this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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FDR was a centrist afraid of a communist revolution. This is the only reason the US got the New Deal. Funny it didn't last 20 years before it started getting dismantled. They are now at the SS dismantling phase.
Keep talking about reforming capitalism though.
New Deal boosted USA economy for decades tho, shit got done & people could spend.
Imagine if socialism was a thing then.
Okay so is every possible candidate for an American left wing leader just "a centrist whose afraid of communists?" Why even bother arguing with me then you've already made up your mind. The reality is he pushed through left wing legislation that pulled working class Americans out of the depression and put America onto the world stage as the leading power. His actions make him centre left regardless of the reasons you think he made them.
FDR did more for American workers reforming capitalism than any revolutionaries have since.
The US has no left wing leaders.
Honestly now I think you're a master-baiter and you caught me hook line and sinker. This is a straight up "there is no war in ba sing se" bit right?
Does Bernie Sanders come close, in your opinion?
Bernie is a social democrat, which is left of the establishment, but he isnt an anticapitalist so a lot of leftists might not call him a left wing leader.
No, especially the last several years with his 'lets fight fascism by electing my good buddies the blue fascists.' He's never been anything but a party sheepdog
It was fake reform BTW. It was never meant to last and you are a fool if you believed it was supposed to.
Okay buddy you're the one against a policy that improved the lives of workers
Liberals are not left wing they are centrist.
You're so brave for saying this
In 1934, a nationwide strike wave brought the us economy to its knees. Cities all along the trans continental railroad went on strike. Minneapolis had been basically completely taken over by a Trotskyist vanguard party, whose non-violent political tactics subverted police and big business interests at every turn. After the police shooting of two union dock workers in San Francisco on bloody Thursday, 160 unions initiated a 4 day general strike. In 1935, we got our new deal.
Workers, fed up with their conditions and inspired by socialist organizing, won a New Deal for ourselves. Giving credit to FDR for it, is ahistorical. It is exactly the sort of ruling class mythologies held and perpetuated by liberal elites. FDR was trying to rescue capitalism from the workers who had organized into a force capable of bringing it down, and seizing the means of production for the workers.
Despite the rational reforms FDR and Keynesian economics brought to the US economy, all of those reforms have been rolled back. That is because only the workers are able to win a rational economic system through struggle, it will never be given to us by some president who is beholden to the class that holds all the power and money.
There were many factors that contributed to disabling the American radical militant workers movement. Some was liberal meddling, and right wing regressive collaboration with regressive big business. But one thing that gets overlooked is how our movements were dismantled by Stalin's Comintern, who caused splits and purges in our movements along the lines of loyalty to the Stalinist bureaucracy.
So completely blaming liberalism isn't totally accurate either, unless you consider Stalin to be a liberal or a comprador (which honestly I think is kind of true.)
I try to be easy on liberals, I think progressive liberals are basically allies, at least when their illusions doesn't get in the way of principled struggle. But don't be confused by the mythology of FDR. Great man theory is a myth, only great movements of workers are capable of positive change under capitalism.
FDR was the leader at the time of the new deal. He gave into the will of the workers. This makes him left wing.
Sure. Left wing for a president, even the left wing of the ruling capitalist class. Not the left wing of the working class.
But you're absolutely right. He was the guy who did the thing at the time that was needed to do the thing. History isn't made by great men. It is made by workers. My point is he sided with the winners.
But he hadn't adopted the sensibilities and interests of the working class. It just so happened that a large enough section of the ruling class agreed with him at the time, not completely without his presidential influence, but that's the whole problem right? FDR was hardly the first member of the the ruling class who had won over to the side of workers, many great socialists, including Marx, Lenin, were themselves members of the bourgeoisie. But there is a canyon of difference between the guy who led a revolution in Russia, and the guy who stopped one in america.
As far as presidents go, he's not a slave owning mass murder, pedophile, complete nepo-baby, etc., the man wasn't evil as far as presidents go, but he was only evef momentarily and conditionally on the side of workers. Populism isnt necessarily leftism
You're doing literally everything in your power to not recognise this guy as left wing to the point of absurdity. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than: sides with workers, left wing. Sides against workers, right wing. Being left wing isn't some special club that only you and all the people you like can join. It's a broad political stance largely defined by the politics of the time. There are plenty of terrible leftists.