Arranged
Alliance: Business and the New Deal's Cross-Class Coalition
Peter Swenson
Abstract
The role of business interests in fighting or supporting
core New Deal social policy reforms of the 1930s remains a highly
contested issue across the disciplines of history, sociology, and
political science. Some argue that capitalists were entirely hostile
and therefore simply ineffective in blocking reforms, while others
maintainthat capitalist support and pressure were decisive. This
paper shifts the focus to business support after passage, presenting
evidence that New Deal politicians sought to arrange and expected
a congenial alliance of business and popular interests after passage.
Scattered but significant business support signalled in advance
the feasibility of such an alliance to New Deal reformers who believed
that the regulatory logic of fair labor standards, old age and unemployment
insurance, and even protection of union organizing and bargaining
rights would appeal to businessmen chronically disturbed by the
destabilizing labor practices of "chiselers," or cut-throat competitors
in product markets. Thus would the reforms offer market security
to many capitalists along with social security for working classes.
These same reformers' experience from progressive reforms earlier
in the century led them to discount organized business opposition
and to believe that a robust cross-class alliance would secure the
reforms once the social emergency that mobilized intense popular
and electoral pressure had passed. The paper concludes with critiques
of other theories about the New Deal associated with Theda Skocpol,
Fred Block, Tom Ferguson, and Colin Gordon, showing how the cross-class
alliance analysis addresses problems with their logic and historical
evidence.
Peter Swenson, Department
of Political Science, Northwestern University
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