(no subject)

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Comments

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

Can we reincarnate him, please? Because we could sure use someone with those values right now.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

AFAIK there are two or three living grandsons/grandnephews available.

[hurleyman.livejournal.com]

That may mean nothing though..I mean after all, look at MLK Jr's daughter...

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

A most powerful condemnation of marxists.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have had any trouble condemning Marxists. He was no commie! But at least he had a basic sense of fairness and justice.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

Practically the only political movements in TR days who talked about social classes (and blowing the whole issue out of proportion) were marxists. So the people he was condemning likely were them.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

He was not as far left as Franklin Roosevelt, but he did break up the trusts, the big businesses. He had some concerns about the rich taking advantage of the system.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

IMO the important thing is that he was actually fixing the excesses of the system (like with antitrust laws), whilst keeping the essense of competitive capitalism, by carefully amending some of the rules. It is so very different from the todays socialists who have no patience or knowledge or honesty not to undermine the whole thing.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Actually, no. Bigger in the US were the Georgists, followers of Henry George, author of the 1888 book Progress and Poverty. Georgists and Marxists have some commonality, but George hated Marx, thinking his publications, if read and acted upon, would lead to a dictatorship.

How big was George? He may have been the author of the most published book in US history prior to 1900 (except for the Bible). I'm researching the man and his work now simply because of his oversized influence and the fact that reactionary forces have all but scrubbed him out of history.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

Wow! Didn't know about the chap. Although I recognize some of the ideas as seen during my Economics courses. Thanks.
But did he actually use words "class" or "class system"? I looked him up briefly on Wiki, and he seems concerned first and foremost with the disadvantages (to economy and society) of land rent and possibilities of land tax. I did not see any reference to "classes" or "class struggle".
What TR was condemning, as far as I understood, were the marxist concepts of class and class struggle, for their intent of promotion of one (allegedly the most progressive) class within society and creation of inner division and strife.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

But did he actually use words "class" or "class system"?

Yes. There's an online copy of Progress & Poverty (http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP.html). I entered "class" into the search function and came up with quite a few references.

Here's one paragraph (actually a sentence and the footnote to it):

It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. *1 I do not mean that the condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. Nay, more, that it is still further to depress the condition of the lowest class. The new forces, elevating in their nature though they be, do not act upon the social fabric from underneath, as was for a long time hoped and believed, but strike it at a point intermediate between top and bottom. It is as though an immense wedge were being forced, not underneath society, but through society. Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down.

(I emboldened a particularly poignant use, one that rings true with the Roosevelt quote in the OP.)

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Ooo! New information! I'm just now reading Gaffney's "Neo-classical Economics as a Strategem against Henry George" (available online here (http://www.masongaffney.org/publications/k1neo-classical_stratagem.cv.pdf) in pdf format).

On the pdf pages 24-25, it is mentioned that in 1886 George ran—and nearly won—for Mayor of New York City; Theodore Roosevelt also ran in that race.

Oh, and correction: Progress and Poverty was printed in 1878, not 1888. My bad.