War And Peace Of FDR.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt has always cut an extremely attractive figure to the Russians, partly due to his aristocratic appearance, background, and manners (the Russians admire aristocratic demeanor, and despise the petit-bourgeois), partly due to his curbing of rampant "ugly" capitalism and the introduction of socialistic concern toward "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid," as manifested in his New Deal, partly due to his enlightened, but strong (no matter what anyone says to the contrary!) foreign policy, which included his prompt recognition of the Soviet Union in the first months of his presidency in 1933, partly for a host of other reasons, but finally, and mainly, for being part of that Big Three image of him-Churchill-and-Stalin, symbolizing Russia’s superpower acceptance by the Western world.
There are several eye-opening revelations about FDR in my No Way To Treat A Lady historical section, and particularly regarding his role in what was to become known as the case of the Atomic Espionage. But those stories belong there, and there they are to stay. The present entry is of a broader, non-specific nature.
The term New Deal, characterizing his Administration, is far more inclusive than it would imply as a purely technical term. In its larger sense, this term becomes a metaphor for the FDR phenomenon as such.
A remarkable case of bipartisan unity, he was a Democrat, related to the Republican Teddy Roosevelt, and married to the latter’s niece. (Here is a nice trivia riddle: what was Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name?!) He also represents a healthy reminder of what America used to be, and, hopefully, could still be, given the right circumstances: a nation of individuals and leaders standing for their own personal beliefs, rather than for the agendas of their handlers.
Although FDR retains a consistent fan club among high-placed ethnic Russians, this is by no means the case among the Russian Jews, who, as I have had several occasions to mention, are not fond of him, blaming the Western Allies of Stalin for failing, due to their selfish reasons, to open the Second Front in 1942, and thus becoming indirectly responsible as enablers of Hitler’s Holocaust. Even so, they are not as vituperative in denouncing him as they are in denouncing Churchill, for the remarkably peculiar reason of denying FDR the necessary perceptiveness and sophistication of a “European” real-politiker. Thus, he is getting a relatively easy pass on his transgressions, but only as a person, without affording a similar absolution to the American political establishment, which is presumed collectively guilty of all mortal sins. Churchill on the other hand, is allowed no such excuse.
In my evaluation, FDR certainly stands out as one of America’s greatest Presidents. The “neoconservative” and pre-neoconservative rants about him being a dupe, and Harry Hopkins being no less than a Soviet agent of influence (!!!), are all preposterous and unworthy of a refutal in this entry. Refuting them in their historical context, which I am doing in the History section, is a different matter, and there it is most appropriate.
Regarding FDR, there are facts that have always been in the public eye, which are fascinating enough even without our recourse to the secrets of history. His legacy can be divided into four quadrants: two, foreign and domestic, timed to the initial period of formal peace, enjoyed by his Administration, and the other two, also foreign and domestic, related to the official state of war, in which America found herself by the force of the circumstances. The reader may have noticed, however, that in my title “war” comes before “peace,” and the famous title of Tolstoy’s novel is not the only reason. In fact, it would be ridiculous to talk of the period between 1933 and 1941 (or even between 1933 and 1939) as a time of “peace,” as FDR’s ascent to power in America coincided with Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, thus making any talk of “peace” after 1933 kind of incongruous. (Stalin, for one, knew already in 1926 that there would be no peace with Hitler, and he had actively started preparing for the imminent war long before FDR became president.)
It does not mean however that we are not allowed to use the above-stated four practical quadrants in putting our entry together in an organized fashion, and the rest of this entry will consist of such four quadrants and a short conclusion.
The most important foreign policy achievement of the Roosevelt Administration during the early period was the diplomatic recognition of the USSR. The latter’s existence being a fait accompli, there was no nationally sustainable interest for the United States to keep ignoring the elephant in the room. To keep pretending that the elephant did not exist would have been as silly and counterproductive as the Prohibition, and it is for this reason that I am qualifying President Roosevelt’s recognition of the USSR as perhaps the greatest triumph of common sense on a par with the Twenty-First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
His second biggest foreign policy initiative was the Good Neighbor Policy, revising the U.S. position toward Latin America. Since the earliest years of America’s independence, reiterated in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, Latin America had been seen as America’s rightful sphere of influence. I find, however, that up to a point the doctrine had been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it strove to defend American interests in the New World, but on the other hand, by implication it restricted the zone of those interests to the New World. For this reason, I regard FDR’s “withdrawal” from a number of places in Latin America not as a retreat, but as his laying a subtle foundation for a more assertive American role in global affairs from now on. Look at it this way: by the turn of the twentieth century, the essence of the Monroe Doctrine had already received an implicit recognition from the rest of the world, but by the same token the rest of world did not want America outside the Americas. (It was hardly a coincidence that the actual acquisition of Puerto Rico and the virtual acquisition of Cuba in the Spanish-American war of 1898 had gone fairly painlessly, whereas the military acquisition of the Philippines half-a-world away had turned into a horrific bloody mess.)
In the spirit of this ingeniously understated renunciation of the Monroe Doctrine, the American forces were now withdrawn from Haiti and the new treaties with Cuba and Panama ended their status as protectorates of the United States. (Needless to stay, their dependence on the United States did not stop. Typically, between 1943 and 1952, when the USSR was maintaining “diplomatic relations” with pre-Castro Cuba, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States [Gromyko] also served as Soviet Ambassador to Cuba without as much as setting foot on Cuban soil… Some independence, indeed!) In December 1933, FDR signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, relinquishing America’s previously indisputable right to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.
What all this amounted to, I repeat, because it is so important to understand, was not letting Latin America go her own way, but an implicit lifting of regionalist restrictions on American foreign policy. Paradoxically, it was this Good Neighbor Policy of the Roosevelt Administration that made America a global superpower!
The second quadrant of our schema covers FDR’s New Deal policies. It goes without saying that FDR was trying to fight the ills of the Great Depression mostly with socialist weapons, but although much of his socialist initiative was eventually assimilated into the American socio-economic system, he was unable to perform a miracle to get rid of the "money-changer" mentality that had emerged to characterize the American capitalist system by the time of his First Inaugural Address (see my illuminating entry FDR And The Villains Of The Great Depression, which follows next in this posting), on March 4, 1933, when he famously attacked the ethics of capitalism, which he saw as the main cause of the economic crisis that devastated the capitalist world, and in particular the United States.
During the war, even before America entered it after Pearl Harbor, she became an “Arsenal of Democracy” as Roosevelt called it, supporting the Allies with military supplies, and expanding the Lend-Lease Program to include the Russians as soon as the USSR joined the war in June 1941. In domestic policies, a large military buildup conducted by the Roosevelt Administration guaranteed virtually full employment of the workforce, and thus did away with the last vestiges of the Great Depression.
There were major sources of controversy, such as the internment of first-generation Japanese, German, and Italian Americans, and the suspectedly excessive rapprochement with the USSR on the part of FDR himself, but especially on the part of his closest adviser Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890-1946) and of his Vice President Henry Agard Wallace (1888-1965). It is, however, ridiculous and factually false to suspect these prominent members of the Roosevelt Administration (including FDR himself) of a particular pro-Soviet bias, as, had it been so, the Second Front in Europe would have been opened already in 1941, or at least by the summer of 1942, and not when it actually happened two years later, in the summer of 1944, when the Soviet Union was already winning the war on its own.
And finally, a bonus futuristic dimension to FDR’s policies. I am talking of the Atlantic Charter, discussed by him with Churchill in Argentina, in 1941. In this discussion of the future post-war world, the plan for the United Nations and a host of other international organizations and mechanisms began to materialize, ready to be implemented in 1945, when the war was finally over, the Allies coming out victorious.
FDR And The Villains Of The Great Depression.
There are some historical truths, which, considering the recurrence of world events, have been transformed to become eternal truths, whose relevance for all time has been established beyond doubt. Yet most such truths being uncomfortable and politically incorrect, they tend to be conveniently retired into oblivion, despite the fact that their serviceability does not subside, but on the contrary increases with the progress of time.
The current global economic depression is admittedly the worst since the Great Depression of the 1920’s to 1930’s. It is therefore tremendously instructive to go back to the bleak era eighty years ago and try to learn some lessons for the troubled times of today.
In this respect, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address to the nation on March 4, 1933, is an eye-opener of the first magnitude. In it FDR clearly identifies the culprits of the crisis and emphasizes its ethical, rather than natural origin. Here is a key excerpt from that immensely important document that reads as if a very brave man has written it today:
"…A host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
"Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts, compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and abdicated. The practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
"True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit, by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision, the people perish.
"The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
"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. These dark days will be worth all they have cost us, if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto, but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
"Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of the pride of place and personal profit; and 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 callous and selfish wrongdoing. Thus, small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live."
There can be nothing added to this astonishing invective against capitalist greed, except for me to note that the whole section Capitalism And Christianity: A Contradiction In Terms of my book, devoted to a discussion of the merits and demerits of capitalism, is greatly honored by its inclusion here.
FDR Speaks.
There are many well-known or lesser-known aphoristic sayings belonging or attributed to FDR, which have left me lukewarm. On the other hand, there are those which I find engaging and most interesting. Here is just such a collection.
I am organizing these sayings in two categories. The first category is non-thematic.---
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1933.)
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given, of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
There is nothing I love as much as a good fight. (Spoken like a true Roosevelt!)
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.
The second category contains sayings arranged by their themes, as becomes clear from my short comments. The first group flirts with socialism, while obliquely, or occasionally directly, attacking capitalist ideology. For the strongest outburst of Roosevelt’s anti-capitalist invective, see my entry FDR and The Villains of the Great Depression, where the quoted passage from his First Inaugural Address is too long to be included in this entry. Need I also mention his multiple signature references to “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,” which sound awfully Karl Marx-friendly, although Marx himself might have found this reference not going far enough? Anyway, here are some shorter and vaguer ones, which still go in the same direction:
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off. (Hard-nosed competition with no holds barred, and “compassion” being the dirtiest word in the lexicon, whereas “cooperation” being a euphemism for “conspiracy” of the rich against the poor, have been the trademarks of capitalism. Thus by putting limits on competition and calling for genuine cooperation, FDR indirectly advocates anti-capitalist thinking. Even if this quote be taken as a global policy statement, the economic undercurrents in it are still defining its core meaning.)
The following two quotes are essentially idealistic pronouncements, and idealism of this nature is inimical to capitalist mentality:
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air, and giving fresh strength to our people.
Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.
Moving on now to the category of religion, we can notice right away that our very first “religious” quote is a borderline case of economics versus religion, thus falling into the category of Capitalism vs. Christianity.
Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
The other one is very much in tune with my own thoughts on religious tolerance.
Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
The next mini-category deals with education.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. (Needless to say, I subscribe to this general view, but do we understand in this case what “education” means and implies?)
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. (This is certainly true, but there are two strong caveats here. One, that it is not enough to throw money at education, unless that education is worth throwing money at. The multiple-choice system is clearly defective, and rather than further strengthening it with money, it ought to be discarded in the first place. And secondly, education has to be free and aimed at supporting special talent, rather than special disabilities.)
And lastly, FDR’s quip about accidents in politics, which sounds a lot like Stalin’s aphorism on the same subject. Did one of them borrow from the other, or did they just think alike?
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” (Compare this to Stalin’s similar adage: “In world affairs, no single event which has serious political consequences can be said to have happened by accident.”)
This last FDR/Stalin twin quip is eminently worthy to become the sparkling closer for this entry.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt has always cut an extremely attractive figure to the Russians, partly due to his aristocratic appearance, background, and manners (the Russians admire aristocratic demeanor, and despise the petit-bourgeois), partly due to his curbing of rampant "ugly" capitalism and the introduction of socialistic concern toward "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid," as manifested in his New Deal, partly due to his enlightened, but strong (no matter what anyone says to the contrary!) foreign policy, which included his prompt recognition of the Soviet Union in the first months of his presidency in 1933, partly for a host of other reasons, but finally, and mainly, for being part of that Big Three image of him-Churchill-and-Stalin, symbolizing Russia’s superpower acceptance by the Western world.
There are several eye-opening revelations about FDR in my No Way To Treat A Lady historical section, and particularly regarding his role in what was to become known as the case of the Atomic Espionage. But those stories belong there, and there they are to stay. The present entry is of a broader, non-specific nature.
The term New Deal, characterizing his Administration, is far more inclusive than it would imply as a purely technical term. In its larger sense, this term becomes a metaphor for the FDR phenomenon as such.
A remarkable case of bipartisan unity, he was a Democrat, related to the Republican Teddy Roosevelt, and married to the latter’s niece. (Here is a nice trivia riddle: what was Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name?!) He also represents a healthy reminder of what America used to be, and, hopefully, could still be, given the right circumstances: a nation of individuals and leaders standing for their own personal beliefs, rather than for the agendas of their handlers.
Although FDR retains a consistent fan club among high-placed ethnic Russians, this is by no means the case among the Russian Jews, who, as I have had several occasions to mention, are not fond of him, blaming the Western Allies of Stalin for failing, due to their selfish reasons, to open the Second Front in 1942, and thus becoming indirectly responsible as enablers of Hitler’s Holocaust. Even so, they are not as vituperative in denouncing him as they are in denouncing Churchill, for the remarkably peculiar reason of denying FDR the necessary perceptiveness and sophistication of a “European” real-politiker. Thus, he is getting a relatively easy pass on his transgressions, but only as a person, without affording a similar absolution to the American political establishment, which is presumed collectively guilty of all mortal sins. Churchill on the other hand, is allowed no such excuse.
In my evaluation, FDR certainly stands out as one of America’s greatest Presidents. The “neoconservative” and pre-neoconservative rants about him being a dupe, and Harry Hopkins being no less than a Soviet agent of influence (!!!), are all preposterous and unworthy of a refutal in this entry. Refuting them in their historical context, which I am doing in the History section, is a different matter, and there it is most appropriate.
Regarding FDR, there are facts that have always been in the public eye, which are fascinating enough even without our recourse to the secrets of history. His legacy can be divided into four quadrants: two, foreign and domestic, timed to the initial period of formal peace, enjoyed by his Administration, and the other two, also foreign and domestic, related to the official state of war, in which America found herself by the force of the circumstances. The reader may have noticed, however, that in my title “war” comes before “peace,” and the famous title of Tolstoy’s novel is not the only reason. In fact, it would be ridiculous to talk of the period between 1933 and 1941 (or even between 1933 and 1939) as a time of “peace,” as FDR’s ascent to power in America coincided with Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, thus making any talk of “peace” after 1933 kind of incongruous. (Stalin, for one, knew already in 1926 that there would be no peace with Hitler, and he had actively started preparing for the imminent war long before FDR became president.)
It does not mean however that we are not allowed to use the above-stated four practical quadrants in putting our entry together in an organized fashion, and the rest of this entry will consist of such four quadrants and a short conclusion.
The most important foreign policy achievement of the Roosevelt Administration during the early period was the diplomatic recognition of the USSR. The latter’s existence being a fait accompli, there was no nationally sustainable interest for the United States to keep ignoring the elephant in the room. To keep pretending that the elephant did not exist would have been as silly and counterproductive as the Prohibition, and it is for this reason that I am qualifying President Roosevelt’s recognition of the USSR as perhaps the greatest triumph of common sense on a par with the Twenty-First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
His second biggest foreign policy initiative was the Good Neighbor Policy, revising the U.S. position toward Latin America. Since the earliest years of America’s independence, reiterated in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, Latin America had been seen as America’s rightful sphere of influence. I find, however, that up to a point the doctrine had been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it strove to defend American interests in the New World, but on the other hand, by implication it restricted the zone of those interests to the New World. For this reason, I regard FDR’s “withdrawal” from a number of places in Latin America not as a retreat, but as his laying a subtle foundation for a more assertive American role in global affairs from now on. Look at it this way: by the turn of the twentieth century, the essence of the Monroe Doctrine had already received an implicit recognition from the rest of the world, but by the same token the rest of world did not want America outside the Americas. (It was hardly a coincidence that the actual acquisition of Puerto Rico and the virtual acquisition of Cuba in the Spanish-American war of 1898 had gone fairly painlessly, whereas the military acquisition of the Philippines half-a-world away had turned into a horrific bloody mess.)
In the spirit of this ingeniously understated renunciation of the Monroe Doctrine, the American forces were now withdrawn from Haiti and the new treaties with Cuba and Panama ended their status as protectorates of the United States. (Needless to stay, their dependence on the United States did not stop. Typically, between 1943 and 1952, when the USSR was maintaining “diplomatic relations” with pre-Castro Cuba, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States [Gromyko] also served as Soviet Ambassador to Cuba without as much as setting foot on Cuban soil… Some independence, indeed!) In December 1933, FDR signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, relinquishing America’s previously indisputable right to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.
What all this amounted to, I repeat, because it is so important to understand, was not letting Latin America go her own way, but an implicit lifting of regionalist restrictions on American foreign policy. Paradoxically, it was this Good Neighbor Policy of the Roosevelt Administration that made America a global superpower!
The second quadrant of our schema covers FDR’s New Deal policies. It goes without saying that FDR was trying to fight the ills of the Great Depression mostly with socialist weapons, but although much of his socialist initiative was eventually assimilated into the American socio-economic system, he was unable to perform a miracle to get rid of the "money-changer" mentality that had emerged to characterize the American capitalist system by the time of his First Inaugural Address (see my illuminating entry FDR And The Villains Of The Great Depression, which follows next in this posting), on March 4, 1933, when he famously attacked the ethics of capitalism, which he saw as the main cause of the economic crisis that devastated the capitalist world, and in particular the United States.
During the war, even before America entered it after Pearl Harbor, she became an “Arsenal of Democracy” as Roosevelt called it, supporting the Allies with military supplies, and expanding the Lend-Lease Program to include the Russians as soon as the USSR joined the war in June 1941. In domestic policies, a large military buildup conducted by the Roosevelt Administration guaranteed virtually full employment of the workforce, and thus did away with the last vestiges of the Great Depression.
There were major sources of controversy, such as the internment of first-generation Japanese, German, and Italian Americans, and the suspectedly excessive rapprochement with the USSR on the part of FDR himself, but especially on the part of his closest adviser Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890-1946) and of his Vice President Henry Agard Wallace (1888-1965). It is, however, ridiculous and factually false to suspect these prominent members of the Roosevelt Administration (including FDR himself) of a particular pro-Soviet bias, as, had it been so, the Second Front in Europe would have been opened already in 1941, or at least by the summer of 1942, and not when it actually happened two years later, in the summer of 1944, when the Soviet Union was already winning the war on its own.
And finally, a bonus futuristic dimension to FDR’s policies. I am talking of the Atlantic Charter, discussed by him with Churchill in Argentina, in 1941. In this discussion of the future post-war world, the plan for the United Nations and a host of other international organizations and mechanisms began to materialize, ready to be implemented in 1945, when the war was finally over, the Allies coming out victorious.
FDR And The Villains Of The Great Depression.
There are some historical truths, which, considering the recurrence of world events, have been transformed to become eternal truths, whose relevance for all time has been established beyond doubt. Yet most such truths being uncomfortable and politically incorrect, they tend to be conveniently retired into oblivion, despite the fact that their serviceability does not subside, but on the contrary increases with the progress of time.
The current global economic depression is admittedly the worst since the Great Depression of the 1920’s to 1930’s. It is therefore tremendously instructive to go back to the bleak era eighty years ago and try to learn some lessons for the troubled times of today.
In this respect, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address to the nation on March 4, 1933, is an eye-opener of the first magnitude. In it FDR clearly identifies the culprits of the crisis and emphasizes its ethical, rather than natural origin. Here is a key excerpt from that immensely important document that reads as if a very brave man has written it today:
"…A host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
"Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts, compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and abdicated. The practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
"True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit, by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision, the people perish.
"The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
"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. These dark days will be worth all they have cost us, if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto, but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
"Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of the pride of place and personal profit; and 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 callous and selfish wrongdoing. Thus, small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live."
There can be nothing added to this astonishing invective against capitalist greed, except for me to note that the whole section Capitalism And Christianity: A Contradiction In Terms of my book, devoted to a discussion of the merits and demerits of capitalism, is greatly honored by its inclusion here.
FDR Speaks.
There are many well-known or lesser-known aphoristic sayings belonging or attributed to FDR, which have left me lukewarm. On the other hand, there are those which I find engaging and most interesting. Here is just such a collection.
I am organizing these sayings in two categories. The first category is non-thematic.---
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1933.)
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given, of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
There is nothing I love as much as a good fight. (Spoken like a true Roosevelt!)
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.
The second category contains sayings arranged by their themes, as becomes clear from my short comments. The first group flirts with socialism, while obliquely, or occasionally directly, attacking capitalist ideology. For the strongest outburst of Roosevelt’s anti-capitalist invective, see my entry FDR and The Villains of the Great Depression, where the quoted passage from his First Inaugural Address is too long to be included in this entry. Need I also mention his multiple signature references to “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,” which sound awfully Karl Marx-friendly, although Marx himself might have found this reference not going far enough? Anyway, here are some shorter and vaguer ones, which still go in the same direction:
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off. (Hard-nosed competition with no holds barred, and “compassion” being the dirtiest word in the lexicon, whereas “cooperation” being a euphemism for “conspiracy” of the rich against the poor, have been the trademarks of capitalism. Thus by putting limits on competition and calling for genuine cooperation, FDR indirectly advocates anti-capitalist thinking. Even if this quote be taken as a global policy statement, the economic undercurrents in it are still defining its core meaning.)
The following two quotes are essentially idealistic pronouncements, and idealism of this nature is inimical to capitalist mentality:
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air, and giving fresh strength to our people.
Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.
Moving on now to the category of religion, we can notice right away that our very first “religious” quote is a borderline case of economics versus religion, thus falling into the category of Capitalism vs. Christianity.
Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
The other one is very much in tune with my own thoughts on religious tolerance.
Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
The next mini-category deals with education.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. (Needless to say, I subscribe to this general view, but do we understand in this case what “education” means and implies?)
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. (This is certainly true, but there are two strong caveats here. One, that it is not enough to throw money at education, unless that education is worth throwing money at. The multiple-choice system is clearly defective, and rather than further strengthening it with money, it ought to be discarded in the first place. And secondly, education has to be free and aimed at supporting special talent, rather than special disabilities.)
And lastly, FDR’s quip about accidents in politics, which sounds a lot like Stalin’s aphorism on the same subject. Did one of them borrow from the other, or did they just think alike?
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” (Compare this to Stalin’s similar adage: “In world affairs, no single event which has serious political consequences can be said to have happened by accident.”)
This last FDR/Stalin twin quip is eminently worthy to become the sparkling closer for this entry.
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