The New Deal's enmity for that system of free and competitive private enterprise which we call capitalism was fundamental.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Free enterprise capitalism has been the most powerful creative system of social cooperation and human progress ever conceived, but its perception and its role in society have been distorted.
Free-enterprise capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress ever conceived. It is one of the most compelling ideas we humans have ever had. But we can aspire to something even greater.
The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.
If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.
The great thing about capitalism is that it's a system that works.
During the New Deal, people thought to be liberal was to reject socialism on one extreme and fascism on the other, and to preserve capitalism through regulation and a social safety net.
The trouble with capitalism as a system is that only those who have or can get capital can make it work for them, and that leaves out damn near all of us.
There's nothing pure about capitalism.
I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child.
Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way.