Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The Democratic order as a political project
- 1 When does politics change?
- 2 Creating political orders: the logic of the Democratic experience
- 3 Democratic opportunities in the crises of the 1930s
- 4 Passing the Wagner Act and building a new Democratic state
- 5 Party and movements in the Democratic upsurge, 1935–7
- 6 Progressive liberalism as pragmatic common sense
- 7 Surprising years: electing Truman and sustaining the Democratic order, 1947–9
- 8 Passing Taft-Hartley: what the losers won (and what the winners lost)
- 9 New political fronts? growth and civil rights in the 1940s
- 10 Democratic anti-Communism and the Cold War
- 11 From Truman to Kennedy: the reach and limits of Democratic power
- 12 Was the Democratic order democratic?
- Index
9 - New political fronts? growth and civil rights in the 1940s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The Democratic order as a political project
- 1 When does politics change?
- 2 Creating political orders: the logic of the Democratic experience
- 3 Democratic opportunities in the crises of the 1930s
- 4 Passing the Wagner Act and building a new Democratic state
- 5 Party and movements in the Democratic upsurge, 1935–7
- 6 Progressive liberalism as pragmatic common sense
- 7 Surprising years: electing Truman and sustaining the Democratic order, 1947–9
- 8 Passing Taft-Hartley: what the losers won (and what the winners lost)
- 9 New political fronts? growth and civil rights in the 1940s
- 10 Democratic anti-Communism and the Cold War
- 11 From Truman to Kennedy: the reach and limits of Democratic power
- 12 Was the Democratic order democratic?
- Index
Summary
The Government must work with industry, labor, and the farmers in keeping our economy running at full speed. The Government must see that every American has a chance to obtain his fair share of our increasing abundance. … We cannot maintain prosperity unless we have a fair distribution of opportunity and a widespread consumption of the products of our factories and farms.
– Harry Truman, State of the Union address, January 5, 1949After World War II, Democratic leaders wanted to maintain a reformist progressive liberalism and mainly did so. They adapted to pressures from a renewed and more sophisticated opposition, so that a conservative shift was channeled within the framework established in the 1930s. While the popular mobilization of the 1930s could not be sustained through the 1940s, new areas of political debate and potential reform were opened. This chapter first evaluates postwar relations between the Democratic order and the economy. I then examine movements and interest groups that arose in and around the Democratic order beyond labor, focusing on the emergence of civil rights as a major public issue. The chapter concludes by assessing the thematic shifts that occurred from the mid-1930s to the end of the 1940s.
Democratic policies and economic performance
Postwar growth did not create a new political order. The Democratic order had been built a decade earlier.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building a Democratic Political OrderReshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s, pp. 262 - 297Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996