Roosevelt's Secret

U.S. elections are nearing, and Barack Obama is actively trying to depict himself as Franklin Roosevelt. He has many suggestions, but does the American president have a new anti-crisis plan?

In 1933, Americans chose an unusual president. In contrast to his predecessor, Hoover, Roosevelt did not guess what sum of money the monopolies would need for the illusion of stabilization. Unemployment was already too high; the crisis had gone on too long. Unlike Obama, Roosevelt directly came to the elections with a new line of economic policies. It was for him that millions of people had voted. The current U.S. president has done things differently: He promoted his inspirational “new man” rather than any recovery plan for the economy. His suggestions constituted a set, not a system. They remain just that to this day — on the eve of new elections.

Roosevelt’s secret lay in the inescapable position of his country. The U.S. had long become the leading economy of the world, but was not the center of the global corporate web. It had no colonies and could not fight the crisis, as England and France did, by exerting pressure on its subordinate markets for commodities. Of course, the U.S. also had dependent countries as a resource, but the crisis had destroyed the domestic market utterly fundamental to its economy. It’s no wonder that under the influence of his ascent, Americans long believed that politics are a domestic matter. When the government launched a war with Spain over Cuba and the Philippines in 1899, many were shocked by the flash of American imperialism.

It may seem paradoxical that Keynesian regulation was invented by an Englishman, yet first applied in the United States. There is even a legend about John Maynard Keynes coming to America, finding an audience and convincing Roosevelt to begin printing money and distributing it to the general population. Many contemporary economists believe that “Keynesian Obama” has been working on just that for a few years. However, this is not so. Generously subsidizing financial corporations is not the same as championing raises in workers’ salaries and thereby restoring demand. A meeting of Roosevelt and Keynes never took place. It was not the exported idea but rather conditions in the United States that had created Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The Great Depression began in 1929. By 1933, the state of the U.S. economy had become catastrophic. The crisis was destroying domestic demand, and in order not to share the American buyer with other countries, Washington adopted a policy of protectionism. It proved to be effective, but the crisis would not let up. Other governments also turned to protectionist measures, but there was a prevailing notion that many of those founded before adequate industrialization were superfluous. Without giving rise to the American consumer, it was impossible to revive the economy. Precisely this was the central tenet of Roosevelt’s plan.

Obama has emphasized in past elections the necessity of reviving American industry. The realization of this fine suggestion, however, carried neoliberal connotations. A fall in Americans’ real wages should have allowed businesses to achieve decreased production costs and be able to more actively export. The results were seen in 2010. If the Federal Reserve system is to be believed, industrial production increased by 6.4 percent that year. In order to secure such a convincing number, it had to be admitted how severe the recession of 2009 really was. Yet, the real source of the United States’ industrial recovery became the policies of pumping cash into banks. China had no small role in actively buying up American industrial machinery in hopes that the crisis would soon end.

In 2011, the results of Obama’s reindustrialization plan seemed to come under question. It is exactly in the conflict of interests between industrial and financial capital that one should search for the cause of the harsh spring-summer confrontation between Republicans and Democrats. Barack Obama is not the majority president he tries to portray himself as; he is a representative and defender of financial corporations. His struggle to abate the crisis, first and foremost, saved banks and encouraged the development of raw and paper speculation instead of providing the basis for a way out of the crisis. It then does not come as a surprise that the president lost a large amount of trust. He himself was forced to admit the failure of his administration in effectively dealing with the problems of the American economy.

This summer, Obama’s attempts to prolong his policy of “collective redemption” and again award speculators monetary assistance were met with resistance. And “Roosevelt’s follower” had to agree to strict austerity measures that had been causing serious discontent among workers in Europe. This policy had gained the most traction in Greece and before long demonstrated just what a horrifying state the economy can be driven to. Obama tried to cover up this capitulation in financial policy with threats to wage a tax offensive on the rich. But having lost most of his Congressional support over his policies, the U.S. president found himself in an extremely difficult situation. He can easily announce initiatives but can hardly bring them to fruition, even if he wants to.

In contrast to Obama, Roosevelt did not waste his time in office on strange maneuvers. Upon securing confidence, he went straight to pulling the country out of the quagmire. From a class perspective, his policy was contradictory. Even within wealthy circles, there was no singular, unequivocal view of him. According to one account, the president considered even himself an opponent of his policies. Nevertheless, they were followed through on — without a remedy for the low demand, recovering the American real sector from the depression would not have been possible. From 2008 to 2011, Obama tried to prevent the collapse of banks and to create salubrious conditions for a revival of industry through exports instead of achieving a raise in workers’ wages. This policy was inevitable because American industry was no longer solely operating in the U.S. Monopolies had changed dramatically since Roosevelt’s time. To break old rules from the top — and at the very core of the world economy — became an almost unthinkable measure. Herein lies the reason why Obama did not make good on voters’ trust.

The U.S. president understands that an injection of Roosevelt’s authority into his image could make a big difference during elections. Obama insists that along with the cuts to social spending, he will be wringing $1.5 trillion from the wealthy with the help of taxes. He promises to allocate $50 billion to infrastructure projects in order to construct new branches of rail and automobile roads. Of the $447 billion of general spending, $49 billion will go to paying unemployment benefits, and $65 billion will be dedicated to assisting small businesses and creating new jobs. Obama’s announced initiatives have the old “democratic” characteristics of plugging all the social gaps within a framework of established politics — neoliberal politics.

Obama does not promise to tackle unemployment and give everyone a decent livelihood in exchange for their labor. He does not proclaim a new economic model in which the construction of roads in the U.S. will be only to the advantage of local manufacturers rather than allowing foreign manufacturers (as China has recklessly done) to provide for growth, even with checked American capital. The U.S. president’s suggestions do not lay any groundwork for an escape from the trappings of globalization, which created the present crisis in the first place, indeed as a result of U.S. growth.

Little has changed. And if Roosevelt offered something fundamentally new to bourgeois politics, Obama has so far stuck with politics as usual. With that, he really wants to stay president.