List of Critics of The New Deal - From The Left (Liberals)

From The Left (Liberals)

• William Lemke, North Dakota congressman, who ran a third-party Presidential campaign against Roosevelt in 1936 on the ad-hoc Union Party ticket. Lemke argued that the New Deal did not go far enough in redistributing wealth in the United States.
• John L. Lewis, leader of the powerful coal miners labor union and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO); supported 1940 Republican Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie over Roosevelt in a power struggle with FDR for control of the Democratic Party.
• Huey Long, populist Democratic Governor and Senator from Louisiana. Long criticized the New Deal for not going far enough to redistribute wealth; Long proposed a more radical economic plan called Share Our Wealth, in which all American citizens would not earn more than a million dollars a year or less than $4,000 a year. His slogan was "Every Man a King". Assassinated in 1935 by a political opponent.
• Max Shachtman, James Cannon and their respective Workers Party and Socialist Workers Party, were or had been followers of Leon Trotsky who argued that Roosevelt instituted these reforms in order to salvage capitalism (see entry for Howard Zinn, below), saw World War II as an imperialist war and the Communist Party's Popular Front as a class-collaborative betrayal.
• Francis Townsend, a retired California doctor who proposed a guaranteed income plan for senior citizens; his plan proved to be so popular that FDR adopted the Social Security Act to halt the growth of Townsend's movement.
• Burton Wheeler, Democratic Senator from Montana; broke with Roosevelt in 1937 over his court packing plan; later opposed Roosevelt as an isolationist wanting to avoid involvement in World War II.
• Howard Zinn, historian at Columbia University whose book A People's History of the United States criticizes Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal for not going far enough to redistribute wealth in the U.S. during the Great Depression. Zinn argues that the New Deal was primarily concerned with saving American capitalism, and that it should have been more radical in nationalizing American industry and promoting economic socialism. Other historians such as Eric Foner, Alan Brinkley have made similar criticisms of the New Deal.