The progressive dilemma: grassroots liberals, the Democratic Party, and the search for political power in mid-twentieth century America

This dissertation offers a new interpretation of the tangled history of American progressivism and liberalism through a study of a series of crucial yet overlooked organizations that worked during the 1930s and 1940s to create a left-leaning electoral and lobbying infrastructure: the National Progressive League (1932), the Progressive National Committee (1936), the National Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt (1940), the National Citizens Political Action Committee (1943-1946), the Motion Picture Democratic Committee (1937-1939), Hollywood for Roosevelt (1940) and the Hollywood Democratic Committee (1943-1947). The stories of these groups constitute a key phase in the longer history of liberals experimenting with strategies for building power within the American political system. The tensions within these groups epitomized the confused positioning of progressives in relation to the American political system, and to the Democratic Party, in particular, as the primary vehicle for their ambitions. Internal debates over which approaches, tactics, and organizational structures were most effective occurred regularly and yet broke along unpredictable lines—not merely between Communists and non-Communists, or between "liberals" and the "left." ❧ While the divide over Communism and anti-Communism did fissure "Popular Front"-era liberalism by the late 1940s, the groups’ challenges were not reducible to Cold War fractures, social group divisions, or putative ideological differences between more centrist “liberals” and more left-wing “progressives.” In fact, this dissertation argues, contrary to much historiography, that there was almost no distinction between "liberals" and "progressives" until the early years of the Cold War, when a clear demarcation emerged. By the early 1930s, "liberal" and "progressive" had become nearly synonymous labels, defined by support for economic regulation, social welfare measures, and workers' rights. ❧ The lack of coherent and autonomous vehicle for advancing their own vision, and not self-inflicted liberal retreat from more truly progressive, radical, or left-wing principles, the dissertation contends, is one of the best explanations for the paradoxical strength and weakness of mid-20th century American liberals. Liberalism was a "fragile giant" which bore the marks of its breach birth into American politics. Liberal ideas emerged prior to the formation of a political home for their ambitions. The country’s messy patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments limited liberals' ability to create an overarching, national political vehicle. They were overly dependent on the popularity and unifying power of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a singular figure who consistently undermined rather than encouraged the development of a durable power center on his left flank. And liberals’ own aversion to partisan politics and their wider beliefs about how to achieve social and political progress—both inherited from their Progressive-era predecessors—undermined their quest for power. ❧ The implicit "theories of change" embedded in their ideologies—the cultural frames that guided and structured their decision-making processes—owed a great debt to more widespread, yet deeply problematic tropes in mainstream and left-wing American political culture. For instance, a "the people versus the interests" model of political process passed down from early 20th century progressives to those who struggled against the Cold War itself. The decision to break away from the Democratic Party and form the Progressive Party in 1948 owed a great deal to the logic valorizing "the American people" as an essentially virtuous and wise group who would vote and act in progressive ways if only they had the right vehicle and heard the right message, free from the shackles of the two major parties. ❧ As these grassroots liberals searched for power, both within and outside the Democratic Party, they encountered the contradictions of the New Deal Democratic order head on. This political order may have been a "fragile giant," but it was one with a beating heart, a strong animating grassroots impulse all its own. The breadth and depth what groups like the National Citizens Political Action Committee and the Hollywood Democratic Committee accomplished in a few short years was remarkable. Their work showed what was possible in a Janus-faced period, looking back to the New Deal and World War II and anticipating the progressive politics that would accompany the major shifts in American society toward international political-economic preeminence and toward a suburban, TV-centered lifestyle and landscape. ❧ The dissertation begins by chronicling the national "independent" "progressive" "citizens" committees for Roosevelt's election that emerged in 1932, 1936, and 1940. The second chapter explores the significance of the National Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC) that grew on the model of these committees, but became a longer-lived umbrella organization for the liberal left from its initial base in the industrial union movement. The third and fourth chapter analyze the line of electoral and lobbying institutions that materialized at the intersection of the "Cultural Front" and the Democratic Party, from the Motion Picture Democratic Committee (MPDC) and the Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC) to the Hollywood branch of the Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP). These chapters draw on an array of organizational and personal archival collections housed at the New York Public Library, the FDR Presidential Library, UCLA, the Bancroft Library, Columbia University, the NYU Tamiment Library, the University of Iowa, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, and the California State Archives.