Democratic Senator from Louisiana Huey Pierce Long Jr. was considered many thing in his life, but authoritarian and demagogue fits him best with a syncretic ideology. His ideas were generally to the far left of the political spectrum with nothing to offer to the right outside of isolationism and racial issues due to his southern heritage. There has been many questions on what if Huey Long was President in the 30s and 40s and what effect this would have on both the United States and WW2, but a question I want to ask is something that I have had for quite a while. On some sites like this one, Long is often compared to Argentine President Juan Peron who created a syncretic ideology in Peronism that ruined has Argentina down a wonky and disastrous path for the last 50-70 years. My question is if Long became President and remained President till at least the 50s and successfully enacted all his policies, would the United States eventually wind up like Argentina, would it be better than Argentina, or worse than it? What would the ensuing Cold War with either the Germans or Soviets look like? How does America look post President Long?
President Huey Long in the 30s-50s, does America become like Argentina?
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No I believe it would not be anything like Argentina and also I would argue that there were many more factors then Peronism that brought Argentina to the place it is. America by the 1940s was one of the world’s most powerful nations industrially and it would take a lot more than just a long presidency to bring it down. Huey Long was a complicated man politically but personally I don’t believe he would be as much of a disaster as you hint at. His economics were oddly somewhat socialist and I don’t know if they would go great in practice but it is likely many of his more radical proposals would be softened by the more moderate demands of the democrats around him especially the conservative southern democrats who were his main base. Political he might be bad for the nation especially the democracy of it he had a major authoritarian bent to him and there is a reason he has become one of the generic stock American dictators in alternative history along side the likes of Alexander Haig and MacAurther.
We'd likely have free college and national healthcare.
Also Guaranteed Basic income.
Long's program
Huey Long and the new deal
FDR And The Kingfish
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Pressure from Long and his organization contributed to Roosevelt's "turn to the left" in the Second New Deal (1935), which consisted of:
- the Social Security Act,
- the Works Progress Administration,
- the National Labor Relations Board,
- Aid to Dependent Children, and
- the Wealth Tax Act of 1935
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I don't know much about Long, but given how many of the wealthiest nations have put in place measures just like Long's proposals (free education and healthcare, a four week holiday, pensions etc) it should be obvious that countries can put in place such measures and remain wealthy and democratic. I'm in Australia, which has had free college/university education (no longer free but still subsidised much more than in the USA) and still has free (and excellent) healthcare, four weeks of paid holiday, reasonable pensions etc and we're vastly wealthier than Argentina and nationally in fairly good shape.
I'd actually push back on the notion that Long would've implemented reforms in excess of what FDR achieved. If you've ever read Long's book, which details what his presidency was supposed to look like, it's incredibly optimistic about the cooperation he'd receive at a national and congressional level. In reality, much of Washington loathed Long, who spent most of his time in the Senate making bombastic speeches and accomplished very little there. It's hard to imagine Long being able to reshape congress, at least to the extent that he'd be capable of pushing his agenda through, and even then he'd likely hit similar if not worse road blocks within the judiciary than FDR did.
I doubt very much that Huey Long will achieve anything similar to Peron without a truly catastrophic event occurring first that severely weakens congress.
Plus the problems that people blame.on Peronism were mostly actually caused either by the military dictatorships or the average Argentinian right wing.
I'm not a Peronist, I see it as a symptom of problems that the opposition calls and makes them able to get elected again.
Argentine GDP shrank in multiple years under CFK and plummeted under Fernandez not to mention the chronic inflation issues. It’s also quite possible to grow an economy with generous spending whilst damaging its fundamentals.
I've yet to update this, it doesn't cover the Macri and the Alberto Fernandez administrations, but the gist remains: in the last 50 years, Argentina has seen only two periods of economic growth: under Menem in the 1990s and under the Kirchners between 2003 and 2011. The last period of economic growth under a non peronist administration was between 1964 and 1973.
In any case, the thread is about Huey Long and @JasTysoe indicates, his policies do not preclude economic growth
Long could get away with being a quasi-dictator in a small state like Louisiana. That's not going to work in the US of A. He may have authoritarian tendencies but there are too many institutional barriers. In any event, the industrialized and diverse economy of the USA is nothing like the raw material extraction based economy of Argentina. An independent CSA under a Long Presidency would be a better analog for Peronist Argentina.
Was he really that racist? Sure he didn't go out his way to court them and used the "n" word but in comparison to the average Dixiecrat he was relatively "woke" (in terms of the misappropriated useage).
Argentina's problems related mainly to the fact that the country's prosperity was brittle and unevenly distributed, with the immigrant masses marginalized politically while living standards and human development stats lagged. If things had gone plausibly slightly differently, Argentina could have avoided the structural impasse, but there was something looming.
My sense is that the United States in this era was not at that point. The United States certainly had problems, but it was not structurally as polarized as Argentina.
Long policies would probably go well beyond (free education and healthcare, a four-week holiday, pensions etc). massive money printing, big government infrastructure projects and corruption have the potential to bankrupt even America many times over. Even the best and richest country in the world and be bankrupted by overspending and foolish economic policies.
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Overspending could, perhaps, but what would that be exactly? Would be be likely to get everything he might want done, or would there be some restraint?
Depends on how successful he is a putting his own people in positions of power. and how many of the voters he can buy with subsidised food and entertainment etc. Bread and circuses.
A great nation like America is often brought down by internal problems.
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Bankrupt the USA or a country with similar good fundamentals in a four year term? When has that happened?
Much of the advanced world has had policies that went well beyond Long's platform for decades. Without wanting to get into current politics, countries like Germany, Australia, Norway etc are still doing very well. Very wealthy countries like Norway and Switzerland sit high on the list of countries ranked on government spending on infrastructure, so it's clearly not lethal to a national economy.
Has any major healthy economy in the modern era been brought down by bread and circuses? As far as I can recall the last major and (by most standards) healthy economy to run into major long-term issues was that of Japan, and as far as I know the Japanese were not exactly famous for bread and circuses.
Correct. By American standards at the time, especially in the South, Long was surprisingly quiet on racial issues. That was probably somewhat intentional, as his populist message was centered on wealth disparity, something not easily blamed on a poor, disenfranchised minority.