An Altogether Different Kind of Abundance Agenda

To The New Republic editors, this collectivist faction that championed an economy of abundance was the “true opposition” to Franklin Roosevelt’s ruling coalition. In Congress, this left opposition included several dozen members of the House of Representatives, collectively called “the Mavericks” after Representative Maury Maverick (whose grandfather, Samuel, is where we get the term maverick, after the cattle he left unbranded). In the Senate, the left featured figures like Robert La Follette, Henrik Shipstead, and, of course, Huey Long.

Despite efforts to coalesce all of these various figures and movements into a durable left party proving abortive, the summer of 1935 saw an energized left, fed up with Roosevelt being insufficiently radical and invigorated by widespread labor and political organizing.

Robert Cantwell, in the May 22 issue, wrote of the turnaround for the left in California, which in recent months had seen an “astonishing and heartening” transformation from being in full political retreat to being energized, organized, and mobilized. Cantwell attributes the reversal to Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial campaign. Sinclair, a long-standing socialist best known as author of The Jungle, ran on the Democratic Party platform for his third attempt. While he didn’t prevail (and faced backlash from the Socialist Party), the campaign got over 800,000 votes and saw volunteers mobilized in numbers greater than the Democratic Party infrastructure was able to coordinate. The experience resulted in “an enlightened, disillusioned, politically experienced electorate.”