Just as America has been a melting pot
of many differing ideals, so too has there always been differing theories about
how the economy and interrelation between the social classes should be
organized. Economic capitalism, which has been a baseline economic system in
the country harkening back to the deeply-rooted tradition of the Protestant
Ethic. In theory, this economic system uplifts the American Dream by rewarding
those who work hard to earn their wealth and their happiness. However, when
systematic failures in the economy, such as the Great Depression, prevent this
economic organization from working properly, it soon becomes a question of how
wealth should be distributed to those who have been most impacted by a
financial crisis and what the relation between the wealthy and the working
classes should be and how wealth is distributed between them. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s theories laid forth in the New Deal doctrines call for a
distribution of wealth that allows for the working class and underprivileged to
be provided for in times of need or crisis while maintaining the capitalistic
spirit and promise of the American Dream. The New Deal theories are preferable
to social Darwinist theories like those of William Graham Sumner and
anti-capitalistic theories like those of Orestes Brownson, on the grounds that
Sumner’s vision does not fully take into account unfair business practices
within American capitalism while Brownson fails to juxtapose capitalism with an
alternate economic theory that upholds the promise of the American Dream.
The
antecedent scenario that compelled Franklin Delano Roosevelt to action with The
New Deal was the Great Depression. Beginning with the Stock Market Crash of
1929 and extending well into the 30’s, bank and market failures and
underconsumption crippled the United States’ economy and resulted in a quarter
of the country being unemployed and, in the most dire cases, forced millions
onto breadlines for food and into run-down shacks and “Hoovervilles” for
shelter. Franklin D. Roosevelt sought economic and social reform through the
New Deal in order to deter the detrimental aftershocks of the Depression and to
put the economy back into balance. In the process of these economic reforms and
sweeping revitalization programs such as the CCC and the CWA, Roosevelt sought
to reevaluate the nature of American capitalism as a whole and to closely
examine the current relationship between the oligarchy of wealthy
business-owners and the rest of the people in the country.
Franklin
D. Roosevelt acknowledges in several of his speeches of the New Deal that the
American economic system of industrial capitalism has, for the preceding
century, gone hand in hand with the American Dream. As he states this in his
First Inaugural Address: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money;
it lies in the joy of achievement; in the thrill of creative effort. The joy
and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of
evanescent profits” (Roosevelt, 1181). By obvious inclusion of certain words
and phrases as “moral stimulation” Roosevelt is acknowledging rather than
disputing the fact that capitalism and the strive toward the American Dream
have been heavily ingrained into the mindsets of many Americans stemming from
the Protestant Ethic. Roosevelt, however, takes issue with the circumstances
surrounding the cause of the Great Depression; that an oligarchy of wealthy
businessmen who control industry and markets have, through arbitrary power,
seized control of the country and have sealed off the American Dream for only
themselves in the midst of the economic crisis while everyone else is left to
rot. As a result, Roosevelt sought to use the New Deal as a way of balancing
the scales and redistributing wealth in a way that the masses of unemployed or
struggling citizens still had fair opportunity and incentive to strive for the
American Dream and would be protected if they fell on hard times. Examples of
this are evidenced in his Second Bill of
Rights document, in which he lists certain economic liberties and
fail-safes that people must be entitled to in the event of hardship or economic
crisis, so that “failures” have a way to get back onto their feet again
(Roosevelt, 1191). However, the New Deal did not seek to completely steal the
entirety of wealth from rich elites to redistribute to the poor nor did it wish
to underscore capitalism and the right for a person to reap the rewards of hard
work and personal achievement. Roosevelt and New Deal advocates instead sought
to do away with control of the economy falling into the hands of a privileged
aristocracy of monopolizing businessmen and to give other struggling,
impoverished citizens to have opportunity to the American Dream as those
wealthy elites have themselves.
The
economic and social visions of William Graham Sumner, by contrast, advocate for
and support economic capitalism in its most idealized form. New Deal documents,
such as the Second Bill of Rights, argue that a person has a right, not a
privilege to certain things as a lucrative job, shelter, business opportunity
etc, so that the person has a minimal level of security to fall back on if they
fall on hard times and have failed to achieve the American Dream of climbing to
the top (Roosevelt 1190). Sumner, on the other hand, argues against a small
minority of people (which he collectively refers to as the “forgotten man”) who
must use their hard-earned wealth to bolster and resuscitate a majority of
other people who have not succeeded and are merely taking from them without
having earned the wealth themselves. He feels that such a redistribution of
wealth is an injustice to the forgotten man –the hard working, enterprising
businessman who earned his wealth. As he states in What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other: “The doctrine which we
are discussing turns out to be in practice only a scheme for making injustice
prevail in human society by reversing the distribution of rewards and
punishments between those who have done their duty and those who have not”
(Sumner 716). In his view, an improper distribution of wealth centered around
taking from those who have succeeded to give to those who have not underscores
the true potential of the American dream because it no longer becomes a pursuit
of happiness but unfair possession of
happiness that negates the very work that the “forgotten man” put into earning
it (Sumner 717).
Instead
of an economic system centered around rewarding those who take from the
successful, Sumner would instead have capitalism be the sole determinant of the
American Dream. He would have capitalism and the economy function as a free
agency in which a person puts the needs of themselves first and foremost above
the needs of those who would take from them unfairly in society (Sumner, 713). Furthermore,
Sumner is resentful of what he calls jobbery –systemic corruption in someone
else decides what is to be done with your wealth without your consent or uses
some form of arbitrary power to tilt the game in their favor, thus spitting in
the face of fair capitalism and the American dream. In this way, Sumner’s views
align with Roosevelt’s to a certain degree because he agrees that any unfair
practice that tilts capitalism and allows a small group of people to “rig the
game” is wrong. However, he would also argue that the government deciding how a
working man’s wealth should be distributed is equally wrong. Sumner would want
capitalism in its purest form with no tampering from corporations, government,
or the “takers”; the pursuit of
happiness should be the surest determinant of wealth.
The
populist thinker Orestes Brownson, on the other hand, has a differing, less
enthusiastic view of capitalism than Sumner. He has observed that perhaps the
largest negative byproduct of capitalism is the notion of a rich, “successful”
man who has become so wealthy or has attained so much legislative power that he
now lives comfortably, lining his pockets while performing far less labor than
his workers. By contrast, his workers struggle daily to even make a basic
livelihood for themselves and all the while the wealthy, seldom-working owner
hypocritically shuns the idea of “slavery” when he himself has
institutionalized a form of capitalistic slavery with his workers (Brownson,
458). In this regard, Brownson examines the negative impact of capitalism that
Sumner may have overlooked and that Roosevelt hopes to curtail with the New
Deal; that the purest evil of capitalism is when it becomes worse than slavery
for the masses of workers who come to depend on the nonworking. As he states:
The evil we have
pointed out, we have said, is not of individual creation, and it is not to be
removed by individual effort, saving so far as individual effort induces the
combined effort of the mass. But whence has this evil originated? How comes it
that all over the world the working classes are depressed, are the low and
vulgar, and virtually the slaves of the nonworking classes? (Brownson, 460).
Interestingly, Brownson, while
criticizing the unfair discrepancy between labor and reward, admits that
self-made men should be rewarded for their actions, as capitalist advocates
like Sumner would agree with. However, the problem for Brownson lies with the
fact that a few men, an oligarchy, has isolated that opportunity –the American
Dream- for themselves, overturning the free agency of capitalism. Sumner would
likely refer to such practice as jobbery and despite his support for
capitalism, would not abide by men tilting the game to give themselves an
unfair advantage over other hardworking people. Brownson’s fears, to a certain
degree, are shared by Roosevelt and Sumner; the only question then, is what is
to be done about it?
FDR’s
New Deal theories on capitalism and a more fair distribution of wealth are more
ironclad and kinetic rather than the passive theories of Sumner and Brownson.
While Sumner’s theories provide valid defenses of capitalism and accurately
acknowledge that the system goes hand in hand with the American Dream, Sumner
does not do enough to account for instances in which big businesses have
cheated the game to make the free agency of capitalism unavailable to many
others. He briefly touches upon the issue by means of opposing “jobbery”, but
he does not provide a call to action to fix such things or even the playing
field nor does he account for systematic failures such as the Great Depression
which may downplay the potential of capitalistic freedom. It took pieces of
Federal legislation late in the 19th and early 20th
centuries such as the Sherman Antitrust Act to begin addressing such instances
that Sumner himself did not account for. Furthermore, Brownson’s theories,
while also valid oppositions to
capitalism and the danger that it could pose to cooperation between social
classes and fair distribution of wealth, fails to provide an alternate means of
curtailing this. Brownson, being a populist, could provide an alternate
economic theory to allow for more liberal distribution of wealth like
socialism; however, this would more than likely make the American Dream fall by
the way side. As such, his theories are more critical jabs at capitalism and
its dangers, rather than solutions to how distribution of wealth could be
organized more fairly.
Roosevelt’s
theories as laid forth in the New Deal trump the other two theories due to the
fact that it provides real calls to action on how to address the growing
economic issues of the time period and takes into consideration inequality
between the classes and unfair distribution of wealth. Roosevelt, in the midst
of the struggles of the Depression, saw a way to utilize the New Deal to ensure
not only that those who fell to the bottom of the chain through circumstantial
hardship would not be left to die, but also that pursuit of the American Dream
would still be held in high regard despite a more evened distribution of wealth
to support these new social economic rights. Sumner and Brownson’s theories,
while valid and thought-provoking in their own ways, are polar extremes of each
other on the spectrum; they either uplift American Dream values over fair
distribution of wealth or vise versa, and neither one provides a real blueprint
for providing equilibrium to the social and economic organizations of the
country. Roosevelt’s New Deal is the only theory out of these three
economic/social theories that attempts to balance American Dream ideologies
with a fair distribution of wealth, allowing for competition, economic
security, and a continued pursuit of happiness, to flourish.
Works
Cited:
Brownson, Orestes. “The Laboring
Classes.” American Political Thought: A
Norton Anthology. ed. Isaac Kramnick, Theodore J. Lowi. New York: Norton
& Company. 2009. Pgs. 458-460.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. “First
Inaugural Address.” American Political
Thought: A Norton Anthology. ed. Isaac Kramnick, Theodore J. Lowi. New
York: Norton & Company. 2009. Pgs. 1181-1182.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. “Second Bill
of Rights.” American Political Thought: A
Norton Anthology. ed. Isaac Kramnick, Theodore J. Lowi. New York: Norton
& Company. 2009. Pgs. 1190-1191.
Sumner, William
Graham. “What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other.” American Political Thought: A Norton Anthology. ed. Isaac Kramnick,
Theodore J. Lowi. New York: Norton & Company. 2009. Pgs. 713-717.
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