The figure to the right--the Keynesian Elite in the
New Deal
state--must be the point of departure for understanding the second New
Deal. Notice that it is possible to group the administrative
agencies of the New Deal state into five major groups: infrastructure,
human capital, labor, planning, and credit. Each group was
staffed by a set of Taylor Society "technocrats" and a
Frankfurter-linked lawyer. (See The Brandeis/Frankfurter
Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court
Justices.) This can be shortened to KE = ∑ (LDB/FF
× TS)i (i = 1 − 5)
The Taylor Society emerged in the course of the Eastern Rate Case (1910), and is the zone of systems synthesis of mass/advanced capitalism, the locus of the emergent functions of the 'welfare state. The force-field of out of which the Keynesian elite input output relations emerged is suggested by the membership list (when interpreted in the context of the origins and history of the Taylor Society and its milieu).
This is the Brandeisian wing of Progressivism: cosmopolitan, enlightened, and above all, committed to science. Much attention has been paid to the middle class, professional character of this wing of progressivism (Otis Grahan Jr. Old Progressives and New Deal); almost none to the vast array of modern firms that constituted the business milieu of Progressivism (Gal is the exception).
Any serious study of these phenomena reveals the advanced capitalist nature of what is almost universally misconceived as some kind of coalition of middle class reformers, workers, and farmers that was anti-business (such is the fairy tale told by historians). In fact, a close study of the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal state shows that not only was the leading institutional formation of reform not anti-business (they represented important parts of modern capitalism); and not merely middle class reformers (they were part of the emergence of the higher-order functions of advanced capitalism that transcended the merely localized praxis of the firm); they were the vanguard of advanced capitalism. In fact, Morris L. Cooke refered to the Taylor Society as the spearpoint of modern business (the less clumsy term vanguard was already taken in another context).
The Taylor Society emerged in the course of the Eastern Rate Case (1910), and is the zone of systems synthesis of mass/advanced capitalism, the locus of the emergent functions of the 'welfare state. The force-field of out of which the Keynesian elite input output relations emerged is suggested by the membership list (when interpreted in the context of the origins and history of the Taylor Society and its milieu).
This is the Brandeisian wing of Progressivism: cosmopolitan, enlightened, and above all, committed to science. Much attention has been paid to the middle class, professional character of this wing of progressivism (Otis Grahan Jr. Old Progressives and New Deal); almost none to the vast array of modern firms that constituted the business milieu of Progressivism (Gal is the exception).
Any serious study of these phenomena reveals the advanced capitalist nature of what is almost universally misconceived as some kind of coalition of middle class reformers, workers, and farmers that was anti-business (such is the fairy tale told by historians). In fact, a close study of the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal state shows that not only was the leading institutional formation of reform not anti-business (they represented important parts of modern capitalism); and not merely middle class reformers (they were part of the emergence of the higher-order functions of advanced capitalism that transcended the merely localized praxis of the firm); they were the vanguard of advanced capitalism. In fact, Morris L. Cooke refered to the Taylor Society as the spearpoint of modern business (the less clumsy term vanguard was already taken in another context).
Taylor
Society I: Keynesian
Elite in the New
Deal State
Source: "Membership
List, May 1927," in the Morris
L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Source: "Membership
List, May 1927," in the Morris
L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Introduction
The section of my site is being recast in the context of DeleuzeOne. The research leading to the charts to the right below (TS in New Deal State; TS firms; TS non-mfg orgs; Eastern Rate Case, and U.S. political economy by sector) was done in the 1970s.
Figure 1, firms by sector, is a synthesis, for purposes of political analsis, of a number of studies of the structure of the U.S. economy. Wassily Leonteff's study of the input-output structure of the U.S. economy, and Charles A. Bliss's work on the structure of manufacturing production provides essential theoretical and staitical tools required for the developmen of a concept of sector of realization.* Leontieff's analysis focuse on transactons between sectors. Bliss's concept of "character of ultimate use" is especially important, for it refers not to a particular industry, but rather to the actual structure of demand. The latter is divided into four major segments: cnsumption goods, construction materials, capital equipment, and dproducers' supplies. These are further broken down into 18 subdividsions.* In the present study "character of ultimate use" is transformed into sector of realization. Figure 1 is also influenced by those modes of taling about "cities" that insist upon looking at real exchanges in the world of activity, and that bring to the fore a geographically oriented systems concept based on hierarchically organized input-output flows.* In the construction of Figure 1, therefore, there is an implicit rejection of the kind of approach one finds in Averitt,* for exmple, where a-priori variables such as size or concentration rather than functionally derived variables such as location within an input-output matrix shape analysis. In Figure _____ sectoral bounaries were etermined by grouping firms and segments based on the nature of their respeoctve input-output matrices.
Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (The Free Press, 1991)
Charles Perrow, Organizing America ()
The Populist Vision ()
Johanna Bockman, Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism (Stanford University Press, 2011)
Chandler, The Visible Hand
Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics by Daniel Stedman Jones ( Princeton University Press, 2012)
One might think that subsequent work on the New Deal (Mann's The Sources of Social Power and Katznelson's Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, for example) would have taken Fraser's work into account. Alas! This is not the case. One reason for this is that an Image of Thought (a set of presuppositions that is the generative matrix of text production) is embedded in the career matrix of institutions; another reason is that the effects of the singularity (anti-communism) are powerful and pervasive, even if they are also subtle as well as. For example, almost all texts deal with the role of capitalist organizations--if they deal with it at all--through concepts of being (big business) rather than of praxis (what they actually do), using general otological terms, as in the corporatization of education, instead of dealing with specific firms and their functions. Absent entirely from the boards of ed reform think tanks is the entire set of firms that one finds in the CED, Century Foundation, Hiss List--multinational firms dependent on a large supply of skilled labor, while dominant on these boards are hedge funds and related post-modern financial institutions that are strictly parasitical, even vampiristic--see EDREFORMLINK)
Second, I examine the state apparatus itself and find that the administrative core of the Secnd New Deal was a well-defined personnel matrix comprised of a cadre of lawyers linked to Felix Franfurter (FF) and Louis D. Brandeis (LDB), and network of technocrats drawn from or closely associated with the Taylor Society (TS). Within this analytical context I reconstruct the history of LDB-FF x TS.
And third, by applying network theory to the Taylor Socety as inter-organizational matrix, I find that the strategic discourse as well as the internal structure and compostion of the Keynesian elite in the Second New Deal was determined by the circuit of realization of mass capitalism. Morreover, this triple web of discourse, institutions and personnel is already clear in the Eastern Rate Case of 1910 and its imediate outcome: the formation of the Taylor Society. That is, the Keynesian elite emerges full-blown in 1910.
U.S. Political Economy by
Sector
see
Rosen for 1932 list
The Taylor Society: elite firms
The Taylor Society: manufacturing firms
Twentieth Century Fund
Committee for Economic Development
Hiss List
The Taylor Society: elite firms
The Taylor Society: manufacturing firms
Twentieth Century Fund
Committee for Economic Development
Hiss List
These interviews had a great impact on me, the Wellman interview especially. Wellman was the leading Communist in Michigan in the post-World War II years, and his comment on the psychological-cultural dynamics of recruitment in Flint was central in the development of my understanding of Bildung as a historical force. In reading through the papers of Morris L. Cooke I was struck by the same thing: Bildung as an historical force. In both cases--the recruitment of native white workers into the CP, and the activities of the leadership of the Taylor Society--I was struck by the palpable psychological investment in thinking at increasingly complex levels.
Only when I read Alcorn (around 2011 or 12) did I gain the language, the conceptual tools, with which to understand both the Wellman interview and the discursive exchanges within the Taylor Society. And only then did it become apparent that such agencies as represented at the right did not emanate at all from some kind of humanitarian, liberal impulse, but rather from the deep logic of advanced captialism (this is what this page is about). The input-output flows of the mass consumer sector were the objective dimension of the Keynesian elite, but it is the concept of Bildung that provides the means to understand the subjective side of advanced capitalism.
What is so striking is the fact that Bildung is the key to understanding both the "appeal" of scientific management and Progressivism and the "appeal" of the Communist Party. All such phenomena are embedded in the same plane of immanence. (Bildung: Was Mozart a Communist?) A key aspect of Bildung is the dialectic of individuation, wherein the individual develops through active engagement with society by means of "projects." This is the dialectic of the objective "out there" and the subjective "inner self." This dialctical concept of Bildung help to understand Stalinism in America in the 1930s and 1940s.
This page is divided into two parts. The first presents a conventional account of the Keynesian Elite. The second formulates the problematic of the Keynesian Elite in terms of Bildung.
Part I.
The
Keynesian
Elite in the New
Deal State
Progressivism to New Deal: Lists of Capitalists
The Eastern Rate Case: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers, August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess. This can now be read online
The Bulletin of the Taylor Society can be read online (Bass Business Collection, University of Oklahoma Libraries)
Pujo Committee, 1913: Interlocking Directorates (the Securities Bloc)
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY by Louis D. Brandeis
What was demonized in later years as the welfare state was in fact the emergence of higher-order functions of capitalism itself. The real thrust of anti-Communism was the rooting out of the personnel who comprised the administative and cultural elite of advanced capitalism, the demonization of not merely the "ideology" of the Progressives inside and outside the New Deal, but of formal-operational thought itself (this why use of the term ideology renders unintelligible issues of cognitive development and the formal-operational dimension of modernity). The current discussion in the USA on education involves, even now in 2013, the demonization of formal operational thought (i.e., Michelle Rhee's denuciation of causal models in which poverty is an independent variable: "poverty is no excuse"). The provincial war against advanced capitalism has several names: one of the most important is McCarthyism, which is continuous with today's GOP war on science.
Advanced capitalism of the 21st century depends above all on human capital formation, precisely what the Finnish political economy is so good at--and what we have so miserably failed at, as Figure 1 demonstrates. The real enemies of America are those who waved the flag while digging the grave of modernity. Figure 1 is a testament to their success.
Thus the modern state of the twenty first century--committed to the broad development of human capital within a political framework misleadingly referred to as the welfare state--is virtually non-existent in the United States.
In decoding the input-output flows that defined the KE the latter was seen as an example of an emergent phenomenon.
What was missing work in my work on the input-output flows that defined the KE was an undestanding of the psychological dynamic, the emotional forces, that I have only recently been able to conceptualize adequately. The concept of Bildung, so central to early ninetenth century German philosophy, became critical to understanding both the Communist Party of the United States and the Brandeis wing of progressivism. (See Bildung: Was Mozart a Communist?)
The
Taylor Society III: Non-Mfg Organizations, 1927
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
JOHN S. LAWRENCE, called as a witness on behalf of the shipping
interests, being first duly sworn, testified as follows:
Direct examination by Mr. Louis D. BRANDEIS:
Mr. BRANDEIS. What is your business?
Mr. LAWRENCE. Merchant; dry-goods merchant.
Mr. BRANDEIS. Your firm?
Mr.LAWRENCE. The firm of Lawrence & Co., with headquarters at
Boston and New York and west.
Mr. BRANDEIS. What is the general character of your business?
Alr. LAWRENCE. The general character of our business is the busi-
ness of commission merchants; in fact, the selling department of the
textile mills in New England.
AMr. BRANDIES. How many mills do you represent?
Mr. LAWRENCE. Five or six of the largest mills.
from ERC, Vol 5, p. 3239, JOHN S. LAWRENCE, cont.
I regard railroad rates as very similar to taxation. The problem
seems to be how to distribute the cost of operation among the users
of a railroad and have prosperity all around.
re. input-output flows (see Bliss) I apply network theory* to the analysis of the genesis and structure of the Second New Deal state apparatus in the following ways. First, I look at the input-output matrices of different sectors of accumulation, and show that the chief executive officers of leading corportions intersected with the polity in such a way that the "state" under FDR could be better characterized as a segmented state within which the Keynesian elite (rooted in mass consumption) finally achieved parity with the two older elite formations--commodities in international trade (cotton, tobacco, wheat, copper together with their financial, legal, and commercial service providers), and the securities bloc (rooted in infrastructure capital (iron, coal, railroads, telephones and the financial institutions connected with marketing and trading their securities, and the legal firms that serviced them). (see row below)
Second, I examine the state apparatus itself and find that the administrative core of the Secnd New Deal was a well-defined personnel matrix comprised of a cadre of lawyers linked to Felix Franfurter (FF) and Louis D. Brandeis (LDB), and network of technocrats drawn from or closely associated with the Taylor Society (TS). Within this analytical context I reconstruct the history of LDB-FF x TS.
And third, by applying network theory to the Taylor Socety as inter-organizational matrix, I find that the strategic discourse as well as the internal structure and compostion of the Keynesian elite in the Second New Deal was determined by the circuit of realization of mass capitalism. Moorreover, this triple web of discourse, institutions and personnel is already clear in the Eastern Rate Case and its imediate outcome: the formation of the Taylor Society
Johanna Bockman, Markets in the name of socialism : the left-wing origins of neoliberalism (Stanford University Press, 2011). Review by, Zsuzsa Gille, in Slavic Review Vol. 71, No. 3, FALL 2012, pp. 655-657
From this review it appears that I am on the same wavelength as Johanna Bockman. Waiting for book to be delivered to my library.
Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism (Princeton, 2002)
Kalecki’s Economics Today Edited by Zdzislaw L. Sadowski and Adam Szeworski
Neoclassical vs. Institutional Economics
Bandera, V. N., 1963 "New Economic Policy (NEP) as an Economic Policy," the journal of political economy 71:265-279
Evidence taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the matter of proposed advances in freight rates by carriers.
Eastern Rate Case: Shippers
Association, 1910: Chicago subset
Mass Consumer-Oriented Firms
Mass Consumer-Oriented Firms
Retail Sears,
Roebuck
Marshall Field & Co. Mandel Brothers B. Kuppenheimer Montgomery Ward Siegel, Cooper & Co. G.W. Shelton & Co. Clothing Hart,
Shafner, & Marx
Rosenwald & Weil, Inc. The Hub (Henry C. Lytton & Sons) Charles A. Stevens & Brothers Percival B. Palmer & Co. Warren Featherbone Millinery, Gloves, Hats, Hosiery Bush Hat Co. Chicagao Mercantile Co. Joseph N. Eisendrath Co. Parrotte, Beals & Co. C.D. Osborn Co. Shoes Wilder
& Co.
Guthman, Carpenter, & Telling Co. Smith-Wallace Shoe Co. The Rice and Hutchins Chicago Co. Selz, Schwap & Co. R.P. Smith & Sons & Co. Food & Related Southern
Cotton Oil Co. (Wesson Oil)
Booth Fisheries National Biscuit Co. Nordyke and Marmon Co. (flour and cerial milling machinery) Beech-Nut Packing Sprague, Warner & Co. (flavoring extracts, preserves, beverages) |
Food & Related, cont. Steel-Wedeles
Co.
(importing, jobbing & mfg. of grocieries and kindred) W.M. Hoyt Co. Frankln MacVeagh & Co. Oerlich & Laux, Inc. Charles B. Ford & Co. (butter, eggs, poultry--brokers and wholesalers) W.T. Rawleigh Co. (veterinary and pultry preparations) E.B. Millar & Co. (tea, coffie--importing and mfg) Libby, McNeil, & Libby Decatur Brewing Co. Thomson & Taylor Co. (coffee, spices--mfg for jobbers) Reid, Murdoch & Co. (coffee, pickles, peanut butter) Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein (candy, crackerjacks) United Cerial Mills (Washington Crisps, Egg-O-See, Toasted Corn Flakes) Soap & Related James
S. Kirk
Packaging
& PaperFrigid Fluid Co. The Fairbanks, N.K. Co. Darling & Co. Globe Rending Pacific Coast Borax Co. Fitzpatrick Bros. Soap Humel
& Downing Co.
Sanfod Mfg. Co. The Paper Mills' Co. J.W. Butler Paper Co. |
SOURCE: Evidence Taken by the
Interstate Commerece Comission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in
Freight Rates by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1 pp. 6-15
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1 pp. 6-15
Full article online
Goldman Sachs+/Waddill Catchings/Pollak Foundation
Eastern Rate
Case: Shippers Association, 1910: Chicago subset, cont.
Mass Housing Supply Industries U.S.
Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry James B. Clough
Kewanee Boiler Crane Co. H. Mueller & Co. Illinois Malleable Iron Co. Joseph T. Ryerson & Son Devoe & Reynolds Adams & Elting Co. George S. Mepham & Co. Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. American Lumberman Lumber World Review Morgan Sash & Door Chicago House Wrecking Co. John V. Farwell Co. (wholesale furniture, carpets, etc) Union Furniture Balkwill & Patch Furniture Co. Inc. W.W. Kimball Co. (pianos, etc.) Lyon & Healy, Inc. (pianos, etc.) Tonk Manufacturing (piano benches) Foley & Williams (sewing machines, supplies, pianos) The Brunswick Balke Collendar Co. Chicago Portrait Co. Pitkin & Brook, Importers, Mfg and Distributors (china, glass, lamps) M. Paulman & Co. |
Diversified Capital Goods, Esp. Agricultural Implements International
Harvster
Deere & Co. Emerson-Brantigam Co. R. Herschel Manufacturing Co. Rock Isoand Plow Co. Star Mfg. Co. Link-Belt Co. Smith Mfg. Co. Williams, White & Co. Whiting Foundry Equipment Co. Whitman & Barnes Co. (twist drils & reamers) The Delaval Seperator Co. Griffin Wheel Co. Galena Sigal Oil Co. Other General
Chemical Co.
Lehigh Valley Railroad Peabody Coal Inland Steel |
SOURCE: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerece Comission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1 pp. 6-15
MASS CONSUMPTION SECTOR
New England
Brandeis-FIRMS (Gal, Chicago subset; N. eng subset)
Hopkins-Ruml-FDR
Merriam-Ickes-Crane-Rosenwald (Chicago Progressivism, similar
to LDB & New England Progressivism)
The Life and Times of Charles R. Crane, 1858-1939: American Businessman, Philanthropist, and a Founder of Russian Studies in America
Charles E. Merriam and the study of politics
The Life and Times of Charles R. Crane, 1858-1939: American Businessman, Philanthropist, and a Founder of Russian Studies in America
Charles E. Merriam and the study of politics
COMMODITIES IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Houston
Kennan-Harriman
(B&O-->Baker-->Davis: Rosen
List-->Liberty League)
Red Scare (Houston)
Red Scare (Houston)
SECURITIES BLOC
Eccles
"And so Merriam entered the race. His campaign manager was Harold L. Ickes, who quickly won promises of substantial financial support from industrialist Charles R. Crane ad Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck and Company. A number of other wealthy businessmen pledged money."
Michael P. McCarthy, "Prelude to Armageddon: Charles E. Merriam and the Chhicago Mayoral Election of 1911 (http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/ishs-1974nov/ishs-1974nov-505.pdf)
see also Ickes, Autobiography of a Curmudgeon pp. 117-20, 122-23, 138
Crane Co. History
| (see Alon Gal, Brandeis of Boston, Harvard University Press, 1980) Louis D. Brandeis, the Lenin of Progressivism, in his own words
Harold Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Vol I (1870-1907): Urban Reformer (State University of New York Press, 1971); Vol II (1907-1912): People's attorney; Vol. III (1913-1915): Progressive and Zionist (State University of New York Press, 1971-78)
testimony of Lawrence
*JOHN S. LAWRENCE, called as a witness on behalf of the shipping interests, being first duly sworn, testified as follows: Direct examination by Mr. Louis D. BRANDEIS: Mr. BRANDEIS. What is your business? Mr. LAWRENCE. Merchant; dry-goods merchant. Mr. BRANDEIS. Your firm? Mr. LAWRENCE. The firm of Lawrence & Co., with headquarters at Boston and New York and west. Mr. BRANDEIS. What is the general character of your business? Mr. LAWRENCE. The general character of our business is the business of commission merchants; in fact, the selling department of the textile mills in New England. |
higher-order macro functions
David O. Ives, manager of the Transportation Department of the Boston Chamber of Commerce John S. Lawrence, Lawrence & Co. The selling department of the textile mills in New England manufacturers Charles H. Jones, President of the Commonealth Shoe and Leather Company of Whitman, Massachusetts (a close associate of Louis D. Brandeis), representing the New Engand Shoe and Leather Association *Guy T. Miller, treasurer of the Bridgeport Brass Company B.F. Curtis of the Norton Company (a major manufacturer of grinding wheels and abrasives) George H. Benkhart, of Smith, Klein and French Company (drugs and baby foods) Edwin F. Forbes, President of the New England Confectionary Company A.C. Lorion, rrepresenting the Wright Wire Company of Worcester and Palmer, Massachusetts (wire cloth for poultry netting) the Grayton and Knight Manufacturing Company, and the Metal Trades Assocation of Worcester (mostly machine tool manufacturers) and E.A. Stuart, of the Mitchell-Woodbury Company, Boston (importers of crockery and china) |
dddddd
The Taylor Society--the heart and the brains of the Keynesian elite--intersected with the Left coalition. One major player in the NGO-social worker milieu of the TS, Mary van Kleeck, was either an actual Party member or a non-member "influential." But the Taylor Society was the strategic elite of advanced capitalism. And, as Steve Fraser (Labor Will Rule) has shown, the TS was at the very center of the Second New Deal state. Looked at in this way, the Communist Party could be seen as the left wing of advanced capitalism; and its subsequent demonization, which reached out to all that was modern in American society, was an indication that advanced capitalism was too weak to resist the massive assault from the forces of provincialism and ressentiment.
Morris L. Cooke
The cognitive/psychological dimension of capital as such is not appreciated. Capital is thought of in terms of property, individual greed, and profit. I propose that capital also be thought of as an active force that is cognitive-organizational (and at varying levels of development), from the small shopkeeper to the major science-based multinational organization to the investment and regulatory activities of the state. The key document wherein one can see emergent Keynesianism as cognitive/psychological revolution is
Evidence Taken by the Interstate
Commerece Commission in the Matter of
Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers, August to December
1910,
Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess.
The institutional context out of which Keynesianism emerged (already well-developed by 1910!) was the input-output matrix of mass consumer capitalism. (see Progressivism to New Deal: Charts and Progressivism to New Deal: Documents)
The calculating, planning, organizing mind, as individual and as aggregation of individuals, is at the core of capital as activity. Conversely, the market wherein desire is stimulated and gratified and stimulated again is the antithesis of this inner, cognitive-organizational dynamic of capitalism. This fundamental contradiction within capitalism has yet to be appreciated. (Although its effects are now evident. See Hall, et. al. above.)
from Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge University Press, 1972)
. . . America has never been a state (in the Hegelian sense), only a 'civil society', where the common bond has always been viewed as a mere instrument for preserving individal life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . . In the American social ethos, the 'tax payer' always comes before the 'citizen'. n. 6, p. 135
First, the cognitive-discursive practices emergent out of the flux of the historical field of "Progressivism." These more complex common cognitive-discursive practices of what is sometimes called Progressivism (and other times socialism) are what ties these different texts together. Given that it is a certain kind of historicized, socialized "individual" that speaks, writes, and acts, the Wellman interview, with its insight into the self-formative process--Bildung--is relevant to understanding these processes among the technocratic, entrepreneurial, managerial, and legal intelligentisia, as well as among white collar employees and the "workng class." In the letter of McElwain to Frankfurter, 1919, one sees the same process in action: an enthusiasm for complex thought, and, implicitly, for the self-discipline that is a key element in self-development that it takes to resist and overcome the business provincialism still powerful today in America. One senses in the McElwain letter great pride in this achievement. In the Murray Body minutes one sees this same process, more clearly in the actual discussion of the UAW representatives, but also in Reuther's comments about Peterson--that is, we get a glimpse into the psychological dynamic of Bildung in the boss of Precision Spring, and note the cultural-linguistic link between the ontological modalities of Peterson and McElwain.
Second, these historicized and socialized individuals refered to above were enmeshed in specific organizational, cultural and political contexts. Some of these contexts are indicated in the lower half of the graphic to the right. Referring to the charts in Progressivism to New Deal: Charts, the three elements in the lower half delineate the mass consumption sector immanently--that is internally, from within the field of its own activity. One form of activity is discursive (see Progressivism to New Deal: Documents); another form of activity is given by the input-output matrix of the business activity of the mass consumption sector. From the Eastern Rate Case of 1910 (Chicago subset and New England Witnesses), to the Taylor Society's membership list of 1927, to the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal state (1936), one sees this sector in action defining itself.
Plane of Immanence -----
Progressivism to New Deal: Bildung
1. discursive flows/networks
1. discursive flows/networks
TS: mfg members
TS ×
FF
(KE in New Deal)
TS: non-mfg
2. institutional
flows/networks
larger image
larger image
Other secondary sources get drawn in at well. Gal's biography of Brandies, because of its thorough and detailed account of Brandeis' business contacts, among the most important of whom was McElwain, is ineluctably drawn into the plane of immanence/consistency under discussion. (Other accounts of LDB, however, are not so affected.)
But so is Alcorn's Narcissism and the Literary Libido. and Moretti's The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. Once the problematic of the development of the self is opened (in Wellman explicitly, but also in ERC, McElwain, Reuther and Peterson), any text that illuminates this process is drawn into the plane of immanence/consistency.
It is this assemblage of texts into a plane of immanence/consistency that is the flux of becoming that gets labeled (as Progressivism, the New Deal, Socalism, or what have you). But I want to avoid the crippling effect of starting with an ontological assumption that there is something (Progressivism, etc.) that has to be elucidated. I do not want to substitute Being for becoming. This is what I construe as transcendental empiricism.
Naturally, there is a tension here. We do speak of things--our secondary literature is generally (but not entirely) about things, not processes. This tension is evident in Lewin's Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate. On the one hand the tremendous ontological instability of the times: as Lewin says, the Bolshevik Party was remade several time over in a period of a few years; but Lewin, in an exercise of the fallacy of misplace concreteness, speaks of the Soviet System as an entity even as he points to the flow of destabilizing forces that render its existence, on the level of ontology, merely nominal. A stable system only emerged after the death of Stalin. This book is important reading, not simply because of its intellectual power, but also because it will force you to think about these things.
Eaton to FDR May 10, 1939:
Supplementing my letter of May 2, the Temporary National Economic Committee might well extend the scope of its investigation to incude the activities of the three New York law firms who handle the legal aspects of the hierarchy mentioned in my letter.
These firms are David,
Polk, Wardwell, Gardiner & Reed; Cravath, deGersdorff, Swaine &
Wood; and Sullivan & Cromwell.
It would be enlightening to find out the number and size of these corporations, banks, and underwriting houses by which these firms are regularly ratained, together with a similar compilzation of those for whom they work from time to time on registration statements and other financial matters
The continued existence of this ring of commercial and investment bankers and law firms does not serve the cause of the country . . . .
It would be enlightening to find out the number and size of these corporations, banks, and underwriting houses by which these firms are regularly ratained, together with a similar compilzation of those for whom they work from time to time on registration statements and other financial matters
The continued existence of this ring of commercial and investment bankers and law firms does not serve the cause of the country . . . .
Eaton to FDR May 24, 1939 re. GOP campaign in Cleveland area.
Eaton to FDR August 31, 1939:
Your great international
policies are in danger of being jeopardized in public antagonism in the
personnel of the new War Resources Board with its three Morgan members:
Stettinius, Gifford and Pratt . . . . Should not such a committee
be composed of bona fide representives of the nation's industrial areas
rather than men located inand connected with the New York financial
district.
Eaton to FDR September 12, 1939 on Wall St. and Morgan Interests
Eaton to FDR Nov 21, 1939:
Although Jack Knight, the
proprietor of the Akron Beacon Journal, was brought up in the
Republican tradition, he is a great admirer of yours. His is the
most successful and prhaps the most influential newspaper in Ohio.
I have been urgin Knight not to support Taft, the Ohio
representative of Morgan and Kuhn Loeb.
Eaton to Willkie Nov 22, 1939
Eaton to FDR Feb 7, 1942 re TIME propaganda re Harriman and Morgan in War and Navy departments
Eaton to FDR April 6, 1944 re. growth of Wall St. since 1933
Other letters I do not have but are referenced but not included in my collection:
Eaton to FDR May 2, 1939;
1. merger discussions with Bowery and East River National Bank, Commercial Exchange Bank and the Bank of America (MEMO Feb 13, 1929)
2. news stories Giannini supports FDR sept 19, 1935; June 25, 1936
3. re furor over court-packing plan: offers to go on radio in support (Giannini to McIntyre, 2/18/37)
4. San Fran. Examiner Nov 9 1934: attacks crowd in control of NRA
5. Warning to Foes of New Deal, Giannini says of Election (Sinclair) SF Bull ?? 1934
These were the very people found as correspondents in the Letters of Louis D. Brandeis and in the Morris L. Cooke papers. Many of these old progressives were members of the Taylor Society. Thus, they properly belong in the plane of immanence.
However, the author misconstrues them as mere middle class humanitarians, rather than as a certain kind of historicized, socialized "individual" entangled in the input-output matrix of modern capitalism.
The second text, A Pretty Good Club, is actually less about the U.S. Foreign Service than it is about the very same thing: a network comprised of a certain kind of historicized, socialized individuals--or rather two networks (just as the old progressives were actually two distinct--two disjoint--sets of historicized, socialized individuals). The personnel matrix of the Keynesian Elite appears in this text as the modern, cosmopolitan ethnically heterogeneous wing of the Foreign Service emergent out of the New Deal, deeply entangled with the Taylor Society, and opposed by the old guard who were both WASP and anti-semitic.
This is to suggest a certain way of reading that decomposes overblown nouns into
actual ontological-discursive
praxiological networks. An
Encore for Reform does this to a degree, but stops short
of making sense of the set of personnel that supported the New Deal.It is one of the contentions of this site that the being of things historical is to be found in the generative matrix that produces their activity. Activity is not merely the effect of of an organism's rational asssessment of its interests. Activity is more important than motive; it is part of the self-formative process. Conceptually motive and activity are diametircally opposed, inasmuch as "motive" presuposes the Cartesian self, thereby obstructing the understanding of praxis. (Deleuze-Bryant)
from Jerome Kagan, The Human Spark: The Science of Human Development (Basic Books, 2913)
"A number of
abstract psychological concepts remain popular because they satisfy the
need for consistency among the investigator's semantic networks. The
networks for the concepts of positive
emotion and negative
emotion are an example . . . . The problems
trailing attempts to preserve semantic consistency are clearest for
concepts related to the antonyms good
and bad.
Many popular terms for human qualities belong to semantic
networks that have good
and bad
as nodes." p. 271
This statement captures the underlying logic--the generative grammar (or generative matrix)--of almost all writing on history. Big business, the capitalist class
Digging the Grave of Modernity:
Two of the Architects of Figure 1⎯ Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn
The possibilities of advanced capitalism were limited by the availability of the wretched masses/resentiment mobilization; the "natural" appearance of so-called neoliberalism is intimately connected to figure 1 THE PRIMACY OF POLITICS