MAXWELL STEWART:
Editor of Public Affairs Pamphlets from 1936 - 1977, published by Public Affairs Committee located at the same address as the Communist-run International Publishers (381 Park Ave. S. N.Y. in 1977). Over half of the pamphlets fall into the category of sex education/home and family living and are therefore included in sex education bibliographies for teachers and students. SIECUS officials, Genne and Emily Mudd, were members of Public Affairs Committee. SIECUS directors, Duvall, Kirkendall, Mace, Peterson and Pilpel helped write Public Affairs Pamphlets. Maxwell Stewart also served as co-editor of "Moscow Daily News." Under oath, Earl Browder called Stewart "one of the reliables of the Communist Party."
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The Russian Model
Among these travelers to the Soviet Union during this period were John Dewey, Rexford G. Tugwell, Paul Douglas, Stuart Chase, Jane Addams, Robert M. LaFollette, Maxwell S. Stewart, George Soule, Edmund Wilson, and many, many Others. Among the abundant literature favoring economic planning, much of it written by people who had traveled to the Soviet Union, here is a sampling of titles from the period: John Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia (1929), Sherwood Eddy, The Challenge of Russia (1931), George S. Counts, The Soviet Challenge to America (1931), Bruce Bliven, "Russia Marches Up a Mountain," New Republic (1931), Charles A. Beard, "The Rationality of Planned' Economy," in America Faces the Future (1932), Rexford G. Tugwell, "The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez-Faire," American Economic Review (1932), Stuart Chase, A New Deal (1932), Chester Davis, "Toward Planned Harvests," Review of Reviews (1933), and Maxwell S. Stewart, "Where Everyone Has a Job," Survey Graphic (1931).
The impact of Soviet planning on American thinkers, many of whom influenced the New Deal, may come out even clearer from a few quotations. The New York Times declared that Stalin's first Five-Year Plan was the "most extraordinary enterprise in the economic history of the world." 10 Stuart Chase proclaimed that it was "exciting, stimulating, challenging." 11 John Dewey said of the Soviet undertaking, "In some respects, it is already a searching spiritual challenge as it is an economic challenge to coordinate and plan." 12 "Why," cried Stuart Chase, "should Russians have all the fun in remaking a world." 13 George Soule said, "We could not assimilate the hard dogmas and terminology of Marxism..., but we were irresistibly attracted by the idea of planned use of modern industrial technique."
Our country flourished within the US because there are no import tariffs between the various states. But notice that labor went south, say, in the textile industry - where there were no labor unions - prior to leaving the country altogether.
A couple key issues that skew things in my mind are official inflation rates as expressed in the CPI. There are a number of "valid" reasons to wish/keep the figures low. One is that so many government pensions and social security COLAs are based on this. But consider that whole swaths of once leading industries are completely expunged from the American scene. Textiles - Gone. Steel is ailing. Machine tools, precision instruments. The US electonics industry was once the envy of the world - completely gutted. Cameras, stereos, radios, televisions, VCR's, etc.
What I see is a huge influx of shoddily made goods which are an ersatz substitute for the quality things that are desirable and last. Inflation is "low" only on paper as I see it.
Well, i may not play an economist on TV, but I am one in real life. ;-)