Synopses & Reviews
As recently as 2008, when Presidents Bush and Obama acted to bail out the nation's crashing banks and failing auto companies, the perennial objection erupted anew: government has no business in . . . business. Mike O'Connor argues in this book that those who cite history to decry government economic intervention are invoking a tradition that simply does not exist. In a cogent and timely take on this ongoing and increasingly contentious debate, O'Connor uses deftly drawn historical analyses of major political and economic developments to puncture the abiding myth that business once operated apart from government. From its founding to the present day, our commercial republic has always mixed—and battled over the proper balance of—politics and economics.
Contesting the claim that the modern-day libertarian conception of U.S. political economy represents the "natural" American economic philosophy, O'Connor demonstrates that this perspective has served historically as only one among many. Beginning with the early national debate over the economic plans proposed by Alexander Hamilton, continuing through the legal construction of the corporation in the Gilded Age and the New Deal commitment to full employment, and concluding with contemporary concerns over lowering taxes, this book demonstrates how the debate over government intervention in the economy has illuminated the possibilities and limits of American democratic capitalism.
Review
"Mike O'Connor takes readers on a meticulously researched, elegantly written, and endlessly fascinating tour of America's great economic brawls. Along the way he explodes one of the nation's most stubborn myths. Forget the visions of a laissez-faire golden age. From the founding to the present day, the Americans have intertwined politics and economics—the United States has always been a commercial republic. This formidable book has much to teach scholars, citizens, and anyone who enjoys a well-told history."—James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation and co-author of The Heart of Power
Review
"With a thorough and learned examination of government policies and the American economy from Hamilton and Jefferson to the 1980s, O'Connor has written a major study for scholars, pundits and those interested in public affairs."—Joyce Appleby, author of Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination
Synopsis
Presents the longstanding debate over federal intervention as a competition among different visions of government stewardship rather than an endless battle over market liberty.
About the Author
Mike O'Connor has taught U. S. history at universities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. His writing has appeared in the scholarly journals Contemporary Pragmatism and The Sixties and in the newspapers Austin AmericanStatesman and the Daily Texan. One of the original bloggers on the U. S. Intellectual History site, O'Connor later founded (with several others) the Society for U. S. Intellectual History.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Idea of Government Economic Intervention
1. Stewardship
-Hamilton's Financial "System"
-Liberalism and Republicanism
-Republican Economics
-The Report on Manufactures and Its Implications
-Reception and Significance of the Report
2. Divorce
-The Franchise and the Market
-What Was Jacksonianism?
-Hard Money
-The Independent Treasury Act
-"Evils of Great Magnitude"
3. Property
-What Is a Corporation?
-Antebellum Understandings of the Corporation
-"Privileges or Immunities"
-"The Liberty of Citizens to Acquire Property and Pursue Happiness"
-"We Are All of the Opinion That It Does"
-Santa Clara in the Gilded Age
-Consequences of the Property Conception
4. Employment
-The Progressive
-From Progressivism to Liberalism
-The Great Depression and the New Deal
-The Philosophies of New Deal Liberalism
-Keynes and Keynesianism
-Sixty Million Jobs
-The Ordeal of Henry Wallace
5. Inequality
-The Liberal Consensus
-Political Economy of Cold War Liberalism
-The War on Poverty
-The Philosopher as Liberal
-A Theory of Justice and the Liberal Consensus
6. Taxes
-The "Bookish" Roots of Modern Conservatism
-Conservative Political Successes
-The Politics of Stagflation
-What Was Supply-Side Economics?
-The Growing Influence of Supply-Side Economics
-The Rage against Taxes
Conclusion: Democratic Capitalism in the United States
Liberalism, Democracy, and Capitalism
The Nature of Government Intervention
Notes
Index