Big Government for Whom?

I have seen some of my most stalwart friends flinch before the accusation that they--in asking, let us say, for a single-payer health care system--were calling for "big government." So insistent has been the press and the political leadership of the country--in both parties--that "big government" is a plague to be avoided, that otherwise courageous people on the left have retreated before the attack.

It's an issue, therefore, that deserves some examination.

When Bill Clinton, in his 1996 campaign, announced happily that "the era of big government is over," he was suggesting that the United States had gone through an unfortunate phase that was now ended.

He was repeating the myth that there once was a golden past where the "free market" reigned and the nation followed Jefferson's dictum: "that government is best which governs least." Big government has been with the world for at least 500 years, and became very big in this country (Jefferson never followed his own pronouncement, as he doubled the territory of the government with the Louisiana Purchase).

It was the rise of the modern nation state in the sixteenth century that introduced big government to centralize the tax system and thus raise enough money to subsidize the new worldwide trading organizations, like the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. Both of these companies were granted government charters in about 1600, giving them monopoly rights to maraud around the world, trading goods and human beings, bringing wealth back to the home country.

The new nation states now had to raise armies and navies to protect the shipping trade (especially the slave trade) of these powerful companies, to invade other parts of the world, to forcibly take land, for trading and settling, from indigenous people. The state would use its power to drive out foreign competitors, to put down rebellions at home and abroad. "Big government" was needed for the benefit of the mercantile and land-owning classes.

Adam Smith, considered the apostle of the "free market," understood very well how capitalism could not survive a truly free market, if government was not big enough to protect it. He wrote, in the middle of the eighteenth century: "Laws and governments may be considered in this and indeed in every case, a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods, which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence."

The American colonists, having fought and won the war for independence from England, faced the question of what kind of government to establish. In 1786, three years after the treaty of peace was signed, there was a rebellion of farmers in western Massachusetts, led by Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran of the war. The uprising was crushed, but it put a scare into those leaders who were to become our Founding Fathers. After Shays's Rebellion, General Henry Knox warned his former commander, George Washington, about the rebels: "They see the weakness of government; they feel at once their own poverty, compared to the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter in order to remedy the former. Their creed is that the property of the U.S. has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore should be the common property of all."

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia for 1787 was called to deal with this problem, to set up "big government," to protect the interests of merchants, slaveholders, land speculators, establish law and order, and avert future rebellions like that of Shays.

When the debate took place in the various states over ratification of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers appeared in the New York press to support ratification. Federalist Paper 10, written by James Madison, made clear why a strong central government was needed: to curb the potential demand of a "majority faction" for "an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked object."

And so the Constitution set up big government, big enough to protect slaveholders against slave rebellion, to catch run-away slaves if they went from one state to another, to pay off bondholders, to pass tariffs on behalf of manufacturers, to tax poor farmers to pay for armies that would then attack the farmers if they resisted payment, as was done in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794. Much of this was embodied in the legislation of the first Congress, responding to the request of the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.

For all of the nation's history, this legislative pattern was to continue. Government would defend the interests of the wealthy classes. It would raise tariffs higher and higher to help manufacturers, give subsidies to shipping interests, and 100 million acres of land free to the railroads. It would use the armed forces to clear Indians off their land, to put down labor uprisings, to invade countries in the Caribbean for the benefit of American growers, bankers, investors. This was very big government.

When the Great Depression produced social turmoil, with strikes and protests all over the nation, the government responded with laws for Social Security (which one angry Senator said would "take all the romance out of life"), unemployment insurance, subsidized housing, work programs, money for the arts. And in the atmosphere created by the movements of the sixties, Medicare and Medicaid were enacted. Only then did the cry arise, among politicians and the press, continuing to this day, warning of the evils of "big government."

Of course, the alarms about "big government" did not extend to the enormous subsidies to business. After World War II, the aircraft industries, which had made enormous profits during the war (92 percent of their expansion paid for by the government), were in decline. Stuart Symington, Assistant Secretary of the War for Air, wrote to the president of Aircraft Industries: "It looks as if our airplane industry is in trouble, and it would seem to be the obligation of our little shop to do the best we can to help." The help came and has never stopped coming. Billions in subsidies poured in each year to produce fighters and bombers.

When Chrysler ran out of cash in 1980, the government stepped in to help. (Try this the next time you run out of cash.) Tax benefits, like the oil-depletion allowance, added up over the years to hundreds of billions of dollars. The New York Times reported in 1984 that the twelve top military contractors paid an average tax rate of 1.5 percent while middle-class Americans were paying 15 percent and more.

So it's time to gently point out the hypocrisy as both Democrats and Republicans decry "big government." When President Clinton signed the crime bill to build more federal prisons, when recently he called for billions more for the military budget, he did not refer to his declaration that "the era of big government is over."

Surely, with only a bit of reflection, it becomes clear that the issue is not big or little government, but government for whom? Is it the ideal expressed by Lincoln--government "for the people"--or is it the reality described by the Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease in 1890: "a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street"?

There is good evidence that the American people, whose common sense often resists the most energetic propaganda campaigns, understand this. Political leaders and the press have pounded away at their sensibilities with the fearful talk of "big government," and so long as it remains an abstraction, it is easy for people to go along, each listener defining it in his or her own way. But when specific questions are asked, the results are illuminating.

Again and again, public opinion surveys over the last decade have shown that people want the government to act to remedy economic injustice. Last year, the Pew Research Center asked if it is "the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can't take care of themselves?" and 61 percent said they either completely agreed or mostly agreed. When, after the Republican Congressional victory in 1994 The New York Times asked people their opinions on "welfare," the responses were evenly for and against. The Times headline read: PUBLIC SHOWS TRUST IN GOP CONGRESS, but this misled its readers, because when the question was posed more specifically: "Should the government help people in need?" more than 65 percent answered in the affirmative.

This should not surprise us. The achievements of the New Deal programs still glow warmly in the public memory: Social Security, unemployment insurance, the public works programs, the minimum wage, the subsidies for the arts. There is an initial worried reaction when people are confronted with the scare words "big government." But that falls away as soon as someone points to the G.I. Bill of Rights, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and loans to small business.

So let's not hesitate to say: We want the government, responding to the Lincolnian definition of democracy, to organize a system that gives free medical care to everyone and pays for it out of a reformed tax system that is truly progressive. In short, we want everyone to be in the position of U.S. Senators and members of the armed forces--beneficiaries of big, benevolent government.

Because "big government" in itself is hardly the issue. That is here to stay. The only question is: Whom will it serve?

Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," is a columnist for The Progressive.