Mongrel firebugs and men of property Capitalism and class conflict in American history
Book - 2019
"Stories about American history, its origins and unfolding, do not, conventionally, feature capitalism. Other tales about the country's history usually take priority. If capitalism figures in at all, it is to forefront opportunity, entrepreneurial vigor, material abundance and the seven league boots of manifest destiny. Conflict may rear its unseemly face but only episodically, as a kind of alien or aberrant detour off the main road of America's exceptional career through the world. Instances of serious social discord, when they draw notice, get transcended, a course correction allowing the utopian project to resume. In this collection, Steve Fraser corrects the record, rewriting the arc of the American saga with capitalism a...nd the class conflict centerstage, mounting a serious challenge to the consoling fantasy of American exceptionalism. Working through the central concepts of political economics - unemployment and risk, unfree labor and household debt - he demonstrates that class is a deeply structuring feature of American political life, and an invaluable heuristic for reading American politics in the longue durée"--
- Subjects
- Published
-
London ; Brooklyn, NY :
Verso
2019.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- 258 pages ; 21 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN
- 9781788736701
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction. Part I. Snakes in the garden : American capitalism and its distempers: 1. The three faces of risk
- 2. Another day older and deeper in debt
- 3. Locking down an American workforce
- 4. Uncle Sam doesn't want you
- 5. Making disaster pay.
- Part 2. The age of capitalism: 6. Two gilded ages
- 7. American labor and the great depression
- 8. The age of acquiescence
- 9. The limousine liberal's family tree
- 10. The genie grown monstrous
- 11. Playing God : the rebirth of family capitalism.
- Afterword: The priest, the Commissar, and the Donald.
