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When analyzing the effects and intents of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal historians determine their views based on the answers to these questions: was the New Deal a continuation of American liberal tradition or was it a repudiation of tradition in the face of the relentless forces of modernization, was the New Deal a reflector of the corporate capitalist attempting to form a partnership with the government to keep its power that would put corporate above government or did the New Deal represent a significant shift in the power to classes and groups that in the past had been powerless, did the New Deal possess ideological coherence or was it just a collected of improvised and pragmatic responses to the crisis? The first major school of thought to address the New Deal were the Progressives. To the Progressives they viewed America’s past in terms of conflict between liberalism and conservatism, so they believed that the advances made by Roosevelt were a mile stone in the struggle against monopolies and the privileged. They saw it as an advancement towards greater political, economic, and social equality. The next major thinkers on the subject were the conservative writers who accused Roosevelt of undermining individual fr