From Warfare State to Welfare State

by Eisner, Marc Allen

• ISBN13: 9780271019963
• ISBN10: 0271019964
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr

Summary

When American history is divided into discrete eras, the New Deal stands, along with the Civil War, as one of those distinctive events that forever change the trajectory of the nation's development. The story of the New Deal provides a convenient tool of periodization and a means of interpreting U.S. history and the significance of contemporary political cleavages. Eisner's careful examination of the historical record, however, leads one to the conclusion that there was precious little "new" in the New Deal. If one wishes to find an event that was clearly transformative, the author argues, one must go back to World War I.

From Warfare to Welfare State reveals that the federal government lagged far behind the private sector in institutional development in the early twentieth century. In order to cope with the crisis of war, government leaders opted to pursue a path of "compensatory state-building" by seeking out alliances with private-sector associations. But these associations pursued their own interests in a way that imposed severe constraints on the governm

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Crisis, Continuity, and Political Change	1	(18)
PART I: Crisis and the Construction of the Modern State
War Making, State Making, and American Political Development	19	(26)
Mobilization, Demobilization, and the Legacy of the Great War	45	(44)
PART II: Demobilization and the Dissemination of a Model
Associationalism and the Regulation of Business	89	(50)
From Warfare Crisis to Welfare Capitalism	139	(42)
Agricultural Adversity and the Curse of the Surplus	181	(40)
Business Cycles, Industrial Stability, and Economic Management	221	(40)
PART III: Peacetime Mobilization and the Modern State
Hoover, the Depression, and the Limits of Associationalism	261	(38)
A New Deal for an Old Model	299	(50)
The Great War, New Battles, and the Limits of the Modern State	349	(11)
Index	360