What people now refer to as the liberal consensus, 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 possibilities for Political Action and the way that people are thinking about politics in america in the 40s and 50s. You also had three readings, all of which in different ways 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. So, well sort of be thinking today about how they kind of frame those ideas, and this is a kind of transition class where we move from kind of discussing the geopolitics of the cold war and the red scare into discussioning sort of 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 were very few questions about this one . Yeah. So, is he essentially saying th that, like the political ideologies that came about in the imperial age are just kind of 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 can possibly be, thats the way it go . Yeah, thats 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, theyre out of steam, and now, really, politics is about management, you know, the adjustment of kind of things within a kind of general consensus. And its, you know, worth thinking about the argument a little bit. You know, its an argument that people have made at various times in history. I dont know, how many of you read Francis Fukuyama in another course, the end of history . He makes a similar argument in the early 1990s, so its an argument that keeps coming back. But if youre going to make that kind of argument, the 50s isnt a bad place to use it. Bell writes this in 1960. This is bell. He was born daniel belotski, child of jewish immigrants in new york. Goes to City College New York, back when City College New York was free, which is a nice thought. And because it was free, people there could spend a lot of time sitting around the cafeterias arguing politics, which i dont know how much time you spend in talking about socialism and the spanish civil war probably in the same way that bell and his friends were, right . And he constantly frames issues in these large, sweeping, historical frames. So, he says, as jacob nicely pointed out, the big ideologies of the 19th century have kind of run out of steam. Whats an ideology for him . Remember the section where yeah . He claimed his version of ideas and social levers the conversion of ideas into social levers. Great. What the hell does that mean . That i dont know. You dont know, right. Thats exactly the quote i had for you. So, youre right on but to say, what does that mean is an interesting question. Yeah. I thought it was interesting when he starts talking about how to get people moving social movement, you have to simplify your ideas. You cant be up in the clouds. Youve got to bring it down to something that they really can either grasp or they like or its going to do something for them. Like whats in it for me . And then the establish the claim of the truth. So, say hey, this is my idea. Its not just something thats an idea. Its the truth. Its reality. And then going into, again, the commitment to action, you know, get people kind of take on, hey, lets get out of the philosophical hurricane and get down into the valley where you can get people on board. Good, terrific. So this is exactly the kind of two concepts we need to flesh out what the ideology is. Its the way you turn ideas into action, right . Its the kind of mechanism, the lever that does that. And the way you do it is in the three steps that bobs just pointed out, right . 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 provides you a framework to then go and 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 . So, in this framework, which you know, he also says, has to appeal to an emotion, right . Its not kind of purely about sort of rational sitting in a room, but it has to speak to you where you live on some level, to get you kind of moving in the world. On this framework, whats an example of an ideology . Any of the big isms will probably help. Communism. Communism. Capitalism. Fascism. Environmentalism, socialism, femini feminism. And if you kind of run through all of those and think about where are they in the 1950s, for most of them, theyre not very operative in the 1950s, right . Communism and socialism in the american landscape are not super popular in the 1950s, for reasons weve been talking about. Fascism and there were american fascists in the 1930s, right . The silver shirts. Theyve kind of been completely discredited by the 1940s for fairly obvious reasons. Feminism . Wheres feminism at in the 50s . Right . I mean, its in a kind of lull. Well talk a little bit more in later classes about whats actually going on, but people traditionally talk about feminism in terms of a first wave in the early 20th century, focused on voting rights, and then a second wave emerging in the 1960s and 1970s. Environmentalism isnt really on the scene yet in any meaningful way. So, theres actually kind of a lull here in some ways. What about religion . Is religion an ideology . Yes. In bells terms . No. Its a myth. Its a myth, yeah. Hes kind of slippery on where religion fits into this whole thing, right . I mean, some of that language there is where he gets less simple than in other parts. And hes got an argument that in some ways, an ideology is secular and about action in the world, right . That you take the ideas and work out how to act in the world on the basis of them. Whereas, religion, in his account, 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 . Use it to prepare for the inevitable. Right. So, who do you change . Yourself. Yourself. Right, for him, religion is a kind of framework that encourages adaptation of the self to kind of eternal truths, rather than change the world in the vision of your kind of idea about how it should be better. Makes sense . So, he in some ways in the argument begins by saying the big 19thcentury floss fees are what take the place of religion when religion goes away. And then that theres a kind of lingering version of religiosity that is much more like an ideology because 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 hes got is a sort of very secular one, right . Religions gone away, and that hes going to be replaced by secular ideologies, but then hes confronted by little bit of a problem in america in the 1950s, which is america bless you america is becoming more religious in the 1950s. About 49 of people in 1940 belonged to a church, all right . Its up to about 69 by 1959. So theres actually an expansion in religiosity and trying to work out what thats about is just 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 kind of now immobilized as a new respect for religiosity at the heart of American Political Culture. If you had to take a simple guess at why theres more religion in American Political Culture in the 1950s, what would your guess be . Because communism, atheist state right, to distinguish religious american liberalism from godless, atheistic communism, right . And theres a kind of clash here going on. The problem with the argument, and i think its one that a lot of historians have made, is that if youre someone who believes in religion, which, i mean, im as we talked about before very secular, but if youre someone who really believes in religion, you dont think you come to a higher personal belief in god in the 1950s because its helping america prove a point against the communists, right . I mean, deeply felt religious belief is something thats very personal, working out why that evolves historically at different times is difficult. Okay. So, hes got this idea that the kind of big ideologies have kind of gone away a little bit, and whats left is kind of a consensus around a bunch of technical, manageable kind of issues. What are those . Whats the center for him . So, theres a section on 373, 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. Do you know this phrase, the mixed economy . No is a fine answer to the question, if you dont. I just, i cant no . Not in particular . 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. Now, just bear with me a little bit. I know when we talk about economics, its nearly your favorite part of this class, but economics is interested in you, even if youre not interested in economics, so ill try to give you a little bit of a gloss of whats happening. In the 19th century, how is the economy supposed to work, in whats called the classical era . How many of you have done macroeconomics . How does the class start . What do you look at first . Years ago. Years ago . A chart that looks Something Like this . Does that sound familiar . Yeah. Yeah . What is that . Supply and demand. So, what is the supply and demand chart measuring . How many goods there are and then what the demand of those goods are and whats the relationship between the two. Good, and where they intersect, right, is where the demand and the supply work each other out in relation to each other, and that will produce the price for any good and determine how things are distributed in an economy. This make sense . This is roughly your understanding about how supply and demand works . The idea of it is that its selfregulating, right . What adam smith called the invisible hand of the market. Supply and demand will meet each other and that will work out how the economy should work and it will balance itself, right, and sort of 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 that there are repeated crashes and depressions in the late 19th and early 20th century, right . 1873, 1890s, then obviously 1929 and the great depression. So a lot of economists who think of themselves as liberals begin to question the assumption about how the economy should work. And the most significant of them for our purposes is john maynard keynes, right, who in the interwar period really begins a series of explorations about how economies actually work in real terms, right . As opposed to focusing on microeconomics, he develops the discipline of macroeconomics, thinking about the system as a whole and how its supposed to work. So if youre taking an introductory economics course in the 1950s, 1960s, you wouldnt start with supplydemand. Right . Which is how microeconomics starts. You start with kind of how does a price work in isolation. It starts with the idea that a lot of things have to be in place before you can have a meaningful supplydemand relationship, before a price system can work. And you sort of need to set that up before you can have capitalism. Operating on the traditional theory. The big intervention that keynes makes in the general employment of interest and money, is to say that what matters most to the economy is aggregate demand. How much demand overall there is, not how any individual consumer decides what price to fit on things, but how much purchasing power there is in the economy overall. This is more easily understood with 1940sera political cartoons, i think. The top is an economy where there are very few wages being paid to workers, right . 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, right . People dont have money to buy the products, and therefore, there is a smaller market to sell to, and the entire thing begins to slow down. You produce less. In the bottom image, right, 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 it make sense . All right, this is a similar representation of the same idea. Youve got to spend to kind of kick things into operation. Once people are spending, it will flow back to the worker and become kind of a virtuous 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 kind of regulate the market a little bit to make sure workers are being paid sufficient wages and theres a kind of not a disequal lib rum in the economy so enough people can spend. And the second thing you realize is that the government can actually 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 spend to create jobs, right . And this is the kind of intervention of the new deal, right . You dont balance the books, you dont let the market fix itself. You act aggressive to spend to try to kick this process into motion again. And this will become kind of the orthodoxy of economics in the 1940s and 1950s to the point that by 1965, Time Magazine will put keynes on the cover and write a lead article were all keynesians now. This is the consensus. Does this make sense . So, there are some reasons to think that bell is kind of onto something when hes focusing on this idea of the mixed economy. Mixed because its neither a staterun economy, nor an entirely freemarket economy, but a market 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, all right . Its a massive the top line is as a percentage of the workforce. The bottom line is as a percentage of the population. And there is a massive spike there during what . World war ii. During world war ii, okay . 26 of the workforce files federal income tax in 1940. 87 files a federal income tax in 1946, and then it stays after the war as the kind of norm. The other thing that will be slightly surprising to you is these are the top marginal tax rates in the period. All right . So, the top earners in the 1950s are paying 90 cents on the dollar. Its not that many people, but thats a high tax rate, right . To redistribute to take the weather a wealth and put it back into general circulation. The drop in two steps comes in which decade . 80s . In the 80s. Thats the reagan tax cuts that really drop the top rate below. We talk a lot about the top marginal tax rate, but i mean, 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. More important, and this is hard to read. I dont want you to focus on the details. Is the middle, right . If you look at the kind of 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 range and the kind of middle income in these years, it spikes as well in 1942, up from kind of 8 or 9 tax to 30 or 40 tax. So, the top is getting taxed at a lot more, but the middle is being taxed a lot more. Okay, so, the amount of tax thats being gathered and being spent is one key indicator that theres much more of a mixed economy in the u. S. In the 1950s. The second is that in many ways, weve had a long period of workingclass agitation that weve talked about in the course already, right . Violent strikes leading through the 1930s. In the 1946, theres actually another wave of strikes at the end of the war, Something Like 4 million workers go on strike in 1945, 1946, so that militancy of the Labor Movement looks like its going to continue as people demand higher wages. My favorite example of this is the tugboat workers in new york city go on strike in 1946, which shuts the city down, because like no fuel can get into new york. So, the subway has to get stopped. Its just kind of an image of new york totally dependent on tugboat workers that we dont normally have. By the early 1950s and then by 160, daniel bell will comment, but actually, the working class are pretty happy. Theyre not going on strike anymore. Theyve calmed down. If anything, people who want to change things are the intellectuals. Its not the workclass anymore. Part of the reason for that is because of changes to labor law that weve talked about already, and then because of a set of agreements that are made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the working class are offered better terms for work, right . 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 that will apply across the automobile sector, which is kind of a leading sector of the economy. 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 costofliving adjustments, so the wages will increase with inflation. Theyll get Pension Plans and theyll get health insurance, and theyll be kind of looked after as part of the middle class, right . And at that point, labor militancy kind of calms down, and the workers have the kind of Consumer Power that they said they needed in order to keep the economy rolling, right . The idea is lets have a bigger pie for everybody and then well need to have less conflict. The third example, ill give you, to just sort of show that theres an emerging consensus around this 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 actually, the parties were very complicated in the 1940s. Each party really has an internal Division Within it. The democrats have a kind of northern wing, right . Urban,