Socialist Platform of 1928
When the socialist party ran a candidate for President in 1928 it received less than 1% of the popular vote, but its platform has been adopted by both major political parties. What follows is an excerpt from Milton and Rose Friedman’s book titled Free to Choose. Most of it is directly copied from the book and only select parts are amended by me. All dollar figures are from the date it was written so are not accurate today. The book was published in 1978. You may find many areas that I have not amended that could easily be added to with the legislation that has passed since 1978, but this will give you a general idea of how close the government of these United States is to being socialist today.
Herewith the economic planks of the socialist party platform of 1928, along with an indication in parentheses of how these planks have fared. The list that follows includes every economic plank, but not the full language of each.
- “Nationalization of our natural resources, beginning with the coal mines and water sites, particularly at Boulder Dam an Muscle Shoals.” (Boulder Dam, renamed Hoover Damn, and Muscle Shoals are now both federal government projects.)
- “A publicly owned giant power system under which the federal government shall cooperate with the states and municipalities in the distribution of electrical energy to the people at cost.” (This is a generally accepted process across the country.)
- “National ownership and democratic management of railroads and other means of transportation and communication.” (Railroad passenger service is completely nationalized through Amtrak. Some freight service is nationalized through Conrail. Private railroads are strictly regulated by the Federal Government. The FCC controls communications by telephone, telegraph, radio, and television.)
- “An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation.” (Government expenditures for these purposes are currently in thee many billions of dollars.)
- “Immediate governmental relief of the unemployed by the extension of all public works and a program of long range planning of public works . . .” (In the 1930s, WPA and PWA were a direct counterpart; now, a wide variety of other programs are.) “All persons thus employed to be engaged at hours and wages fixed by bona-fide labor unions.” (The Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healey Acts require contractors with government contracts to pay “prevailing wages,” generally interpreted as highest union wages – also the national minimum wage.)
- “Loans to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works and the taking of such other measures as will lessen widespread misery.” (Federal grants in aid to states and local municipalities currently total tens of billions of dollars a year.)
- “A system of unemployment insurance.” (Part of Social Security system.)
- “The nation-wide extension of public employment agencies in cooperation with city federations of labor.” (U.S. Employment Service and affiliated state employment services administer a network of about 2,500 local employment offices.)
- “A system of health and accident insurance and of old age pensions as well as unemployment insurance.” (Part of Social Security. Full global health insurance proposed widely.)
- “Shortening the workday” and “Securing every worker a rest period of no less than two days in each week.” (Legislated by wages and hours laws that require overtime for more than forty hours of work per week.)
- “Enacting of an adequate federal anti-child labor amendment.” (Not achieved as amendment, but essence incorporated into various legislative acts.)
- “Abolition of the brutal exploitation of convicts under the contract system and substitution of a cooperative organization of industries in penitentiaries and workshops for the benefit of convicts and their dependents.” (Partly achieved, partly not.)
- “Increase taxation on high income levels, of corporation taxes and inheritance taxes, the proceeds to be used for old age pensions and other forms of social insurance.” (In 1928, highest personal income tax rate, 25 percent; in 2008, 35 percent, above 40 percent proposed by Obama; in 1928, corporate tax rate, 12 percent; in 2008, 35-39% percent with proposed increases by Obama; in 1928, top federal estate tax rate, 20 percent; in 2008, 48% with proposed increases by Obama.)
- “Appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all land held for speculation.” (Not achieved in this form, but property taxes have risen drastically.)
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Excuse what might be considered a faux pas on this forum, but I think full employment through government programs makes very good sense. There should never be high unemployment in America. We have some of the most productive workers in the world. I never understood why there even was a non-work based welfare during LBJ’s “Great Society”. Issue bonds, pay workers, rebuild the country’s infrastructure to some extent. Look around: our cities need a lot of work.
A lot of cities do need a lot of work. Do you know why? Because they are run by governments! Employment is good when it is earned and paid for by people who are directly gaining from it. It is terrible when it is given away as charity and paid for by unwilling participants (tax payers).
I daresay if you read this list of items without identifying where they originated, and asked one by one if these were good ideas or not, the average American would not only agree that we’re better off with them, but could hardly imagine what modern life would be like without them. Without them we’d be living in some Dickensian, Libertarian Hell.
For example, where would conservative, GOP dominated Arizona be without such “Socialist” goverment funded projects as Hoover Dam, FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Agency, WAPA (Western Area Power Administration), and the Central Arizona Project canal? The answer is, we would have dried up and blown away years ago due to lack of water and power. And how about that toll-free “Socialist” Interstate freeway system? Federally subsidized passenger airports? NTSB monitoring of transporation safety? If the Libertarian Scrooges had their way, we’d still driving Model T’s around on rutted dirt two-tracks.
Just ask your average senior citizen if they’d mind giving up their Social Security checks, or drop their Medicare coverage and pay all their health care costs out of pocket, or the unemployed (brought low through no fault of their own by the shenanigans of Wall Street greedheads and crooked mortage brokers) if they’d mind not being able to collect un-employment or extend their health insurance through COBRA because it smacks of “Socialism”.
Of course, if we didn’t have these pesky “Solialst” child labor laws, the un-empolyed could just hire out their 10 year old kids to go to work full time and help support the family while Mom & Dad are out of work, and we could just support Grandma and Granpa in their old age by ourselves.
Amazingly, Steve, I pretty much believe that virtually everything you said sarcastically would improve our lives.
I too reside in the Phoenix area and liberally use the public water supply and semi-public energy supply. They are great. The water is relatively clean and the power rarely shuts off. However, the same would still be true if there was no government intervention. Private companies would gladly step in to provide water and the power grid is almost private. A step to complete privatization and competition would likely improve our situation.
If, for whatever reason, private companies decided it was not economically viable to provide water and power to the Phoenix area then it never would have developed in the way it did and we wouldn’t even need to have this conversation. Most people will inevitably argue that it is a wonderful thing that Phoenix is so well developed and millions of people happily reside here. However, if it truly is a viable place (I believe it is), then the market will find a way to provide water and power. If it is not viable, then it would be a disservice to humanity to have people living here in the first place.
A similar case can be made for New Orleans (think Katrina). The government disobeyed the market by building a crap levy and subsidizing people who lived there and moved back there. This is ludicrous. The whole area is under water level and the same event will inevitably happen again. In a free market home insurance would be astronomical and would certainly drive people away from New Orleans and to higher, safer ground. However, the government steps in and alters the market to make it easy for people to live in New Orleans, prompting a similar Katrina disaster in the future.
The same argument can be made for freeways or any other asset that the government controls. If it is economically viable, the free market will provide it privately and it will likely be far more efficient and less expensive.
As far as the “Wall Street greedheads” causing this economic debacle we’re in today, I’d like to link you to another article, Who is to blame for this mess?
I agree with you regarding child labor in that I wouldn’t send my children off to work at the age of ten. However, a compelling case could and should be made that if children want to work they should be able to, particularly in developing nations. With regard to sweatshop labor, read this article: Why sweatshops are good for everybody.
Ummm problem with this… Boulder dam construction did not even begin until 1931, the name hoover dam was never suggested until 1930 and was not officially named hoover dam until an act of congress feb 14, 1931.
There is no way this could have been a platform in 1928 because hoover wasnt elected until 1928 and took office in 1929!
I think you misread, James. The Hoover Dam is but one example of how their platform has been enacted, despite their losing the election. That is, Hoover Dam is an example of nationalization of natural resources, which was part of the socialist platform.
“There is no way this could have been a platform in 1928 because hoover wasnt elected until 1928 and took office in 1929!”
Oh really?….
“A commission was formed in 1922 with a representative from each of the Basin states and one from the Federal Government. The federal representative was Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce under President Warren Harding. In January 1922, Hoover met with the state governors of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming to work out an equitable arrangement for apportioning the waters of the Colorado River for their states’ use. The resulting Colorado River Compact, signed on November 24, 1922, split the river basin into upper and lower halves with the states within each region deciding how the water would be divided. This agreement, known as the Hoover Compromise, paved the way for the Boulder Dam Project. This huge dam was built to provide irrigation water flow, for flood control, and for hydroelectric-power generation.
The first attempt to gain Congressional approval for construction of Boulder Dam came in 1922 with the introduction of two bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The bills were introduced by Congressman Phil D. Swing and Senator Hiram W. Johnson and were known as the Swing-Johnson bills. The bills failed to come up for a vote and were subsequently reintroduced several times. In December 1928, both the House and the Senate finally approved the bill and sent it to the President for approval. On December 21, 1928, President Calvin Coolidge signed the bill approving the Boulder Canyon Project. The initial appropriation for construction was made in July 1930, by which time Herbert Hoover had become President.”
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