If the alternatives to liberal democracy had appeared attractive during the 1920s, the attraction increased following the onset of the depression of the 1930s. The depression did more for communism than for fascism, in that the former spurned while the latter embraced the capitalism that appeared to be shattering itself on the shoals of history. American radicals thrived on the ruination Marx and Lenin had predicted. Lincoln Steffens greeted the depression with good cheer. “I am not a Communist,” he assured a friend, before adding, “I merely think that the next order of society will be socialist and that the Communists will bring it in and lead it…. The Communists know that they can proceed (as the capitalists do) with a minority just as soon as capitalism busts.” The Communist writer Michael Gold asserted hopefully that the depression marked “a great turning point in the consciousness of the American nation.” Even a journal as close to the mainstream as the New Republic wondered “whether capitalism can survive as we know it, or must be at least modified greatly in the direction of a socialized order.”

Whether capitalism would survive, and if so how, obsessed American public thinkers during the 1930s. Some old-line liberals looked for a revival of the progressive movement. John Dewey judged that the basic issue confronting America remained essentially what it had been since the nineteenth century: Would the people of the United States control the government, or would control continue to reside with the interests? Dewey called for “fundamental thinking and action along new lines.”