State-Building from the Bottom Up

In the last few years a form of austerity politics has dominated the United States. Three things make that possible: an intellectual rational that privileges markets over government, the deregulation of labor markets, and the decline of unions. This paper begins by looking at how the New Deal, as embodied in the National Labor Relations Act, represented the most radical vision of American political economy. It was a vision of public policy that linked Keynesianism, a powerful state, and an expansive labor movement together as the essential ingredients for economic growth. This paper then compares that redistributive vision, premised on a form of what I call state-building from the bottom up, to the more recent austerity politics to explore the implications for the left and for contemporary public policy.