[발췌] Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943

자료: [구글도서] Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943
지은이: Patrick D. Reagan
Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1999

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Epilogue: The Abolition and Legacy of New Deal Planning


(...) As the president responsible for dealing with the wreckage of the Great Depression, FDR made possible the only experiment in public-sector national planning in U.S. history. Between 1933 and 1943 the National Planning Board, the National Resources Board, the National Resources Committee, and the National Resources Planning Board retained a remarkable continuity of direction from above. Bringing ideas, institutional support, and money from mainstream areas of American life, FDR's planner instituted a brief, stormy life for an advisory process of American national planning that moved beyond the voluntarism of 19th century America but was never intended to create a European statist form of national planning. In a sense, New Deal planning proved to be an example of America exceptionalism compared with its counterparts elsewhere in fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and a militarized Japan. Exceptionalism, however, should not be taken in an absolute sense, but rather needs clarification in a historical perspective too often missed in the theoretical abstractions of social science models. To fully understand New Deal planning requires the longer-term view made possible through the lens of historical focus, a recognition of who the planners were, how they came to New Deal planning, and a close attention to the primary source records.

The origins of New Deal planning went back to the early 20th century. Planning grew up as part of the creation of the modern organizational society that late 20th century Americans take for granted. Between 1900 and 1933 the groundwork was laid through the building of an organizational nexus for planning on a national scale. In the 1930s five men-all lifelong, independent Republicansㅡbecame FDR's planners, but they did not work alone. Before the FDR's election in 1932 they had the support of complex hierarchical bureaucratic institutions first pioneered by the railroads and taken up soon enough by other industries. Eventually that model permeated associational life in modern America and made possible enormous advances in national economic growth while creating a variegated mix of political, social, and cultural institutions. (...)