| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933–1956. By Jason Scott Smith. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xvi, 283 pp. $75.00, ISBN 0-521-82805-8.)

Jason Scott Smith's intention in Building New Deal Liberalism is nothing less than to reinterpret the New Deal's public works' programs and reorient our understanding of the New Deal's political economy. Neither liberal nor left interpretations, Smith believes, have merit. The former's critique, that public works spending was too timid and thus failed to achieve its purpose of solving the unemployment crisis, and the latter's, that the spending was merely temporizing and a sop, are both inadequate. The public works programs had purposes more profound than simply alleviating unemployment or promoting recovery. They were intended, and succeeded, as the means for building up the nation's infrastructure. Public works spending, the author argues, whether through the Public Works Administration (PWA) or the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was never intended to be merely the remedy for unemployment. Rather, it was meant to be the instrument of economic development. That intention, the author argues, was realized during the 1930s and World War II, but was fulfilled even more abundantly in the postwar era when the New Deal's example and tradition led to the creation of the interstate highway system and to other vitally important applications of the principles of state-sponsored capitalism, which, Smith argues, the New Deal had firmly embedded in national policy.

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