On 2010-10-30, at 12:38 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
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> On Oct 30, 2010, at 11:04 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> ...The New Deal was the product in part of a rising and militant trade union movement, many of its activists inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution...
>
> This is so not true. The New Deal started on March 4 1933 with the Bank Holiday--an act of naked executive power--and was shaped in the next "hundred days." At the time the trade union movement was moribund, the CIO not even a glint in John L's eye.
Agreed - my formulation was sloppy. The unions became important in FDR's second term. Funny, I corrected Woj on this point yesterday: "I suggest you go back and study the size and influence of the US trade unions and Socialist and Communist parties before and after the New Deal, as well as the pre-Keynesian economic orthodoxy prevailing in 1932. It was the rhetoric and policies of the New Deal which gave a powerful stimulus to the subsequent growth of the mass organizations and mass protest - not because FDR and the DP were radicals, but because their foremost concern was to boost mass purchasing power and revive growth."