A 21st Century New Deal

The New Deal was the economic initiatives taken in response to the Great Depression under the leadership and presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who mobilized the Democratic Party to accommodate a large portion of the radicalized elements of the Labor movements and working class. New Dealism had useful structures for localized nation wide initiatives and quasi-grassroots mobilizations for simultaneous centralized networking with decentralized emphasis. However, it fundamentally did not eliminate privatization and private economic powers; many of whom went on the undo much of the New Deal achievements, some even plotted a fascist coup in response to the original New Deal policies (known as the Business Plot of 1933). Those same plotting forces are still to this day part of the economic and political power elites. It can be recognized then that the command economy structure that developed under the New Deal could be augmented towards the complete abolition of private property in order to structure a command economy that utilizes a national Federal centralized structure simultaneously with localized decentralized initiatives in every community. This would require not just the organization and mobilization of the common people, also recognized as the proletariat class; but it would also require the necessity of total structural augmentation, reconstruction, disillusionment, and entirely new created systems.

A prime action that can be taken is dissolving the 50 states of the Federal Union, in addition to the territorial governments; and re-federalizing on the basis of communal representation of the 19,505 cities, towns, villages in United States, along with the territory municipalities and all native tribes/nations. This is a practical solution that could completely restructure the United States in a manner that can prevent Balkanization as the American empire declines and the shift away from current economic systems occurs. Furthermore, the restructuring of political power can usher in an immediate economic restructuring on a similar basis of community focus seen in past grassroots efforts. With the overwhelming economic capacities currently existing in the United States economy, we could provide self sustainability and self-sufficiency to every community with a Second Bill of Rights consisting of: food, water, energy, infrastructure, knowledge, and productive abilities. Such a restructuring would also allow for ecological focus and rejuvenation via the creation of 100% renewable energy system; along with actively working to reverse climate destabilization and the degrading of the biosphere caused by the anthropocentric 6th Great Mass Extinction.

The failures of the original New Deal can be largely traced to its overall design meant to preserve capitalism rather than create a competent economic structure. Because of this, Capital and other private powers were able to functionally erase its structural legacy and purge its mentality from the collective economic and political structuring of the United States. The imperative for an economic restructuring on the basis of emphasizing the organization and mobilization of the working class must occur if we are to prevent the balkanization of the United States political structure in its imperial decline, the statistical inevitable economic collapse of capitalism, and the rise of reactionaries and fascism that will viciously assert itself in order to defend and protect private capital. The necessity of preventing those outcomes is also critical towards the survival of the human species in its efforts to reverse the biospheric damage it has inflicted and the unfathomable loss of life occurring under anthropocentric driven mass extinction.

Workers were the backbone of the original New Deal in the mobilization efforts that saved not just local, state, and the national economies; but laid the foundations for a working class that rightfully retained the fruits of its labor. We may never know what could have happened had someone such as Vice President Henry Wallace carried on the mantle of the New Deal upon Roosevelt’s death; or if the fascists, reactionaries, and conservatives had not stripped its legacy out of the consciousness of the nation and erased the institutions that once gave it life. But we can say unequivocally that the need for a worker oriented management and direction of the economy is the only path the United States, and the human species as a whole, has towards preserving the thousands of years that we call human history and civilization. As well as for laying the foundations for the human species as it rises towards a global civilization, and expansion into the cosmos.