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, based on workingclass 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 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 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, that 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 him to be their president ial candidate, right . Which, with the partial exception of bloomberg today, its hard to imagine any other candidate that both parties would be like, actually, we think that persons pretty good for us. That will be fine. No real difference here. And then, eisenhower continues a lot of new deal programs around Government Spending in the economy and gets some flack from conservatives on his right flank, and 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 would not hear of that party again in our political history, right . The idea that the new norm is the mixed economy, we have to continue some of these programs. This make sense . Yeah . Theres actually a famous american Political Science article written in 1950, a big report that says the american political system is really falling apart because the parties are not polarized enough. And, like, we need to make the parties more polarized so voters have a clearer indication when they go to the polling booth about which party theyre voting for, which, i guess be careful what you wish for is the answer to that report. Any questions about this . Are you doing all right . Yeah, jim. Does government have a lot more money from i mean, during the war, with all these extra people working and a lot of taxes coming in, a lot of that money, government money, was being spent on the war, ships and tanks, et cetera. As soon as that was over, they had a pot. So, was it easier for government to intervene when they had all that money . Yeah. I mean, its something i want to develop in the next part of the class. But 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, and there are a lot of different ways and places government can spend money to stimulate the economy, right . In the war, for obvious reasons, it was in war time. I mean, one of the reasons that is very in military purposes. One of the reasons that keynesian economics is really good during a war to kind of gin up spending is you cant produce too much, right . I mean, the thing about producing bombs and planes is they keep getting themselves broken during the war and youve got to keep producing pem. You cant have an overproduction problem. What thats going to look like in peace time 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 schlesingers piece, which hopefully was a little bit easier for you to make sense of, although you did well with bell. Schlesingers writing in 1948, right . And hes rgi arguing that there is a sort of consensus forming in american politics. He calls it the vital center, right . 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 leftright spectrum. He actually tells us in the beginning of this piece where that comes from. Where does the idea from of calling conservative parties left and right . The French Parliament . The French Parliament during the revolution, where people were sitting during those discussions. Thats given us the leftright spectrum that weve kept to this day. Schlesinger says, this doesnt work anymore to make sense of politics. How come . Yeah. He argues its more of a circle. Yep. And you cant really define communism and fascism on a traditional left and right scale. And that the leftright scale works kind of more to the center than the noncommunist left or nonfascist right. He actually says, if you keep going too far to the left, you end up taking away Property Rights and stepping on individual liberties, right . And if you go too far to the right, you do the same thing, right . And so, you also end up, if you go too far either end of the spectrum, you come back around, and it forms a circle and you end up at the bottom. Does this make sense . Right . This is an argument you should be familiar with, like a lot of people have compared hitler and stalin over the years and said theyre basically the same typology, even though they understand themselves to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, right . And so, 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 schlesinger before reading this piece . Okay. So, those of you who havent heard of schlesinger, did you think that he was a conservative or a liberal . Or were you not sure . [ inaudible ] 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. Sam . Given that hes advocating for whats essentially theory, i dont think he was too far either side, but i would agree somewhat liberal. Somewhat liberal, but hes making a strong case for the center is the place to be, right . But he fancies himself, if you read the piece closely, as a person of the liberal left, the noncommunist left. Hes a model of when hes looking to europe, right, of the noncommunist social left, right . Its his idea about where we should be. He actually was very involved in Democratic Politics through his entire life. Set up the americans for democratic action, right, one of the key, kind of the first super pac, one of the key lobby groups for the Democratic Party, was a 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 that 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, right, you also have a problem. Its kind of an interestingly conservative argument in its form, before we get into its details, right . But its assumption is, like, its one thing its one thing to say, you know, if youre here, you can go to the left or the right with experimentation, right . 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 schlesinger thinks you have and theres a domino theory to the piece that should remind you perhaps of some of the geopolitics weve been reading, kenins theory about slippery slopes. But hes very vague about where it is, so in that sense its conservative itself, where it imagines were at the top of the circle, right . Kind of the best place that you could be in the circle and that any step you take is already beginning the slippery slope, whereas maybe the top is more like a plateau and you have a little bit more room to maneuver. But the argument i 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. So, youve got a consensus that the government should spend some money, should be involved in regulating the economy. Schlesinger thinks that this means that were kind of in the realist left framework, right . I will just remind you of sidney from last class, realist liberalism. And interestingly, i dont know if you noticed, daniel bells article was dedicated to sidney hook. Right, so these people are all talking to each other in the 1940s1950s. I want to argue that that center is defined by the cold war in two important ways, so that 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 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. Okay . 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 that this will shape the kind of possibilities for what policies are proposal and able to be put into play in the late 1940s. Trumans Domestic Program is referred to as the fair deal. Its how he kind of packages himself. In this, and in other ways, hes just trying to inherit fdrs mantle. Fdr had a new deal, ill have a fair deal. Some of the things he proposes in his fair deal are full employment, that theres going to be the government will spend money if people are unemployed to create work so that everyone can have a job, right . 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 Spending, but we should just do factfinding 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 neo marxian thinking and is tainted by the keyneshanson school of thought in the government. So an attack that this kind of left intervention is too close to communism. The second example id give you from that Domestic Program is one that is familiar to you today, which is truman proposes that there should be Government Health care, right . 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 about 50,000, doesnt really have the kind of in eto advertise back. And part of the Advertising Campaign against single payer is built around the idea that this is worryingly communist in implication. And actually, one of the pamphlets quotes lenin saying socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state. The only problem is that lenin never said anything like that, but it is one of the ways that governmentfunded health care is presented as being 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. And as you tea sosee today, tha ongoing problem. Medicare, our medical insurance is tied to employment in the United States in a way its not tied necessarily in that way in other countries. Yeah, sam. I was just going to bring up how, almost certainly relevant not just that, but [ inaudible ] just in terms of modern politics issues. Yeah. I mean, definitely it rhymes with contemporary concerns, right . And the debates being had in the 1940s are the debates that are being had today, which is, will the American People support singlepayer health care, or is it too radical a proposal and get you tainted as looking like a communist . In the 1940s, thats what happened, right . So, the limits of whats proposal 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, right . Eisenhower is attacked in the 1950s by some conservative republicans who are like, why arent we cutting taxes like republicans have always wanted to cut taxes . And eisenhower gives a National Television address where he justifies why its important ei television address why its okay to have a higher tax rate, not like politics in our generation. Part of his case, 70 cents on the dollar youre being taxed is spent for National Security. Were not just doing this to make peoples lives better. Were doing it to protect the nation and the public good. And 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. Fullbright, the senator looks into this in the late 1960s, he calculated between 1945 and 1967 the federal government spent Something Like 904 billion on military related expenses and 94 billion on all other functions. So that money is tied directly to military expenditure. And this actually takes on surprising forms. What it means politically if you want to get something funded by the federal government, your case is helped mass i havely if you can tie it to defense spending. Wasnt that accusation in there that in that article thats because people wouldnt be as inquisitive as where the money went because its National Security or its in defense, i cant tell you. Youre not going to dig as much into where the money is being spent versus against health care or Unemployment Insurance or whatever . So kind of under the secrets of there is a secrecy element to things like defense budgets. But theres a public side too that has a political logic. People will stand up in public say were willing to spend taxpayer dollars on National Defense issues not on social benefit because the market should determine those things but the market cant provide goods of the sort of National Security requirements. One of the big spending in the 1950s is the highway act. This is the era of the car, obviously. But this is how its defined this is a 1970s pamphlet. The National System of interstate and defense highways. Part of the logic for highway spending is it provides for mobility of logistics, right, you can keep some of the nukes on the road. You can move them from facilitytofacility. This is important for the National Defense to have a strong infrastructure of transportation. The same thing happens with the university and educational spending. Not a lot of federal spending on high schools for a variety of reasons, one is tied to segregation which well talk to in a couple of classes, but its not something that americans want to justify spending money on. Until the soviets look like theyre winning the space race. Sputnik goes up, the americans dont get very far. Then you get the defense educational fund. Theres also debate in these years about science grant funding. The creation of a 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 Research Money to universities to do weaponsrelated developments. So in all of these ways, the type of money you can spend is best justified if its tied to military or National Defense purposes. 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 an example to suggest how these two things work in practice. This is leon kiesling, who i dont think any of you have ever heard of, maybe with one exception. Hes involved with new deal politics, he comes out of socialist politics in new york in the 1930s, he drafts the Labor Relations act in 1935. Hes committed to increasing the working class wages to make for greater demand in the economy. His wife, mary dublin, is very involved in Consumer Rights politics in the 1930s. Focused on making sure people have enough money to spend so the economy can work. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, they spent four to five years being investigated for communism in the loyalty hearings 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 adjust their arguments. They continue to believe the federal government has a big role in spending to make the economy work, but they stopped making the case in terms of consumer demands and working class rights. Keysiling comes on the economic advisers, but he makes the argument in terms of National Security spending. Hell be the Economic Consultant where he argues to win the cold war we need to keep the National Defense. He trims it away from its connection to kind of working class radicalism and retargets it around National Security interests. Does this make sense . So bill has an argument which we talked about earlier, which is at the end of ideology comes about in part because the idea runs out of steam. The big ideas have gone away. You can make a case in some ways they havent just gone away but the history of mccarthyism and the red scare and the cold war confrontation changes what it looks like in the u. S. So its focused much more around National Security than around social expenditure. Yeah . When keysling moves away from social spending does he have a trickle down theory that if you spend the money on defense, some of it will go to the workers . Yeah. So hes just figuring out a different way to do it . In some sense that would be an argument. What were at some level and ive read more books. Youre trying to get into the psychology of an individual and you read some books where they say its a cynical sell out, others its the best in bad times. What version how you want to pass that is the we question. But the move is what matters. You say the money goes through one route, not another, and you justify that in various ways. The question to how effective trickle down is but there are ways you can make your move talking about ideological changes over 12 years, he gets older, the attitude changes, hes like everybody else reading the news whats happening in the europe. So its a complicated change, which im presenting too simply but i think the shift is interesting. Its also the case that a lot of arguments about spending will say it doesnt matter where the money goes. Its just important that you put it into the economy and it will then have consequences later. I think that that im not an economist. But just acting simply logically, i think it kind of matters where the money goes too in the first instance. If its going to have downstream consequences no matter where it goes, what matters less is its longterm consequences but what are the shortterm benefits of promoting particular parts of Economic Activity and putting it into defense spending promotes part of that activity. This was a problem in universities today. Grant money goes to certain types of projects not others which provide a social benefit. Just thinking about the dollar it goes into the economy but it goes into the economy in particular pockets that have an impact. Make sense . Yeah . The argument against military spending is that its a dead end. I mean, the jet that you build does not 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 of this military spending. I have one, half a century ago, who argued you might as well just shovel sand if all youre trying to do is pump money into the economy, shoveling sand is as unproductive as military spending, leafing leaving aside the defense, protecting us because youre not creating productive goods. You have boeing, make military aircraft and then turn around and make jet liners for everybody else. Even if the fighter planes or whatever themselves arent producing, they do contribute to companies that can produce consumer but boeing wasnt im talking the 40s and 50s. What youre talking about are complicated debates worth having talking about the trickle effects and flow on effects of spending. So one of the arguments say the space race is its a waste of public money around prestige, but there are a lot of Technological Developments that 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 p patents to deploy them under written by public spending. Some people talk about this as socialization of risk but not of profit. Theres a complicated set of arguments we could talk about more probably for the rest of the semester. Theres something i want to move on to today. Any other questions about the kind of big picture pattern that im trying to show . Seem moderately clear . Umhum. Can you make a comment on eisenhowers warning about the military industrial complex. He ends by giving a warning about the military industrial complex, right, which he argues there there is too much spending going into military activity. Whats interesting to me is the first draft of the speech is called the military industrial complex, because hes realized what defense spending does is it come part meantized production so every district has part of the plane so theres a congressman interested in voting up, kind of pork barrel, to the constituents. And if you dont break that, congress will have too many incentives to do service to industry. I think he decides, im not sure why, calling it the military congressional industrial speech would be too much. So he drops it. But its about the intersection between military Industrial Power and congressional 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 weve been developing is bell says theres an end of ideology, a move to the center. Theres some evidence for that that we talked about that feels kind of right. The question was where actually is the center in whats being called the center, sit more to the left, more to the right . How should we understand it . I argued that the cold war, moves that center more along the conservative spectrum than we might have anticipated from the way that someone like schlesinger understands himself both because of ideological pressure and the ways you can justify defense spending. The one grand irony of American History, the grand irony of todays class, is that the exact moment that were talking about the emergence of a fairly conservative center, right, that has purged the left from american politics under the banner of mccarthyism, William Buckley comes along and starts the National Review. And you read the kind of Mission Statement of National Review for todays class. Whats buckley so upset about in this piece . Was it that like the media in his time wasnt really doing what it was supposed to do . It was kind of from what i understood, it was kind of like supporting the government when it should have been critiquing it. Critiquing it from which perspective . Was it that from whatever opposite side of the political spectrum was in. He wants the National Review to fill the gap, he thinks theres too much of one thing not another. Small government libertarian economics. He wants you to pulverize either end. Report whether its on one end or the other, report more on the conservative side, of course, but dont take middle ground because its not taking anything. Good. On page 196 he says, the middle of the road is repugnant. Why are we all in the middle of the road . Were all too centrist, we believe too much in big Government Spending and arguing the media is part of the problem as well. There are no meaningful journals of libertarian conservative thought no way for us to get our ideas out. Its interesting how much he emphasizes in this piece small magazines and also education. The idea that through education you spread your ideas and that gives you political power down the road. Who was William Buckley . Ive seen him described as like the father of conservativism. And kind of the spiritual genesis of like the later reagan era. Exactly. Hes most famous as the firing line. He has a Television Show for a long time on pbs. Well watch a little bit of it later in the semester. Well have people on to debate. But he emerges in 1955 as a kind of godfather of an emerging conservative movement. He gets money to start the magazine, the National Review to be the central organ of conservative thinking. Before that hed written two books, the first on the left is a book about his time at yale called god and man at yale, which is basically an attack on the secular propaganda happening in universities. So theyve been upset about Political Correctness on campus for a long time. Thats his first book. His second book he cowrites with brent bozle, whos his friend from yale. Its called mccarthy and his enemi enemies, and its a defense of mccarthy as a patriot misunderstood by the American People. Bozle is an important figure himself. Hell later be a speech writer for barry goldwater. Establishing the ideological template for conservative republicanism which well come back in the 1960s. Whats happening in this piece then is basically the rearticulation of a libertarian philosophy. He argues, on 197, that the Competitive Price system is indispensab indispensable. Its a return to like 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 formed his ideas about the need for the price mechanism to be the center of Economic Activity in vienna where it was upset by riots on the street as people were trying to imagine a more socialist politics. He leaves vienna, is brought to the London School of economics. Now the London School of economics wants some bigtime economist to build their department because theyre in the shadow of cambridge. Theyre like, we need to hire a rival and they hire hayek in the late 1930s. Who publishes a book that becomes a surprise bestseller in the United States. They dont want to publish it at first but then it gets private funding and then a business person gives the university of chicago enough money to hire for ten years. So hes not paid for by the university, hes paid for on a private line. And this is interesting given where we are. George mason rising as a university in the 70s and 80s. Realizes it cant compete with the main Stream Research communities that exist and needs to find a market niche and will hire liberal economists, including james beuchanabuchana building around the sentiments of hayek. This will institute itself as a 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 kind of looks like when you flip through. Which is to say, it looks a little bit like what you expect an economics textbook to look like. A lot of figures, numbers, its the math. Its a big, hefty book called the general theory. This is the road to surfdom. Its a lot smaller. If you flick through, right, youll see there is almost no math. In fact, there is no math whatsoever. Its a work of political philosophy. I raise this as a point, not because theres anything wrong with political philosophy, i stopped doing math at 16, i prefer political philosophy but a lot of libertarian economists argue that kanes economics doesnt work mathematically, the numbers arent right it doesnt produce the best economy, if you do the math properly, you need a small government to have a 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 central Government Spending. Actually, the math in the 1930s and 1940s is in the bigger book, in canes. But thats the road to surfdom. Not as big a book but thats too much for 1940s americans. It gets turned into a Readers Digest version, which gets turned into this month. But even your colleagues in the 1940s want the overheads, they didnt want to read a short book like this. They wanted the Cartoon Version which was published luckily in look magazine. I can show you the argument of the book in basically like a dozen easy steps. This is how the road to serfdom makes its case. First you want to do planning, everyone likes planning and they want to keep planning after the war. The planners say everything is going to be great once the plan is in place but then they cant agree with each other. When they cant agree with each other, that makes people in the citizenry disagree as well. So then they stoke up disagreement and everyone is arguing how to plan the economy, whats the best way to do it. Then they have to sell people on the plan with propaganda and a controlled press. And then you get agreement by getting a big figure to come along and make the case this is what we should be doing and that figure would convince everyone they are the ones to run the economy. Once you give that person power over the economy, that party will take over the country and theyll need to justify themselves to identify someone to persecute. As they point out helpfulfully here, in germany, the negative aim was antisemitism, the experience of nazi germany is front and center on their mind. Approve the plan, as a result you get told what to do, how many youre going to get paid, you get told what to think. You get told how to spend your recreation time. Its interesting. The worst possible thing you can imagine in a dictatorship, well, second worst, the first worst is you get shot. The first is they break your golf clubs and make you do calisthenics. Thats the road to serfdom. 18 steps. Now hayek hates the cartoon. Hes just like i got a lot of caveats in here, im a serious political philosopher. This is just simple. But it captures a key part of the argument, right, which is there are political philosophical reasons not to do government planning or 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 he will call himself a liberal his entire life. This is one of the origins of the confusion you have around liberal. What is a liberal . Is a liberal someone on the left or someone on the right . In australia the conservative party is called the liberal party because they were the liberals in in the late 19th century, which is how hayek understands himself the defender of an old liberal tradition thats gone out of fashion in the era of canes. Earlier in the class we defined an ideology. What was an ideology, bob . It had three steps. Its to simplify your philosophy, your idea, establish a claim to the truth and demand an 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. Right. And then, it says, as a result you need to resist the encroachment of Government Authority into the economy and protect a market as free. The seed for this will be planted in the 1950s with people like buckley and hayek making the case for the ideas. And then itll be transmuted into the Republican Party in the 1960s, particularly with the election of goldwater but then particularly with the reagan revolution. And so one of the stories to m come out of the kind of cold war consensus period is that americans refer to the 1940s, 1950s, as a liberal consensus. As a long new deal, as a kind of centrist where liberal ideas about Big Government dominated. But actually, the cold war shapes very deeply where that consensus is, and its not that far to the left. Particularly when you compare the country to the welfare states and intervention that occurred in other european states at around the same time. But ie lronically, the partisan conflict that arises in the 1950s and 1960s sets the time for today. Which is you need to object that fairly conservative in favor of true conservative. And theyll be true ied logs to the right. Thats how buckley understands himself. And on the other hand, the liberals will be making a case much more similar to schlesinger. Which is the place we need to be is in the center. If we go too far to the left were communists. That sets the template for both Political Parties from the 1960s to the present. Well see how the primaries go today. Thats a debate theyre still having, to the ncenter or the left . The republicans havent had that argument for a while, they had a vision of a conservative philosophy 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 defined in the 19 on 1950s. Make sense . Any questions before we begin to wrap up . Something about ran being the philosopher of the conservative Libertarian Movement . Yeah. Thats something to mention about ian rand. One of the things interesting about rand, i dont find him that interesting but one of the things interesting about rand is the relationship with her and buckley on the issue of relig n religion. Rand is a secularist. Buckley weds into the piece you talked about, weds his Cambridge Analytica toll schism to his lib tear nichl. I think they really like rand and that represents the conservative emphasis in america in the late 20th century less well than the figure of buckley. Its the fusion of conservative religious family values with free Market Economics that defines the kind of agenda of the Republican Party whereas rand is so idiosyncratic in her vision of the world that she shes not a coalition builder. One of the things about buckley is his identifying kind of political coalition. Which is what schlesinger also thinks hes doing, right. But his idea is to its that nice piece in there, the paragraph where he says thank got we got rid of the left of the Democratic Party. That proves were good centrists now. So theres an different ideological va lance 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 there are still these unfulfilled emotions, the anxiety of modern life that people want to work at 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 thinking about domestic politics. Well move within the politics of the quote unquote liberal consensus and look at particular issues, housing, welfare spending, education, segregation, sexual politics and the debates are about how those problems can be resolved and how the kind the world of the 1950s makes people seek meaning and transformation. It alienates them in certain ways. So bell is writing in 1960 that there was this ongoing problem of alienation, a lack of fulfillment and the parameters there, when we move from the realm of formal politics, Political Parties, political philosophy into the world of personal politics and personal experience will i think also be reflected in our discussions in the second half of the semester. Sound good . All right. I look forward to those conversations in a couple of weeks. Have a good spring break. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you know who Lizzie Borden is . The deepest cause where well find the true menning of the revolution was in the transformation that took place in the minds of the American People. So were going to talk about both of these sides of the story here, right. The tools, the techniques of slave owner power and talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. 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