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Redefining the New Deal: Some Thoughts on the Political and Cultural Perspectives of Revisionism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
Thirty years after the publication of Arthur Schlesinger's The Crisis of the Old Order and two decades after the “New Left” provoked a modicum of self-examination by established historians of the New Deal, there is still no general revisionist work or interpretation of the 1930s of the stature of Schlesinger, Leuchtenburg or Freidel. Despite twenty years of revisionist challenges, the notion of the 1930s as an affirmative and progressive era in American history remains dominant and commands broad acceptance. Revisionist analysis has appeared marginal to the dominant interpretations of the New Deal and has been either easily accommodated or effortlessly dismissed by the “liberal historical establishment.” This does not validate the dominant discourse so much as suggest that dissenting historians have pursued unrewarding lines of enquiry in challenging prevailing orthodoxy about the nature and significance of the New Deal. Whatever their differences, revisionists have shared with the “liberal establishment” the assumption that it was public policy which ensured the State's survival during the severe economic crisis of the 1930s and which provides the touchstone for historical evaluation of the New Deal. In the course of this review of the overarching concerns of historical writing about the New Deal it is intended to suggest that new perspectives and points of reference are required, and are being developed, to reinvigorate revisionist historiography of the New Deal period, and to shed light, in particular, on the State's ability to withstand crisis. As the debate over slavery was enlivened and sharpened by the introduction of cultural perspectives, so historical analysis of the New Deal stands to derive similar benefit.
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