The age of acquiescence : the life and death of American resistance to organized wealth and power

Fraser, Steve 1945- (Author).

Summary: "From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? <i>The Age of Acquiescence</i> seeks to solve that mystery. Steve Fraser's account of national transformation brilliantly examines the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts to protect the democratic commonwealth, and the great surrender to today's delusional fables of freedom and the politics of fear." -- From publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9780316185431 (hc.)
ISBN: 0316185434 (hc.)
Physical Description: print
viii, 470 p. ; 25 cm.
Publisher: New York, NY : Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-452) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Part I: Class warfare in America : the long nineteenth century. Progress ; Progress, poverty, and primitive accumulation ; Premonitions ; The second civil war : in the countryside ; The second civil war : on the industrial frontier ; Myth and history ; The end of socialism -- Part II: Desire and fear in the second Gilded Age. Back to the future : the political economy of auto-cannibalism ; Fables of acquiescence : the businessman as populist hero ; Fables of freedom : Brand X ; Wages of freedom : the fable of the free agent ; Journey to nowhere : the eclipse of the labor movement ; Improbable rebels : the folklore of limousine liberalism ; Conclusion: Exit by the rear doors.