Restoring the concept of The Commons
October 29th, a Tuesday 92 years ago, saw the colossal failure of laissez faire capitalism. Entrusting the future of the world’s most promising democracy to a tiny elite of trust fund babies, oil tycoons and financial buccaneers was a spectacular failure.
It cost millions of immigrants and first-generation Americans their shot at the American Dream, which was not to become a member of that brassy upper crust that filled the opera houses and art galleries of New York; but to provide a safe home in a safe community and the economic security their children would need to build a better future.
When the U.S. stock market collapsed, it took the Gilded Age with it. The wiser members of America’s economic aristocracy retreated to their private estates in Long Island and Penobscot and other coastal retreats. It was no longer safe to parade their wealth and privilege in front of men who could no longer feed their children.
Concentration of wealth and opportunity in a tiny economic elite of trust fund royalty and financial privateers while ignoring the needs and aspirations of millions of American workers led to its inevitable end point, a complete collapse of the economy.
After Herbert Hoover’s fumbling, vapid attempts to blame the victims of their runaway greed, the One Percenters of that age, the ones ruined the economy, finally gave way to the desperate voices of the people. Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved from the New York governor’s mansion in Albany to the White House on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. with a mind to change things for a faltering working class.
I mark that moment as the beginning of America’s attempt to restore a British notion that provided the template for the Magna Carta and for our own Constitution – the idea of the Commons, a shared public space where free exchange of goods and services, social interactions between diverse economic classes, and the advance of the liberal ideal of self-governance could all thrive.
I mark that moment as the moment when America committed to becoming the shining city on a hill, a beacon to the world, symbolized so well in the torch held high by Lady Liberty in New York Harbor.
The shared vision of what we as American citizens want to accomplish for ourselves and our progeny is all played out on The Commons. Whether or not the great American experiment in democratic governance, in the form of today’s republic, succeeds depends on what happens in The Commons.
President Biden spoke to our shared interest in the success of The Commons frequently during the 2020 presidential campaign. He remains a firm believer in the access of every American to The Commons and in every American voter’s ability to shape The Commons. He believes this is our birthright as citizens, despite the relentless attacks on voting rights and on objective truth by Donald Trump and the GOP in the wake of Trump’s trouncing in the 2020 election.
Let’s hope our President is right. More importantly, let’s hope we the people are up to the challenge of protecting the Commons from the powerful people who seek to destroy it in their relentless pursuit of concentrated wealth and absolute political power. In the end, it is up to us.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood something about The Commons that today’s Republicans do not seem to grasp.
“We Americans expect our government to protect all of us regardless of our economic status, to serve our interests as we articulate them through elections, and to solve the really big problems that stand between us and a secure and better future for us and our children regardless of the price tag. We Americans don’t want smaller government. We want better government. That means a government big enough to defeat our biggest problems, competent enough to govern wisely and efficiently, and responsive enough that we always know ultimately we are in charge through the regular exercise of our right to vote.”
This is what The Commons is all about and why so many political battles are waged there every day, opposing parties are constantly trying to control or free up access to The Commons, to protect it or attack it.
It’s my intent to use Working the Commons to explore the issues facing The Commons and profiling the people who work there every day, dedicated to keeping it open to all of us for the very same reasons that FDR explained so eloquently in
If you work The Commons, from maintenance worker to executive leader of a large agency, I encourage you to share your stories with me. You can reach out to me here: editor@workingthecommons.com.
Best wishes,
Jim Wavada, your editor and moderator at Working the Commons.
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