[Marxism] A few FDR quotes

[Mark Lause]

I suggested in my last post to Artesian that FDR's own rhetoric not
only reflected the movements of his base but he said things that
actively encouraged those movements.  Right up to the present, various
labor and progressive sites post these things and use them....

* "If I went to work in a factory, the first thing I'd do would be to
join a Union."

* "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living
wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By
living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level --I mean the
wages of decent living."

* "Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary
standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed
to pollute the channels of international commerce."

* "It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer
and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working
conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the
well-paid worker."

* "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for
those who have too little."

* "Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy, forget in
time that men have died to win them."

And, one of my personal favorites (from his  Simple Truths message to
Congress 1938)...

"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the
liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of
a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private
power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State
itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an
individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.

"The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if
its business system does not provide employment and produce and
distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of
living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of
private power without equal in history is growing."

--

At the time, the CIO and the Left circulated these things very widely
and used them to legitimate their efforts.  And before we start
talking about what a backwards old racist nabob FDR was (no denying
that), we should ask ourselves which of the presidents in our
lifetimes would have come close to saying any of the above....

ML