Op-Ed The Truth About Prohibition

[thegreenhand]

The Truth About Prohibition​

Mark Lawrence Schrad
The Atlantic
01 Jan 2022

The Prohibition era, which for most Americans conjures images of “untouchable” lawmen, tommy-gun-toting gangsters, and jazz-filled speakeasies, is easily one of the most romanticized periods in U.S. history. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. We now vilify the temperance activists who promoted public welfare and excuse corrupt and murderous gangsters such as Al Capone as “legitimate businessmen” who only wanted to slake the thirst of paying customers. The whole concept is topsy-turvy.

How did that all happen? What caused Prohibition? The real answer might surprise you.

Read the full story here.

 

[thegreenhand]

This is an interesting reframing of the traditional view of alcohol prohibition.

The author seems to be hinting that temperance movements were anticapitalist and/or anticolonialist political movements at heart. And while I obviously agree that economic subjugation is a bad thing, the author seems to imply that prohibitionist movements were (and still are) useful tools for opposing such subjugation. Which imo is just a very bad take.

I would say prohibition is actually itself a tool for such predatory economic practices. The bountiful private prison industry in the US demonstrates this.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Prohibition had a widespread appeal at the time of its inception...it had the support of the IWW and the bosses, of the NAACP and the Klu Klux Klan. So while it's not exactly true to say that Prohibition was "reactionary", its definitely a stretch to categorize it as "progressive" or "revolutionary", at least within the context of the United States imo.

I view temperance as a mass social movement, and in such movements a range of political ideology is often evident. While it may be reductionist to say that the context of Prohibition is "reactionary", it is equally reductionist to say that it's somehow "progressive" when you consider how it was all wrapped up in a moral panic and an obsession with creating good little worker bees who operate according to the Fordist/Taylorist "scientific management" which was all the rage at that time. (I haven't really explored the temperance movement internationally very much, so I'm not sure how it manifested in different countries outside the United States.)

It's also important to point out that there were many beliefs held by legitimately left-wing people at the time of Prohibition which were, how shall we say, in need of revision considering what the left currently believes. You can look at someone like Alexandra Kollontai's writings and see support for eugenics, for example...you can search in vain for just about anyone on the left-wing, with the exception of a few anarchists like Emma Goldman, who considers homosexuality a legitimate sexual orientation during that time. Conservatism when it came to individual lifestyle choices was pretty much the norm, actually, when it came to wide swathes of the political left during that time period. So even if we were to agree with the author's contention and say, "it originated from the left" (which I don't necessarily agree with, but just for the sake of argumentation) IMO it's an embarrassment & failure that we've moved past

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Some on the political left got the issue right, though

Puritanism has robbed the people even of that one day. Naturally, only the workers are affected: our millionaires have their luxurious homes and elaborate clubs. The poor, however, are condemned to the monotony and dullness of the American Sunday. The sociability and fun of European outdoor life is here exchanged for the gloom of the church, the stuffy, germ-saturated country parlor, or the brutalizing atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibition States the people lack even the latter, unless they can invest their meager earnings in quantities of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, every one knows what a farce it really is. Like all other achievements of Puritanism it, too, has but driven the “devil” deeper into the human system. Nowhere else does one meet so many drunkards as in our Prohibition towns. But so long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant. Ostensibly Prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and economy, but the very spirit of Prohibition being itself abnormal, it succeeds but in creating an abnormal life.