Would Wallace have been different from Truman?

[jacobin1949]

Not to indulge in speculative Alternate History. But how big an effect do you think the domestic counterrevolution against the New Deal that took place during WW2 had on Cold War politics and international socialism? Do you think if FDR had lived to finish his term or Wallace not dropped in 1944, that the USA would not have taken Europe's place as the imperialist bully? Even the CP was willing to work within FDR's vision of the 4 policemen. Do you think Mao's China could be accepted as one of them? The continuation of the World War Grand Alliance into the 1950s?

[manic expression]

First, there was no counterrevolution against the New Deal; the New Deal was a collection of measures put into place as concessions to the working class. The bourgeoisie removed them once they were no longer necessary.

On to the main point: no. I can't forsee Wallace being too different from Truman. It smacks of the difference between Bush and Clinton. If someone is a bourgeois politician, they will pursue bourgeois policies. That's a scientific fact.

[jacobin1949]

There is certainly counterrevolutions within the bourgeois democratic system. Napoleon and Napoleon III, the backlash against Reconstruction, Weimar. So just because the New Deal wasn't socialist doesn't mean there wasn't a counterrevolution.

In addition Wallace was NO Clinton. He was endorsed by the CPUSA in 1948 and nearly ran with PAUL ROBESON as his VP.

[Dimentio]

I would like to have seen "The Kingfish" as president.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 09:37 pm
There is certainly counterrevolutions within the bourgeois democratic system. Napoleon and Napoleon III, the backlash against Reconstruction, Weimar. So just because the New Deal wasn't socialist doesn't mean there wasn't a counterrevolution.

In addition Wallace was NO Clinton. He was endorsed by the CPUSA in 1948 and nearly ran with PAUL ROBESON as his VP.
Sure, but the New Deal wasn't anything like Thermidor, it was very much a collection of conscious concessions to stave off revolution.

On your main point, I do think it's alternative history. However, I do know that what Truman did fit into the wider picture. US capitalism needed to expand and gain control of more and more markets. I really don't think this or that politician would have been able to diffuse this.

[oujiQualm]

Jacobin: Interesting question!

I am fascinated by the years 1946 and 1947 in US history, just before Wallaces run in 1948. What a huge turning point! There needed to be a huge ideological justification for changing from Keynesianism in the New Deal to Military Keynsianism. At the same time 1946 was one of thei biggest most widespread strike years in US history.

If we look at New Deal America not just in terms of gov. policies but in terms of social movements that these governemtne programs were reacting to, I think there is every reason to believe that the change to globocop was not invitable.

I tend to agree with the manic that the Wallace campaign was imcompatable with wider structural developments in the US bourgeoisie; namely a move toward militant internationalism, ossilating between European multilatteralism and Asian and Latin American Unilatteralism. I think there was something of a cleavage within the US bourgeosie in these directions.

The phrase Military Industrial Complex, is often used dismissively as though it is a vacuous generalization. It wasn't, as we know, and this is the primary force that would have made a Wallace presidency impossible.

I recommend a great book called Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948 by an author named
Frank Kofsky

[Intelligitimate]

Wallace was so pro-communist it destroyed his political career. He later wrote a book, Where I Was Wrong, apologizing for being pro-communist at all, and even backed the US side in the Korean War.

No, I don't think he would have been much different. At first, yes, but eventually he would have sensed which way the wind was blowing.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 01:10 am
eventually he would have sensed which way the wind was blowing.
If he was to be elected, though, the winds ought to be blowing in a different direction.

Luís Henrique

[Dimentio]

Actually, the newspapers did not expect Truman to win either. They even had first pages where the head news were that Truman had been defeated on november 03.

[oujiQualm]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+December 16, 2007 12:09 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ December 16, 2007 12:09 pm)
[email protected] 16, 2007 01:10 am
eventually he would have sensed which way the wind was blowing.
If he was to be elected, though, the winds ought to be blowing in a different direction.

Luís Henrique [/b]
good point. Which raises the question of who made the winds! Certainly 1946 showed a degree of potential for further left advance

By 1950 though most of the Uions had abandoned shop floor activism in favor of the leader flies to Boca crap that has paralyzed the American labor movement since. A good source on this is the bio of Walter Reuther by ????cant remember right now. The author calls the UAW GM contract of 1950 the Treaty of Detroit because the union agreed to completely abandon all say so in terms of shop floor dicision making. In return they got a truly significant raise. But in the long run this may have been the bureacratizing death knell.

[jacobin1949]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the far right in America was still isolationist in the 1940s and into the 1950s. It was only with Ike and McCarthy that interventionism took over the Republican party. Most opposition to NATO came from the right!