The Great Society and the Progressive Tradition

On the surface, the flurry of federal legislation, new programmes, agencies and initiatives enacted by the Johnson administration and collectively termed the ‘Great Society’ were a natural next step in a long tradition of American liberal reformism. This reformist tradition in American politics had emerged as a political force through the Progressive movement of the late 19^th and early twentieth century, coming of age as the core philosophy of the New Deal. The identifying features of this liberal reformism included an intensely moral advocacy of the interests of the ‘ordinary man’, concern for the corrosive influence of big business tempered by support for the capitalist social system as a whole, a belief in the use of government as a vehicle for reform, a measure of social conservatism and, finally, an enthusiasm for technocratic expertise in order to inform policy and achieve the goals they sought.

As a legislative programme which sought to deploy the power of the federal government to create a ‘Great Society’ in which even the most marginalised had the ability to prosper, Johnson’s programme fulfilled all of the above characteristics. It was self-consciously modelled on the New Deal with its emphasis on Presidential leadership and the use of government regulation and agencies as drivers of relief for the disadvantaged and of reform. Indeed, in private Johnson routinely admitted a desire for the acclaim that Roosevelt had gained amongst the marginalised.

On the other hand, in its political consequences, the Great Society shared little in common with its 1930s or late 19^th century predecessors. Whilst these reform movements marked incremental advances in the tide of reformism, built lasting political coalitions and set precedents to be built upon, it is tempting to see, as figures such as Steigerwald have, the Great Society era as the climax of America liberalism, with much of American politics since characterised by efforts to reverse or at least repudiate its legacy. Whilst the reforms of New Deal liberalism brought Franklin Roosevelt lasting recognition and gratitude from the millions who mourned his death in 1945, Johnson unhappily remarked that “I tried to make it possible for every child of every color to grow up in a nice house, eat a solid breakfast, to attend a decent school…but look at what I got instead. Riots in 1975 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting”[1]. Whilst attempting to create a stronger society, the Johnson presidency ended with Americans more divided than at any time since the Civil War. It oversaw the collapse (and, claim opponents, actively facilitated) the replacement of racial integrationism with racial militancy, and sowed the seeds for the rise of a New Republicanism in the 40 years that followed.

To understand why the consequences of the Great Society era were so radically different to that of the New Deal, it is necessary to consider the relationship of both to the broader liberal tradition in American politics, the opportunities and limitations inherent within it, as well as the ways in which the Great Society departed from it.

In its approach towards poverty, the Great Society shared much of the New Deal’s enthusiasm for experimentation and, more broadly, the progressive faith in using academic ideas to drive policy. Much of the Great Society’s approach to poverty, for example, was informed by the belief that it was at least as much a political and cultural problem as an economic one. The anthropologist Oscar Lewis had coined the term ‘the culture of poverty’ in 1959, whilst David Hackett, head of the Office for Juvenile Delinquency, whose work the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 built on, drew heavily from the work of Ohlin and Cloward at the University of Chicago, who argued that “delinquency was misguided energy that could be rechanneled into respectable paths if only opportunities were there”[2].

Influenced by the work of such men, and provided with just $2.1m to spend, Hackett piloted Community Action Programs, initiatives through which urban poor were provided with support from the federal government to politically organise themselves in order to improve their situation. In many respects, such pragmatism and openness to the latest ideas shared much in common with the Roosevelt years. He too had been informed by a ‘Brains Trust’ of academics and experts in their field, whilst seasoned progressives such as Harry Hopkins and Frances Perkins were given considerable freedom within their departments to pilot new schemes and fund pioneering approaches to social problems, as seen through seemingly obscure projects such as Hopkins’ Federal Theatre Project. Whilst such potentially risky initiatives operated with Roosevelt’s tacit support, however, he was careful not to become overcommitted to any single one until it had been proven a success.

Where Johnson’s Great Society departed from its predecessors was in the haste with which the experimental policies of figures such as Hackett were recklessly embraced and publicly committed to. Matusow writes how “in one stroke Johnson escalated community action from an experimental program to precede the War on Poverty into the very war itself”. The Economic Opportunity Act famously guaranteed the poor “maximum feasible participation” in local government, with Johnson breathlessly promising that “the days of the dole in our country are numbered”. The results of the sudden and unexpected expansion of community action programmes were soon felt. Democrats such as San Francisco mayor John Shelly complained that the community action was “undermining integrity of local government” after militants had stormed the mayor’s office and extorted $45,000 for Summer youth employment, and there were numerous examples of community action being used as a federally-sponsored platform for black and left-wing radical attacks on often Democratic local government machines.

The consequences of the hastily-expanded Community Action Programs are a good example of the ways in which the Great Society, whilst sharing structural similarities with previous American reform movements, was also a significant departure. Whilst the Progressives and New Dealers had both shared a technocratic streak and an understanding of education, they were also deeply practical and incrementalist in their approach. In contrast to Johnson, Roosevelt never dared promise that poverty could be eliminated overnight, nor was he prone to narrowing his policy options by saying such things as education being “the only valid passport from poverty”.

Both Roosevelt and the Progressives understood that, in order to be politically viable, efforts to alleviate poverty had to be highly visible and deliver fast results to the broadest section of the country. Community action failed on both counts. A focus on addressing poverty by helping the politically disenfranchised in the inner cities by the mid 1960s meant, in reality, focusing on blacks and ethnic minorities whilst neglecting the working class and lower-middle class whites who, through taxation, paid for it nonetheless. These groups would form the basis of Regan’s electoral coalition 15 years later.

Secondly, by choosing to fight the ‘War on poverty’ at a cultural, rather than economic level, Johnson forsook the practicality of the New Dealers in favour of an open-ended commitment to political organisation amongst the marginalised whose practical effects would, in any case, have been a long time coming and highly unpredictable. In place of highly visible (if economically questionable) initiatives such as the TVA, young men planting trees as part of the CCC, or even the Progressives efforts to eliminate child labour, all Johnson had to show for his efforts and expenditure in the short term was the highly embarrassing images of Black Panthers taking on local government machines from his own party, leaving these programmes highly vulnerable to conservative attacks in years to come.

To understand just how much of a departure Johnson’s approach to the War on Poverty was, we might contrast it against the kind of plans being put forward by Civil Rights leaders such as Bayard Rustin, and Philip Randolph. In 1966, they proposed a ‘Freedom Budget’, drafted by Leon Keyserling, Truman’s Chief Economic Advisor. In place of the abstract, long-termist approach of the tactics advocated by men such as Ohlin and Cloward, the Freedom budget aimed to bring about full employment by 1975.

It criticised the Johnson administration’s tendency to “place excessive emphasis on the personal characteristics of the poor” and recognised that projects such as the community action programs threatened to “generate resentment and reaction by lifting expectations much more rapidly than they are being fulfilled”[3]. Theirs was a plan that seems to fit much more comfortably with the legacy of the New Deal, investing in areas where the effects would much more quickly be felt such as low-cost housing, education and health services, as well as providing jobs which would benefit not just minorities, but the economy as a whole.

The problems raised by the War on Poverty and the Community Action experiment are symptomatic of the ways in which the Great Society departed from previous American reform movements, often to its detriment. Whilst incrementalism and pragmatism had traditionally been offered, Johnson was prone to overselling his policies, and failed to sufficiently focus on delivering immediate, politically symbolic improvements to the lives of enough Americans. There were occasions where he did venture down this path, such as in the provision of school lunches and food stamps, but all too often such measures were afterthoughts, underfunded and, thanks to Johnson’s inability to manage expectations, disappointments. Whereas progressivism had historically emphasised poverty alleviation as a tool for bringing the nation closer together and understood the political risk in alienating the white middle class, all too often the Great Society delivered benefits such as healthcare to select groups whilst neglecting the majority, and undermined the city machines which, for good or ill, had historically formed the bedrock of the Democratic Party’s grassroots support in urban areas.

On the other hand, it is perhaps too tempting to blame the Great Society’s shortcomings on Johnson’s deviance from the American progressive tradition when, in truth, many were long-term features of it. American liberalism, writes Hugh Brogan,  had since the beginning been driven by a spirit of ‘do goodism’ amongst the educated middle and upper classes, driven by their own sense of idealism and morality rather than being necessarily representative of those they purported to help.  This meant that, in the longer term, the American liberal tradition was always going to be vulnerable at times where the interests of these intellectual elites diverged with those of the majority working class- as it did over the race issue.

Once the rhetoric of the elites fell out of step with the scale of the changes they were capable of bringing about, as occurred with the War on Poverty, it was always likely that many of these poor and marginalised groups would seek a voice of their own. Similarly, many of the limitations of the Great Society’s programmes were faults inherited from the American reform tradition itself. Johnson inherited their aversion to radical economic change and their commitment to American capitalism, which in turn made him unwilling and unable to challenge vested interests such as the American Medical Association and made him too willing to compromise on projects such as Medicare.

Such compromises would significantly harm the effectiveness of these programmes (such as by allowing medical costs to skyrocket), in turn damaging the reputation of liberal achievements and leaving them open to attack by the New Right in the years that followed. In its overall shape and objectives, therefore, the Great Society was not a fundamental departure from previous American reform movements.

However, in its political organisation and presentation, Johnson failed to borrow enough from the successes of previous programmes such as the New Deal, whilst replicating many of the Progressive tradition’s flaws which, amongst the changing social background of American society in the 1960s, were increasingly visible.

[1] Boyer, Clark, Kett The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People p901

[3] Quoted in Steigerwald, p56