As evidenced in Wall Street and FDR, Antony Sutton writes from a Libertarian perspective. He refers to famous Libertarian economists Ludvig von Mises and Murray Rothbard and expressly shares their belief in a free market economy based on competition and free of all governmental influence.
Against his Libertarian ideals Sutton contrasts the big industrialists and bankers whose eyes are always on the prize of maximized profits – by whatever means. In the 19th century the railroad and oil magnates experienced the economic power of monopoly, and also learned that the best way to monopolistically corner the market was through politics. Now Libertarians don’t have a problem with monopolies per se, but acquiring monopolistic power through corruption of government is crossing a line. Government should stay out of economic affairs, says the Libertarian, and businessmen should steer clear of government as well. It is still an infringement on business if government interferes in business and the economy, even if government is controlled by business.
And big business, especially those big industrialists and bankers headquartered within a stone’s throw of 120 Wall Street, did their level best to control government. Sutton goes into statistical detail as to the campaign contributions Wall Streeters made to presidential candidates. (Big money’s control of presidential politics did not begin with Citizens Untied.) No recent president has been elected without Wall Street’s money, and this was certainly the case in first half of the 20th century. And Sutton shows how FDR was no exception to this rule.
FDR’s relations with Wall Street and the world of finance were intimate in the years prior to running for public office. Sutton catalogs his business dealings in the years leading up to becoming governor of New York. It was primarily through his political contacts, many established during his stint as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, that FDR brought value to Fidelity & Deposit Company, a firm with offices at 120 Wall Street. Through his political contacts F & D received preferential treatment in the bonding business. Through these and other schemes Roosevelt learned how business and government can work hand in hand for the sake of profit.
In the 1932 election, as Sutton again shows in stark statistical detail, Wall Street shifts its backing from Republican Herbert Hoover and supported Franklin Roosevelt for president. Why was this? Hoover, it seemed, was too much of a free marketer. And it was Roosevelt, in the first months in office, who backed the National Industrial Recovery Act. Through this measure the fat cats on Wall Street wanted to gain monopolistic control of much of industry, doing away with anti-trust, and creating regulations that made it hard for smaller companies to compete. Measures like workmen’s compensation, old-age pensions, and unemployment insurance, Sutton says, add up to a “welfare carrot.” (See pages 126-7) These carrots were offered to Labor as an incentive to go along. A model for the NRA was the War Industries Board which had the authority to plan the economy in detail as an emergency measure during World War I. FDR called the depression an emergency which called for and justified a planned economy during peacetime.
Sutton, true to his Libertarian principles, argues that planned economies are never as efficient as a truly free market uninfluenced by government interference. He cites in particular the damage done to small businesses due to the NRA. The NRA had the power to reduce production, affect prices, and otherwise enhance the monopolistic power of its industrial authors and benefactors.
Wall Street and FDR reaches a climax with the Smedley Butler affair – an event in American history everyone should take stock of. As the NRA failed to achieve the results for which it was designed there was a Wall Street faction prepared to go a step further and establish a kind of dictatorship backed by a half a million veterans to be headed by former general Butler. (See Devil Dog by David Talbot for an entertaining and informative look at the life of Smedley Butler.) The path to economic control was through political control. That an industrial and banking cabal of sorts centered at 120 Wall Street had an affinity with totalitarianism is successfully established by Sutton. Wall Street and FDR is only one book within a trilogy, the two others dealing with Wall Street’s support of the Bolshevik Revolution and Nationalist Socialism, respectively.
We come to understand that Wall Street is no fan of competition, and no fan of democracy. The appeal of the Bolshevik Revolution was not its egalitarian ideals, but its totalitarianism, because if despots have more political control then monopolistic economic control was all the more possible. With an eye that Sutton affords us, it is clear that by the 1930s that fascism had the most appeal to Wall Street tycoons. (See pages 145-9 for Smedley Butler’s testimony regarding the appeal Nazism had for Wall Streeters.)
In the aftermath of the hearings where Smedley Butler testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee, Wall Street propaganda ramped up its anti-Communistic rhetoric. It has been the commercial cabal’s method to contrast capitalism and communism, giving lip service to the support of the former and lambasting the latter. But by reading Antony Sutton one comes to see this as a false dichotomy framed dishonestly by Wall Street propagandists. The true dichotomy, according to Sutton, is that between the true free market and those who would use government to enrich themselves, and in the process impoverish the masses and ruin the economy for all but the few.
Much has been written about the Deep State, the Secret Team, the Power Elite. Different authors shine a light into this or that corner behind the many curtains that screen us from the truth. One does not need to share every aspect of Sutton’s Libertarian ideals to appreciate the insight afforded us into what motivates the privileged class. Their thirst for power knows no bounds. Every American needs to come to know that the moneyed interests have controlled politics in this country to a degree few realize, and that their hearts are in the wrong place.
And all the while Sutton raises new questions about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Should he be despised after all? FDR’s connection to Wall Street is undeniable, and Sutton is convincing when he spells out the mischief Wall Street was up to. The fact no one was prosecuted for the Butler affair, and that the hearings were halted and the records redacted, is at least suspicious. But our view of Roosevelt must now reconcile what Sutton has brought with the Second Bill of Rights and the fact that FDR opposed Churchill over colonialism. Roosevelt came from the well-born and well-heeled; but was he to some degree also a man of the people? We may not yet have a final view, but thanks to Sutton we have at least a more balanced one.
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