However it wouldn't be done by
Long's followers. The Share Our Wealth Clubs and Societies withered away without
their outspoken leader to guide them, and of course, one could presume
that the fear of fascism and Communism moving from Europe to the US
simply reinforced that perhaps capitalism, even with all its inherent
flaws and even with them coming to a head in the Crash of 1929, might
just be too linked to democracy to ignore. But, not matter their reason
for disbanding, their work was not without cause. One could
speculatively argue that if a fine-toothed comb were used on the New
Deal, one would probably find pieces of Long's platform carefully
reconstructed as classic FDR rhetoric, but as with Father Coughlin, FDR
was not ready to have the New Deal steer America away from capitalism
and certainly not any more deeper into socialism than it already done
so, and if for no other reason than FDR was part of the same wealthy
class that benefited from capitalism.
Next, Upton Sinclair...
|
