The New Deal altered American politics but never the structure of its economy.

Evidence

This was a view of Roosevelt which had long been common among German émigrés, and was usually accompanied by support or enthusiasm for him. Roosevelt’s New Deal strengthened the trade unions and sometimes encouraged, sometimes restrained big business. It brought Jews and left-wingers into important political and administrative positions for the first time, and made the so-called Red Decade, the Rebel Thirties, possible. But neither its intentions nor its consequences included changes in the structure of the economy. The 1938 recession brought unemployment back up to ten million, and Roosevelt admitted in a public declaration that the only way out of the depression was to stimulate the arms industry. This made it unmistakably clear that developments in the USA represented the lesser evil compared with European conditions, but were in no way an alternative heralding a socialist democracy. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 270

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Frankfurt School institutional history notes on Pollock’s state-capitalism thesis and the Institute’s verdict on the New Deal lacking structural change.
• DEFINE: Maps the émigrés’ phrase ‘Red Decade / Rebel Thirties’ onto concrete New Deal hiring of Jews and left-wingers.