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Full-Text Articles in Political Science

What The New Deal Can Teach Us About Winning A Green New Deal, Martin Hart-Landsberg Apr 2020

What The New Deal Can Teach Us About Winning A Green New Deal, Martin Hart-Landsberg

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Growing awareness of our ever-worsening climate crisis has boosted the popularity of movements calling for a Green New Deal. At present, the Green New Deal is a big tent idea, grounded to some extent by its identification with the original New Deal and emphasis on the need for strong state action to initiate system change on a massive scale. Given contemporary conditions, it is not surprising that people are looking back to the New Deal period for inspiration. However, inspiration is not the same as seeking and drawing useful organizing and strategic lessons from a study of the dynamics of …


Popular Radicalism In The 1930s: The History Of The Workers' Unemployment Insurance Bill, Chris Wright Feb 2018

Popular Radicalism In The 1930s: The History Of The Workers' Unemployment Insurance Bill, Chris Wright

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Historiography on the Great Depression in the U.S. evinces a lacuna. Despite all the scholarship on political radicalism in this period, one of the most remarkable manifestations of such radicalism has tended to be ignored: namely, the mass popular movement behind the Workers’ Unemployment Insurance Bill. This bill, which the Communist Party wrote in 1930, was introduced in Congress three times, in 1934, ’35, and ’36, as an alternative to the far more conservative Social Security Act. Its socialistic nature ensured that it never had any chance of becoming law, but it also enabled it to become enormously popular among …