The New Deal was an attempt to save capitalism from the threat of socialist revolution. The Great Depression left the working class in grave financial straits, and socialism was a foreign & domestic threat. This was before the socialists were purged from labor unions, before the Cold War and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The Democratic Party didn’t make concessions to the working class out of the kindness of its heart.

Over decades, those temporary concessions have eroded along with any threats to the capital order: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise the US’s neocolonial hegemony; the end of history. The Democratic party is to the right of Reagan now, and some in the Republican party are itching to remove even the trappings of democracy.