Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property
Subtitle: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 258
ISBN-13: 9781788736701
Subjects: Capitalism; Social classes, united states; Social classes; United states, economic conditions; United states, social conditions; United states, history
Description: "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 and 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 dure e"--