medicaid - 3 Quarks Daily

by Akim Reinhardt

The United States boasts a deeply conservative economic tradition. From its origins as a colonial, agricultural society, it quickly emerged as a slave holding republic built on the ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide of Indigenous peoples. After the Civil War (1861-65), it reshaped itself in the crucible of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism straight through to the Roaring ‘20s. A post-Depression Keynesian consensus led U.S. leaders to reign in the most conservative impulses during the mid-20th century, but the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s set the stage for the current neo-liberal moment.

Consequently, ever since the industrial revolution, the United States has typically trailed other developed nations in establishing a basic social welfare system. It has never fielded a competitive socialist or labor party. It was the last major nation to implement an old age pension. More recently, ObamaCare made it the last major nation to mandate that all of its citizens receive some sort of healthcare coverage, even if it's quite wanting in many cases.

Amid its overriding conservativism, the United States has had only three presidents with any real socialist tendencies: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45), Harry S. Truman (1945-53), and most recently Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose presidency (1963-69) ended before half of current Americans were born (median age 37.9).

The election of Donald Trump as president and, just as important, the impending Republican dominance of Congress, make certain that the United States will not correct its social welfare shortcomings anytime soon. Indeed, the nation may take significant steps backwards.

However, a quick review of America's stunted progressive history suggests that the opportunity for a progressive counter-revolution may be closer than it appears at this dark moment.

by Akim Reinhardt

We may now be gazing upon the fading days of the Occupy movement as an actual episode in which numerous, large scale occupations are taking place and having immediate impact. Then again, maybe not. But if so, it is perhaps time to begin reflecting upon the movement and how we might measure it.

Elsewhere I have written about Occupy within the contest of two earlier American social protest movements against poverty: Coxey’s Army of unemployed men looking for work in 1894, and the Bonus Marchers of impoverished World War I veterans in 1932.

During the depression of 1893-98, the second worst in U.S. history, many Americans began to agitate for a federally-funded public works project to build and improve roads across the country. In addition to building up the infrastructure, such projects could also put men to work during an era when unemployment was in the teens and there was no goverment welfare safety net to speak of. Coxey's Army, led by an Ohio millionaire named Jacob Coxey, was the largest of many protest movements advocating this approach. Thousands of men marched to the nation's capital in support of the plan.

Later on, the Bonus Marchers were a collection of homeless and unemployed World War I veterans who sought government action during the darkest depths of the Great Depression. During the roaring `20s the government had promised to award them a one time bonus of $1,000 in gratitude for their wartime service, payable in 1945. However, unemployed vets, many of them homeless, sought early payment of the bonus in 1932. They too crossed the country in caravans, arriving in the nation's capital.

Despite their numbers, organization, and commitment, neither group was able to achieve its immediate goal. Congress did not create a public works job program as Coxey requested, nor did it award early payment of the cash bonus promised to war veterans as the Bonus Marchers requested. In both cases, the press and political opponents smeared peaceful and patriotic protestors as criminals and revolutionaries. And after arriving in Washington, D.C., both groups suffered state violence from police and even the military. Indeed, in 1932 one of America's lowest moments came when future WWII heroes Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Patton all played a direct role in leading military forces against their former fellow servicemen, who had assembled peaceably

As we now witness what may very well be the decline of the Occupy movement, in the face of similar smears and violence, it is worth considering the following questions:

How do Historians look back upon Coxey’s Army and the Bonus Marchers; how do they measure their political significance; and what might that portend for the way history comes to view the Occupy movement should it soon fade from the scene as did its predecessors?

Tag: medicaid

Monday, December 19, 2011

Occupy and History: Are We Near the End and What Will it Mean?