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 th