The 77th Anniversary of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps

By Jason Peirce

Seventy-seven years ago today, March 31, 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was founded. The kinder, gentler way to remember the CCC is as a benign make-work/aid program bestowed upon the unfortunate masses by the benevolent FDR during the Great Depression. Indeed, the CCC provided (albeit at the expense of the taxpayer and liberty) resource conservation jobs for some 3 million unemployed young men over the course of its 9-year existence. In its day it was arguably the most popular of FDR’s New Deal programs because it represented a feel-good war against the Great Depression.

But the CCC was also much more: it was a liberty-assaulting doubling-down of Woodrow Wilson’s brand of “war collectivism” which, as noted by Murray Rothbard, served as the inspiration for FDR: 

“Deeply impressed with the ‘national unity’ and mobilization achieved during the war (WWI), the New Deal established the Civilian Conservation Corps to instill the martial spirit in America's youth. The idea was to take the ‘wandering boys’ off the road and ‘mobilize’ them into a new form of American Expeditionary Force. The Army, in fact, ran the CCC camps; CCC recruits were gathered at Army recruiting stations, equipped with World War I clothing, and assembled in army tents. The CCC, the New Dealers exulted, had given a new sense of meaning to the nation's youth, in this new ‘forestry army.’ Speaker Henry T. Rainey (D., Ill.) of the House of Representatives put it this way: ‘They [the CCC recruits] are also under military training and as they come out of it … improved in health and developed mentally and physically and are more useful citizens … they would furnish a very valuable nucleus for an army.”

Wow. A “valuable nucleus for an army.” Valuable to whom or what? Certainly not to peace, prosperity, and freedom. This “war collectivism” – an extension of the en vogue totalitarian statism of the early 20^th century -- set the foundation for the unsustainable U.S. “corporate monopoly state” of today. This truth is most succinctly expressed by Tom Woods:“War is Big Government’s best friend.” Bruce Porter provides an excellent elaboration: 

“Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which the presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance. It has been a wellspring of American nationalism and a spur to political and social change.” 

This truth goes for both literal wars and figurative wars such as the “wars” on poverty, drugs, smoking, obesity, and even the war on women and the war on climate change. Some may claim that the different ideologies which tend to support certain of the aforementioned wars over others are more desirable or necessary. But no matter the supposed ideology, once power is assumed the effect on liberty is the same. Notes Rothbard:

“Ideology is not all. As libertarians should be aware, whenever any group, regardless of ideology, takes over a State, it immediately constitutes a ruling class over the people and the land governed by that State. It immediately acquires interests of State, which can readily clash with the interests of other State ruling classes, regardless of ideology.”

This brings us back to the lesson for today: never let the state “fix” the problems it’s created with more of the state, no matter what feel-good ideology it espouses. This goes whether the state promises a New Deal, or a successful War on Terror, or to deliver “Hope and Change.” The last thing Americans needed after the government-created Great Depression was the government-created New Deal and CCC which set the stage for the unsustainable totalitarian-corporate-monopoly state – or welfare/warfare state -- we live in today.The solution was and always is liberty.