laissez-faireand prepare the ground for socialism.^14 On the right
there was more reluctance, but planning often seemed unavoidable.
For instance, in Italy and Germany, the new fascist leaders promised
to do away with state socialism and the planned economy, but they
rapidly moved toward a command economy where the state effec-
tively planned autarkic industrial development and war.^15 Elsewhere,
many on the liberal right could not resist, either, a scientific approach
that promised to settle threatening social conflicts.^16
When the war ended, planning became the order of the day. The
Great Depression had discreditedlaissez-faireand both the reforms of
the New Deal period and the efficiency of war economies suggested
that state intervention could work. John Maynard Keynes’ new eco-
nomic theory also supported the idea that enlightened macro-economic
management could prevent damaging business cycles and sustain full
employment and prosperity. The left and the right did not agree,
however, on the extent of state intervention in the new mixed econ-
omy. Overall, the left wished to nationalize key industries and pursue
extensive planning, and the right preferred as much market freedom
as possible.
The American debate was a case in point. Before the war was even
over, conservatives organized to prevent what they saw as excessive
state intervention. Business leaders, Republicans, and Southern
Democrats mobilized to defeat the ambitious reforms implemented by
Northern Democrats and New Deal bureaucrats during the thirties.
Now dominant in Congress, the right denounced “statism,” and spoke
of a looming “Communist state” that would eventually destroy “free
enterprise” and the “American way of life.”^17 “The United States,”
stressed Republican Congressman Jesse W. Wolcott of Michigan with
an intriguing precision, was “now within 8 per cent of socialism.”^18 In
1946, conservatives defeated a Bill that would have committed the
American government to maintain full employment. A year later, they
adopted the Taft-Hartley Act, which circumscribed in a number of
ways the power of trade unions and made it more difficult for the
(^14) Maier,In Search of Stability, p. 43. (^15) Ibid., pp. 74 and 114.
(^16) Hobsbawm,The Age of Extremes, pp. 96–97.
(^17) Gary Mucciaroni,The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 1945–1982,
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990, p. 24.
(^18) Jesse W. Wolcott, quoted in John Kenneth Galbraith,American Capitalism:
The Concept of Countervailing Power, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1952, p. 5.
112 Left and Right in Global Politics