The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of The Idea of Economic Inequality in America

1. See Paul A. Rahe, “How to Think About the Tea Party,” Commentary, February 2011. Also see Rahe’s more extended attempt to pervert the republican tradition for conservative ends in his Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 242–280.

2. See Edward N. Wolff, “Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle Class Squeeze—an Update to 2007.” Working Paper, no. 589. (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2010); Thomas Pikkety and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–2002,” http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezOUP04US.pdf (accessed: 3/24/2011); Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).

3. Edward N. Wolff, Ajit Zacharias, and Thomas Masterson, “Postwar Trends in Economic Well-Being in the United States, 1959–2004. Levy Institute Measure of Well-Being Report (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2009).

4. See Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, “Oligarchy in the United States?” Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 4 (2008): 731–751, as well as Winters’ more extended study of the concept in his Oligarchy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Also see the important discussion by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010). For a more progressive view, see John Ehrenberg, Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

5. Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkonson, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2009); and Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy, The Health of Nations: Why Inequality is Harmful to Your Health (New York: The New Press, 2002).

6. See Frederick Solt, “Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 1 (2008): 48–60. Also see the important analysis by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006).

7. For a discussion, see Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage, 1993); as well as Göran Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When it Rules? (London: Verso, 1978), 236–240.

8. See the discussion by Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 41–76. Also see David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5–38.

9. For an important discussion, see Joseph M. Schwartz, The Future of Democratic Equality: Rebuilding Social Solidarity in a Fragmented America (New York: Routledge, 2009); as well as Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).

10. On the crucial alliance between the state and the corporate class in expanding accumulation, see David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 40–105; and James K. Galbraith, The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (New York: The Free Press, 2008). For a more classic discussion of the infiltration of corporate interests into the state, see E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York: Wadsworth, 1975).

1. This interpretation of political history is in stark contrast to the “Cambridge School,” which argues that ideas or “political language” alone is the causal factor in explaining the vicissitudes of political history. I will elaborate on this critique more in chapter 2.

2. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 44.

3. Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, xii.

4. See the discussion in Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution, 1:185–284.

5. For an excellent discussion, see Fink, The Classical Republic.

6. Philip Green, The Pursuit of Inequality (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), 3.

7. See Deere and Welch, “Inequality, Incentives, and Opportunity,” 84–109.

8. Freeman, The New Inequality, 3.

9. See Freeman and Katz, “Rising Wage Inequality.”

10. This is not, however, a problem that is unique to the United States. For a discussion of this phenomenon in Europe, see Atkinson, “Bringing Income Distribution in from the Cold.”

11. See James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, 133–49.

12. For an excellent discussion of the spatial aspects of economic inequality and the problem of housing segmentation, see Denton and Massey, American Apartheid. Also, for the worsening economic conditions of the urban poor, see Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, and When Work Disappears.

13. Wolff, “Racial Wealth Disparities,” 7.

14. See Williamson and Lindert, “Long-Term Trends in American Wealth Inequality.” One of the more popular explanations for the recent trends in inequality of incomes—and of overall social inequality—has been an emphasis on differentials of skills. This argument claims that when a rise in “skill-biased technical change” sets in, certain groups—i.e., those who possess more highly technical job skills—become more preferred in the job market and therefore skew the overall income distribution. However, this has been refuted empirically, most recently by Ian Drew-Becker and Robert Gordon, who argue that “the ‘economics of superstars,’ i.e., the pure rents earned by the top CEOs, sports stars, and entertainment stars … combined with the role of deunionization, immigration, and free trade pushing down incomes at the bottom, have led to the wide divergence between the growth rates of productivity, average compensation, and median compensation.” See their paper “Where Did the Productivity Growth Go? Inflation Dynamics and the Distribution of Income,” http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/BPEA_Meetingdraft_Complete_051118.pdf (accessed January 5th, 2006), 1.

1. The idea that economic relations were also seen as political relations is something somewhat foreign to the contemporary mind. Traditionally, however, the relation between the two was always seen as seamless. As C. B. MacPherson has argued, “since the late nineteenth century, economics has largely turned its attention away from that concern which had made earlier economic thought so congruent with political thought, namely, its concern with the relations of dependence and control in which people are placed by virtue of a given system of production” (The Rise and Fall of Economic Justice, 102).

2. Recent work on the origins of the idea of equality in Greek thought has emphasized the issue of political equality over that of economic equality. See Stuurman, “The Voice of Theristes.” For a perspective on the historical trajectory of the idea of equality in western thought and the development of modernity, see Dann, Gleichheit und Gleichberechtigung. For a more recent discussion of the origins of the critique of unequal property in Greek thought and its implications for republican thought throughout the Western political tradition, see Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought.

3. As Sanford Lakoff has argued when discussing Judaism and Christianity and the problem of inequality, “in neither of these instances, however, is there an unambiguous and systematic effort to invalidate earthly distinctions except with reference to the ultimate source and destiny of all being, expressed in the belief in the equality of all souls before God” (Equality in Political Philosophy, 12).

4. For an important discussion, see McCarthy, Classical Horizons, 15–63.

5. Polanyi, Trade and Market in the Early Empires, 243.

6. Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, 84.

7. Plato, Republic, 547 B–C.

8. This interpretation is in sharp contrast to older interpretations of how the Greeks viewed the division of economic classes. M. Rostovtzeff, for example, claims that the Greeks saw the problem of penia kai ploutos “not as an important social and economic issue, but as a question of individual morals” (The Social and Economic History of the Ancient World, 2:1129). For his broader discussion on the topic, see 2:1115–35. My claim here is that the Greeks were able to see the political dimensions of economic life and therefore that inequlity was an inherently political problem for them since they were able to perceive the dehumanizing effects of poverty and the injustice of its existence next to those possessing wealth.

9. It is important to understand how Greeks themselves would have heard the terms “rich” and “poor.” Moses Finley has argued that “the poor embraced all the free men who labored for their livelihood, the peasants who owned their farms as well as the tenants, the landless laborers, the self-employed artisans, the shopkeepers. They were distinguished on the one hand from the ‘rich,’ who were able to live comfortably on the labor of others, but also from the paupers, the beggars, the idlers” (Politics in the Ancient World, 10). Also see Finley’s discussion in The Ancient Economy, 40–42. For an additional discussion of the way that class was understood by the ancients themselves, see Nippel, Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealität, 103–5.

10. For a more extended discussion on these two plays of Aristophenes, see Zumbrunnen, “Fantasy, Irony, and Economic Justice in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen and Wealth.”

11. For an excellent discussion of this theme, see Fuks, “Patterns and Types of Social-Economic Revolution in Greece.” For more on the importance of utopia in the ancient world, see John Ferguson, Utopias of the Classical World. For a more extensive discussion of the problem of class struggle in ancient Greece, see G. E. M. Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World.

12. Plato, Republic, 551D.

13. Austin and Vidal-Naquet are clear on this point: “During the fourth century the gulf between rich and poor kept widening. Egalitarian aspirations implicit in the notion of the citizen aggravated tensions, and social inequalities were all the more keenly felt as a result” (Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece, 139).

14. Plato, Republic, 420B.

15. For an interesting discussion, see Barker, Greek Political Theory, 165–80. Also see Vidal-Naquet, Le chasseur noir, 317–80.

16. There is also little question that the concept of citizenship itself was an elitist one based on property holding and that class was a fixed notion in Greek political thought. However, this does nothing to diminish the power of the argument that links economic division, egoism, and the breakdown of democratic political institutions and culture.

17. See Pöhlmann, Geschichte der Sozialen Frage, 1:227. Also see Austin and Vidal-Naquet’s discussion in Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece, 130–53.

18. See Fuks, “Patterns and Types of Social-Economic Revolution in Greece,” 34–39; Pöhlmann, Geschichte der Sozialen Frage, 1:332–48.

19. Isocrates, Areopagiticus, §35.

20. It should also be noted that movements for economic equality were based on the notion of land redistribution (anadasmos gēs). Such was the case for social reformers in Sparta such as Agis and Cleomenes who sought to establish an absolute equality of shares of property (isomoiria). The process of realizing equality (exisosis) was therefore seen as a process of an equalization of property. See Fuks, “Agis, Cleomenes, and Equality.” For more on egalitarian land reforms in the ancient Greek world, see Fuks, “Redistribution of Land and Houses in Syracuse in 356 B.C., and Its Ideological Aspects”; and Pöhlmann, Geschichte der Sozialen Frage, 1:155–169.

21. Raaflaub, “Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy,” 143.

22. Specifically, see Plato, Laws, 736e–737b and 739d–e.

23. Wallach, The Platonic Political Art, 378.

24. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 5.1.8.

25. This is an important term derived from the phrase ho pleon echon, meaning “one who has more than enough” or “a superfluous amount” and that came to simply mean “one who has more than another.” In Aristotle’s political and ethical theory, the core issue is that of self-sufficiency (autarkeia). Hence, taking “more than one’s share” is seen as inherently unjust from an ethical point of view, but it is also problematic when it comes to the larger property structure and distribution of land for individuals in the polis, which states that everyone should “command that which is most self-sufficing.” See his Politics, 5.5.1–2.

26. It should be pointed out that Aristotle’s notion of justice as developed in the Nicomachean Ethics emphasizes “distributive justice,” which Aristotle defines as “accordingly, the just is the proportionate (analogon) and the unjust is that which violates proportion (para to analogon). The unjust may therefore be either too much or too little” (Nicomachean Ethics, 5.3.15). The problem of greed and its relationship to justice is a major theme in the classical world, and Aristotle’s ideas are part of a broader understanding of the immorality of greed. For an excellent discussion, see Balot, Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens.

27. McCarthy, Classical Horizons, 104.

28. For a discussion, see Leyden, Aristotle on Equality and Justice, 1–25.

29. “The adherents of the deviant-form of government (ta parekbebēkuia), believing that they alone are right, take it to excess” (Aristotle, Politics, 1309b, 22–23). For a discussion of the way that economic inequality becomes the problem of the ambition of a ruling class in Aristotle, see Lintott, Violence, Civil Strife, and Revolution in the Classical City, 239–51; also see Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, 71–80. A broader discussion of these themes can be found in Watson, Class Struggles in Ancient Greece.

30. Aristotle, Politics, 1302a.9–15.

31. Ibid., 1302a.16.

33. Ibid., 1308b.25–31; also 1318a–1318b.5.

34. Aristotle is explicit on this point in his Politics: “It is clear then that those constitutions that aim at the common advantage are in effect rightly framed in accordance with absolute justice, while those that aim at the rulers’ own advantage are only faulty, and are all of them deviations from the right constitutions; for they have an element of despotism, whereas a polis is a community of those who are free (polis koinonia tōn eleutheriōn estin).” (1279a.17–20).

35. For a lucid discussion of this distinction between Greek and Roman thought, see Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought.

36. Cicero, De officiis, 2.21.73.

37. Specifically, Philippus is quoted by Cicero as saying: “non esse in civitate duo milia hominum, qui rem haberent” (De officiis, 2.21.73).

39. “[C]orrupti mores depravatique sunt admiratione divitiarum” after which he follows with the question: “quarum magnitudo quid ad unum quemque nostrum pertinet?” (Ibid, 2.20.71).

40. Cicero, De re publica, 1.32 (this quotation is from the translation by Clinton Walker Keyes and slightly modified by the author).

41. Ibid. Cicero goes so far in De officiis to maintain that it is also the responsibility of government to make sure that the necessities of life be provided for the public welfare: “Atque etiam omnes, qui rem publicam gubernabunt, consulere debebunt, ut earum rerum copia sit, quae sunt necessariae” (2.21.74).

42. Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, 175. Machiavelli is explicit about the need for any republic to eliminate inequality in terms of property and the power that results from it. The gentiluomini, or those that derive status from property and wealth, are the permanent enemies of republicanism: “Credo che a questa mia opinione, che dove sono gentiluomini non si possa ordinare republica, parrà contraria la esperienza della Republica viniziana, nella quale non possono avere alcuno grado se non coloro che sono gentiluomini” (176). Machiavelli makes a distinction in his republican theory between the gentiluomini, on the one hand, and the ottimati, or those who hold office or prestige as a result of their personal, ethical, or political virtue, on the other.

43. See Hilton, Bond Men Made Free.

44. Luther, “Concerning Christian Liberty,” 363.

45. For a discussion of the influence of the humanists on the Reformation and vice versa, see the excellent essay by Spitz, “The Third Generation of German Renaissance Humanists.” Spitz points to the young humanists in northern Europe who “were no longer satisfied with criticism, but, following upon the impetus of conversion in many cases, were bent on changing the world” (45).

46. For an excellent historical discussion, see Walker, “Capitalism and the Reformation”; as well as Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus.”

47. Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism, 1. See Kramnick’s broader discussion of liberalism and its opposition to republicanism on pages 163–99. I will discuss this in more detail in chapter 2.

48. For a discussion, see the classic study by MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism.

49. James Harrington, Commonwealth of Oceana, 127. David Hume would later counter Harrington’s argument with respect to the “agrarian law” by arguing that it was “impracticable” since “men will soon learn the art, which was practiced in ancient Rome, of concealing their possessions under other people’s name; till at last, the abuse will become so common, that they will throw off even the appearance of restraint” (“Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” 515).

50. An interesting discussion of Harrington’s ideas about republicanism and equal distribution of property can be found in Anna Strumia, L’immaginazione repubblicana, 35–48.

51. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 42.

53. Hirschman, Rival Views of Market Society, 107. For a more developed discussion of this theme of the relation between the market and political thought during the eighteenth century, see Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests.

54. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 310. Smith also argues in his Lectures on Jurisprudence that economic inequality arises during the transition from the hunting and gathering stage of social development to the herding stage. In the Industrial Age, he argues that poverty is not as big of a problem, but his connection between inequality and politics speaks to a different concern: the possibility of social justice itself. Also see his discussion in The Wealth of Nations, 310–11.

56. Ibid., 33. For a more detailed analysis of Smith’s views of poverty, see Gilbert, “Adam Smith on the Nature and Causes of Poverty.” For more on his ideas about the connection between economics and morality and ethics, see Rothschild, Economic Sentiments.

57. As economic modernity began to evolve, social inequality emerges as a concern in the literature of the mid-eighteenth century. This is seen in England first, the nation that moved fastest toward capitalism and massive economic and social change. Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Deserted Village” is an extended lament of the destruction of the English countryside by expanding wealth and privilege. It also critiques the problem of proliferating economic inequality:

58. Hume, “Of Commerce,” 15.

60. For a discussion of these thinkers and their ideas about equality, see Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 67–71.

61. It should be remarked that even after the French Revolution, the concern with economic inequality did not lessen. Thinkers like Condorcet and Jean Baptiste Say argued for the elimination of poverty and believed that this could be achieved through rational social policies. For an excellent discussion, see Jones, An End to Poverty? 16–63 and 111–32.

62. “Je conclus donc que comme le premier devoir du legislateur est de conformer les lois a la volonté générale, la premier regle de l’economie publique est que l’administration soit conforme aux lois” (Discours sur l’economie politique, 52). The second law, Rousseau says, is no less important than the first: “Voulez-vous que la volonté générale soit accomplie? Faites que toutes les volontés particulièrs s’y rapportent; et comme la vertu n’est que cette conformite de la volonté particulière a la générale, pour dire la même chose en un mot, faites régner la vertu” (ibid., 53). This is a direct response to the liberal and utilitarian ideas of self-interest that dominated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century discussions about economic life and liberty. For more on the historical and philosophical evolution of self-interest, see Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, 20–66.

63. For an excellent discussion of the relation between Rousseau’s ideas and classical Greek themes, see Shklar, Men and Citizens. For an interesting discussion of Rousseau’s ideas about the relation between property and the notion of amour-propre, see Birkhead, “Property and Amour Propre.”

64. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §49.

66. See Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom, 200–207. Another common but incorrect view is that Hegel’s views on inequality also led him to a wholly negative view of the problem of those impoverished by economic modernity. See Muller, The Mind and the Market, 154–61.

67. Hegel, Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science, § 118.

68. It is important to note that, in contrast to Hegel’s earlier writings on civil society and the problem of social classes and inequality, in the Philosophy of Right he uses the modern term for class (Klasse) over the older term (Stand), which denotes estate or status as opposed to the economically specific Klasse. For an excellent discussion, see Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, 147–54. For a historical discussion of the idea of Stand as opposed to that of class, see Böröcz, “Stand Reconstructed.” For another discussion of Hegel’s views on poverty, see Paul Diesing, Hegel’s Dialectical Political Economy, 57–58 and 97–98.

69. Hegel, Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science, § 118. Also see the discussion by Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, 171–74.

70. As Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato have argued:

It is only what Hegel considers the underside of this process of the emergence of new, nonascriptive status groups that belongs to the socioeconomic level of his analysis. Accordingly, the working class represents a form of inequality produced by civil society in which the absence of inheritance and otherwise unearned income, as well as a specific form of life, makes estate membership inaccessible and exposes individuals to the hazards of economic contingencies beyond their control.

71. Hegel’s analysis of the problem of inequality shows a concern not simply with the problem of social dissension and strife but also with the moral development of certain segments of society left in poverty: “the subdivision and restriction of particular jobs … results in the dependence and distress of the class tied to the work of that sort, and these again entail inability to feel and enjoy the broader freedoms and especially the intellectual benefits of society” (Philosophy of Right § 243).

72. Arnold, “Equality,” in The Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold, 485.

73. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 73.

74. Matthew Arnold, “Equality,” 494.

75. Urbinati, Mill on Democracy, 191.

76. For an excellent discussion, see McCarthy, Classical Horizons, 15–47, 103–10, and 138–47.

1. Webster, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” 134.

2. See Wilentz, “America’s Lost Egalitarian Tradition,” for an excellent discussion of the sources of the egalitarian tradition in American political thought.

3. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 138.

4. I am, of course, referring to Louis Hartz’s classic argument for American liberal exceptionalism (see The Liberal Tradition in America). Hartz’s argument is not wrong, in that liberalism did become an overriding dimension of American political and economic life, but it is important to see how this was separated over time from a broader concern with a civic republican concern for the public good and the search for the proper balance between individual self-interest and liberty, on the one hand, and the duties individuals must have toward the community and the maintenance of the public good, on the other. Even more, Hartz did not consider the extent to which feudal relations—specifically within economic life—persisted well beyond the Revolutionary era.

5. There is a large literature on this subject. Prominent examples include Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 506–52; Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution; Dienstag, “Serving God and Mammon”; Kornfeld, “From Republicanism to Liberalism”; and Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine. For more recent perspectives on the debate between republican and liberal interpretations of American political thought, see Heideking and Henretta, eds., Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States.

6. For an important discussion, see Bronner, Reclaiming the Enlightenment, 41–60. The argument for a fusion of liberalism and republicanism was made much earlier in Banning, “Republican Ideology and the Triumph of the Constitution,” and “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited.” For those who argue not for a synthesis of the two but rather parallels between liberalism and civic republicanism, with an emphasis on liberalism, see Kloppenberg, “The Virtues of Liberalism.” Other scholars have questioned the extent to which republicanism displaced liberalism during early American political thought, emphasizing the importance of Lockean liberalism. See Appleby, “Liberalism and the American Revolution,” Capitalism and a New Social Order, and “Republicanism in Old and New Contexts”; as well as Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics.

7. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 172.

8. Several classic examples include MacPherson, The Political Philosophy of Possessive Individualism; Laski, The Rise of Liberalism; and Strauss, Natural Right and History.

9. Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism, 34.

10. See Kerber, “The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation.”

11. Gordon Wood, among others, makes this argument explicitly: “The great social antagonisms of the American Revolution were not poor vs. rich, workers vs. employers, or even democrats vs. aristocrats. They were patriots vs. courtiers—categories appropriate to the monarchical world in which the colonists had been reared” (The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 175). This point is also famously made by Bernard Bailyn: “The American Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, political struggle and not primarily a controversy between social groups undertaken to force changes in the organization of the society or the economy” (The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, vi). This general argument—also made by J. G. A. Pocock and his circle—seems credible only if we are willing to split the interpretation of social relations from the realities of the economic relations of the period—and this is not a credible interpretive strategy. It is not my contention that the American Revolution was a class revolution in the Marxian sense but rather that the problem of unequal property was seen at the time to be crucially linked with the problem of liberty and the protection of the republic from aristocratic perversion. In this sense, the revolution—and the concept of the republic itself—was not an exclusively ideological event; it was fundamentally tied to issues of property and wealth and the kind of social and political power they engendered in a society that sought to throw off lingering feudal arrangements.

12. In a strange way, this is the antithesis of Louis Hartz’s argument of American exceptionalism. Essentially, it is clear that American radicals were deeply opposed to the feudal forms of life that they saw extant in Europe, and this, I think, decisively impacted the object of their radical critique. For an important discussion, see Becker, The Declaration of Independence, chap. 2.

13. Freyer, Producers Versus Capitalists, 8.

14. For an excellent discussion, see McCoy, The Elusive Republic.

15. For an important discussion, see Appleby, “Liberalism and the American Revolution,” 1–25. Also see Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 325–347

16. See Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution.

17. The propertyless were the disenfranchised. As Charles Beard pointed out, “in 1787, we first encounter four groups whose economic status had a definite legal expression: the slaves, the indented servants, the mass of men who could not qualify for voting under the property tests imposed by the state constitutions and laws, and women, disenfranchised and subjected to the discriminations of the common law” (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, 24).

18. The literature on economic inequality in early northeastern American cities—where commerce was first taking root—shows a general picture of rising economic disparities between the poor and the wealthy. See Lemon and Nash, “The Distribution of Wealth in Eighteenth-Century America”; Nash, “Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre-Revolutionary America”; Pencak, “The Social Structure of Revolutionary Boston”; Kulikoff, “The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston”; Henretta, “Economic Development and Social Structure in Colonial Boston.” For a dissenting view, see Warden, “Inequality and Instability in Eighteenth-Century Boston.”

19. For a discussion, see Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order, 10–15.

20. For an analysis of the economic trends of inequality in this period, see the excellent work of Williamson and Lindert, American Inequality, 9–95. Also see Soltow, Distribution of Wealth and Income in the United States in 1798, 35–59.

21. See Barbara Clark Smith, “Food Rioters and the American Revolution.”

22. For the importance of the discourse of letters on the political atmosphere of the revolutionary period, see Warner, The Letters of the Republic.

23. Quoted in Nash, “Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre-Revolutionary America,” 547.

24. New York Gazette, July 11, 1765.

25. For an historical discussion, see Becker, The Declaration of Independence.

26. For a discussion of leveling in the colonial period and its effect on the discourse on economic inequality, see Ingersoll, “‘Riches and Honor Were Rejected by Them as Loathsome Vomit.’”

27. For an excellent discussion of these ideas, see Burke, The Conundrum of Class, 1–21.

28. The Federalist, no. 51, 339.

29. The Federalist, no. 10, 56.

30. Adams, A Defense of Constitutions of Government of the United States, 10.

31. For an important discussion, see Howe, The Changing Political Thought of John Adams, 133–92. Also see Soltow, Distribution of Wealth and Income in the United States in 1798, 18–22; and Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 417–33.

32. George Logan, “Five Letters Addressed to the Yeomanry of the United States,” quoted in Burke, The Conundrum of Class, 39.

33. James Lyon, “To Aristocrats Generally,” National Magazine 1 (1799): 14–15, quoted in Burke, The Conundrum of Class, 40.

34. Noah Webster, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” 132.

36. Ibid., 135–36.

37. Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, 238. Millar’s insights echo many of the ideas of the period. His link between commerce and liberty is decidedly liberal in nature: “Where-ever men of inferior condition are enabled to live in affluence by their own industry, and, in procuring their livelihood, have little occasion to court the favour of their superiors, there we may expect that ideas of liberty will be universally diffused” (243).

38. For more on Jefferson’s ideas on public and private morality and its Greek and Christian roots, see Sheldon, “Classical and Modern Influences on American Political Thought.”

39. Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, chap. 1.

40. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 226.

43. Jefferson, to James Madison, October 28, 1785, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 396.

44. Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 293.

45. For an interesting discussion on Jefferson’s concept of property and its relation to the ideas of Aristotle, see Jill Frank, “Integrating Public Good and Private Right.”

46. Taylor, An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States, 434.

47. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 582.

49. Tocqueville lays this out explicitly: “I think that, taking the whole picture into consideration, one can assert that a slow, progressive rise in wages is one of the general laws characteristic of democratic societies. As conditions become more equal, wages rise; and as wages rise, conditions become more equal” (ibid.).

50. Ibid. Tocqueville was able to see the oppression of early American industrial capitalism quite clearly: “If by common accord they withhold their work, the master, who is rich, can easily wait without ruining himself until necessity brings them back to him. But as for them, they must work every day if they are not to die, for they scarcely have any property beyond their arms. They have long been impoverished by oppression, and increasing poverty makes them easier to oppress. This is the vicious circle from which they cannot escape” (ibid., 584).

51. For a more technical discussion of Quesnay’s political economy, see Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, 25–29.

52. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 264.

53. This is the insight of Karren Orren: “The association of liberalism with market society, however, has created another false impression of rupture with the past. By emphasizing the disintegrating effects of capitalist development on the older institutions of feudalism, and identifying liberalism as the ideology associated with that process, historical accounts of the rise of market society have tended to eclipse preliberal institutions that survived the transition. The two hyper-histories are mutually reinforcing: The same institutions allegedly superseded by capitalism are those thought to have graced the United States by their absence” (Belated Feudalism, 10). For more on the remnants of feudalism in American labor law and workplace culture, see Belated Feudalism, 68–117.

54. For an excellent discussion of the problem of wealth inequality during the antebellum period, see Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1973).

55. Skidmore, The Rights of Man to Property! 3–4.

57. For an historical discussion, see Schultz, The Republic of Labor; and Wilentz, Chants Democratic.

58. As J. R. Pole has insightfully argued: “It was growing increasingly clear to the labor radicals of this age, and to the leaders of political and economic labor organizations, that the workers as a class would never enjoy equality of economic opportunity with their capitalist masters, and few of them would escape from their class; but they insisted all the more passionately on equality not because they could hope for more equal rewards but because it was a metaphor for independence, control, and self-respect” (The Pursuit of Equality in American History, 167).

59. Fisk, “Capital Against Labor,” 2.

60. Simpson, The Working Man’s Manual, 145.

62. For a discussion, see Sellers, The Market Revolution.

63. Simpson, The Working Man’s Manual, 162.

65. Byllesby, Observations on the Sources and Effects of Unequal Wealth, 24.

67. Sedgwick, “What Is a Monopoly?” 222.

68. Henshaw, Remarks upon the Rights and Powers of Corporations, 163.

70. Gouge, A Short History of Paper Money, 184.

72. Vethake, “The Doctrine of Anti-Monopoly,” 231.

74. Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” 49.

75. Pickering, The Working Man’s Political Economy, 3, 6; emphasis in the original.

76. For an excellent discussion, see Kohl, The Politics of Individualism, 186–227; as well as Huston, Securing the Fruits of Labor, 259–95.

77. Leggett, “The Inequality of Human Condition,” 163.

78. The emphasis on equality of opportunity would move to the forefront of the discourse on inequality later in the nineteenth century, when monopoly power was seen to be its main threat (for a discussion, see chapter 4). But the radicals of the early nineteenth century were more keen, in this regard, since they were able to point to the systemic moment when all forms of economic parity were lost: the move toward wage labor itself. For a discussion of equality of opportunity during the early republic and the early nineteenth century, see Pole, The Pursuit of Equality in American History, 150–62.

79. For a discussion of Byllesby and Carey and the historical context of their ideas, see Matson, “Economic Thought and the Early National Economy,” 117–36.

80. Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” 52.

1. See Williamson, Industrialism, Inequality, and Economic Growth; as well as his Did British Capitalism Breed Inequality?.

2. For an excellent discussion, see Kasson, Civilizing the Machine, 53–106.

3. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916, 8.

4. See Chandler, “The Organization of Manufacturing and Transportation.” Also see Chandler, The Visible Hand.

5. Godkin, “The Labor Crisis,” 186, 188.

6. See Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.

7. For a discussion of the Radical Republicans and their debates on political and economic equality, see Foner, Reconstruction, 228–80.

8. See Foner, Reconstruction, 235.

9. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 43–44.

10. For an important discussion of the differences among various black intellectual ideas of the period, see Wintz, ed., African American Political Thought, 1890–1930, 1–18.

11. See Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 146–63.

12. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 580–636.

13. George, Progress and Poverty, 282.

15. For important discussions, see Pole, The Pursuit of Equality in American History, 254–83; John Thomas, Alternative America, 103–31; and Lustig, Corporate Liberalism, 57–77.

16. Sorge, “Socialism and the Worker,” 207.

17. Most, “The Beast of Property,” 213, 215.

18. Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth, 1–2.

20. The emergence of the “utopian novel” in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was no mere coincidence. It came about as a direct result of the atomized social effects of early industrialism as well as the emergence of modernity in America. For an interesting discussion, see Forbes, “The Literary Quest for Utopia, 1880–1900.”

21. It has also been argued that Bellamy’s anti-individualist stance gave rise to a totalitarian impulse because he emphasized a bureaucratic solution—in place of a more social-democratic one—to the problems caused by laissez-faire. For this view, see Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America.

22. In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel argues that it is through what he terms the “universal class,” or the bureaucracy, that the state will be able to manifest the collective will of society and the objective realization of human freedom vis-à-vis the state (§§ 260, 261). For Hegel, the state was the dialectical culmination of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), human freedom, and political modernity. It would overcome the social atomization of “civil society,” and it would also strive toward a rational universalism based on the institutions of the state (objektiver Geist) and characterized by rational laws grounded in an ethical imperative toward human freedom. Bellamy spent time in Germany in the winter of 1868–69, where he studied German socialism. The Hegelian themes in Looking Backward are certainly not coincidence.

23. Bellamy, Looking Backward, 89.

25. Bellamy, Equality, 3.

26. Quoted in Pole, The Pursuit of Equality in American History, 266.

27. The classic account of this is Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 51–66. For a critical view of the extent to which conservatives during the Gilded Age actually relied upon Darwinian ideas and principles, see Wyllie, The Self Made Man; as well as Bannister, “The Survival of the Fittest is Our Doctrine: History or Histrionics?”; and West, “Darwin’s Public Policy.”

28. For a discussion of this antiegalitarian tradition in early-nineteenth-century America, see Becker, The Declaration of Independence, 234–79.

29. Calhoun, Disquisition on Government, 56–57.

30. Calhoun, Exposition and Protest, quoted in Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, 105. Also see the discussion in Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic, 1:201–10.

31. Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 29.

32. For a discussion, see Robert McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise, 42–71.

33. Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, 56.

34. Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 47.

36. Jacoby, “American Exceptionalism Revisited.” Also see Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism.

37. Ely, The Labor Movement in America, ix–x.

39. For a discussion of the expansion of the American state, see Skowronek, Building a New American State.

40. For a discussion of the debate on laissez-faire during the early twentieth century, see Barbara Fried, The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire, 1–70.

41. Note the important discussion by Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism, 8–47.

42. For an important discussion of the antiradicalism of American Progressive intellectuals, see Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory.

43. Croly, The Promise of American Life, 23.

44. Ibid., 380–81.

45. Weyl, The New Democracy, 162; emphasis added.

46. Ibid., 163–164.

48. Croly, The Promise of American Life, 358–59.

49. See Spargo, The Socialist, 34–39 and 71–77.

50. For a discussion of the proletarianization of the American working class and its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, see Gordon, Edwards, and Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers.

51. Glickman, A Living Wage.

52. For a discussion, see Kazin, “The Workers’ Party?”

53. Gompers, Labor and the Common Welfare.

54. For an interesting discussion of how this deradicalization of labor and capital was carried out in the Progressive and New Deal Eras in the realm of film, see Michael Rogin, “How the Working Class Saved Capitalism.”

55. Arnold, The Symbols of Government, 259–60.

56. Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism, 203.

57. It should be pointed out that Dewey’s ideas about political economy were not particularly sophisticated. He still saw Henry George’s ideas as possessing theoretical validity as he argued in one of his radio addresses in 1933 concerning the massive inequality of the day:

Go to the work of Henry George himself and learn how many of the troubles from which society still suffers, and suffers increasingly, are due to the fact that a few have monopolized the land, and that in consequence they have the power to dictate to others access to the land and to its products—which include waterpower, electricity, coal, iron and all minerals, as well as the foods that sustain life—and that they have the power to appropriate to their private use the values that the industry, the civilized order, the very benefactions, of others produce. This wrong is at the very basis of our present social and economic chaos, and until it is righted, all steps toward economic recovery may be temporarily helpful while in the long run useless.

58. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 15–16.

59. Dewey, “The Future of Liberalism.”

60. Thurman Arnold remarks on this theme: “It is not sufficient to describe social institutions as one describes the organization of an anthill. Ants have no souls and we are writing this book for men who do have souls. Therefore something must be said to point out what men should believe in order to make them better, more cooperative, more just, and more comfortable” (The Folklore of Capitalism, 332).

61. For a discussion of the various policies enacted by Roosevelt and their impact on income and wealth distribution, see Edsforth, The New Deal, 235–52; and Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining,” 122–52. These views go against the idea that Roosevelt relied on certain sectors of capital—that is, those that were not labor intensive—to push through his economic reforms. For this view, see Thomas Ferguson, “Industrial Conflict and the Coming of the New Deal,” 3–31.

62. For an excellent discussion, see Brinkley, The End of Reform, 137–74.

63. Norman Thomas, “Shall Labor Support Roosevelt?” For more extensive comments by Thomas on the New Deal, see The Choice Before Us, 83–127.

64. Dewey, “The Economic Basis of the New Society,” 430.

65. See Orren, Belated Feudalism, 118–208.

66. For a discussion, see Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights, 61–98. Sunstein argues that Roosevelt was not an egalitarian and was concerned with the issue of “security” over that of equality. But this is hard to argue in face of the kind of sweeping power that he gave to labor, and its ability to bargain collectively had a large impact on equalizing income distribution through the 1940s and 1950s.

67. John Bates Clark, “Monopoly and the Struggle of Classes,” 141.

1. Welch, “In Defense of Inequality,” 1.

2. For a discussion of the crisis of New Deal liberalism, see Brinkley, The End of Reform, 15–30.

3. See Schulman, The Seventies. For perspectives on this phenomenon from the point of view of political economy, see Sawyers and Tabb, eds. Sunbelt/Snowbelt. Also see Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest, 169–234.

4. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority.

5. John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, 398.

6. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic, 9.

7. Krugman, “For Richer.”

8. For a discussion, see Thomas Frank, One Market Under God, 1–50; and Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies, 102–20.

9. For an important discussion of Knight’s ethical and economic ideas, see Kasper, The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory, 7–28.

10. The evolution of libertarian and laissez-faire ideas within European social and economic thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries cannot be fully investigated here. For a discussion, see Infantino, Individualism in Modern Thought, 100–131.

11. Mises, Liberalism, 10.

14. See Finis Welch, “In Defense of Inequality,” for an excellent summary of this position in a more contemporary context.

15. Menger, Principles of Economics, 121.

16. For a discussion of Hayek’s ideas about epistemology, see Gray, Hayek on Liberty, 1–26; as well as Kasper, The Revival of Laissez-Faire, 46–53.

17. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order, 14.

19. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 87.

20. For a discussion of Hayek’s ideas in this regard, see Hoover, Economics as Ideology, 203–18.

21. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 93.

22. Friedman, Free to Choose, 135.

23. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 166.

24. For an important discussion, see Bronner, Ideas in Action, 55–67.

25. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 172.

26. Friedman, Free to Choose, 134–35.

27. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 29.

28. See Hayek’s discussion of liberty in The Constitution of Liberty, 11–61.

29. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 5.

30. For an important discussion, see Orren, Belated Feudalism.

31. The classic analysis of this phenomenon remains Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 248–340.

32. The classic analysis of the ideas from this period is Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism; for a specific discussion of the utilitarian and liberal theories that thinkers such as Hayek and Friedman invoke, see 120–50.

33. For a discussion, see Noble, The Collapse of Liberalism, 14–18.

34. For an important discussion, see Munkirs, The Transformation of American Capitalism, 8–50.

35. See Harrison and Sum, “The Theory of ‘Dual’ or Segmented Labor Markets”; and Moore, Labor Market Segmentation and Its Implications.

36. For a discussion, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic, 200–256.

37. Rae, “Democratic Liberty and Tyrannies of Place.” Also see Sugrue, “The Structures of Urban Poverty.” For more on inequalities within urban areas, see Bobo, ed., Prismatic Metropolis; as well as O’Connor, Tilly, and Bobo, eds., Urban Inequality.

38. Shapiro, “Why the Poor Don’t Soke the Rich”.

39. For recent perspectives on deindustrialization, see Cowie and Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins; also Bluestone and Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America.

40. For an important discussion, see Aronowitz, How Class Works, 23–37; as well as Mills, “The Sociology of Stratification,” 305–23. Also see the important analysis by Danziger and Gottschalk, America Unequal, 124–50.

41. See the discussion in chapter 3 of the present work.

42. The most important of these studies include: McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos; Verba and Orren, Equality in America; Kluegel and Smith, Beliefs About Inequality; and Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream. Also see Glazer, “On Americans and Inequality”; and Samuelson, “Indifferent to Inequality?”

43. See McCloskey and Zaller, The American Ethos; as well as Samuelson, “Indifferent to Inequality?”

44. Kluegel and Smith, Beliefs About Inequality, 5–6. As Stanley Aronowitz has acutely observed concerning this same theme: “Many Americans take ‘equality of opportunity’ literally. They believe that being born poor or working class is not economic destiny, that with a combination of luck and hard work … they can get rich or at least achieve economic security” (How Class Works, 15).

45. For a discussion of this change in macroeconomic thought, see Smithin, Macroeconomics After Thatcher and Reagan.

46. Epstein, “Against Redress,” 45.

47. Larry Bartels refers to this narrow, misinformed self-interest as “unenlightened self-interest.” See his “Homer Gets a Tax Cut.”

48. For an important analysis, see McCall, Complex Inequality.

1. Thomas Frank seeks to analyze this problem as well in What’s the Matter with Kansas?

2. For a discussion about the turn away from inequality as a concern in modern American politics, see Madrick, “Inequality and Democracy.”

3. For a discussion or this aspect of republicanism in early American political thought, see Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 95–145 and 169–89. For a discussion of republican ideas among the early working-class movements, see Wilentz, Chants Democratic, as well as Schultz, The Republic of Labor.

4. It is important to note that Karren Orren argues that liberal ideas served to attack preliberal institutions in the workplace. See Belated Feudalism.

5. For example, see Maynor, Republicanism in the Modern World, as well as Viroli, Republicanism. For a critical account of both, see Lock, “Review of Maynor and Viroli.”

6. Richard Dagger has called this synthesis of autonomy and public good “republican liberalism.” See his Civic Virtues, 11–25.

7. See Pettit, Republicanism, 51–110, as well as Honohan, Civic Republicanism, 180–231.

8. Hegel made a distinction between Moralität, by which he meant a Kantian, modern form of ethical autonomy, and Sittlichkeit, which he defined as a combination of the Aristotelian Greek polis and the secularized version of community derived from Protestantism (as opposed to the otherworldly morality that defined Catholic community in the form of Heiligkeit). From Hegel, the idea that rights matter, but within their social and historical context, is essential: hence the preservation of individual autonomy and public goods through the institutionalization of the state. For an interesting discussion, see Steven B. Smith, Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism, 232–46.

9. At about the same time that Dewey was making these arguments, Emile Durkheim was doing the same. See his Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, 1–41. Durkheim’s emphasis was on the need to prevent modern economic life from ripping apart social cohesion through the amoral logic of the market. “If we follow no rule except that of a clear self-interest, in the occupations that take up nearly the whole of our time, how should we acquire a taste for any disinterestedness, or selflessness or sacrifice? Let us see, then, how the unleashing of interests has been accompanied by a debasing of public morality” (12). In so doing, he emphasized—not unlike Hegel—the importance of worker “corporations,” or the emergence of a “corporate system” that would help in pushing the state to regulate economic life: “A corpus of rules has to be laid down, fixing the stint of work, the pay of the members of staff and their obligations to one another, to the community, and so on” (30–31).