American Capitalism

by Lichtenstein, Nelson

• ISBN13: 9780812239232
• ISBN10: 0812239237
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-10
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the legitimacy of American capitalism seems unchallenged. The link between open markets, economic growth, and democratic success has become common wisdom, not only among policy makers but for many intellectuals as well. In this instance, however, the past has hardly been prologue to contemporary confidence in the free market. American Capitalism presents thirteen thought-provoking essays that explain how a variety of individuals, many prominent intellectuals but others partisans in the combative world of business and policy, engaged with anxieties about the seismic economic changes in postwar America and, in the process, reconfigured the early twentieth-century ideology that put critique of economic power and privilege at its center.The essays consider a broad spectrum of figures--from C. L. R. James and John Kenneth Galbraith to Peter Drucker and Ayn Rand--and topics ranging from theories of Cold War "convergence" to the rise of the philanthropic Right. They examine how the shift away from political economy at midcentury paved the way for the 1960s and the "culture wars" that followed. Contributors interrogate what was lost and gained when intellectuals moved their focus from political economy to cultural criticism. The volume thereby offers a blueprint for a dramatic reevaluation of how we should think about the trajectory of American intellectual history in twentieth-century United States.

Author Biography

Nelson Lichtenstein is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. He is the author of Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit and State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, and editor of Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Social Theory and Capitalist Reality in the American Century	1	(20)
Part I. Theorizing Twentieth-Century American Capitalism
1. The Postcapitalist Vision in Twentieth-Century American Social Thought	21	(26)
Howard Brick
2. To Moscow and Back: American Social Scientists and the Concept of Convergence	47	(24)
David C. Engerman
Part II. Liberalism and Its Social Agenda
3. Clark Kerr: From the Industrial to the Knowledge Economy	71	(17)
Paddy Riley
4. John Kenneth Galbraith: Liberalism and the Politics of Cultural Critique	88	(21)
Kevin Mattson
5. The Prophet of Post-Fordism: Peter Drucker and the Legitimation of the Corporation	109	(26)
Nils Gilman
Part III. A Critique from the Left
6. C. Wright Mills and American Social Science	135	(22)
Daniel Geary
7. C.L.R. James and the Theory of State Capitalism	157	(18)
Christopher Phelps
8. Oliver C. Cox and the Roots of World Systems Theory	175	(16)
Christopher A. McAuley
9. Feminism, Women's History, and American Social Thought at Midcentury	191
Daniel Horowitz
Part IV. The Rise of the Right
10. The Road Less Traveled: Reconsidering the Political Writings of Friedrich von Hayek	213	(15)
Juliet Williams
11. The Politics of Rich and Rich: Postwar Investigations of Foundations and the Rise of the Philanthropic Right	228	(21)
Alice O'Connor
12. American Counterrevolutionary: Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and General Electric, 1950-1960	249	(22)
Kimberly Phillips-Fein
13. Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Movement	271	(20)
Jennifer Burns
Notes	291	(70)
Contributors	361	(4)
Index	365	(14)
Acknowledgments	379