Bringing misery out of hiding: The unemployed movement of the 1930s

[marmar]

from the International Socialist Review:



Bringing misery out of hiding
The unemployed movement of the 1930s

By DANNY LUCIA


THIS YEAR marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the passage of the Social Security Act (SSA). The SSA, which created unemployment insurance and assistance programs for the elderly, disabled, and poor, is the most lasting achievement of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.1 These programs formed the foundation of a social welfare system that today keeps an estimated 31 million people out of poverty.2 Equally important, the passage of the SSA marked a fundamental shift in American political culture that has endured, even through the past thirty years of conservative attacks on “entitlements” that have steadily eroded the social welfare provisions of the act. Today, unemployment is seen as a societal question that demands some type of government response.

The history taught in most high schools is that Roosevelt created the Social Security Act with the aim of “relieving human suffering…helping business and industry to recover… adjusting the economic system to prevent recurrence.”3 The textbooks typically do not explain why Roosevelt, elected in 1932, did not present the SSA to Congress until 1935, a three-year period that saw no shortage of human suffering.

In fact, Roosevelt had no intention of creating the programs for which he has become a liberal hero. He came into office with a modest package of regulation and piecemeal programs, many of which were watered down by the reactionary Southern segregationist wing of his own Democratic Party. FDR was pressured to create more extensive social welfare programs by the largest protest movement the country had seen since the populist movement of the late 1890s.

Though they are barely mentioned in the history textbooks, it was socialists and communists who built this movement.4 The Communist Party, Socialist Party, and followers of radical pacifist A.J. Muste created unemployed organizations that mobilized hundreds of thousands of jobless workers in local and national protests. While these actions on their own were not enough to win national legislation, they helped to shift popular opinion about government assistance and trained thousands of future leaders of the union movement that did attain the power to produce lasting change. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.isreview.org/issues/71/feat-unemployed.shtml

[proudohioan]

1. K&R for this excellent post!

We subscribe to this publication ourselves and always find fascinating, timely and relevant reading.

A must read. Thanks for posting this!

:kick:

[usrbs]

2. + 1,000

Very good article with many lessons for nowadays. Thanks.

[lib2DaBone]

3. Ironic.. on the 75th Anniversary of Social Security

Mr. Obama has appointed a team headed by Max Baucus to meet in secret and do away with SS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/05/obamas-fiscal-commission_n_565121.html


Pete Peterson... Nixon Appointee and Goldman-Sachs Banker, appointed by Mr Obama to gut Social Security.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/pete-petersons-anti-entitlement-juggernaut-gets-fueled-obama

[Daveparts still]

4. I've read

this type of story before. The author is correct that Roosevelt was pressured in to forming Social Security. But it is a tendency of Socialists and Communist to overplay their role in it's creation.

In the 1930's the Communist party was the fastest growing party in America but never exceed 5% which was less than the Socialist movement of a generation before. The hunger March on the River Rouge plant is Dearborn was organized by charity hunger groups. After the shootings the Communists co-opted the funeral and made the victims look as if they were Communist martyrs. There were Communists in the crowd but the people killed by police were hungry more than they were Communists.

Huey Long had more to do with the New Deal than Communist or Socialists. Long was using national radio to broadcast a left leaning progressive agenda but Long was neither Communist or Socialist. He was a left leaning Democrat far to the left of FDR and Long was so popular that he got more mail each week than FDR did.

He was so effective that he was considered a threat to corporate interests and when he was assassinated no one at the White House cried.