BUILDING A WORKERS REPUBLIC - BEARD,CHARLES,A. CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISMIN THE 1930S

Charles Beard's sympathizers have correctly dismissed conservative cla ims that he was a Marxist, but they have often substituted the equally misleading claim that he was a forebearer of mainstream liberalism in the post-New Deal United States. In the 1930s Beard developed a bluep rint for a ''workers' republic'' that went far beyond the bounds of we lfare liberalism or New Deal economic policy. Beard's proposals for co nstitutional reform envision a post-capitalist economic republic ancho red in the creation of new forms of social property, the adjustment an d redefinition of other property rights, and a mix of expert planning and political accountability that would maintain economic and politica l democracy.