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  • The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics by Jefferson Cowie
  • Peter S. McInnis
Jefferson Cowie, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016)

Jefferson cowie has always published books with persistent influence. His earlier efforts, Capital Moves (New York: New Press, 2001) and Stayin' Alive (New York: New Press, 2011), offered incisive commentary on the systemic inequities of 20th-century capitalism and challenges to working-class solidarity. At first glance, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics appears ambitious for such a succinct discussion of the significant reforms and regulations enacted in the Great Depression under Franklin Roosevelt. The passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935 has become a pivot for intense scholarly debates on the role of the state in supporting working-class aspirations with opinions diverging from championing the nlra as the touchstone of legislative reform to denunciations that it was merely a scheme to entice working-class demobilization. Interpretations aside, the New Deal era represents the solitary effective period of progressive reform centred on the economic security of American working people. The obvious racial and gendered limitations of the 1930s–1970s interregnum notwithstanding, these interventions had tangible benefits for both unionized and unorganized citizens. Nostalgia for a revitalized version of the New Deal has long preoccupied many progressives and has only intensified with the further transgressions of neoliberalism, a rising nativist hostility towards immigrants, and the prospect of a US Supreme Court more rigidly reactionary than that which obstructed the 1930s-era Democrats. In a tersely-written analysis Cowie argues persuasively that there will be no contemporary New Deal variant as the cold-fusion of political and economic forces that came together for fdr will not be repeated. So, what may we learn of this "exceptional," and "aberrant," period between 1935 and 1973 that might instruct a more realistic strategy for our times?

It is useful, once again, to be provided with detailed evidence that the New Deal was broadly successful in ameliorating economic inequality from the Great Depression well into the late-20th century. The positive role of the state was dramatically in evidence with the 1933 inauguration of the fdr Democrats as the ensuing flurry of "alphabet agencies" which may not have transformed the nation as much as suspend disbelief in statist solutions. The Great Exception carefully reconstructs the confluence of political and social forces, from southern Dixiecrats to moderate Republicans, that advanced the New Deal. The persistent irritants of immigration and religious moralism were abated temporarily.

From this understanding, realizing this precisely balanced fulcrum would later totter appears inevitable. The longitudinal perspective does suggest the New Deal is framed by two gilded-age barriers. History makes clear reforms are not ratchet-like unidirectional but subject to destructive counterattack. Here, the narrative might have benefitted from the injection of more on the gathering formation of anti-progressive forces that would introduce not only the tremendously destructive Taft-Hartley Act by 1947, sidetrack Harry Truman's Fair Deal postwar initiative, but also start to reformulate a broad coalition of their own to roll back economic and political reforms. Without question, the New Deal's liberal consensus had intrinsic instability, but it took decades of conservative fracking to split apart the constituent elements. In our times, a list of regressive alphabet agencies, including: alec (American Legislative Exchange Council), afp [End Page 277] (Americans for Prosperity), the Olin Foundation, Mackinac Center, Cato Institute, all channel dark money from donors resolutely determined to eliminate all traces of the New Deal. Further, the book could add more of Franklin Roosevelt, the man, as it was the president's dynamism and sheer force of personality that propelled the message of this ambitious agenda. While fdr had many detractors, few leaders could have marshalled the necessary political support for such an interventionist platform. This was another key element of the "extraordinary" moment. Neither the charisma of John F. Kennedy, the backroom arm-twisting of Lyndon Johnson, nor the affable intellectualism of Barack Obama could yield similar results.

Despite the propensity of the progressive left to inflict...

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