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« La liberté dans une démocratie n’est pas assurée si le peuple tolère que la puissance privée grandisse au point qu’elle devienne plus forte que l’état démocratique lui-même. Ce qui, fondamentalement est le fascisme, » avertissait le président Roosevelt en avril 1938. En une génération, l’héritage du New Deal a été défait aux USA par la vague libérale. Pourtant, le message de l’homme qui voulait instituer une « charte des droits économiques » (que nous reproduisons ici), reste plus que jamais d’actualité.
The Only Fitting Tribute
by Frances Moore Lappé, The Nation, 21 mars 2008
I feel a bit silly. For decades I called myself a child of the ’60s, only to realize on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal that I’m really its child. Coming to maturity as its beneficiary, I had a debt-free college education and, thanks to New Deal advances that doubled the real family income of the poor and middle class, my husband and I were able to live for a time on his salary alone.
It was thus, very practically, the New Deal that freed me to explore the “big questions.” Food, the basis of life, seemed like a smart place to start, so I asked, Why hunger in a world of plenty ?
Soon it began to dawn on me : as long as food is merely a commodity in societies that don’t protect people’s right to participate in the market, and as long as farming is left vulnerable to consolidated power off the farm, many will go hungry, farmers among them-no matter how big the harvests.
I might have gotten there quicker if I’d studied Roosevelt’s insight that, to serve life, markets need help from accountable, democratic government. Against those who saw “economic laws” as “sacred,” he argued that “economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.” So in 1944 (my birth year), Roosevelt called on Americans to implement what was already “accepted”-”a second Bill of Rights” centered on economic opportunity and security. It would, in effect, put values boundaries around the market. His goal wasn’t a legal document, observes University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, but the generation of a “set of public commitments by and for the citizenry, very much like the Declaration of Independence.”
The first two economic rights assured a “useful” job that paid enough to provide “adequate food and clothing.” The third guaranteed farmers a high enough return for their crops to provide their families with a “decent living.” To begin, he asked Congress to pass a “cost of food law,” putting a price floor under farmers and a price ceiling on the cost of food necessities for all.
In emphasizing rights, Roosevelt clearly did not view the New Deal as a giant safety net ; rather, he saw it as a way to advance freedom. Freedom rests as much on economic as political rights, he argued, because both are necessary to security and peace, which in turn are the basis of citizens’ freedom from fear and to the liberation of our talents. “Necessitous men are not free men,” he said.
What if Americans were now to demand that presidential contenders further Roosevelt’s definition of freedom ? Imagine calling on our next President to focus, laserlike, on FDR’s core insight that concentrated economic power is anathema to democracy and freedom. By April 1938, even after basic economic protections for citizens were law, Roosevelt still warned that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” (Roosevelt could hardly have imagined such “growth in private power” that more than sixty lobbyists now ply their trade in Washington for every person elected to represent us.)
Given the New Deal’s powerful grounding in freedom and the striking advances it ushered in for most Americans, why was the right able to reverse the New Deal in just one generation ? Perhaps the answer is that the New Deal failed to instill an understanding of democracy as more than a particular structure of government, more than a set of laws protecting our freedoms. Enduring, effective democracy isn’t something we have that’s finished ; it’s what we do that’s always unfolding. Democracy is a particular culture, a system of values-fairness, inclusion and mutual accountability-that empowered citizens learn to infuse in all dimensions of our common life.
In other words, to save the democracy we thought we had, we must now take democracy to where it’s never been. Might we start by demanding that the 2008 presidential contenders commit to engaging us in living democracy-in community-based deliberation, policy shaping and action, on matters from climate change to ending hunger to reinventing farming so that it sustains both farmers and the land ?
There could be no more fitting tribute to the New Deal in its seventy-fifth year, at least in the eyes of one of its children.
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of fifteen books, including, Democracy’s Edge : Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Our Democracy to Life (Wiley). See http://www.smallplanetinstitute.org. Her most recent book is Getting A Grip : Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad.
Document : “The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people-whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth-is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights-among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however-as our industrial economy expanded-these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all-regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are :
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation ;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation ;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living ;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad ;
The right of every family to a decent home ;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health ;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment ;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Publication originale The Nation
The Only Fitting Tribute
by Frances Moore Lappé, The Nation, 21 mars 2008
I feel a bit silly. For decades I called myself a child of the ’60s, only to realize on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal that I’m really its child. Coming to maturity as its beneficiary, I had a debt-free college education and, thanks to New Deal advances that doubled the real family income of the poor and middle class, my husband and I were able to live for a time on his salary alone.
It was thus, very practically, the New Deal that freed me to explore the “big questions.” Food, the basis of life, seemed like a smart place to start, so I asked, Why hunger in a world of plenty ?
Soon it began to dawn on me : as long as food is merely a commodity in societies that don’t protect people’s right to participate in the market, and as long as farming is left vulnerable to consolidated power off the farm, many will go hungry, farmers among them-no matter how big the harvests.
I might have gotten there quicker if I’d studied Roosevelt’s insight that, to serve life, markets need help from accountable, democratic government. Against those who saw “economic laws” as “sacred,” he argued that “economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.” So in 1944 (my birth year), Roosevelt called on Americans to implement what was already “accepted”-”a second Bill of Rights” centered on economic opportunity and security. It would, in effect, put values boundaries around the market. His goal wasn’t a legal document, observes University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, but the generation of a “set of public commitments by and for the citizenry, very much like the Declaration of Independence.”
The first two economic rights assured a “useful” job that paid enough to provide “adequate food and clothing.” The third guaranteed farmers a high enough return for their crops to provide their families with a “decent living.” To begin, he asked Congress to pass a “cost of food law,” putting a price floor under farmers and a price ceiling on the cost of food necessities for all.
In emphasizing rights, Roosevelt clearly did not view the New Deal as a giant safety net ; rather, he saw it as a way to advance freedom. Freedom rests as much on economic as political rights, he argued, because both are necessary to security and peace, which in turn are the basis of citizens’ freedom from fear and to the liberation of our talents. “Necessitous men are not free men,” he said.
What if Americans were now to demand that presidential contenders further Roosevelt’s definition of freedom ? Imagine calling on our next President to focus, laserlike, on FDR’s core insight that concentrated economic power is anathema to democracy and freedom. By April 1938, even after basic economic protections for citizens were law, Roosevelt still warned that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” (Roosevelt could hardly have imagined such “growth in private power” that more than sixty lobbyists now ply their trade in Washington for every person elected to represent us.)
Given the New Deal’s powerful grounding in freedom and the striking advances it ushered in for most Americans, why was the right able to reverse the New Deal in just one generation ? Perhaps the answer is that the New Deal failed to instill an understanding of democracy as more than a particular structure of government, more than a set of laws protecting our freedoms. Enduring, effective democracy isn’t something we have that’s finished ; it’s what we do that’s always unfolding. Democracy is a particular culture, a system of values-fairness, inclusion and mutual accountability-that empowered citizens learn to infuse in all dimensions of our common life.
In other words, to save the democracy we thought we had, we must now take democracy to where it’s never been. Might we start by demanding that the 2008 presidential contenders commit to engaging us in living democracy-in community-based deliberation, policy shaping and action, on matters from climate change to ending hunger to reinventing farming so that it sustains both farmers and the land ?
There could be no more fitting tribute to the New Deal in its seventy-fifth year, at least in the eyes of one of its children.
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of fifteen books, including, Democracy’s Edge : Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Our Democracy to Life (Wiley). See http://www.smallplanetinstitute.org. Her most recent book is Getting A Grip : Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad.
Document : “The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people-whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth-is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights-among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however-as our industrial economy expanded-these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all-regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are :
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation ;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation ;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living ;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad ;
The right of every family to a decent home ;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health ;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment ;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Publication originale The Nation