– Edward Dodson
Watching this 1976 film after all these years brought to mind the origins of the political and philosophical divide that now characterizes discourse in the United States.
Few Americans during the 1920s understood what was occurring in Russia under the Bolsheviks and state-socialism. At the time, U.S. reformers were of two minds. Some continued the effort to rid the “American System” of monopoly privileges—carrying on the campaign started by journalist Henry George in the 1870s to reward actual producers of goods and services and end the redistribution of wealth to a non-producing rentier class. They included people such as Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, John R. Commons, Harry Gunnison Brown, Louis F. Brandeis and many others who embraced the principles of cooperative individualism (i.e., a society in which individual liberty is secured and protected within a cooperative societal framework).
As historian Frederick Lewis Allen detailed in ‘Only Yesterday’, land and stock market speculation in the 1920s created the conditions that caused the Great Depression in the 1930s. It was during this period that millions lost faith in the American system. While some fought for social democracy, others were drawn to democratic socialism, Russian state-socialism, or the state-capitalism of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. All manner of myths and distortions of the historical record were utilized to support the violation of human rights. As Winston Churchill later stated, when we give up a little liberty in exchange for greater security, we soon have neither security nor liberty.
While some American leaders were convinced that government should not intervene in private contractual relations, that the excesses of the 1920s and the destruction of depression would eventually give way to recovery, others agreed with Franklin Roosevelt that government had to meaningfully intervene if the republic was to be preserved. And, so the nation got the policies of the New Deal.
Absent the fundamental systemic changes called for by the individualist remnant that continued to look to the ideas of Henry George, incremental increases in government intervention at least mitigated the depths of cyclical busts that continued and have continued to plague the American System. The Second World War created full employment in the United States that lasted until near the end of the 1950s. In the meantime, the Russians provided the evidence that state-socialism was not only an evil but an evil that sought to spread its dominion. As the film reminds us, this provided the excuse for setting aside constitutionally-protected rights in the interest of systemic security.
Fast forward to 2026. None of the fundamental problems of the American System have been removed. Privilege still dominates our socio-political arrangements and institutions. The republic is approaching yet another period of domestic disintegration.
