The political label “economic royalist” has lived on in current memory via recordings and reading of the speeches of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the 1930’s. FDR, drawing on a populist tradition within the Democratic Party, used the label to portray the financial interests and Republicans who opposed the New Deal agenda during the 1930’s as essentially traitors to the intent of the US Constitution and the American dream. In his speech to the 1936 Democratic National Convention, FDR drew a contrast between the economic powers that opposed him and ordinary small businessmen:
For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital – all undreamed of by the Fathers – the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things. (complete speech here)
Echoing the language of the American War of Independence 160 years before, Roosevelt implicitly drew an equivalency between New Deal Democrats and American Patriots fighting for independence against the royalist sympathizers, also known as Tories, who sided with the British crown.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 in front of Madison Square Garden in New York. Unlike any politician since, Roosevelt was able in no uncertain terms to condemn financial and economic malfeasance while holding out a role for legitimate businesses and businesspeople.
At first glance, the use of the concept or label “economic royalist” today would seem to be a throwback to a time when people knew enough about American history to know what a “royalist” was. Alternatively, it might sound like an old political debate overheard, with “economic royalist” the equivalent of “scoundrel,” a generic and perhaps outdated derogatory term. Yet I believe that there is something in the label that goes beyond either nostalgia or finding the most effective way via a put-down to win political sympathy. We have been experiencing over the last 30 years, a return to “economic royalism” which has led to the intensification of the commitments of its adherents rather than weakened it.
In the last few months, having listened to a number of the speeches and interviews from the extreme Right Republicans, such as Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Scott Walker that now dominate the Republican Party, it occurred to me that the policy framework that they propose as well as the economic model behind it, consists of treating the wealthy and corporations as economic royalty, with the privileges of kings and queens. Government should “make way for” the private sector, the “job creators”, and it appears as though these political representatives are happy to function as the courtiers who stand aside for the passage of a class of “higher ups” who will do as they please. On a human level, there is also something sad and obsequious about the overawed treatment of the wealthy that does not, as it turns out, correspond to their real virtues and talents, or for that matter, the real virtues and talents of any human being.
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