The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left: (Politics and Society in Modern America)

The loyalty investigations triggered by the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s marginalized many talented women and men who had entered government service during the Great Depression seeking to promote social democracy as a means to economic reform. Their influence over New Deal policymaking and their alliances with progressive labor and consumer movements elicited a powerful reaction from conservatives, who accused them of being subversives. Landon Storrs draws on newly declassified records of the federal employee loyalty program--created in response to fears that Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government--to reveal how disloyalty charges were used to silence these New Dealers and discredit their policies. Because loyalty investigators rarely distinguished between Communists and other leftists, many noncommunist leftists were forced to leave government or deny their political views. Storrs finds that loyalty defendants were more numerous at higher ranks of the civil service than previously thought, and that many were women, or men with accomplished leftist wives. Uncovering a forceful left-feminist presence in the New Deal, she shows how opponents on the Right exploited popular hostility to powerful women and their "effeminate" spouses. The loyalty program not only destroyed many promising careers, it prohibited discussion of social democratic policy ideas in government circles, narrowing the scope of political discourse to this day. Through a gripping narrative based on remarkable new sources, Storrs demonstrates how the Second Red Scare undermined the reform potential of the New Deal and crippled the American welfare state.

About the Author :
StorrsLandon R.Y.: Landon R. Y. Storrs is associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era.

Review :
"[F]ascinating. . . . [Storrs] has uncovered many fascinating stories of dedicated public servants whose careers were cut short, with a chilling impact on government programs, and further documents the negative aspects of the anticommunist crusade beginning during the New Deal and long continuing."-- "Choice" "Storrs' research in the brilliant book is prodigious. . . . Her accomplishment . . . is truly awesome, as she creates a giant jigsaw puzzle, methodically putting each piece in its place to reveal an unexpected picture. "---M. J. Heale, Reviews in American History "[I]mportant, portentous work . . . the means by which the once powerful American Left was reduced to stigmatized impotence were far from pretty. In fact, Storrs argues convincingly that historians have yet to grasp just how ugly they were."---David Hawkes, Times Literary Supplement "[W]ell-documented and tidily written."---Jim Burns, pennilesspress "An exceptional piece of detective work, The Second Red Scare is one of the finest books written on the McCarthy era in the last decade and raises important questions that will no doubt be debated at length in the decade to come."---Alex Goodall, Journal of American Studies "At a time when respect for civil liberties in America seems tenuous, [this] provocative book deserve[s] a wide audience."---Dean J. Kotlowski, International Social Science Review "In her persuasive new book, Landon Storrs . . . provides a fascinating account of how we lost our path to a New Deal by succumbing to the politics of fear. . . . [T]he powerful anticommunist movement, which silenced feminism (among other social movements), helped to move social policy away from the left-liberal consensus of the thirties and toward the less vital center, where it has remained ever since."---Alice Kessler-Harris, Women's Review of Books "In this meticulously researched book, Landon Storrs provides a powerful account of a collision between two groups. . . . It is difficult to find fault with this finely crafted and wonderfully researched study."---Fred Block, Women and Social Movements in U.S. "Storrs casts a wide net with this book and offers a sweeping analysis of an understudied component of the anticommunist investigations of the Second Red Scare. It pushes forward our thinking on the origins of McCarthyism, the effects of New Deal reform on later social movements, and the influence of anticommunist sentiment on American culture, politics, and federal policymaking. In addition to scholars of the period, this well-crafted book will appeal to graduate and undergraduate audiences studying twentieth-century reform efforts."---Aaron D. Purcell, American Historical Review "Storrs' work makes incredibly important contributions to our understanding of Cold War liberalism."---Lisa Phillips, AU Press "The book has a wonderful richness and depth, and the whole period is dramatically revived as Storrs uses biographies of individuals who participated in the various movements to illustrate this history."---Bill Barry, Labor Studies Journal "The book provides a fresh and exciting perspective on two aspects of New Deal and early Cold War politics that deserve the forensic attention Storrs affords them. . . . [T]he fact that I ended up asking serious questions about the Left in the United States in these years is testimony to the powerful research and probing of political figures and ideas too often obscured in American historiography but revealed in this book in vibrant detail."---Jonathan Bell, Journal of American History "Why is there no socialism in the United States? In this book, University of Iowa history professor Landon R. Y. Storrs proposes a new answer: Much more than previously supposed, left-leaning policy makers were targeted by government 'loyalty' investigations and intimidated into adopting conservative ideas. In making the argument, Storrs does a lot of spectacular things."---Rick Perlstein, Bookforum