Full Description
The series of economic programmes, public works projects, financial reforms, and regulations introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939 in response to the Great Depression. The New Deal created the Social Security system, regulated banks and securities markets through the Glass-Steagall Act, built rural infrastructure through the Tennessee Valley Authority, and employed millions through agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. It represented the most significant expansion of the federal government in American history to that point.
Critical Perspective
The New Deal is contested terrain in American political history. Its defenders see it as the programme that saved capitalism by humanising it and preventing a turn to fascism or communism. Its left-wing critics note that it preserved the fundamental structures of American capitalism while systematically excluding Black Americans — through agricultural and domestic worker exemptions from Social Security, through segregated CCC camps, and through FDR’s refusal to support anti-lynching legislation for fear of alienating Southern Democrats. The New Deal’s racial exclusions helped determine the shape of American inequality for decades.
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