people have compared hitler and stolen and said they are basically the same Technology Even though they understand themselves being at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. The argument is given this better understanding of politics, where do you need to be . The center. You need to stay in the center right . Because if you move too far to the left or right, if you end up creating deep problems. When you read this, how many of you had heard of schlesinger before reading this piece . Those of you have not heard of schlesinger, do you think he was a conservative or a liberal . Or were you not sure . Im guessing maybe liberal. Okay. How come . Probably just because of the time period. If you are conservative you would not be afraid of just claim that everyone on the left is a communist. Sam . Given that he is advocating for what is essentially cultural theory, i dont think hes too far neither side but i would think hes liberal. He makes a strong case as the center being the place to be but hes a person of the liberal left, the non communist left, his models of europe that he uses are the non communist social left. It is his idea about what we should be right . He was actually very involved in Democratic Politics his entire life. He set up the americans for democratic action, one of the first super pac, key lobby groups. Court historian for jfk and the kennedy years. Harvard historian, son of a harvard historian. He is making a case that the center is actually the right place for the liberal democrats to be. That where that is is if you go too far left from there, you basically run the risk of communism and a slippery slope down the road on stepping on Property Rights. If you go too far to the right, you are also having a problem. It is kind of been interestingly conservative argument in its form before we get into its details. Its assumption is, it is one thing to say if you are here you can go to the left or the right. With experimentation. Right . It is another thing to say that actually the circle starts going like that. The minute you move from the center. It is unclear how much wiggle room schlesinger things you have and theres a domino effect to the piece that should remind you a little bit of the geopolitics we have been reading. The theory about slippery slope. He is very vague about where it is and in that sense it is kind of conservative and its self. The best part you could be in the circle is at the top and either side you take begins the slippery slope. And perhaps the top is a little bit more of a plateau and gives you more room to maneuver. The argument i want to make in the next part of the class is that actually, that the key form of the mixed economy, what actually is centrist liberalism in the 1940s is pretty conservative for very particular reasons related to the cold war. So you have a consensus that the government should spend some money. That it should be involved in regulating the economy. Schlesinger thanks this means we are in the realist left framework. This should remind you of sydney hook, realist liberalism, daniel bell and his article was dedicated to cindy hook. These people are all talking to each other in the 1940s and 1950s. I want to argue that that center is defined by the cold war in two important ways. So what is seen as the left most edge of liberalism that you can go to without risking communism, that that edge is defined by a few features of the cold war we have been discussing. The first is what we have spent the last four classes talking about which is what . The red scare. The red scare. So we have just spent classes talking about the way any left associations in the 1940s and 1950s runs the risk of having you accused of communism with huge personal costs to your role in politics. This will shape the kind of possibilities for what policies are opposable and able to be put into play in the late 1940s. Trumans Domestic Program is referred to as the fair deal. That is how he packages him self in this and other ways, he is just desperately trying to inherit fdrs mantle. Fdr had a new deal i will have a fair deal. One thing he a few things he proposes is for employment, the government will spend money if people are unemployed to create work so that everyone can have a job. What happens to that proposal . This legislation drafted and passed to the senate in 1946 . Then it goes to the house. The house is more conservative. In the house, a substitute bill is proposed and written by the chamber of commerce. It says, no full employment. What we should do is encourage maximum employment and no Government Spending but we should just to fact finding to work out what the best ways to create maximum employment in the private sector are. What are the arguments of the proponent of the hospital to get rid of the Senate Version . They argue that it is quote, not greatly distanced from neil marks in thinking and is tainted by the school of thought that is dominant in the government. This left intervention is too close to communism. What i will give you as another example is one that is true today. Truman proposes that there should be Government Health care, single payer. There is a massive lobbying campaign by the American Medical Association and private insurance firms. I spent about two and a half Million Dollars on propaganda. The group in favor of single payer spends about 50,000 dollars and does not have the kind of money to advertised that. Part of the Advertising Campaign against single payer is built around the idea that this is worryingly communist an implication. Actually, one of the pamphlets quotes lennon essaying, socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state. The only problem is that lennon never said anything like that. It is one of the ways that government funded health care is presented as being too radical communist for the u. S. That is created a very unusual situation in the u. S. For an advanced industrial democracy in the second half of the 20th century which is all health care as been private until the creation of medicare in the 1960s. As you see today it is an ongoing problem. Medicare, medical aid insurance is tied to employment in the united states. In a way it is not tide necessarily in that way in other countries. Yes sam . I want to bring up how almost its certainly relevant, inaudible . 1940s. . 1940s,. The limits of what is proposal is in part limited by accusations of communism. On the other hand, the type of spending that is very justifiable is military and National Defense spending. Eisenhower is attacked in the 19 fifties by some conservative republicans who are like why are we not cutting taxes . Eisenhower gives a National Television address where he justifies why it is important to for there to be a high tax rate. Which is not republican politics in our generation. Part of his case, he says, is that 70 cents on the dollar but you are being taxed is being spent for National Security. So we are not just doing this to make peoples lives better, we are doing it to protect the nation and the public good. What you can get in the period is massive expansion of federal Government Spending if it can be justified as tied to National Security and some front. Not if it is tied to other social benefits. Full bright, the senator, actually looks into this in the late 1960s and calculates that between 1945 and 1967, the federal government spent Something Like 904 billion dollars on military related expenses. They spent 94 billion dollars on all other functions. Right . So that money is tied directly to military expenditure. This actually takes on surprising forms. What it means politically is that if you want to get something funded by the federal government, your case is helped massively if you can tied to defense spending. One of the. . Wasnt the accusation in there in the article is that because people would not be as inquisitive as to where the money went because it is National Security or in defenses, i cannot tell you, they will not dig as much into it about where the money is being spent versus Unemployment Insurance or something else. There is a secrecy element to things like defense budgets. But there is a public side of this as well that im trying to argue has a political logic that is, people will stand up and public and say we are willing to spend taxpayer dollars on National Defense issues, we are not willing to spend taxpayer dollars on social benefits. Because the market should determine those things. But the market cannot provide public goods of the sort of National Defense requirements. For instance, one of the big public spending projects of the 1950s is the highway act. Massive expenditure to expand the highway system. This is the era of the car obviously. But this is how it is defined, this is a 1970s pamphlet. The National System of interstate and defensive highways. Part of the logic for highway spending is that it provides for mobility of logistics. You can keep some of the nukes on the road so you can move them from facility to facility. This is important to the National Defense to have a strong infrastructure of transportation. The same thing happens with university and educational spending. Right . Theres not a lot of federal spending on high schools for many reasons, one is directly linked to segregation which we will discuss in a few classes. Its also not the kind of thing people want to justify an american spending money on until the soviets look like they are winning the space race. Sputnik goes up. The americans equivalent does not go very far. The joke is that its called kaput nick, not sputnik. Then you get the National Education act which will put a lot of money into math and Science Education in the u. S. Theres also debate during these years about science grant funding. The creation of a National Science foundation to see money in scientific advances that benefits the nation. That never has very much money. By 1952, its budget is about three and a half Million Dollars a year. Meanwhile, the office of Naval Research alone is spending 120 Million Dollars a year providing Research Money to universities we do weapons related developments. In all of these ways, the kind of money you can spend is best justified if it is tied to military or National Defense purposes. I actually think these two factors go together to limit the range of possibilities in america in the 1940s and 1950s. On the one hand, if you propose something to radical looking you could be accused of being a communist, on the other hand no one will question federal spending if you are doing it for National Security. I want to give you an example to sort of suggest how these two things work in practice. This is leon keys a link which i do not think any of you have heard of. Maybe with one example exception. Hes very involved in new deal politics in the 1930s. He comes out of socialist politics in the 1930s. He drafts the wagner act in 1935. He is committed to increasing working class wages to make for a greater aggregate demand in the economy. He is a keynesian. His wife is involved in consumer politics in the 1930s, making sure people have enough money to spend so the economy can work. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, they spent 45 years being investigated for communism in the loyalty hearings and the sort we have talked about in the last two classes. What happens . They keep their jobs. She develops a series of stomach also due to the stress. They keep their jobs but adjust their arguments. They continue to believe that the federal government has a big role in spending to make the economy work. But they stop making the case in terms of consumer demand and working class rights. Keyserling well becoming one of the key advisers on the council of economic advisers and argue into the 1950s about big Government Spending. He will make the argument in terms of National Security spending. He will be the economic consulted to and this 68 where he argues that you can win the cold war, we need a massive defense establishment. He keeps the same commitment to keynesian economics but trims it away from its connection to working class radicalism and retargets it around National Security interests. So make sense . Bill has an argument that we talked about earlier which is the end of ideology comes about in part because the ideas have run out of steam. Big ideas have gone away. You can make a case that in some ways, they have not just gone away, but the history of mccarthy isnt and the red scare and the cold war confrontation shapes what keynesian looks like in the u. S. So it is focused much more around National Security then social expenditure. When keyserling moves away from social spending, does he have a theory that if you spend all of this money on the fence that some of it will go to the workers . Yes. He is just figured out a different way to do. It in some sense. That would be an argument. At some level, were trying to get into the psychology of an individual and you read some books about him where they say hes a cynical sellout, others say its the best the bad times. What version of that and how you want to pass that i think is open to question. But the move is kind of the broader pattern. You start saying the money goes through one route and not another. Then you justify that in various ways. How effective the trickle down is is one question. But im sure there are multiple ways when we are talking about is an ideological change that happens over 12 years. He gets older, his attitude to the world changes, hes like everybody else reading news about what is happening in europe and getting concerned that communist aggression. It is a complicated change which i am presenting to simply. But the shift i think is interesting. It is also the case that a lot of arguments about spending will say it does not matter where the money goes. It is just important that you put it into the economy and it will then have consequences later. I think that, im not an economist, but simply acting logically, it kind of matters where the money goes in the first instance. If it is going to have downstream consequences no matter where he goes, what matters less are the longterm consequences, what are the short term benefits of promoting particular parts of Economic Activity . And putting it into defense spending, promotes a type of activity. This is a problem in universities today. That grant money goes to certain types of projects and not to others which produces certain types of social benefits. If you are just thinking about the dollar, it is all going into the economy, but it goes into the economy into particular pockets that have an impact. Does that make sense . The argument against military spending is that its a dead end. The jet that you build does nothing to grow the economy. Its great for defense as opposed to building a house, building a car, or building machinery that can then be used to build more. That was the economists argument against all this military spending. Theres one half a century ago who argued you must not just shovel sand. If all you are trying to do is pump money into the economy, shoveling sand is in this unproductive as military spending, leaving aside the defense aspect. Because you are not creating productive goods. I would not are necessarily agree with that. Boeing make military aircraft in turn around and make jetliners for everyone else. Even if the products, fighter planes themselves, they do contribute to companies that go on. Im talking about the 1940s and 1950s. Boeing listened. Youre talking about the trickle effects and flow on effects of where the spending goes. Figuring out with the aggregate benefit versus the particular benefit. One argument is that the space race is a colossal loss of public money yet there are a lot of Technological Developments that come out of that that have downstream benefits overall. The flip side is who reaps the most benefits . Its usually the Big Companies that develop the patents. Some discuss this as the socialization of risk but not a profit. There is a complicated set of arguments that we could talk about more for the probably the rest of the semester. Theres something i want to move on to today. Is there anything else . Questions about the big picture pattern then im trying to show . Would you make a comment up eisenhowers warning on the military Industrial Complex . He ends by providing a warning about the military Industrial Complex by saying theres too much spending going into military industrial activity and captured the public spending process. What is most important thing is that the first drafts of the speech is called the military industrial congressional complex because he has realized that what defense spending does is that it compartmentalizes production so that every district has one part of the plane so that there is a Congress Person whos invested in voting out. He realizes that unless you break that, congress will not make real decisions in the public good. We will have too many incentives to two service to industry. I think he decides, im not exactly sure why, but he decides that calling it the military industrial congressional in his Farewell Speech would be too much of a shock across the bow of congresspeople. Its actually about the intersection between military Industrial Power and congressional politics and the distorting effect it has on electoral democracy. We can think hear about the senator from boeing from Washington State and so forth. People who are seen as advocates for particular interests. The general argument we have been developing is that bell says there is a move to the center. Theres some evidence that the feels kind of right. Then the question was, were actually is the center . What is being called the center, is it more to the left or more to the right . How should we understand it . I have sort of argued that the cold war moves that center more along the conservative spectrum than we might have anticipated from the way someone like schlesinger understands himself. Both because of ideological pressure and the way we should justify defense spending. The one grand irony of American History, not the only grand irony, the grand irony of today s class is that the exact moment we are talking about the emergence of a fairly conservative center that has purged the left from american politics under the banner of mccarthy is, William Buckley comes along and starts the National Review. You read the kind of Mission Statement of National Review for todays class. What is buckley so upset about in this piece . The media and its time was not really doing what it was supposed to do. It was kind of from what i understood, it was kind of supporting the government when it should have been critiquing it . Critiquing it from which perspective . Wasnt it that from whatever opposite side the political spectrum the government was in. Right . He thinks theres too much of something and not enough of something else. He wants the review to fill the gap. One small government and less interference. Small government. Libertarian economics. He wants to report whether it is on one and or the other. Report more on the conservative side. Do not take middle ground because it is not taking anything. Good. On page one 96 explicitly says the middle of the road is repugnant. Why are we all in the middle of the road . We are all too centrist. We are all kind of belief in big Government Spending and argues the media as part of the problem as well. There are no meaningful journals of libertarian conservative thought. There is no way for us to get our ideas out. It is kind of an interesting how much he emphasizes in this piece small magazines and also education. The idea that through education you spread your ideas and that gives you political power down the. Road who was William Buckley . Ive seen him described as the father of. And the spiritual genesis of the later reagan area. Exactly. He has a Television Show for a long time on pbs. We will watch a little bit of it later in the semester. He had people on to debate. He emerges in 1955 as the kind of godfather of in a merging conservative movement. He gets money to start this magazine, the National Review, to be the central organ of conservative thinking. Before that, he had written two books. The first on the left is a book about his time at yale called god and man at yale which is basically an attack on the secular propaganda that is happening in modern universities. Conservatives have been upset about Political Correctness on campus for an awfully long time. This current round is the latest substantiate. In the second book, he cowrites with his friend from yale. Brent bosel was looking a bit stone on the left. Its called mccarthy and his enemies. Its the defenses of mccarthy as a patriot that is being misunderstood by the american people. Bosel, looks kind of like the joke, or is actually an important figure himself. He will later be a speech writer for Barry Goldwater and ghost right conscious of the conservative as another figure establishing the ideological template for various conservative republicanism. It will come back to the fore in the 1960s. What is happening in this piece then is basically the rearticulation of a libertarian philosophy. He argues on one 97 that the Competitive Price system is indispensable. It is a return to like 19th century ideas about the state needs to be out of the economy. In this regard, he is influenced by this guy, frederik hayek, an austrian economist who had formed his ideas about the need for the price mechanism to be the kind of center of Economic Activity in inter war vienna where he was very upset by riots on the streets as people were trying to kind of imagine a more socialist viennese politic. He then, in the 1930s, leaves vienna and brought to the London School of economics. The London School of economics really wants some bigtime economist to build their Economy Department because they are in the shadow of cambridge which is where canes is. In the terms of institutional politics, we need to do Something Different then keynesianism, we need to hire some kind of rival. They hire hayek in the late 1930s who publishes a book called the road to serve them. It will become a surprise bestseller in the united states. Most University Presses pass on it at first. They think keynesianism is popular. It gets private funding from the university press. A business person gives the university of chicago enough money to hire hayek for ten years. Hes been paid for on a private line and not the university. These kind of institutional politics are interesting given where we are. George mason, rising is a university in the 1970s and 1980s, realizes it cannot compete with a lot of the Mainstream Research universities that exist. It needs to find a market niche. It will begin hiring a variety of libertarian economists including James Buchanan and building and Economics Department around the ideas of hayek. We have a set of high extends a george mason. This will position itself as a sort of institutional home for a particular vision of the economy. What i want to briefly do is introduce give you an overview of how hayeks book works and i want you to compare it to keynes. Can you see . This is what keynes book looks like when you put through. Which is to say, it looks a little bit like what you expect an economic textbook to look like. A lot of numbers and matt. It is a fairly big and have the book called the general theory. This is the road to serfdom. Its a lot smaller. If you flick through, you will see there is almost no. In fact there is no math whatsoever. It is a work of political philosophy. I raised this is a point not because theres nothing wrong with political philosophy. But a lot of libertarian economists will argue that after the 1970s and 1980s, that keynesian does not work mathematically. If you do the math properly like milton friedman, you need a small government to have a really vibrant economic growth. That is not what hayeks argument is about. It is not about output or economic terms at all. It is about the political consequences of federal central Government Spending. Actually the math in the 1930s and 1940s is in the bigger book in keynes. That is the road to serfdom. Not as big a book but even that is a little bit too much for 1940s americans. It gets turned into a Readers Digest version which is this much which is how a lot of people actually read it. But never fear, even your colleagues in the 1940s just wanted the overheads. They did not even want to read a short book like this. They wanted the Cartoon Version which was published in look magazine. I can show you what the argument of the book was in basically a dozen easy steps. This is how a road to serfdom makes its case. First during the war you want to do planning. Everyone likes planning and they want to keep planning after the war. The planners say everything is going to be great once our plan is in place. It turns out they kind of they cannot agree with each other. When they cannot agree with each other, it makes people in the citizenry disagree with each other as well and so then the plan is stoke up and everyone is arguing about how to plan the economy. Then they have to sell people on their plant with propaganda and a controlled press. Then, the way you begin to get agreement is you get some big figure come along and make the case that this is what we should all be doing. That dictatorial figure will convince everyone that they are the ones we should really run the economy. Once you give that person power over the economy, that party will then take over the country and then they will need to justify themselves to identify someone to persecute. Right, as they point out helpfully here, in germany the negative aim with antisemitism. The experience of nazi germanys front and center on their mind. No one opposes the leaders plan and as a result, you get told what to do. You get told how much you are going to get paid. You get told what you think. You get told how to spend your recreation time. Again, it is really interesting, but the worst possible thing you can imagine in a dictatorship. The second worst thing. The worst thing is you get shot. The second worst thing is they break youre golf clubs. Then you do calisthenics. That is the road to serfdom. 18 steps from you want to intervene in the economy, to dissidents. He puts a lot of caveats in here. This is just simple. It captures a key part of the argument though. Which is, there are political, philosophical reasons not to do government planning or Government Intervention because the risks of a growing government state or two great, not to the economy, but to liberty and Civil Liberties and freedom. Hayek understands him self to be a liberal. We will call himself a liberal his entire life. This is one of the origins of the confusion im sure you all have around the term liberal. Which is like what is a liberal . Its a liberal someone on the left . Is a liberal and neoliberal. In australia, the conservative party is called the liberal party because they were the liberals in the late 19th century which is how hayek understands himself. He is a defender of an old liberal tradition that has gone out of fashion in the era of keynes. Earlier in the class, we defined and ideology. What was an ideology . We have three steps. To simplify your philosophy, simplify your ideas, establish a claim to the truth and then demanded into action. Get people moving in toward something. Good. This isnt ideology under those terms. It simplifies a complicated issue around how much intervention a government can have in an economy. And makes a claim to truth which is look at what happened in europe right . And, then it says as a result you need to resist the encroachment of Government Authority into the economy and protect a market as free. The seed for this will be planted in the 1950s with people like buckley and hayek making the case for the ideas. Then it will be transmuted into the Republican Party in the 19 sixties particularly with the eighth election of cold water, but then eventually with the reagan revolution. And so one of these stories that come out of the cold war consensus period is that americans refer to the kind of 1940s and 1950s as a sort of liberal consensus. As a long new deal. As a kind of centrists where liberal ideas about the government dominated. But actually, the cold war shapes very deeply where that consensus is. It is not that far to the left, particularly when you compare the country to the kind of welfare states and Government Interventions that occurred in other european states at around the same time. But ironically, the partisan conflict than emerges out of the 1950s and 1960s has set the template for the days wealth. Which is you have figures like buckley arguing that we need to reject that fairly conservative centrism in favor of true conservatism. That they will be true ideologues of the right, which is not a critique that buckley would be offended by. That is how he understands himself. On the other hand, the liberals will be making a case much more similar to schlesinger, which is the place we need to be is in the center. If we go too far to the left, we are communists. I think that sets the template for both major Political Parties from the 1960s to the present. We will see how the democratic primaries go today. You know that is a debate the democrats are still having. Do you go to the center or do you go to the left . What is the path to electability . The republicans have not been having that debate for a while. They have had an argument about a vision of the conservative philosophy a government that stems from hayek an buckley. And so the american political spectrum is kind of skewed even though we think of the center as something that was defined in the 19 fifties. This makes sense . Any questions before we begin to wrap up . Simon. You mentioned something about aaron rand being the high philosopher of the quote unquote conservative libertarian moment meant. That is something to mention about ayn rand one of the interesting things about rand is the relationship between her and buckley on the issue of religion. Rand is a secularist. Buckley wets his catalyst isnt to his libertarianism. In some ways, even though paul ryan and those figures really like rand, i think it represents the kind of conservative emphasis in america in the late 20th century less well than the figure of buckley. The fusion of conservative, religious family values with free Market Economics that defines the kind of political agenda of the Republican Party. Whereas, rand is idiosyncratic in her vision of the world. She is not a coalition builder. One of the things about buckley is his identifying political coalition. Which is what schlesinger also thinks he is doing. His idea, is this paragraph races thanks we got rid of the left of the Democratic Party, proves we are good centrists. There is a slight ideological veil on both sides of the party. Lasting before we wrap up. Theres an interesting passage at the end of bell where he talks about the fact that there are still these kinds of unfulfilled emotions, anxieties of modern life that people want to work out how to change the world and do not know what will fulfill them. I want you to bear that in mind as we shift in the second half of the course to thinking about domestic politics. What we will now do is move within the kind of politics of the quote unquote liberal consensus. And we will look at particular issues. Housing, welfare spending, education, segregation, sexual politics and the debates there are about how those problems can be resolved and how the world of the 1950s makes people seek meaning and transformation and alienates them in certain ways. So, bell is writing in 1960 that there is this ongoing problem of alienation, a lack of fulfillment. The parameters there, when we move from the realm of formal politics, Political Parties, political philosophy, into the world of sort of personal politics and personal experience will also be reflected in our discussions in the second half of the semester. Some good . All right. I look forward to those conversations in a few weeks. Have a good spring break. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures and history. Next on lectures in history, Virginia Commonwealth University professor Nicole Myers Turner discusses the lives of formerly enslaved African Americans following emancipation. She explains how they define freedom for themselves while the federal government debated political and legal definitions. Professor turner also discusses the Important Role of religious and educational institutions in newly freed american African American communities. All right so today we will be talking about the meaning of freedom. I wanted to capture our sort of earlier discussions about the meaning of freedom when we talked about free communities, free black folks in the north and the south and how we came to this way of representing freedom. Freedom to freedom. This question of fed
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