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About the book Crisis and Leviathan

Contents:

• Introduction
• Causes of the Great Depression
• Economics of World War II
• General
• Growth of Government
• Neutrality and “Isolationism”

Introduction:

The economic crisis that began with the stock market crash in October 1929 paved the way for the most substantial permanent institutional change in the history of the United States. The expansion of government power over the individual and social life would make the responses to previous crises pale in comparison. It all began with a plummeting of stock-market values, a predictable (and predicted) consequence of the manipulation of money and credit by the Federal Reserve System, which was established less than 20 years earlier precisely to prevent money and banking crises.

Earlier crises and depressions were short-lived because government leaders, such as President Grover Cleveland, restrained themselves and let markets adjust to new conditions and reestablish their own relative stability. But the response in 1929 was different. While popular accounts hold that government corrective action did not begin until 1933, after the defeat of President Herbert Hoover by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that is not the case. After the stock-market crash, Hoover signed the historic Smoot-Hawley tariff increase, crippling U.S. exports and world trade generally; pressured businessmen to maintain high real wages despite falling prices and a declining demand for labor; supported increased government spending; raised taxes; engaged in deficit spending; and backed the creation of new interventionist programs and agencies, such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to funnel capital to favored failing banks, railroads, and state governments. This was hardly laissez faire. As historian William Appleman Williams wrote, Hoover was not the last of the old presidents but the first of the new.

Nevertheless, when Roosevelt took office, the level of intervention went up several notches. While Hoover had laid the groundwork for debilitating economic intervention that prolonged the crisis, Roosevelt greatly expanded government power using the rhetoric of class warfare and then created the massive federal dole in response to the predictable failure of such approaches. The result was the New Deal, built on World War I precedents, complete with emergency executive decrees, such as the order for citizens to surrender their gold, and the establishment of permanent agencies designed to guide the economic activities of the entire society, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and Social Security Administration. The pragmatic Roosevelt and his collectivist Brain Trust took full advantage of crisis and despair to radically disfigure the American political-economic landscape. But for all his effort, America did not rise out of the Depression, in fact it worsened and unemployment remained high throughout the 1930s. And today, the U.S. system largely reflects this statist vision, with both “liberal” and “conservative” presidents expressing allegiance to the New Deal as having saved “free enterprise.” Roosevelt’s ultimate legacy was the firm planting of the principle, even among the general population, that without the President and the federal government’s oversight and direction of the economy, massive unemployment and economic hardship would result.

Also, click here for Bibliography for Crisis and Leviathan.

Causes of the Great Depression:

Best, Gary Dean. Pride, Prejudice and Politics: Roosevelt versus Recovery, 1933-1938. New York: Praeger, 1991.

Brandes, Joseph. Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy: Department of Commerce Policy, 1921-1928. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975.

Couch, Jim F. and William F. Shughart II. The Political Economy of the New Deal. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar Publishers, 1998.

Dickman, Howard. Industrial Democracy in America: Ideological Origins of National Labor Relations Policy. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987.

Higgs, Robert. “How FDR Made the Depression Worse,” The Free Market, March 1995.

—. “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War,” The Independent Review, Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 561-590.

Higgs, Robert and Charlotte Twight. “National Emergency and the Erosion of Private Property Rights,” Cato Journal, Winter 1987.

—. “National Emergency and Private Property Rights: Historical Relations and Present Conditions,” Journal of Private Enterprise, Fall 1996.

Palyi, Melchior. The Twilight of Gold, 1914-1936: Myths and Realities. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1972.

—. Monetary Policy of the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

White, Lawrence H. “Review of the book The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century edited by Michael D. Bordo, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White,” The Independent Review, Vol. IV, No. 3 (Winter 2000), pp. 456-461.

Economics of World War II:

Darby, Michael R. “Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941.” Journal of Political Economy 84 (Feb. 1976).

Gardner, Lloyd C. Economic Effects of New Deal Diplomacy. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.

Higgs, Robert, ed. Arms, Politics, and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Holmes & Meier for The Independent Institute, 1990.

—. “From Central Planning to the Market: The American Transition, 1945-1947,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 59, No. 3 (September 1999).

—. “The Myth of U.S. Prosperity during World War II,” The Freeman, January 2003.

—. “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Prosperity Resumed after the War,” he Independent Review, Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 561-590.

—. “Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 52, No. 1 (March 1992).

—. “Wartime Socialization of Investment: A Reassessment of U.S. Capital Formation in the 1940s,” Working Paper No. 45. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute, February 2003.

—. “World War II and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex,” Freedom Daily, May 1995.

General:

Baker, Paula. “Review of the book American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition by Kenneth D. Rose,” The Independent Review, Vol. III, No. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 286-289.

Conkin, Paul. The New Deal. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967.

Ekirch, Arthur A., Jr. Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969.

Flynn, John T. Country Squire in the White House. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940.

Garrity, John A. “The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression,” American Historical Review, Vol. 78 (October 1973). The New Deal in the U.S. was very similar to European fascist economic policies.

Martin, James J. American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931-1941, 2 Vol. New York, Devin and Adair Company, 1964.

Thornton, Mark and Chetley Weise. “The Great Depression Tax Revolts Revisited,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 15 No. 3.

Growth of Government:

Armentano, D.T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Government Failure. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute, 1990.

Collins, Robert. The Business Response to Keynes, 1929-1964. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.

Flynn, John T. As We Go Marching. New York: Free Life Editions.

Garrity, John A. “The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression,” American Historical Review, Vol. 78 (October 1973). The New Deal in the U.S. was very similar to European fascist economic policies.

Hawley, Ellis W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Higgs, Robert. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

—. “Crisis and Quasi-Corporatist Policy-Making: The U.S. Case in Historical Perspective,” The World & I, November 1988.

—. “Crisis, Bigger Government, and Ideological Change: Two Hypotheses on the Ratchet Phenomenon,” Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 22 (1985).

—. “How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century,” The Freeman, July 1999.

—. “War and Leviathan in Twentieth-Century America: Conscription as the Keystone,” from The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John V. Denson. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999.

Hunt, E. K. “A Neglected Aspect of the Economic Ideology of the Early New Deal,” Review of Social Economy, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (September 1971).

Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1963.

—. “The New Deal and the Analogue of War.” In Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and Everett Walters. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964.

Libecap, Gary D. “The Political Economy of the Establishment of the Interstate Oil Cartel, 1933-1940.” In Emergence of the Modern Political Economy, ed. Robert Higgs. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1985.

Raico, Ralph. “FDR: The Man, the Leader, the Legacy,” Future of Freedom Foundation, 2001.

Rothbard, Murray N. “Herbert Hoover and the Myth of Laissez-Faire.” In A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State, ed. Ronald Radosh and Murray N. Rothbard. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972.

Wallis, John Joseph. "The Birth of the Old Federalism: Financing the New Deal, 1932-1940." Journal of Economic History 44 (March 1984).

—. “Why 1933? The Origins and Timing of National Government Growth.” In Emergence of the Modern Political Economy, ed. Robert Higgs. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1985.

Wallis, John Joseph, and Daniel K. Benjamin. “Public Relief and Private Employment in the Great Depression.” Journal of Economic History 41 (March 1981).

Neutrality and “Isolationism”:

Bandow, Doug. “Review of the book Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century, by Eric Nordlinger,” The Independent Review, Vol. I, No. 1 (Summer 1996), pp. 147-150.

Beale, C.A. The Devil Theory of War: An Inquiry into the Nature of History and the Possibility of Keeping Out of War. New York: Vanguard, 1936.

Beard, Charles A. Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels. New York: Macmillan, 1939.

—. A Foreign Policy for America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.

Borchard, Edwin M., and W. P. Lage. Neutrality for the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940.

Butler, General Smedley. War Is a Racket. Costa Mesa, California: Noontide Press, 1991.

Chamberlin, William Henry. “War—Shortcut to Fascism,” American Mercury, Vol. LI, 204 (December 1940), pp. 391-400.

Cole, Wayne S. America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-1941. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953.

—. Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Interventionism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.

—. Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1934-45. Omaha, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

Dennis, Lawrence. The Dynamics of War and Revolution. New York: Weekly Foreign Letter, 1940.

—. The Battle Against Intervention, 1939-1941. Melbourne, Florida: Krieger Publishing, 1997.

—. “Explaining the Antiwar Movement, 1939-1941: The Next Assignment,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 8 No. 1.

—. In Danger Undaunted: the Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940-41 as Revealed in the Papers of the America First Committee. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1990.

—. “The Debate Over Coercion: The Dilemma of America’s Pacifists and the Manchurian Crisis,” Peace and Change, Vol. II, No. 1 (Spring 1974), pp. 47-52.

—. From Isolation to War, 1931-1941. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1991.

—. The Literature of Isolationism: Non Interventionist Scholarship 1930-1972. Lake George, CO: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1972.

—. Not to the Swift: the Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era. Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 1979.

—. Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

Jonas, Manfred. Isolationism in America, 1935-1941. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966.

—. “Pro-Axis Sentiment and American Isolationism,” The Historian, 29 (February 1967), 221-237.

Knight, Bruce. How to Run a War. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

MacDonald, Dwight. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. New York: Meridian Books, 1958.

McElroy, Wendy. “War’s Other Casualty,” The Freeman, July 1999.

Nordlinger, Eric. Isolationism Reconfigured. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Page, Kirby. Must We Go To War? A Book for Men with a Subtitle for Women: Must American Women Send Their Men to Fight in Europe or Asia? New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937.

Pinckney, Orde S. “William E. Borah: Critic of American Foreign Policy,” Studies on the Left, Vo. I (1960), pp. 48-61.

Regnery, Henry. Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1979.The autobiography of the man responsible for publishing many of the major books on World War II revisionism, in contrast to the blackout-efforts of so muh of the mainstream book trade.

Sargent, Porter. Getting Us Into War. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1941.

Stenehjem, Michele Flynn. An American First: John T. Flynn and the America First Committee. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1976.

Stinnett, Robert B. “Pearl Harbor: Official Lies in an American War Tragedy?”, Independent Policy Forum, The Independent Institute, May 24, 2000. [Forum Anouncement, Forum Audio, Forum Transcript, Order Tapes and Transcripts]

Viereck, George S. Men Into Beasts. New York: Fawcett, 1952. The second volume of Viereck’s autobiography in which he recalls his efforts to keep America out of war, and the Sedition Trial of 1944-45 attempting to smear him.