While FDR was popular, he was a social democrat. Welfare under capitalism is not socialism, it’s just welfare, and the welfare the US received was largely built from colonial holdings and imperialist plunder. Socialism isn’t just having decent welfare, it’s an entirely new economic system where the base of society is determined by social ownership of production and distribution. The only reason FDR was even allowed to pass these social reforms was because, at the time, economic unrest was high and workers could look to a largely unaffected and growing USSR for inspiration. The New Deal was a concession made to an organized working class, and the source was largely imperialist super-profits, ensuring both capitalists and workers could domestically be happy (assuming you were white). They exported the contradictions of society to the global south.
I think FDR - maybe better than any president since - really “understood the assignment” in regards to the POTUS being the manager of international capitalism in the post-war world. Part of that is understanding that the working class, in times of crisis, need to be pacified with carrots because sticks only heighten contradictions in the long run (even if he didn’t see or understand it that way nexessarily). FDR understood that capitalism is a global system and thus requires global coordination. He saw what happened between the wars where the bourgeoisie of each nation turned inward and disregarded this global nature of capitalism. Recently it seems the bourgeoisie are forgetting this lesson.
FDR genuinely was very competent at maintaining capitalism and facilitating the basis of imperialist expansion in a way no president before or since has managed to reach.
While FDR was popular, he was a social democrat. Welfare under capitalism is not socialism, it’s just welfare, and the welfare the US received was largely built from colonial holdings and imperialist plunder. Socialism isn’t just having decent welfare, it’s an entirely new economic system where the base of society is determined by social ownership of production and distribution. The only reason FDR was even allowed to pass these social reforms was because, at the time, economic unrest was high and workers could look to a largely unaffected and growing USSR for inspiration. The New Deal was a concession made to an organized working class, and the source was largely imperialist super-profits, ensuring both capitalists and workers could domestically be happy (assuming you were white). They exported the contradictions of society to the global south.
I think FDR - maybe better than any president since - really “understood the assignment” in regards to the POTUS being the manager of international capitalism in the post-war world. Part of that is understanding that the working class, in times of crisis, need to be pacified with carrots because sticks only heighten contradictions in the long run (even if he didn’t see or understand it that way nexessarily). FDR understood that capitalism is a global system and thus requires global coordination. He saw what happened between the wars where the bourgeoisie of each nation turned inward and disregarded this global nature of capitalism. Recently it seems the bourgeoisie are forgetting this lesson.
FDR genuinely was very competent at maintaining capitalism and facilitating the basis of imperialist expansion in a way no president before or since has managed to reach.
I think the joke is many American democratic socialists have policies comparable to just FDR
That’s one way to read it!