Democratic Socialist is a “party” in the US that takes in a lot of political space. Bernie is a member of that party but is not a “true” socialist. His reference to FDR was meant to clarify that, as FDR wasn’t even close to being a socialist by its dictionary definition.
FDR was more concerned with salvaging the democratic process and avoiding the collapse of critical supply chains that makes economic recovery all but impossible, especially with the restrictions of the gold standard that we functioned with at the time. It needs to be noted that the government didn’t default on any of its obligations and the depression was all on the private sector side of the economy where capitalism lives, very similar to the ’08 crash.
However, the people don’t normally make distinctions between government and banking that they make between government and industry, especially since the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Many people don’t remember, or never knew, that the banking system left the gold standard domestically in ’34 to avoid more serious defaults and bank runs, and probably a lot of prosecutions for not maintaining sufficient fractional reserves of gold or Treasury debt to cover reserve liabilities.
The ability of the Federal Reserve to create unlimited amounts of money as long as demand and resources were present prompted the complaints from other members of the Bretton-Woods agreement that led to Nixon backing out of it and acknowledging that we hadn’t practiced the restraint demanded by the gold standard for decades. Doing so would have made the recovery from the Great Depression all but impossible, and we can thank the fiat currency regime for the ability of America to provide such a massive armed force against the Third Reich.
FDR very masterfully managed the economy between the extreme deflation period of the depression and the opposite extreme of inflation during the war effort when employment was 100% and few products were available to absorb the wages. I believe he ranked up with many of our best Presidents and statesmen and is the reason capitalism survived the depression. Sadly, we didn’t learn the lessons of his Presidency and allowed the wealthy to dominate labor again after Reagan. That is why we now need Bernie so badly before we fall into the same hole we climbed out of under FDR.
