At the target of the other plane. This is live ammunition, of course. Live ammunition, colorcoded bullets. They did this with a wide variety of different planes. They served as civilians until the 1970s when they started a Grassroots Campaign to be recognized as veterans. Its an incredible, incredible campaign. And they finally were given veterans benefits. This is at the in congress after they testified. This is 1977 when president carter finally recognized them as veterans in the United States. All of their papers are here, if you guys want to serve as interns in the womens collection. We have that. And you can work for their papers directly. But, again, we could have an entire semester on women in war and this is just a quick and dirty version of it. Think about women in these three ways of working here in the United States, domestically and abroad and ill help you organize your thoughts. Do you have any questions or any final ideas or thoughts about this . Thank you, guys, well continue our conversation in our regular class on thursday. Good job, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Have a good day. Thank you, you too. Good job, guys. Thanks. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, San Diego State University Professor lectures on the vietnam war. He looks at the conflict from u. S. Military escalation in 1965 to the fall of saigon ten years later and the competing interests of the americans, chinese and soviets in the region. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv on cspan3. Exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this Labor Day Weekend, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, historians discuss how we remember the civil war and whether to remove or contextualize confederate monuments. Sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifacts, well preview photographs of native americans from the Smithsonian National museum of the American Indians collection which includes more than a half million images. At 8 00 p. M. On the presidency, a look at president ial retreats including abraham lincolns summer cottage and stories of the kennedys, clintons and obamas in marthas vineyard. August marked the 75th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. We look back to the events that led to the bombing and their legacy. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this Labor Day Weekend on cspan3. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. On lectures in history, george mason University Professor teaches a class about u. S. Politics and economics in the early cold war period of the late 1940s and 50s. He argues that with extreme i ideology completely discredited, a consensus formed in the u. S. Around centrst political groups. Today well be looking at kind of the rest of the political landscape, beginning to look at what people refer to as the liberal consensus of the 1940s and 1950s and trying to work through what actually is happening in terms of the kind of main thoroughfare of american politics, the policies for Political Action and the way that people are thinking about that in the 1940s and 50s. You had three readings all of which deal with the kind of idea of political ideology and all of which share a set of assumptions about the way that ideas matter to politics. Be thinking about how they frame those ideas. This is a transition class where we move from discussing the geopolitics of the cold war, into discussing what else is happening in america in the 1940s and 1950s. So shall we start with daniel bell . Everybodys favorite reading from today. I assume there are very few questions about this one . Yeah . Is he essentially saying that, like, the political ideology that came about in the imperil age are not worth it anymore and these new kind of like focusing on Economic Issues and focusing on the government and just making that one country the best it could possibly be, the best way to go . Yeah. Hes basically thats a nice summery of a complicated argument. The political ideologies of the 19th centuries in particular have run their course. Theyre out of steam and theres really politics is about management, you know, the adjust of the kind of things within a general consensus. Its worthying about the argument a little bit. Its an argument that people have made at various times in history. A similar argument was made in the early 1990s. Its an argument that keeps coming back. Belle writes this in 1960. This is bell. He was born daniel, child of immigrants in new york. Went to city college in new york. And people could spend a lot of time arguing politics because it was free. And he constantly frames issues in these large, sweeping historical frames. He says, the big ideologies of the 19th century have kind of run out of steam. Whats an ideology for him . Remember the section where he yeah . [ inaudible ]. Ideas into social levers. What does that mean . I dont know. Thats exactly the quote i have for you. What does that mean is an interesting question. I thought it was interesting where he starts to talk about how to get people moving, you cant be up in the clouds and bring it down to something that they really can either grasp or like. And then the established claim to the truth. This is my idea. Its not something thats just an idea. Its the truth and reality and going into the again, the commitment to action. Kind of my take on it. Lets get out of the philosophical part and get down into reality to get people on board. This is exactly the kind of two concepts that we need to flesh out what an ideology it is. Its the way you turn ideas into action. And you do it in the three steps that bob just pointed out. You have to simplify the kind of idea. You have to make a claim about it being truthful to the world, and then using that simplified idea, it provides you a framework to act in the world to 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 . In this framework, he says, has to appeal to an emotion. Its not purely about rational sitting in a room, but it has to speak to you where you live to get you moving in the world. On this framework, whats an example of an ideology . Any of the big isms will probably help. Communism, capitalism, fascism, socialism, feminism. If you run through all of those and think about where are they in the 1950s, theyre not very operative in the 1950s. Communism and socialism are not superpopular in the 1950s. Fascism, theyve been discredited by the 1940s for fairly obvious reasons. Feminism. Where is feminism in the 1950s . Its in a lull. Well talk about later classes about whats going on. People talk about feminism in the early 20th century, focused on Voting Rights and a second wave emerging in the 1960s and 1970s. Environmentism isnt on the scene yet. Theres a lull here in some ways. What about religion . The religion an ideology . In bells terms. Its a myth. Its a myth. Yeah. Hes slippery on where religion fits into this whole thing. Some of that language there is where he gets less simple than in other parts. And hes got an argument that its secular and about action in the world. That you take the ideas and work out how to act on the world on the basis of them. Whereas religious, what are you supposed to do with the ideas. Are you supposed to change the world . What are you supposed to do with religious ideas . Who do you change . Yourself. 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 your idea about how it should be better. He in some ways begins by saying the big philosophies of what takes the place of religion, when religion goes away. Its much more about changing the world. I dont think he basically can decide what to think about religion. I think the reason for that is the big framework is a very secular one. Religion has gone away. And hes going to be replaced by secular ideologies and confronted with a problem in america in the 1950s, which is america is becoming more religions in the 1950s. About 49 of people in 1940 belong to a church. Its up to about 69 by 1959. Theres an expansion in religion and trying to work out what thats about is a difficult question. But it has an impact on politics. Most notably, in god we trust is added to the pledge of allegiance in 1954 and in 1955, in god we trust is added to the currency which had not previously been in the currency but is immobilized as a symbol of religion at the heart of american political culture. If you had to take a guess of why theres more religion in the 1950s. Communism is an atheist state. To distinguish american liberalism from godless communism and theres a clash here going on. The problem with the argument and i think its one that a lot of historians have made, if you believe in religion, and im very secular. You dont think you come to a higher personal belief in god in the 1950s because its helping prove a point against the communists. Okay. Hes got 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 . Whats the center for him . Section on 373 when he talks about the welfare state, the mixed economy, and political pluralism. I want to spend most of todays class talks about the issue of the mixed economy. Do you know this phrase, the mixed economy . No is a fine answer to the question. Not particularly. I think to understand what hes talking about, you need to think a little bit about how people thought about economics in the 19th century. Bear with me a little bit. When we talk about economics, its never your favorite part of this class. Economics is interested in you even if youre not interested in economics. In the 19th century, how is the economy supposed to work in whats called the classical era . How many of you have done microeconomics . How does the class start in micro . What do you look at first . That was years ago. Years ago. A chart that looks Something Like this, does that sound familiar. What is that . Supply and demand. What is the supply and demand chart measuring . How much how many goods there are and what the demand of the goods are and whats the relationship between the two. And where they intersect is where the demand and the supply work each other out and that will produce the price for any good and that will determine how things are distributed in an economy. Does this make sense . Its roughly your understanding about how supply and demand works. The idea of it, its selfregulating. What adam smith called the invisible hand of the market. Demand and supply will meet each other and that will be a way to work out how the economy should work and it should balance itself and become sustainable and optimize the economy generally for everybody. Through the 19th century, thats considered liberal economics. Laissezfaire economics. Free economics. The only problem is, there are repeated crashes and depressions in the late 19th and early 20th century. 1873, 1890s and 1929 and the great depression. And the most significant of them for our purposes is john kings. And he develops the discipline of macro economics, think about the system as a whole and how its supposed to work. If you were taking an introductory economics course in the 1950s, 1960s, you wouldnt start with supply demand. You start with how does the price mechanism work in isolation. The macro economics approach starts with a lot of things have to be in place before you can have a meaning supply demand relationship before a price system can work. And you need to set that up before you can have capitalism operating on the traditional theory. The big intervention that is made in 1936 in a general theory is to say what matters most to the economy is aggregate demand. How much demand overall there is. Not how any individual consumer decides what price to set on things, but how much purchasing power there is in the economy overall. This is more easily understood with 1940s era 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, theyre not paying many wages which means there is the tank of purchasing power is low. People dont have money to buy the products and therefore theres a smaller market to sell to and the entire thing begins to slow down and you produce less. 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 รท into prod 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. You got to spend to kind of kick things into operation once people are spending, it will flow to the worker and become a circle. Questions about this . Any questions . So the key challenge then is how do you make sure theres always enough purchasing power in the economy . On the one hand, you need to regulate the market a little bit to make sure that workers are being paid sufficient wages and theres a disequilibrium in the economy so enough people can spend. And you realize that the government can act to stimulate demand when theres an economic downturn. At moments when theres less demand because people are getting forced out of work, the government can act to create jobs. This is the kind of intervention of the new deal. You dont balance the books, you act aggressively to spend to try to kick this process into motion again. And this will become kind of the orthodox of economics in the 1940s and 1950s. And by 1965, Time Magazine will put him on the cover. This is kind of the consensus. Does this make sense . So there are some reasons to think that bell is onto something when hes focusing on this idea of the mixed economy. Mixed because its neither a staterun economy nor a freemarket economy but an economy in which the state intervenes. How does the state get its money to then spend and intervene in the economy . Taxation, right . This is a chart of the amount of americans who are paying federal income tax every year. The top line is as a percentage of the workforce, the bottom line is as a percentage of the population. Theres a massive spike there during what . World war ii. World war ii. 26 of the workforce files federal income tax in 1940. 87 in 1946 and it stays after the war as the kind of norm. The other thing that will be surprising to you, these are the top marginal tax rates in the period. So the top earners in the 1950s are paying 90 cents on the dollar. Thats 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. Thats the reagan tax cuts. We talk a lot about the top marginal tax rate. If youre taking history courses, the chances of you being in the top marginal tax rate are not as high as i wish they were. This is hard to read. I dont want you to focus on the details. Its the middle. If you look at the 8,000, 10,000 range in these years, spikes as well in 1942. Up from 89 tax to 30 to 40 tax. The top is getting taxed a lot, but the middle is being taxed a lot more. The amount of tax that is being gathered and spent is a key cater th indicator that theres a mixed economy. The second is that in many ways, we had a long period of workingclass agitation that weve talked about in the course already. Violent strikes leading through the 1930s. In 1946, theres actually another wave of strikes at the end of the war. Something like 4 million workers go on strike in 1945, 1956. It looks like its going to continue as people demand higher wages. My favorite example is the tugboat workers in new york city go on strike which shuts the city down. No fuel can get into new york. The subway has to get stopped. An image of new york dependent on tugboat roerpoperators that dont normally have. Daniel bell will comment that the working class are pretty happy. Theyre not going on strike anymore. The people who are angry are the intellectuals. Its not the working class anymore. And part of the reason for that is that because of changes to labor law that we talked about already, right, and then because of an a set of agreements that are made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the working class are offered better terms for work. The key example for this is called the treaty of detroit in 1950. Which is an agreement between the united automobile workers and General Motors which will apply across the automobile sector. And the deal is basically in exchange for guarantees to go on strike, less frequently, to recognize the need for production, the union will get cost of living adjustments so the wages will increase with inflation. Theyll get Pension Plans and Health Insurance and will be looked after as part of the middle class. At that point, it sort of calms down and the workers have the kind of Consumer Power they need in order to keep the economy working. Lets have a bigger pie for everybody and well have less conflicted. The third example ill give you to show that theres an emerging consensus around this consensus idea of a mixed economy is the fact that the Political Parties are really confusing to people in the 1950s. This is a cartoon from 1957. The joke is what . How are you supposed to tell what the difference is between a republican and a democrat, which i imagine this feels like it came in from outer space to you at this point given polarization. But the parties are very publy kated in the 1940s. Each party really has an internal Division Within it. The democrats have a kind of northern wing, right, urban, based on working class votes and africanamerican votes. In the south, the Democratic Party is the party of white supremacy. So, theyre very opposed on a lot of issues and dont work very well together. The republicans are also divided between what were called liberal republicans, progressive republicans in the northeast, and more conservative republicans, particularly in the south and the west. And so voting doesnt happen in the way you would think it would happen in the 1950s. There are weird kind of coalitions that are forming. The key sign that politics is a lot closer together, the parties are a lot closer together 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 their president ial candidate, which with the partial exception of bloomberg today, its hard to imagine any other candidate that both parties would be like that candidate is pretty good for us. That would be fine. No real difference here. And eisenhower continues a lot of new deal programs around Government Spending in the economy and gets flak from conservatives and writes a famous letter back to them. Says, should any Political Party should attempt to abolish social security, you will not hear of that party again in the the political history. The new normal is the mixed history, we have to continue these programs. Does that make sense . Theres a famous american Political Science article written in 1950 that says the american political system is really falling apart because the parties are not polarized enough. And we need to make the parties more polarized so voters have a clearer indication when they go to the voting booth about which party theyre voting for. I guess be careful what you wish for is the answer to that report. Any questions about this . You doing all right . Did government have a lot more money from during the war, with all these extra people working, a lot of taxes coming in a lot of that government money was being spent on workships and tanks and so forth. As soon as that was over, they had a pot. So, was it easier for government to intervene when they had all that money . Something i want to develop in the next part of the class. The key question is all weve 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 it should intervene. Theres a lot of different ways and places government can spend money to stimulate the economy. In the war, for obvious reasons, it was in wartime. One of the reasons that economics is really good during the war to gin up spending is you cant produce too much. The thing about producing bonds is they keep getting broken. What thats going to look like in peacetime is a more difficult question. Well turn to that now. Its a good question. Where is the money going. I think the way to do that is to turn to slesen jers piece, which hopefully was easier to make sense of. So, hes arguing theres a consensus forming in the middle of american politics, right . He calls it the vital center. Thats where we need to be, not too left, not too right. He makes a kind of helpful argument, i think, that we normally think of politics on a left right spectrum. He actually tells us where that comes from. Where does the idea of calling more parties left and right come from . French parliament. It was the French Parliament during the revolution which is where people were sitting during the discussions. Thats given us the left right spectrum that weve kept to this day. He says this doesnt work anymore to make sense of politics. How come . He argues its more of a circle and that you cant really define communism and fascism on a traditional left and right scale and that the leftright scale works more toward the center and the noncommunist left and the nonfascist right. He says if you keep going too far to the left sorry you end up taking away Property Rights and stepping on individual liberties, right . 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 the spectrum, you come back around. It forms a circle and you end up at the bottom. Does that make sense . You should be familiar with this. A lot of people have compared hitler and stalin, the same typology even though they understand themselves on the opposite ends of the political spectrum. He argues given this better understanding of politics, where do you need to be . You need to stay in the center, right . Because if you move too far to the left or the right, you end up creating deep problems. When you read this, how many of you had heard of him before reading this piece . Did you think he was a conservative or a liberal . Or were you not sure . Im guessing liberal. Okay. How come . Probably just because in that time period, if you were conservative, you wouldnt be afraid to just claim everyone on the left is a communist. Given that hes advocating for whats the theory, i dont think he was desired. Somewhat liberal. Hes obviously making a strong case for the center as the place to be. But he fancies himself, if you read the piece closely, as a person of the liberal left, the noncommunist left. His model, when hes looking to europe, are the noncommunist social left. Its his idea about where we should be, right . He actually was very involved in Democratic Politics through his entire life, set up the americans for democratic action, one of the key lobby groups of the Democratic Party was the Court Historian for jfk in the kennedy years, harvard historian, son of a harvard historian. But hes making a case that the center is actually the right place for the liberal democrats to be. And where that is is if you go too far further to the left from there, you basically run the risk of communism and a slippery slope down the road to stepping on Property Rights. If you go too far to the right, you also have a problem. Its kind of an interestingly conservative argument in its form before we get into its details. But its assumption is its one thing its one thing to say, you know, if youre here you can go to the left or the right with experimentation. Its another thing to say that actually the circle starts going like that, right, the minute you move from the center. Its unclear how much wiggle room he thinks you have and theres an alarmist piece. Hes very vague about where it is. So, in that sense its kind of conservative of itself that it imagines were at the very top of the circle, the kind of best place you can be at the circle. Maybe the top is a little bit more like a plateau and you have a little bit more room to maneuver. The argument you might want to make in the next part of the class is 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. Youve got a consensus that the government should spend money, should be involved in regulating the economy. He thinks this means were kind of in the realist left framework. This would remind you of sidney hook from last class. Interestingly, i dont know if you know this, daniel bells article was dedicated to sidney hook. So, these people are all talking to each other in the 1940s, 1950s. I want to argue that that center is defined by the cold war in two important ways. So, whats seen as the leftmost edge of liberalism that you can really go to without risking communism, that that edge is defined by a couple of features of the cold war weve been talking about. The first is what weve spent the last four classes talking about, which is what . The red scare. The red scare. So, weve just spent classes talking about the way that 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. And this will shape the kind of possibilities for what policies are proposeable and able to be put into play in the late 1940s. Trumans Domestic Program is referred to as the fair deal. Its how he packages himself. In this and other ways hes trying to inherit fdrs mantle. Some of the things he proposing are full 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 . Theres legislation drafted, passed through the senate in 1946. And then it goes to the house. The house is more conservative. In the house, a substitute bill is proposed, written by the chamber of commerce, that says no full employment. What we should do is encourage maximum employment. And no government, but we should just do fact finding to work out what the best ways to create maximum employment in the private sector are. What is the argument of the proponents of the house bill to get rid of the Senate Version . They argue that it is, quote, not greatly distanced from neomarxian thinking and is tainted by the canes hand school of thought that is dominant in the government. So, the thought that this is too close to communism. The second example from the Domestic Program is familiar to you today, which is truman proposes that there should be Government Health care, single payer. And there is a massive lobbying campaign by the American Medical Association and the private Insurance Firms that actually they spend about 2. 5 million on propaganda the group in favor of single payer spends 50,000. Doesnt really have the money to advertise against that. Part of the Advertising Campaign against single payer is built on the idea this is worringly communist in implication. One of the pamphlets quotes lenin saying socialized medicine is the cornerstone. Lenin never said anything like that. The way the government funded health care is presented as too radically communist for the u. S. And thats 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 has been private until the creation of medicare in the 1960s which is very limited. As you see today, thats an ongoing problem. Medicare medical insurance is tied to employment in the United States in the way its not tied necessarily in that way in other countries. Yeah, sam . Im just going to figure out how almost certainly relevant, not just the feel of the tests, just in terms of modern politics issues. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely rhymes with contemporary concerns, right . And the debates being had in the 1940s are the same debates being had today which is will the American People support Single Payer Health care . Or is it too radical a proposal. In the 1940s, thats what happened. So, the limits of whats prop e proposeable as part of Government Intervention in the economy are defined in part by fears and accusations of communism. On the other hand, the type of spending, as jim was suggesting, that is very justifiable, is military and National Defense spending. Eisenhower is attacked by conservative republicans that are like why arent we cutting taxes like republicans always want to cut taxes. Eisenhower gives a television address that justifies why he thinks the way he does. Part of the case, he says that 70 cents on the dollar that youre being taxed is being spent for National Security. So, were not just doing this to make peoples lives better, were doing it to protect the nation and the public good. What you then get in the period is massive expansion of federal Government Spending, if it can be justified as tied to National Security in some front, not if its tied to other social benefit. Fulbright, the senator, actually kind of looks into this in the late 1960s, and he calculates between 1945 and 1967, the federal government spent Something Like 904 billion on militaryrelated expenses and 94,000,000,000 billion on all other functions. So, money is tied directly to military expenditure. And this actually takes on surprising forms. What it means politically is if you want to get something funded by the federal government, your case is helped massively if you can tie it to defense spending. Wasnt that accusation in that article that thats because people wouldnt be as inquisitive about where the money went, just so its National Security or its in defense, i cant tell you . Were not going to dig as much into where the moneys being spent, versus, you say in health care or Unemployment Insurance or whatever. There is a secrecy element to things like particularly defense budgets, right . But theres a public side of this too that has a political logic that is just people will stand up in public and say were willing to spend taxpayer dollars on National Defense issues. Were not willing to spend taxpayer dollars on social benefit because the market should determine those things. But the market cant 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 its defined. This is a 1970s familiar flet. The National System of interstate and defense highways. Part of the logic of highway spending is it providing mobility of logistics. You can keep the nukes on the road. The same thing happens with university and educational spending. Theres not a lot of federal spending on high schools for a variety of reasons, one of which is directly tied to segregation, which well talk about in a couple of classes. But its also not the kind of thing that people want to justify in america, spending money on, until the soviets look like they were winning the space race. Sputnik goes up. The americans equivalent doesnt go very far. And you get the National Defense education act which will start putting a lot of money into science and math education in the u. S. Theres also debate in these years about science grant funding. Theres the creation of the National Science foundation to try to seed money for medical and scientific advances that will benefit the nation. That never really has very much money. By 1952, its budget is about 3. 5 million a year. Meanwhile, the office of Naval Research alone is spending 120 million a year providing money to universities to do weapons related developments. So, these ways, the type of money you can spend is best justified if its tied to military or National Defense purposes. And i 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 anything thats too radical looking, you can be accused of being a communist. On the other hand, no one will question federal spending if you say youre doing it for National Security. I want to give you one example to kind of suggest how these two things work in practice. This is leon. I dont think youve ever heard of him. Maybe with one exemption. Hes very involved in new deal politics in the 1930s. He comes out of socialist politics in new york in the 1930s. He drafts the wagner act, the labor re Labor Relations act in 1935. Hes very committed to increasing working class wages to make for greater aggregate demand in the community. His wife is very involved in Consumer Rights politics in the 1940s, focused on making sure people have enough money to spend so the economy can work. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, they spend four to five years being investigated for communism in the loyalty hearings of the sort we talked about in the last few classes. What happens . They keep their jobs. She develops a series of stomach ulcers as a result of the stress. They keep their jobs. But they adjust their arguments. They continue to believe that the federal government has a big role in spending to make the economy work. But they stopped making the case in terms of consumer demand and working class rights. Ke hell continue to argue into the 1950s for big Government Spending. But hell make the argument in terms of National Security spending. He will be the Economic Consultant to nsc68 which we read a few years a few years ago. A few weeks ago. It feels like years. Where he argues to win the cold war we need a massive defense establishment. So, he keeps the argument, but trims it from its connection to kind of working class radicalism and retargets it around National Security interests. This make sense . So, bell has an argument which we talked about earlier, which is at the end of ideology comes about in part because the idea has kind of run out of steam, right . The big ideas have gone away. You can make a case that in some ways they just havent they havent just gone away. But the history of mccarthyism and the red scare and cold war confrontation shapes what it looks like in the u. S. So its shaped around National Security more than national expenditure. When he moves away from social standing, does he have a dribble down theory that if you spend all this money on defense, some of it will go into the workers and so forth . Yeah. So, hes just fig you aring out a different way to do it . In some sense. That would be an argument. Were at some level, and ive read more books. Youre trying to get into the psychology of an individual. Youve read some books about him where they say this is a cynical sell out. Others where its best of bad times. What version of that, how you want to pass that is open to question. The move of the broader pattern is what matters. The money starts going through one route, not another, and you justify that in various ways. How effective the trickle down is is open to question. But im sure there are multiple ways that you can make your peace with that kind of move when what youre talking about is an ideological change that happens over 12x2pn years. He gets older, his attitude to the world changes, he is, like news about whats happeningxic zn ee and getting concerned aboutรท kn communist aggression of his own. So, its a complicated change, which im presenting too simply. But the shift, i think, isnj. L interesting. Its also the case that a lot oe this is a problem in universities today. The grant money goes to certain types of projects, not to others, which produces certain types of social benefit. If youre just thinking about the dollar, its all going into the economy. But it goes into the economy in particular pockets that have an impact. 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 or building a car or building machinery that can then be used to build more. And that was the economists argument against all this military spending. I have onehalf a century ago who argued you must just shovel sand. If all you try to do is pump money into the economy, shoveling sand is as unproductive as military spending, leaving aside the defense protecting us, because youre not creating productive goods. I wouldnt necessarily agree with that. Take boeing to make military aircraft and turn around and make jet liners for everybody else. Even if the fighter planes arent necessarily producing, they do contribute to companies that can produce. But boeing wasnt building. Im talking 40s and 50s. What youre talking about is a complicated set of debates that are worth having about the trickledown effects and the flowdown effects of where the spending goes. And working out there what the aggregate benefit is to society versus the particular benefit. One argument is the space race is a colossal waste of public money around prestige but there are a lot of Technological Developments that have come out of that that have downstream benefits overall. The flip side is to say who reaps most of the benefit of those social improvements . In the first instance, its the companies that can have the patents to deploy them in the commercial marketplace, having been underwritten by public spending. So, some people talk about this as the socialization of risk but not of profit. So, theres a complicated set of arguments that we could talk about more probably for the rest of the semester. Theres something i want to move on to today. Is there anything else we have any other questions about the kind of big picture pattern that im trying to show . Seem moderately clear . Could you make a comment on eisenhowers warning of the military complex. Yes, he ends by giving a warning about military industrial complex, which he argues theres too much spending going into spending activity and theyve captured the public spending process. The first drafts of the speech, its called the military industrial congressional complex because hes realized that actually what defense spending does is it compartmentalizes production so that every predict has one part of the plane that is being made, so that there is a Congress Person who is invested in voting up as barrel services to their constituents. He realizes unless you break that, Congress Wont make real decisions in the public good. Itll have too many incentives to do service to industry. I think he decides im not sure why. But he decides calling it the military industrial speech in his farewell address would be too much across the shot of bow of his fellow Congress People so he drops it. But its about the intersection between military Industrial Power and politics and the distorting effect it has on democracy. We can think about the senator from boeing, from Washington State and so forth. People who are seen as advocates for particular interests. Okay. So, the general argument here that weve been developing is bell says theres a move to the center. Theres some evidence for that that weve talked about that feels kind of right. And then the question was, well where actually is the center . In whats being called the center. Is it more to the left, more to the right . How should he understand it . Ive argued that the cold war moves that center more along the conservative spectrum that we might have anticipated from the way someone like understands himself. The one grand irony of American History its not the only grand irony. The grand irony of todays class is that the act moment that were talking about the emergence of a fairly conservative center that has purged the left from american politics under the banner of mcm mccarthyism, William Buckley comes along and starts the National Review. And youve read the Mission Statement of National Review for todays class. Whats buckley so upset about in this piece . The media in this time wasnt really doing what it was supposed to do. It was kind of, from what i was understood, it was kind of supporting the government when it should have been critiquing it. Critiquing it from which perspective . Well, was it that from whatever opposite side of the spectrum the government was in. He thinks theres too much of something and not nuenough of something else. Small Government Plus interference in life. Small government, libertarian economics. Beau. He also says against the middle, he wants to report whether its on one end or the other, but report more on the conservative side of course. But dont take middle ground because its not taking anything. Good. On page 196, he very explicitly says the middle of the road is repugnant. Why are we all in the middle of the road . Were all too centrist. We all kind of believe too much in big Government Spending. Hes arguing the media is part of the problem as well. There are no media journals of libertarian conservative thought. There are no ways to get the idea out. Its interesting how he emphasizes small magazines and education. The idea that through education you spread your ideas and that that gives you political power down the road. Who was William Buckley . Ive seen him described as the father of conservatism. And kind of the spiritual genesis of the later reagan era. Yeah, exactly. He was most famous for firing he had a Television Show a long time on pbs, firing line. Well watch a little bit of it later on in the semester. Well have people on to debate. He emerges in 1955 as a kind of god father of an emerging 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 an attack on the secular propaganda thats happening in modern universities. Conservatives have been upset about Political Correctness on campus for a long time. The current round is the latest instantiation. Thats the first book. The second book he cowrites with a friend from yale. Hes the guy looking a bit stunned ton left. Its called mccarthy and his enemies and its a defense of mccarthy as a patriot whos been misunderstood by the American People. Bosal here just looks like a joker. Hes an incredibly important figure himself. Hell later be speech writer for gary gold waur and will ghost write. Well come back to that in the 1960s. Whats had happening in this piece then is basically the rearticulation of a libertarian philosophy. He argues on 197 that the competitive prize system is indispensable. Its a return to 19th century ideas about the state needs to be out of the economy. In this regard, hes influenced by this guy, frederick hayek, austrian economist, who had formed his ideas for the need of the price mechanism to be the center of the war economy in interwar vienna when he was upset about riots on the street as people were trying to visualize a socialist viennese politics. He leaves vienna, brought to the London School of economics. They want someone to build their department because theyre in the shadow of cambridge. In terms of institutional politic, theyre like we need to do something different. We need to hire some kind of rival. They hire hayek in the late 1930s who publishes a book called the road to serfdom which will become a surprise best seller in the United States. Most publishers pass on it at first. It gets private funding through a university press. And a business person give the university of chicago enough money to hire hayek for ten years. These institutional politics are interesting given where we are. George mason when its rising as a university in the 70s and 80s realizes it cant really compete with a lot of the main Stream Research universities that exist and needs to find a market niche and will begin hiring a variety of libertarian economists, including james bucannon, and building an Economics Department around the ideas of hayek, including, we have a set of hayek studies at george mason. This will kind of position itself as a kind of institutional home for a particular vision of the economy. What i want to just briefly do is give you an overview of how hayeks book works. And i want you to compare it to canes. So, can you see . This is what canes book looks like when you flip through it. It looks a little bit like what you would expect an economics textbook to look like. A lot of figures. A lot of numbers. Its math. Its big, heavy. This is the road to serfdom, its a lot smaller. Theres no math whatsoever. Its a work of political philosophy. I raise this as a point, not that theres anything wrong with political philosophy. I stopped doing math when i was 16. I prefer political philosophy. A lot of libertarian floss fists will argue that canian economics doesnt work, that if you do the math properly you need a small government to have a really vibrant economic growth. Thats not what hayeks argument is about. Its not about output or economic terms at all. Its about the political consequences of federal of central Government Spending. Actually the math in the 1930s and 1940s is in the bigger book, is in canes. But thats the road to serfdom. Not as big a book. Even that is too much for 1940s americans. It gets turned into a Readers Digest version which is this much, which is how most people read it. Never fear, even your colleagues in the 1940s wanted the overheads. They didnt want to read even a short book like this. This is what this is like. They wanted the cartoon version, which likely was published in lock magazine. I can show you what the argument of the book was in basically a dozen easy steps. So, this is how a road to serfdom makes its case. First during the war, you want to do planning. Everybody 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. But it turns out then they cant agree with each other. When they cant agree with each other, that makes people in the citizenry disagree with each other as well. So the planners stoke up disagreement and everyone is arguing about how we should plan the economy, what would be the best way to do it. Then they have to sell people on the plan with propaganda and controlled press. Then you get some big figure come along and make the case that this is what we should be doing and the dictatorial figure are the ones to convince people they should run the economy. Once you have them power over the economy, that party will take over the country and theyll need to justify themselves to identify someone to persecute. As think point out helpfully here, in germany, the negative aim was antisemitism, the experience of nazi germany is front and center on their mind. Nobody opposes the leaders plan and as a result you get told what to do. You get told how much youre going to get paid. You get told what to think. You get told how to spend your recreation time. Again, its really interesting. But the worst possible thing you can imagine in a dictatorship the second worst thing. The worst thing is you get shot. Thats step 18. The second worst thing is they break your golf clubs make you do callisthenics. But that is the road to serfdom. You want to intervene in the economy to a shooting boots. Hayek hates the cartoon. Hes like im a serious political plos fer. This is just simple, simple. It captures a key part of the argument. There are political and philosophical reasons not to do government planning or Government Intervention because the risks of a growing government state are too great not to the economy but to liberty and Civil Liberties and freedom. Hayek understands himself to be a liberal. And hell call himself a liberal his entire life. And this is one of the origins of the kind of confusion im sure you all have around the term liberal. What is a liberal . A liberal someone on the left . Is a liberal a neoliberal which is someone on the right. In australia the liberal party was the conservative liberal party because they were the defender of the old liberal tradition thats gone out of fashion in the era of cane. Earlier in the class, we defined an ideology. What was the ideology . Had three steps. Its sought to simplify your philosophy, simplify your ideas, establish a claim to the truth and in union with those demand action, get people moving towards something. Good. This is an ideology under those terms, right . It simplifies a complicated issue around how much intervention a government can have in an economy. It makes a claim to truth, which is look what happened in europe. 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. And then it will be transmuted into the Republican Party in the 1960s, particularly with the election of goldwater, but then particularly with the reagan revolution. So, one of the stories to come out of the kind of cold war consensus period is that americans refer to the kind of 1940s, 1950s, as a liberal consensus, as a long new deal, as kind of centrist where liberaled whys Big Government dominated. The cold war shapes deeply where that consensus is. Its not that far to the left. Particularly when you compare to welfare states and Government Interventions in other welfare states at around the same time. But ironically, the partisan conflict that emerges out of the 1950s and 1960s has set the template for today as well, which is you have figures like buckley arguing that we need to reject that fairly conservative centism in favor and they will beide i dondeologs of the light. The liberals will be making a case similar to slushenger. If we go too far to the left, were communists. That sets the template for both Political Parties from the 1960 tos the present. Well see how the democratic primaries go. Thats a debate the democrats are still having, do you go to the center . Or do you go to the left . The republicans havent had that debate for a while. Theyve had an argument about a conservative version of government that stems from hayek and buckley. So, the american political spectrum is kind of skewed, even though we think of the center as something that was defined in the 1950s. Does that make sense . Any questions before we begin to wrap up . [ inaudible question ] thats something to mention about rand. One of the things thats interesting about rand is the relationship with her and buckley on the issue of religion. So, rand is a secularist, really dislikes religiosity. Buckley weds his catholicism to his libertarianism. And in some ways, i think although a lot of paul ryan and these figures really like rand, i think that represents the kind of conservative synthesis in america in the late 20th century less well than the figure of buckley because its actually that fusion of conservative religious family values with free Market Economics that kind of defines the positive ajen dooft Republican Party whereas rand is idiosyncratic in her vision of the world. Shes on a coalition build up. One of the things about buckley is hes identifying a Political Coalition which is what he thinks hes doing. But his idea is to theres a nice piece in there where he says thank god we got rid of the left of the Democratic Party. Thats proof were really good centrists now. Theres a different ideological valence on both sides of the party. Last thing before we wrap up. Theres an interesting passage at the end of bell where he talks about the fact that there are still these kind of unfulfilled emotions, the kind of anxiety of modern life that people want to work on how to change the world and dont know whats going to 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. Because what well now do is move within the kind of politics of the quote unquote liberal consensus and look at particular issues, housing, welfare spending, education, segregation, sexual politics. And the debates there are about how those problems can be kind of resolved and how can the world in the 1950s make p
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