THE GREENING OF AMERICA by CHARLES A. REICH

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Chapter III --- The  Failure  of  Reform
We have described the major forces that transformed America, and the consciousness that determined the nation's inability to respond. Now we turn to a third element in the development of the contemporary American state: efforts at reform, their failure, and the growth of power that resulted. Although we will mention some reforms of the populist and Progressive-Wilsonian eras, the New Deal will be the chief focus.
Since we left our account of the main forces of industrialism at some point in the nineteenth century, we should take note of how they continued during the period of reform. The primary trends we have discussed--erosion of the physical and social environment, and the growth of "private" power over the economy and over individual lives--continued at an accelerating rate, and their impact became vastly greater. The competitive market, however, was gradually replaced by something more consolidated and regulated, and both the labor market and the product market were enveloped in controls, most of them "private."
Most reform legislation in England, on the European continent, and in the United States falls in this general category. That is, the legislation tries to protect the society from the harshest effects of industrialism by such means as minimum wages for workers, prohibition of child labor, and industrial safety laws.

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Beginning in the early part of the twentieth century, America became deeply divided between those people who held fast to Consciousness I and those who began to seek governmental and social reform and, beyond that, a new way of life based on the realities of the twentieth century. Perhaps the reformers never achieved a majority. But they did gain enough power to change the structure of our institutions, and to begin the creation of a new consciousness. These changes were commenced with great hope and idealism. Ultimately, however, they failed to produce what their originators wanted. They produced not a reformed democracy, but an even greater domination by industrialism. A discussion of American efforts at reform and social control must start with the various diagnoses that were made of the ills of society, which supply at least some of the assumptions under which the reforms proceeded. The presumed causes of America's troubles can be summed up simply: the evils of unlimited competition, and abuses by those with economic power.
In literature by Edward Bellamy, he likened American society to a great coach in which a privileged few were riding in comfort but others were outside, desperately clinging or pushing, driven by the lash of hunger. He pictured the bitter antagonism between people, caused by competition for jobs and the evils of gross inequality and social injustice. Upton Sinclair (in his writings), effectively showed the second half of the picture in his description of the meat-packing industry. He pictured corporate giants turning out unhealthy, adulterated meat products that were a menace to the public, and at the same time ruthlessly oppressing their employees, who lived in perpetual fear, insecurity, and misery. Abuses of the system, consequences of greed, irresponsibility, and extreme individualism, were the primary target of the reformers.

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Even Ida Tarbell's far more structurally oriented study, A History of the Standard Oil Company, treated Rockefeller as a destroyer of what she considered the basically valid competitive market. And Jacob Riis, who showed that the city slums were an "urban problem" many decades ago, treated slums as an evil that could be corrected by vigorous action. The fight against abuses would be the major theme of reform.
But these deeper artistic perceptions never became political perceptions. Reform began with highly specific efforts: laws regulating unhealthy practices in the meat industry, prohibition of monopolies and piratical methods of competition, laws against railroad favoritism, provision of maximum hours for workers in certain employments, regulation of dishonest advertising. The basic theme was simple: economic power, where it has been too severely abused, must be subjected to "the public interest." This meant that government would keep an eye on the consequences of the economic system; when these got too bad, it would apply regulation (although self-regulation was always preferred). It was a moralistic system, dealing with crime but not its causes; in this sense it was typically American.
Franklin D. Roosevelt stated this moralistic approach, and also the "public interest" philosophy that was later to dominate, in his 1933 and 1937 inaugurals.

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In 1933, after describing the chaos of the depression, he said:  "Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and incompetence........They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers......there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of a callous and selfish wrongdoing.....we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good."
In his second inaugural address, FDR summed up the themes of his program:......we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.....We refuse to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.....we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government....We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics........in the long run economic morality pays.....This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.

[islandboy]

It was a diagnosis of selfish men, people left out of the system, the American dream somehow misused.
The  New Deal brought together representatives of the major attitudes in the American reform movement, including those committed to the populist-Progressive-Wilson programs and those with far more advanced ideas. Speaking generally, there was a group which wanted to regulate the abuses of capitalism, one which wanted to redistribute power in society, particularly by giving recognition to the labor movement, and another (the most radical) which wanted a substantial amount of government economic planning and redistribution of wealth. The ideologically mixed and highly pragmatic New Deal program that emerged contained four main aspects.

1. Regulatory. 
The New Deal tried to protect the system against abuse by creating such devices as the NRA (fair competition), the SEC  (honesty and prudence in the securities market), and the Robinson-Patman Act (destructive pricing).

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2. Balancing of Power.
Organized labor was given an opportunity to become a counterpower to business, and other major groups were encouraged in an effort to substitute pluralism for sheer business power.

3. Security and Welfare.
A floor was placed under the competitive labor market, through unemployment compensation, welfare, and social security, to provide a minmum "freedom from want" to the losers in the competitive struggle.

4. Radical  Programs.
A beginning was made toward affirmative social-economic activity by government such as TVA, public housing programs, public works, and federal subsidies.

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Beyond these particular programs the New Deal consisted of an attempt to further certain general values. It believed in the rational use of the nation's resources through organization, cooperation, planning, and regulation: ultimately it believed in reason. It believed in the maximum utilization of technology and science. It believed in a meritocracy of equal opportunity and ability, unencumbered by irrational forms of prejudice and discrimination. It believed that private business should be carried on privately, if possible, but ultimately must be subject to the public good. It believed the best route to reform to be through a strong affirmative government manned by the best educated, most intelligent, most expert men who could be found, devising and carrying out programs in the best interests of the people.
What the New Deal did was to create, in furtherance of these objectives, and to carry out its reforms, a new public state, matching in size and power the private Corporate State. For each piece of regulatory legislation a large, specialized government agency was established, and at the same time the regular executive departments of the government were greatly expanded. This physical growth was accompanied by a growth in power. The Supreme Court gave the government sweeping new constitutional authority---virtually a free hand, in place of the original constitutional idea of expressly limited powers. The dominating concept was that all private activity, individual or corporate, was subject to restriction, licensing, or regulation "in the public interest," meaning, for reasons based on the good of the whole nation.

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The public state was managerial and administrative in nature; its values were rationality, order, and organization. It saw no evil in technology or power as such, so long as they were in "the public interest." In a sense the public state was government in the shape of technology.
What were the successes and failures of the New Deal? The question has implications far beyond the New Deal itself: it goes to the ability of an industrial nation to substitute rational management for the unregulated development of industrialism; it is a test of whether self-protection of society is possible, whether an administered state is possible, and whether the New Deal--liberal theory of government balanced against the private sector makes sense. The evidence is of course open to question in many respects, but it is in the nature of the problem of an administered state that laboratory experiments are impossible.
The first thing we might observe is the phenomenon of tremendous lag in American governmental actions. The reforms of the New Deal were mostly responses to ills that had been diagnosed many decades earlier. The Social Security Act, one of the most important and most characteristic New Deal reforms, looked back fifty years to Edward Bellamy's vision of the coach driven by hunger. But the solution the Social Security Act was far less comprehensive than what Bellamy himself said was needed.

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Similarly the Deal welfare program was far less than Bellamy's proposal that each man receive support from society on one basis alone: "because he is a man." It is only today, more than eighty years after Bellamy, that such a proposal is beginning to be sought (over much opposition) on the political scene. Thus, most of the New Deal came too late---far, far, too late. By 1933 the problems were so different that the programs of Bellamy's era, if enacted, might either fail altogether or even do more harm than good.
Lag is quite plainly an inherent problem in any attempt at social management. There is creaky political machinery to be set in motion, stubborn and powerful vested interests to be overcome. Somebody profits from child labor, from lack of safety in mines. Meanwhile, society keeps on changing. Can government ever be flexible and swift-acting enough to deal with social problems at the same time that they occur? Can it ever act with scientific precision when it must act through the political system? The New Deal, fumbling belatedly with the problems of fifty years earlier, casts some doubt. The New Deal did succeed in coping with the Depression emergency, which might have brought down the whole system, but the system's problems were preserved along with it.
Far greater doubt about reform arises not from lag, but from the shallowness of the New Deal's accomplishments and its failure to follow through. Such radical efforts as redistribution of income, greater public ownership and planning, and programs aimed at improving the quality of life were soon abandoned.

[islandboy]

The evils that had crept into the American political system--urban disenfranchisement, disenfranchisement of blacks, gerrymandering, bosses and undemocratic political conventions, oligarchical control of Congress, and newspaper domination of the channels of public opinion--were all left to grow worse. The black was allowed to remain in his outcast status. The tendency of American culture to crass and garish materialism was not checked. It is true that the period of reform was brief and shortly interrupted by international events; Dr. New Deal became Dr. Win-the-War. But it is clear that the New Deal never touched the deeper problems of American life, which continued to grow worse all through the 1930's.
A crucial test of the New Deal is how it dealt with the fundamental problems of industrialism. With respect to power, it is apparent that the reforms did not roll back private power. Instead, they sought to require that private power now be exercised according to standards set by the legislatures as well as standards set by corporations. The legislative standards were those of "reasonableness": only reasonable prices, or reasonable restraints of trade. But technology and corporate power, over the long run, do not have to be "unreasonable" to do their work. Unreasonableness was the hallmark of the early buccaneers. In the long run, technology had to be reasonable, and thus curbs on human unreason were in aid of the long-run assumption of power by more efficient organizations.

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Neither the New Deal reforms nor the earlier Progressive reforms restored any power to individuals, or limited the power that could be  applied against individuals. Originally, individuals lost power to private organizations. What the reforms did, so far as individuals were concerned, was to take some of that lost power and turn it over to "public" organizations--government, labor unions, farmer's groups. Nothing came back to the people. If anything, the public organizations gained greater power over individuals than the private organizations had held previously. And the private power remained, in addition. It was regulated, but subject to regulation, it still was there. What reform assumed was that its power would be "good" for individuals, whereas the previous power had been "bad."

[islandboy]

The New Deal furthered the creation of a hierarchical, elitist society whose principles contrasted with those of democracy and equality. Public and private government were seen as the province of the "best" and "ablest" and "most expert" or "professional" men, the most knowledgeable, the best educated, the specialists, and above all, the lawyers, who were thought of as the "social engineers" or "policy scientists" who manned the centers of administration. In government and in business, planning and "rational allocation of resources" became key words, placing controls on the consumer market. Legislative and Judaical "interference" with administration was deplored, and the power of elected representatives and stockholders reduced. It was a transfer of power from the man in the street to the man from the "Harvard Law Review"---a transfer that had been taking place gradually for a long time, but now was accelerated, leaving the little man, the ordinary American, more a subject for the plans of others than an actual participant in his own destiny.
On the broader questions of technology and the effects of power, "good" as well as "bad," the New Deal was limited by its diagnosis. None of the great modern problems, such as loss of meaning, loss of community and self, dehumanization of environment, were in any way approached, except to encourage the trends toward making them worse. Assuming that American problems were due to abuse of the system, the New Deal did not question the system itself, nor respond to the darker side of the art of the 1930's. It believed that economic progress and quantitative advance could only be good; most of is rhetoric is about more of everything.
One accomplishment of the New Deal dwarfed all others: the creation of the public state.

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The New Deal naturally gave little thought to the dangers of what it was so enthusiastically building, but we may at least raise some questions it failed to raise. What would be the long-range impact of the new public state on the working of the democratic process? How would democracy survive the rule of the expert? What would be the influence of regulation and licensing on personal liberty? How would administrative discretion and bureaucratic authority affect the rule of law? What would be the status of individuals in the new organizations, such as labor unions and the social security--welfare system? And how vulnerable was the structure to capture by special interests? Would the regulated become the regulators and use government machinery to help create restraints of trade? Would the new positive government become a grab bag for those seeking economic favors and special privileges?
The New Deal was our first great attempt at social control; and if in large measure it failed, we can still put it down as a noble experiment, an improvement on the American habit of unreality.
But have we, up to now, offered an adequate explanation for the failures of the New Deal and for the dangerous structure it built? We have neglected the question of consciousness. What role did it play?

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Every step the New Deal took encountered the massive, bitter opposition of Consciousness I people. They found their world changing beyond recognition, and instead of blaming the primary forces behind that change, they blamed the efforts at solving the problems. They totally lacked the sophistication necessary to see that a measure such as the Wagner Act might be redressing an existing oppression rather than creating oppression. The businessmen who were the most vocal in their opposition had a pathological hatred of the New Deal, a hatred so intense and personal as to defy analysis. Why this hatred, when the New Deal, in retrospect, seems to have saved the capitalist system? Perhaps because the New Deal intruded irrevocably upon their make-believe, problem-free world in which the pursuit of business gain and self-interest was imagined to be automatically beneficial to all of mankind, requiring of them no additional responsibility whatever. In any event, there was a large and politically powerful number of Americans who never accepted the New Deal even when it benefited them, and used their power whenever they could to cut it back.
What about the major supporters of the New Deal, most notably organized labor, city dwellers, and portions of the South? These are the groups whose support was gained through the catastrophe of the Great Depression. But how committed were they to the New Deal program as a whole?

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Looking back, we can see that each was committed only to its own interest, for which it needed the help of the government. The workers needed the Labor Board; the cities needed relief, housing, social security; the South needed the TVA, rural electrification, and farm subsidies. But none of these groups had abandoned an older picture of America save in the one particular that concerned them. Thus we have the spectacle, still to be seen today, of the western rancher who accepts federal aid for his cattle operations and federal aid for his grazing requirements, but bitterly opposes all social programs that do not concern him, and the philosophy that lies behind them. And those political allies of the New Deal, the blue-collar worker, the ethnic groups, the urban poor, were all waiting in line for their chance at the American dream, not for an assigned place in a new managerial state. When they got what they wanted and the Depression was a thing of the past, their enthusiasm for reform waned.
Nor was there any genuine radical consciousness to be found in America. The Communist Party was so tiny, so impotent, so burdened with irrelevant ideology, that it was without significance; nor did any minority, racial, or student group supply a base for radicalism. The New Deal really consisted of an alliance of interest groups, presided over by a narrow ridge of liberal intellectuals who were the main source of the New Deal thinking, the only members of the whole alliance who had any general ideas about America.