Commentary Magazine


Article Preview

What Happened in the 30's

- Abstract

FOR THE LAST two decades Almost everyone has been trying to forget what happened in the 30′s; now, suddenly, everyone is trying to remember. Ideas that had been written off are back in circulation again, and commitments that for years had been dismissed as “irresponsible” are once more taken seriously. The explanation is not so hard to find, but it is sticky and takes us into problems we do not like to face. For the new turn means that temperate solutions having failed, people are looking again for radical ones.

In this see-saw of beliefs and commitments lies the main story of our time. And to ask what happened in the 30′s is only a way of asking what is happening today.



About the Author