Could the United States had followed Germany and France down the path to fascism in the 1930s? Consider the dark logic of Lawrence Dennis, the failures of liberal reform, and the contingent heroism...
Ah yes, fascist regimes, famously immune from hyperinflationary crashes.
So Dennis lived until 1977. Did he ever acknowledge that the toboggan of inflation didn't slide quite as fast as he expected? I get that we need to take him seriously because other people took him seriously, but that is a kind of Keynesian ugliness contest. It's not clear to me why I should respect him on his own merits. He suffers from a defect that is more common than I could wish, what you might call a failure of the "reality circuit-breaker". As in, when the impeccable reasoning of your diamond-hard intellect leads you to an absurd conclusion, the reality circuit-breaker should trip and tell you to reexamine your premises at the least. And perhaps your reasoning also is not quite as flawless as you had supposed.
I will never understand the appeal of Hobbes or Rousseau, but some folks apparently just find liberty too chaotic (sic) to bear. At its core, the authoritarian impulse assumes that the Philosopher King will simultaneously maintain the "proper" (sic) order AND rule in the "right" way, both as expected by the particular author. You'd think the experience of the 1930s would dampen those expectations, but as you say self-reflection seems to be lacking.
Henry Farrell has a thing where he proposes that the appeal of Patrick O'Brian is that he puts the best possible face on conservatism. I agree with that, but some people forget that O'Brian wrote fiction.
Truly fascinating. I was completely unaware of Lawrence Dennis. His take seems much more nuanced and challenging than contemporary understandings which tend to just use 'fascism' as an epithet. I'm not saying he was right, just that his arguments are worth engaging with. Thanks!
Agree with this. And while he was clearly wrong on his read of the US in his own time, it really does seem like it'd be easy to imagine an alternate universe where a version of his arguments made its way into Deng Xiaoping thought.
And for all FDR's success, he couldn't manage to include non-Whites in the reforms, perpetuating the racism of the USA despite teh Constitution. Maybe that was a bridge too far. His wife, Eleanor, managed to do so much better regarding human rights after his death.
Sigh, I give this a like even though I tried to skim it, which turned out not to be possible. I know there is significant information to be digested, but the depth and breadth require a much more careful read than will happen tonight, for me. Apologies from a too casual reader...
Also, and echoing JH, Roosevelt implemented much of the program, preserving political democracy but breaking with lots of US tradition. James Burnham in 1941 saw this as another version of managerial rule, along wiht fascism and communism. Orwell correctly diagnosed Burnham as a "power-worshipper"
Very interesting. With today's fusion of silicon valley and maga-types in mind I wonder whether a triumvirate of Henry Ford, WR Hearst, and Charles Lindbergh, running on an America First ticket, would have been able to beat out FDR.
This is a really great column. Very informative and thought provoking. Professor DeLong certainly makes good use of his summer break. Some thoughts:
One reason Lawrence Dennis is largely forgotten is that Anne Morrow Lindbergh expressed similar views in her 1940 book “The Wave of the Future.” Of course unlike Dennis, Lindbergh was rich and famous. Philip Roth also explored this theme in his novel “The Plot Against America”, where he envisions Charles Lindbergh defeating Roosevelt in the 1940 election.
“We did it in the 1930s: constructed the social-democratic New Deal Order that had a powerful affinity with the mass-production mode of societal organization and that drove the greatest boom generation after World War II that the world had ever seen.” But that was then, this is now. Can we do it again? The U.S. is approaching $40 trillion in debt. We are also a much more ethnically diverse nation than in 1933, and diversity is not necessarily an advantage. After all, Yugoslavia was a diverse country.
Keynes was correct that deficit spending can be used to end an economic depression. But Keynes also assumed the deficit would be paid back once prosperity returned. As history has shown, politicians will always vote for deficit spending. They seldom vote to reduce the debt. This is because voters choose politicians who vote for low taxes and high government benefits.
China’s leader Xi Jinping has stated that he doesn’t think democracy is sustainable in the 21st century. What’s ironic here is that China is basically a fascist country. Instead of the CCP it should be the CFP. What aspects of socialism remain in China are blatantly national socialism. Xi is a Chinese Hitler, except instead of conquering the world, he just wants to get Taiwan back and ensure prosperity for his countrymen.
“After World War II, the U.S. had the power and the will to shape the world outside the Iron Curtain. It did so.” Not exactly. U.S. attempts to “contain” communism had mixed results. In fact communism reached its greatest geographical limits around 1988. And then it all fell to ruin.
Regarding the Multiverse. Isaac Asimov once wrote a novel called “The End of Eternity.” The novel takes place in the far future where time travel is possible. Agents from the future go back in time in an attempt to “fix things.” In the novel an agent goes back in time and moves a bucket on a ship. As a result a parallel universe splits off where the future is completely different. For the next several hundred years the two universes become ever more different. But then something strange happens. A reversion to the mean begins to take effect. So after 1000 years or so the two universes are very similar. As if the bucket was never moved.
Of course the real world is not science fiction. And just because an idea is interesting doesn’t mean it’s true. I recall the lyrics from a Jackson Browne song:
Now, for you and me it may not be that hard to reach our dreams.
But that magic feeling never seems to last.
And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems
Was Dennis really wrong? A classical liberal would view the administrative state as a crazy mix of fascism and socialism, but in either case a frightening expansion of governmental power. Their heirs still do.
What Dennis didn't anticipate was that FDR was able to carry out most of his program, while still preserving democracy. In Dennis' (or for that matter, Arendt's) sense, liberalism disappeared in 1933 and is still gone. What Dennis couldn't conceive was that great governmental power could be consistent with democracy.
On another topic, Our Host snarked at Pope Paul for his refusal to modify the Church's stance on contraception. John Noonan, a qualified canon lawyer and political liberal, wrote the book on the topic. (Contraception, Belknap Press 1965.) He blamed the Church's dogmatism on the low quality of post-reformation Catholic scholarship. He explained that the Church's original stance against contraception came from its opposition to Gnostics, who didn't believe in sex or procreation. This Church took this to mean that the Gnostics were really in favor of non-procreative sex, which therefore must have been a very bad thing indeed.
One small irony. President Reagan appointed Noonan to the Ninth Circuit based on Noonan's strong opposition to abortion. He never bothered to vet Noonan's other political beliefs, which were about as far from Reagan's as possible. The Republicans don't make such mistakes any more.
There is also the irony that at one time the Church believed in the idea of the "quickening." The quickening occurred when the soul of the unborn entered the fetus. Up until this point the fetus was considered not developed enough to host a soul. This was a rational point of view in the pre-scientific age, and it had the potential to allow for abortions early in the pregnancy. Too bad the Catholics abandoned the idea.
Ah yes, fascist regimes, famously immune from hyperinflationary crashes.
So Dennis lived until 1977. Did he ever acknowledge that the toboggan of inflation didn't slide quite as fast as he expected? I get that we need to take him seriously because other people took him seriously, but that is a kind of Keynesian ugliness contest. It's not clear to me why I should respect him on his own merits. He suffers from a defect that is more common than I could wish, what you might call a failure of the "reality circuit-breaker". As in, when the impeccable reasoning of your diamond-hard intellect leads you to an absurd conclusion, the reality circuit-breaker should trip and tell you to reexamine your premises at the least. And perhaps your reasoning also is not quite as flawless as you had supposed.
I will never understand the appeal of Hobbes or Rousseau, but some folks apparently just find liberty too chaotic (sic) to bear. At its core, the authoritarian impulse assumes that the Philosopher King will simultaneously maintain the "proper" (sic) order AND rule in the "right" way, both as expected by the particular author. You'd think the experience of the 1930s would dampen those expectations, but as you say self-reflection seems to be lacking.
Henry Farrell has a thing where he proposes that the appeal of Patrick O'Brian is that he puts the best possible face on conservatism. I agree with that, but some people forget that O'Brian wrote fiction.
Truly fascinating. I was completely unaware of Lawrence Dennis. His take seems much more nuanced and challenging than contemporary understandings which tend to just use 'fascism' as an epithet. I'm not saying he was right, just that his arguments are worth engaging with. Thanks!
Agree with this. And while he was clearly wrong on his read of the US in his own time, it really does seem like it'd be easy to imagine an alternate universe where a version of his arguments made its way into Deng Xiaoping thought.
And for all FDR's success, he couldn't manage to include non-Whites in the reforms, perpetuating the racism of the USA despite teh Constitution. Maybe that was a bridge too far. His wife, Eleanor, managed to do so much better regarding human rights after his death.
Sigh, I give this a like even though I tried to skim it, which turned out not to be possible. I know there is significant information to be digested, but the depth and breadth require a much more careful read than will happen tonight, for me. Apologies from a too casual reader...
Closely related, and an actual mass movement with uniforms etc. was Technocracy and attracted, among others, King Hubbert of the Hubbert Curve
The movement still survives in a vestigial form https://technocracyinc.org
Also, and echoing JH, Roosevelt implemented much of the program, preserving political democracy but breaking with lots of US tradition. James Burnham in 1941 saw this as another version of managerial rule, along wiht fascism and communism. Orwell correctly diagnosed Burnham as a "power-worshipper"
Very interesting. With today's fusion of silicon valley and maga-types in mind I wonder whether a triumvirate of Henry Ford, WR Hearst, and Charles Lindbergh, running on an America First ticket, would have been able to beat out FDR.
There were many opinions on ow to cure the t e Depression, ranging from socialism to to a total free market. Roosevalt had an experimental attitude.
Allen Kamp
This is a really great column. Very informative and thought provoking. Professor DeLong certainly makes good use of his summer break. Some thoughts:
One reason Lawrence Dennis is largely forgotten is that Anne Morrow Lindbergh expressed similar views in her 1940 book “The Wave of the Future.” Of course unlike Dennis, Lindbergh was rich and famous. Philip Roth also explored this theme in his novel “The Plot Against America”, where he envisions Charles Lindbergh defeating Roosevelt in the 1940 election.
“We did it in the 1930s: constructed the social-democratic New Deal Order that had a powerful affinity with the mass-production mode of societal organization and that drove the greatest boom generation after World War II that the world had ever seen.” But that was then, this is now. Can we do it again? The U.S. is approaching $40 trillion in debt. We are also a much more ethnically diverse nation than in 1933, and diversity is not necessarily an advantage. After all, Yugoslavia was a diverse country.
Keynes was correct that deficit spending can be used to end an economic depression. But Keynes also assumed the deficit would be paid back once prosperity returned. As history has shown, politicians will always vote for deficit spending. They seldom vote to reduce the debt. This is because voters choose politicians who vote for low taxes and high government benefits.
China’s leader Xi Jinping has stated that he doesn’t think democracy is sustainable in the 21st century. What’s ironic here is that China is basically a fascist country. Instead of the CCP it should be the CFP. What aspects of socialism remain in China are blatantly national socialism. Xi is a Chinese Hitler, except instead of conquering the world, he just wants to get Taiwan back and ensure prosperity for his countrymen.
“After World War II, the U.S. had the power and the will to shape the world outside the Iron Curtain. It did so.” Not exactly. U.S. attempts to “contain” communism had mixed results. In fact communism reached its greatest geographical limits around 1988. And then it all fell to ruin.
Regarding the Multiverse. Isaac Asimov once wrote a novel called “The End of Eternity.” The novel takes place in the far future where time travel is possible. Agents from the future go back in time in an attempt to “fix things.” In the novel an agent goes back in time and moves a bucket on a ship. As a result a parallel universe splits off where the future is completely different. For the next several hundred years the two universes become ever more different. But then something strange happens. A reversion to the mean begins to take effect. So after 1000 years or so the two universes are very similar. As if the bucket was never moved.
Of course the real world is not science fiction. And just because an idea is interesting doesn’t mean it’s true. I recall the lyrics from a Jackson Browne song:
Now, for you and me it may not be that hard to reach our dreams.
But that magic feeling never seems to last.
And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems
It would be easier sometimes to change the past.
Was Dennis really wrong? A classical liberal would view the administrative state as a crazy mix of fascism and socialism, but in either case a frightening expansion of governmental power. Their heirs still do.
What Dennis didn't anticipate was that FDR was able to carry out most of his program, while still preserving democracy. In Dennis' (or for that matter, Arendt's) sense, liberalism disappeared in 1933 and is still gone. What Dennis couldn't conceive was that great governmental power could be consistent with democracy.
On another topic, Our Host snarked at Pope Paul for his refusal to modify the Church's stance on contraception. John Noonan, a qualified canon lawyer and political liberal, wrote the book on the topic. (Contraception, Belknap Press 1965.) He blamed the Church's dogmatism on the low quality of post-reformation Catholic scholarship. He explained that the Church's original stance against contraception came from its opposition to Gnostics, who didn't believe in sex or procreation. This Church took this to mean that the Gnostics were really in favor of non-procreative sex, which therefore must have been a very bad thing indeed.
One small irony. President Reagan appointed Noonan to the Ninth Circuit based on Noonan's strong opposition to abortion. He never bothered to vet Noonan's other political beliefs, which were about as far from Reagan's as possible. The Republicans don't make such mistakes any more.
There is also the irony that at one time the Church believed in the idea of the "quickening." The quickening occurred when the soul of the unborn entered the fetus. Up until this point the fetus was considered not developed enough to host a soul. This was a rational point of view in the pre-scientific age, and it had the potential to allow for abortions early in the pregnancy. Too bad the Catholics abandoned the idea.