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The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
A groundbreaking investigation of how and why, from the 18th century to the present day, American resistance to our ruling elites has vanished.
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?
The Age of Acquiescence 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. Effervescent and razorsharp, The Age of Acquiescence is provocative and fascinating.
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?
The Age of Acquiescence 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. Effervescent and razorsharp, The Age of Acquiescence is provocative and fascinating.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2015
105 people are currently reading
2318 people want to read
About the author
Steve Fraser
30 books27 followersSteve Fraser is an author, an editor, and a historian whose many publications include the award-winning books Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor and Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. He is senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and cofounder of the American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and the American Prospect.
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on-hiatus
March 22, 2015I'm blaming this book for my experience of the last two days; hiding in bed without showering or speaking to humans and pretending the exterior universe is not present. Fuck. Just incredibly depressing and full of systematised injustices.
NO MORE OF THIS NOW.
NO MORE OF THIS NOW.
February 15, 2016
How did Americans react to economic inequality in the past? Why do we not rise up in the present? Answering those questions is the task of The Age of Acquiescence.
The first two-thirds concern that first question. Fraser surveys how Americans perceived and often organized against economic inequality from the 1700s through the early 20th century.
This is useful stuff, a tour of labor movements, political parties, key thinkers, strikes, suppressions, and trials. We read of Haymarket and the Pullman utopia, Eugene Debs and Jane Adams. Again and again we see resistance to plutocracy - often failed, but ultimately leading to regulation and redistributive programs through the New Deal and Great Society.
The last part of The Age of Acquiescence is about how those gains were reversed, starting in the late 1970s. Fraser explores the mid-century labor settlements (such as the Treaty of Detroit) for the roots of how Reagan was able to start changing Americans' minds from opposing to acquiescing to, even celebrating oligarchy. Here we read about the rise of debt, the ascent of consumerism, the shift in anti-elite cultural politics, globalization, the decline of unions, the Democrats' turn to the right under the Clintons, financialization, etc.
Fraser's book has many strong points. He has a fine ear for primary source materials. He sticks to points and works them out at length, examining them through some degree of analytical variation. And he writes with passion, engagingly. If you are new to the subject, it's a gold mine.
Some of the arguments are very interesting. Fraser paints useful pictures of the transition of management styles. I know that sounds dull, but it's actually pretty explanatory to think of the mid 20th century transition from family-based companies to professional management (269), and the latter's supplanting by shareholder-driven management during the later 20th century.
I like the casting of late 19th-century anti-plutocracy politics as a culture war (102), since this lets us think of a variety of developments in a unified way: union activism, religious discourse, changing sexual mores, the Populist party. I also appreciated the book's account of dystopian and utopian literature around inequality (155ff), from Edward Bellamy to L. Frank Baum. (I'm looking forward to Caesar's Column (1890)).
However, The Age of Acquiescence isn't sure if it's history or polemic. It thrives on following events through time, seeking causes and effects, but its focus is too narrow. We see little of foreign policy (anti-imperialism being a significant cause; mobilization for WWII and the Cold War is vital for understanding economic transformation). The economic crises of the 1970s reduced the appeal of many aspects of liberalism and the left, as did the crime panic; these don't do much for Fraser. The fall of the Soviet Union and the capitalization of China helped discredit the left throughout the West, but that point is quiet in Fraser's account.
Moreover, the appeal of the American Dream doesn't do much in this book, which saps its arguments. In fact, these arguments are largely one-sided. We don't really get to hear the opposition - which is par for the course for a polemic, but not too useful as history. We need to hear the arguments against Keynes, against FDR, against LBJ in ways other than cackling.
Personally, I was disappointed on another front, as I already knew most of this stuff. The historical sections will be familiar to many on the left, or to readers of Howard Zinn. The explanations for our present plutocracy I've already studied, both in recent scholarship and in popular discussions.
I would give this three stars, but award it a bonus star for style. I think he invented the word "housoleum", or at least gave it a political charge (210). Sometimes Fraser is just superbly clear:
In short, read this is you're new to the subjects, or would like a refresher.
The first two-thirds concern that first question. Fraser surveys how Americans perceived and often organized against economic inequality from the 1700s through the early 20th century.
This is useful stuff, a tour of labor movements, political parties, key thinkers, strikes, suppressions, and trials. We read of Haymarket and the Pullman utopia, Eugene Debs and Jane Adams. Again and again we see resistance to plutocracy - often failed, but ultimately leading to regulation and redistributive programs through the New Deal and Great Society.
The last part of The Age of Acquiescence is about how those gains were reversed, starting in the late 1970s. Fraser explores the mid-century labor settlements (such as the Treaty of Detroit) for the roots of how Reagan was able to start changing Americans' minds from opposing to acquiescing to, even celebrating oligarchy. Here we read about the rise of debt, the ascent of consumerism, the shift in anti-elite cultural politics, globalization, the decline of unions, the Democrats' turn to the right under the Clintons, financialization, etc.
Fraser's book has many strong points. He has a fine ear for primary source materials. He sticks to points and works them out at length, examining them through some degree of analytical variation. And he writes with passion, engagingly. If you are new to the subject, it's a gold mine.
Some of the arguments are very interesting. Fraser paints useful pictures of the transition of management styles. I know that sounds dull, but it's actually pretty explanatory to think of the mid 20th century transition from family-based companies to professional management (269), and the latter's supplanting by shareholder-driven management during the later 20th century.
I like the casting of late 19th-century anti-plutocracy politics as a culture war (102), since this lets us think of a variety of developments in a unified way: union activism, religious discourse, changing sexual mores, the Populist party. I also appreciated the book's account of dystopian and utopian literature around inequality (155ff), from Edward Bellamy to L. Frank Baum. (I'm looking forward to Caesar's Column (1890)).
However, The Age of Acquiescence isn't sure if it's history or polemic. It thrives on following events through time, seeking causes and effects, but its focus is too narrow. We see little of foreign policy (anti-imperialism being a significant cause; mobilization for WWII and the Cold War is vital for understanding economic transformation). The economic crises of the 1970s reduced the appeal of many aspects of liberalism and the left, as did the crime panic; these don't do much for Fraser. The fall of the Soviet Union and the capitalization of China helped discredit the left throughout the West, but that point is quiet in Fraser's account.
Moreover, the appeal of the American Dream doesn't do much in this book, which saps its arguments. In fact, these arguments are largely one-sided. We don't really get to hear the opposition - which is par for the course for a polemic, but not too useful as history. We need to hear the arguments against Keynes, against FDR, against LBJ in ways other than cackling.
Personally, I was disappointed on another front, as I already knew most of this stuff. The historical sections will be familiar to many on the left, or to readers of Howard Zinn. The explanations for our present plutocracy I've already studied, both in recent scholarship and in popular discussions.
I would give this three stars, but award it a bonus star for style. I think he invented the word "housoleum", or at least gave it a political charge (210). Sometimes Fraser is just superbly clear:
Leveraged by debt, consumer culture has helped make the state of permanent wage labor - even a declining, downwardly mobile one - tolerable. (310)
In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. (365)
If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist. (374)
In short, read this is you're new to the subjects, or would like a refresher.
July 19, 2015
Good, but could have been better. Fraser articulates an interesting question - why was the first Gilded Age so contentious and our current Gilded Age so quiescent? - but writes (and overwrites) around the answer. This book desperately needed better editing, particularly in the first half which was painfully, almost unbearably overwritten. I'm glad I made it through the first half, because I thought his account of our current issues was much better written and much more interesting. Still, I don't think Fraser really answers his question in a systematic way, which is perhaps the problem when a person looking through a "humanities" lens tries to answer a question that demands social science. He illustrates the problem thoroughly but I don't think he really provides a coherent answer, just a few hypotheses. Maybe a social scientist will pick up where he left off and try to answer it.
October 25, 2024
Age of Acquiescence
First, Steve Fraser has a word for us to learn: “Precariat.” You can probably see the word from which this portmanteau derives, in turn riffing on “proletariat.” Yes, we are the class of the precarious.
So, why didn’t more Americans join Occupy Wall Street a few years back, or start their own, similar movements? That’s the thesis of this book.
One of the greatest strengths of this book is Chapter 10, titled “Fables of Freedom: Brand X.” Of course, branding and its adjunct, marketing, become fiercer by the day. But, as Fraser shows, their roots go back at least to the Keynesian consumerism which he marks as the real “settlement” of the New Deal and later. He’s true about this in general — American “mainstream” organized labor accepted the offer of a theoretically guaranteed piece of the capital pie on wages, health care and other benefits, while agreeing to keep its collective nose out of corporate operations, unlike in a Germany, and to also play good soldiers abroad in undermining labor movements elsewhere that wouldn’t salute the flag of high-octane American capitalism.
And so, as the Sixties drew to a close, organized labor had trouble incorporating the Vietnam generation into its ranks. Fraser even shows that many strikes of the early Seventies were wildcats, without hierarchy’s OK, and at times aimed at the hierarchy as much as the employer. Hence, Reagan Democrats were "easy pickings" for the GOP.
And, from there, the first waves of outsourcing and offshoring meant fewer non-Reagan Democrats in unions to protest, let alone pre-Reagan Republicans in middle management, when folks like Chainsaw Al Dunlap popped up.
It's all a game; that's from 245.
And, the game needed old rules broken, which itself became a new rule.
Page 354
And, it goes without saying that this has become true of both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations.
Fraser notes, correctly:
That quote is part of a section about the rise of neoliberalism after McGovern's defeat.
Fraser also reminds us that finance dereg, along with trucking (bad) and airlines (good and bad, IMO) started under Carter. Ditto for electric utilities.
He then notes that free market thinking pernicious not just in public policies but in exiling communal ways of thought.
As for Democrats becoming more and more associated with social liberalism and identity politics, Fraser notes this as part of the “Southernization” of both politics and of the American working class. This, too, intruded into the modern Democratic party with Carter.
A smiley face on top of this is neoliberalism, which Fraser calls the technocratic equivalent of Marxism. I could go even worse, but that’s a good start.
Specifically, Fraser says, on page 417:
In other words, an economically determined version of Fukuyama’s end of history.
First, Steve Fraser has a word for us to learn: “Precariat.” You can probably see the word from which this portmanteau derives, in turn riffing on “proletariat.” Yes, we are the class of the precarious.
So, why didn’t more Americans join Occupy Wall Street a few years back, or start their own, similar movements? That’s the thesis of this book.
One of the greatest strengths of this book is Chapter 10, titled “Fables of Freedom: Brand X.” Of course, branding and its adjunct, marketing, become fiercer by the day. But, as Fraser shows, their roots go back at least to the Keynesian consumerism which he marks as the real “settlement” of the New Deal and later. He’s true about this in general — American “mainstream” organized labor accepted the offer of a theoretically guaranteed piece of the capital pie on wages, health care and other benefits, while agreeing to keep its collective nose out of corporate operations, unlike in a Germany, and to also play good soldiers abroad in undermining labor movements elsewhere that wouldn’t salute the flag of high-octane American capitalism.
And so, as the Sixties drew to a close, organized labor had trouble incorporating the Vietnam generation into its ranks. Fraser even shows that many strikes of the early Seventies were wildcats, without hierarchy’s OK, and at times aimed at the hierarchy as much as the employer. Hence, Reagan Democrats were "easy pickings" for the GOP.
And, from there, the first waves of outsourcing and offshoring meant fewer non-Reagan Democrats in unions to protest, let alone pre-Reagan Republicans in middle management, when folks like Chainsaw Al Dunlap popped up.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the new corporations emerging out of this bazaar of buying and welling were in a new business: the fabrication of companies to trade back and forth.
It's all a game; that's from 245.
And, the game needed old rules broken, which itself became a new rule.
Employers all over the country think nothing of violating labor laws covering minimum wages, overtime pay, hours of work, and safety regulations — all the basics of civilized capitalism. Beating the system is the system. No one is watching.
Page 354
And, it goes without saying that this has become true of both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations.
Fraser notes, correctly:
After Ronald Reagan’s election, what remnants there were of New Deal populism and class consciousness were shuttered away in some attic of the Democratic Party. Legions of working people, whether unionized or like the thirty million or so unorganized working poor, could expect little help from that quarter.. They had been abandoned not only by government but by the political machinery their forbears had created to help them cope.
That quote is part of a section about the rise of neoliberalism after McGovern's defeat.
Fraser also reminds us that finance dereg, along with trucking (bad) and airlines (good and bad, IMO) started under Carter. Ditto for electric utilities.
He then notes that free market thinking pernicious not just in public policies but in exiling communal ways of thought.
As for Democrats becoming more and more associated with social liberalism and identity politics, Fraser notes this as part of the “Southernization” of both politics and of the American working class. This, too, intruded into the modern Democratic party with Carter.
A smiley face on top of this is neoliberalism, which Fraser calls the technocratic equivalent of Marxism. I could go even worse, but that’s a good start.
Specifically, Fraser says, on page 417:
Neoliberalism as a way of thinking about the world has been profoundly disempowering precisely because it conveys a techno-determinism about the way things are. It presents itself as a kind of Marxism of the ruling classes, suggesting that the telos of history and the relentless logic of economic science lead inevitably not where Marx thought they were heading, but rather to just where we are now.
In other words, an economically determined version of Fukuyama’s end of history.
March 1, 2015
The first book in a long time to actually scare me....mandatory reading.
March 15, 2015
I was hoping for more. Fraser does a workmanlike, if somewhat inflated, job of comparing the gilded age of the long 19th century and our current gilded age. The traditional gilded age of the long 19th century of course included a strong labor movement, strikes, small insurrections and flirtations with socialism. Our current gilded age is one of acquiescence. Fraser does a credible job of analyzing our current powerlessness and dehumanization, but I was hoping for more insight into precisely why we are so meekly accepting of our fates and why there are no modern day Teddy Roosevelts. On this front, the book is unsatisfying. While there is discussion of the Tea Party, there is no attempt to explain why its members would consistently vote against their own interests. Apparently this is beyond the scope of the book.
May 24, 2015
I picked up Age of Acquiescence because it was recommended as a companion work to Capital in the 21st Century. Age of Acquiescence is also certainly worth the long read although its focus is narrower. Its author, Steve Fraser, asks a basic and important question: Why isn’t there an American movement that rails against the economic disparity that we see in the 21st century? Why are we ‘acquiescing’ to the monied and the very powerful, to the inequalities that stem from capitalism as we practice it?
The answer to that question has much to do with the history of the United States. Fraser works to show the reader that during the first Gilded Age--the turn of the 19th to the 20th century (which Fraser extends a few decades into the 1920s and even the 1930s for some examples), ordinary, working class folks protested against the economic disparity inherent in capitalism, against the dreadful working conditions under which they slaved. (And yes, Fraser does make an argument that there is such a thing as ‘salaried slavery.’ ) These protests sometimes became violent riots. And things did change. By mid-century, there was the eight-hour working day, and the laboring classes lived much better lives under unions. Well, mostly. Fraser mentions that unions could be guardians of the old prejudice and although he doesn’t include much detail, many unions originally kept out people of color. This in itself is an interesting topic to pursue.
Many people felt that life was good in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Financially, they were better off than their parents and grandparents had been. But Fraser notes a downward trend in social mobility, a new Gilded Age of economic disparity and ostentatious wealth that began in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. The resulting decimation of the middle class in our current Gilded Age concluded in the economic meltdown of 2007-8. When people took stock of their ‘new normal’ in 2008 and saw that they would be less financially well-off/stable than their own parents had been, there wasn’t much fuss.
There was, of course, the Occupy Wall Street movement, but how long did that last? And what did it all mean? Fraser argues that the reason people could rail about their situation over a hundred years ago was because they were unused to capitalism as a system. They had been able to grow their own food, trade and barter their own goods, and manage to get along working fewer hours for big businesses or corporations. But now, we don’t know any other sort of life. We are certain that capitalism is the only economic system that our country can labor under. We have no genuinely creative ideas about how to change things, nor do we have the power to do so, when banks are ‘too big to fail.’ In addition, we are so used to excess that it no longer outrages us. We model our lives on the excesses of the rich, are guilty of satisfying our desires with borrowed money.
The one movement that Fraser sees rallying against the status quo is not on the left or progressive as it once was, but rather is on the right--the Tea Party. However, the Tea Party is railing against the government and not against an economic system or wealthy inequity.
Fraser hopes to stir us out of our stupor--to stop believing that ‘Greed is good,’ that top earning CEOs know better than anyone else in the universe what is good for all of us. How exactly this is to happen is less clear. Twenty-first century workers can look backward at numerous failed socialist experiments, so they are less inclined to see other economic systems as a panacea for our current state of woes--which include endless working hours (thank you modern technology!), diminished buying power, two family incomes as the norm, skyrocketing college costs and more.
High school housekeeping: The Age of Acquiescence is a good book for teens and young adults (college age) interested in economics. It’s a longish work--without the endnotes, it’s about 425 dense pages. You need to read at grade level or you won’t follow Fraser’s arguments. I think it is exactly the kind of book that the framers of the Common Core would like you to read. It is well worth your time--you’ll learn a lot about the history of the United States, including not only about labor protests and the formation of unions, but of robber barons and the current version of these men. You’ll be introduced to the various (failed) socialists experiments and utopian colonies of a century ago. Still, I think that most AP and honors students don’t have a lot of free time to read. That this is a shame goes without saying, but it’s also a fact. If you are interested in economics--maybe you are thinking of it as a college major--check out the book from the library and read the introduction. It’s about 10 pages and will give you a very good overview of the book, helping you decide whether you want to devote more time to it.
If you are truly interested in economics and specifically in the problems with capitalism as a system, you shouldn’t skip Capital in the 21st Century. It takes a longer view over much of the western world and shows that capital will always accrue at the top, to a few people. At times when this didn’t happen in the U.S., it was due to open frontiers (stealing land from American Indians was a way of ordinary people to get a start without paying the price, but of course, that’s no longer an option) and wars.
Both The Age of Acquiescence and Capital in the 21st Century are the work of liberal thinkers. While they are based on solid research, there exist economists that come to more conservative conclusions about capitalism and its benefits for the common man. One of these is Deirdre McClosky. I have a son who reads widely in economics and recommends McClosky’s point of view to balance Fraser and Picketty. However, her work is not only very long, but multi-volumed. With this in mind, I asked for the single volume that would be best for intelligent high school students considering economics as a field of study. He recommends Bourgeois Dignity. He also promises to write a guest review for me, so stay tuned.
NOTE: this review mirrors my review on my blog School Library Lady.
The answer to that question has much to do with the history of the United States. Fraser works to show the reader that during the first Gilded Age--the turn of the 19th to the 20th century (which Fraser extends a few decades into the 1920s and even the 1930s for some examples), ordinary, working class folks protested against the economic disparity inherent in capitalism, against the dreadful working conditions under which they slaved. (And yes, Fraser does make an argument that there is such a thing as ‘salaried slavery.’ ) These protests sometimes became violent riots. And things did change. By mid-century, there was the eight-hour working day, and the laboring classes lived much better lives under unions. Well, mostly. Fraser mentions that unions could be guardians of the old prejudice and although he doesn’t include much detail, many unions originally kept out people of color. This in itself is an interesting topic to pursue.
Many people felt that life was good in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Financially, they were better off than their parents and grandparents had been. But Fraser notes a downward trend in social mobility, a new Gilded Age of economic disparity and ostentatious wealth that began in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. The resulting decimation of the middle class in our current Gilded Age concluded in the economic meltdown of 2007-8. When people took stock of their ‘new normal’ in 2008 and saw that they would be less financially well-off/stable than their own parents had been, there wasn’t much fuss.
There was, of course, the Occupy Wall Street movement, but how long did that last? And what did it all mean? Fraser argues that the reason people could rail about their situation over a hundred years ago was because they were unused to capitalism as a system. They had been able to grow their own food, trade and barter their own goods, and manage to get along working fewer hours for big businesses or corporations. But now, we don’t know any other sort of life. We are certain that capitalism is the only economic system that our country can labor under. We have no genuinely creative ideas about how to change things, nor do we have the power to do so, when banks are ‘too big to fail.’ In addition, we are so used to excess that it no longer outrages us. We model our lives on the excesses of the rich, are guilty of satisfying our desires with borrowed money.
The one movement that Fraser sees rallying against the status quo is not on the left or progressive as it once was, but rather is on the right--the Tea Party. However, the Tea Party is railing against the government and not against an economic system or wealthy inequity.
Fraser hopes to stir us out of our stupor--to stop believing that ‘Greed is good,’ that top earning CEOs know better than anyone else in the universe what is good for all of us. How exactly this is to happen is less clear. Twenty-first century workers can look backward at numerous failed socialist experiments, so they are less inclined to see other economic systems as a panacea for our current state of woes--which include endless working hours (thank you modern technology!), diminished buying power, two family incomes as the norm, skyrocketing college costs and more.
High school housekeeping: The Age of Acquiescence is a good book for teens and young adults (college age) interested in economics. It’s a longish work--without the endnotes, it’s about 425 dense pages. You need to read at grade level or you won’t follow Fraser’s arguments. I think it is exactly the kind of book that the framers of the Common Core would like you to read. It is well worth your time--you’ll learn a lot about the history of the United States, including not only about labor protests and the formation of unions, but of robber barons and the current version of these men. You’ll be introduced to the various (failed) socialists experiments and utopian colonies of a century ago. Still, I think that most AP and honors students don’t have a lot of free time to read. That this is a shame goes without saying, but it’s also a fact. If you are interested in economics--maybe you are thinking of it as a college major--check out the book from the library and read the introduction. It’s about 10 pages and will give you a very good overview of the book, helping you decide whether you want to devote more time to it.
If you are truly interested in economics and specifically in the problems with capitalism as a system, you shouldn’t skip Capital in the 21st Century. It takes a longer view over much of the western world and shows that capital will always accrue at the top, to a few people. At times when this didn’t happen in the U.S., it was due to open frontiers (stealing land from American Indians was a way of ordinary people to get a start without paying the price, but of course, that’s no longer an option) and wars.
Both The Age of Acquiescence and Capital in the 21st Century are the work of liberal thinkers. While they are based on solid research, there exist economists that come to more conservative conclusions about capitalism and its benefits for the common man. One of these is Deirdre McClosky. I have a son who reads widely in economics and recommends McClosky’s point of view to balance Fraser and Picketty. However, her work is not only very long, but multi-volumed. With this in mind, I asked for the single volume that would be best for intelligent high school students considering economics as a field of study. He recommends Bourgeois Dignity. He also promises to write a guest review for me, so stay tuned.
NOTE: this review mirrors my review on my blog School Library Lady.
May 6, 2025
I love when you read a book and feel like you’re not smart enough to read all of it.
June 12, 2015
After hearing the author interviewed on National Public Radio I wanted to dislike this book. I came away feeling that this would be just another left-liberal attack on capitalism. I was wrong. In fact Fraser mostly won me over to his point of view. This book is an attack on capitalism, however the author's reasoning is much different from what is normally presented, and as such it deserves our attention.
What got me was a sense that the author has genuine, humane feelings about the circumstances of the working class in America, something that I do not see in many academics and journalists. Combining that with an extraordinary accounting of the history of labor struggles since the 19th century, he began to win me over. Even my frustration with the author’s confusion with regard to the difference between free markets and crony capitalism receded into the background as I took in his compelling case for ordinary folks as they face down the array of institutional forces aligned against their getting a fair deal. And that is quite a feat considering that I normally think of myself as a champion of free markets and think of myself as philosophically libertarian.
In the end Fraser's case against capitalism is a bit muddled and he is short on solutions, yet I believe that the wonderfully descriptive power of his writing will move others like myself to think hard about what a just society requires. I further hope that this book will motivate others to rise up against institutional power and special interests, and that it not be construed as a mandate to impose or expand state socialism. Clearly the enemy is crony capitalism and the fiat money banking system, to which the answer is more freedom not less.
Read this book. Get angry. And then get busy.
What got me was a sense that the author has genuine, humane feelings about the circumstances of the working class in America, something that I do not see in many academics and journalists. Combining that with an extraordinary accounting of the history of labor struggles since the 19th century, he began to win me over. Even my frustration with the author’s confusion with regard to the difference between free markets and crony capitalism receded into the background as I took in his compelling case for ordinary folks as they face down the array of institutional forces aligned against their getting a fair deal. And that is quite a feat considering that I normally think of myself as a champion of free markets and think of myself as philosophically libertarian.
In the end Fraser's case against capitalism is a bit muddled and he is short on solutions, yet I believe that the wonderfully descriptive power of his writing will move others like myself to think hard about what a just society requires. I further hope that this book will motivate others to rise up against institutional power and special interests, and that it not be construed as a mandate to impose or expand state socialism. Clearly the enemy is crony capitalism and the fiat money banking system, to which the answer is more freedom not less.
Read this book. Get angry. And then get busy.
April 13, 2015
"Freedom is the promissory note issued in return for willing assent."
"Primitive accumulation in America has again and again found justification in the psychic netherworld of racial phobia."
"'On the shoals of roast beef and apple pie socialistic utopias of every sort are sent to their doom'" - Werner Sombart
"What is therefore most pernicious about the recent ascendancy of free market thinking is perhaps not so much the triumph of its public policies. Rather, it is how its spirit of self-seeking has exiled forms of communal consciousness, rendered them foolish, naive, woolly-headed, or, on the contrary, sinful and seditious."
"How much sorrier it is when a culture is so coarsened that it looks at legions of casualties and without batting an eye dismisses them as 'losers.'"
"As of 2010, American women had fallen to forty-first place in the United Nations ranking of international life expectancy, from fourteenth in 1985. Among developed countries, American women now rank last."
"The United States now has the highest percentage of low-wage workers (earning less than two-thirds of the median wage) of any developed nation."
"Primitive accumulation in America has again and again found justification in the psychic netherworld of racial phobia."
"'On the shoals of roast beef and apple pie socialistic utopias of every sort are sent to their doom'" - Werner Sombart
"What is therefore most pernicious about the recent ascendancy of free market thinking is perhaps not so much the triumph of its public policies. Rather, it is how its spirit of self-seeking has exiled forms of communal consciousness, rendered them foolish, naive, woolly-headed, or, on the contrary, sinful and seditious."
"How much sorrier it is when a culture is so coarsened that it looks at legions of casualties and without batting an eye dismisses them as 'losers.'"
"As of 2010, American women had fallen to forty-first place in the United Nations ranking of international life expectancy, from fourteenth in 1985. Among developed countries, American women now rank last."
"The United States now has the highest percentage of low-wage workers (earning less than two-thirds of the median wage) of any developed nation."
May 19, 2019
I don't think I can recommend this book. It was a struggle to get through. It's not the content (although that is depressing, it's not fundamentally different from the other books I choose to read), and Fraser definitely knows his material. It's the style. One reviewer called it "dense"--it is, but being dense isn't inherently bad. It's (as another reviewer put it) "overwritten." I actually like academic writing, but not when it's this turgid. This book would probably work for you if you have a background in economics and enjoy getting barraged by unnecessarily elevated vocabulary like perfervid, dirigisme, and suzerain (not to mention a surfeit of ne plus ultras and other Latin cutesies). At the least, I learned more about economics (everyone loves "disaccumulation of capital" on a Saturday night!) and learned some new words. But I'm not sure there's much here you couldn't get in a less painful way from other critics of neoliberalism like Zinn, Chomsky, or Chris Hedges. Oh, bonus: My son loves the graphic of the Gilded-Age captain of industry on the cover. Whoever did that, props to you. The way the word "acquiescence" stretches across the impossibly wide buttocks? Stellar.
May 12, 2016
read to 100 pages and quit. this shit is dense. and I'm not afraid of density, but Fraser writes with no variation in tone or style; every single sentence is formed like the one before it and the one after it and it's just unrelenting and, honestly, not as interesting as I wanted it to be. He prefers sweeping statements (like "This affected the carriage makers, the taverns, the farmland both great and small" -- I paraphrase, I don't have the book nearby). After few dozen broad strokes I started to wonder wtf he was getting this precise information. Yanno?
The constant jump back-and-forth between timeframes wearied me too. It's the early 20th century! No, it's the mid 19th! No, it's the 17th! I get it, you're drawing parallels, but it also breaks up the narrative structure, which, let's face it, was pretty lightweight to start.
Two stars. A good effort, and good things even in the little that I read. I just can't get through the damn thing. And I'm not alone in that.
The constant jump back-and-forth between timeframes wearied me too. It's the early 20th century! No, it's the mid 19th! No, it's the 17th! I get it, you're drawing parallels, but it also breaks up the narrative structure, which, let's face it, was pretty lightweight to start.
Two stars. A good effort, and good things even in the little that I read. I just can't get through the damn thing. And I'm not alone in that.
April 1, 2017
This book covers the erosion of the role of a franchised citizen to that of a consumer. This dance has been going on at least since the beginning of the 20th Century. It's not a new phenomenon, but seems to get looked over in times of trouble (scarcity), because everyone is scrambling to get what they can, and times when economic prosperity brings an abundance of products - so why rock the boat?
It starts out by grounding the narrative in a walk through the history of acquiescence which highlights the other problematic duality of "Capital' and "Labor." The real value comes in an overall assessment of how things stand in Chapter 8.
That feeds into the other duality of "Haves" and "Have Not's" that is heightened in the 21st century as politicians state we need to move from a consumer-based economy to an owner-based. But not everybody can be owners. How can that be a valid working model for supporting society, rights, freedoms, and having a voice in how a country is governed?
It starts out by grounding the narrative in a walk through the history of acquiescence which highlights the other problematic duality of "Capital' and "Labor." The real value comes in an overall assessment of how things stand in Chapter 8.
That feeds into the other duality of "Haves" and "Have Not's" that is heightened in the 21st century as politicians state we need to move from a consumer-based economy to an owner-based. But not everybody can be owners. How can that be a valid working model for supporting society, rights, freedoms, and having a voice in how a country is governed?
March 10, 2015
A densely written informational book about the relationship between the working class and the wealthy capitalist that for the most part control their economic fate. This covers the period from the end of the Civil War to the present. The principal thesis as indicated in the title is that historically workers used strikes, violence and other means to voice their displeasure. Now, starting in the Reagan years people are working longer hours with less pay and benefits and are taking it without a whimper. Fraser gives several valid reasons for the total domestication of the American worker most streaming from a mythology workers have taken hook, line and sinker from business interest and politicians. He does wander a little of topic from time to time.
October 19, 2018
I had assumed the central thesis of this book was 'Why is the resistance to wealth in 1900 absent in 2015?'. But this question is only addressed in the last 2 chapters. The rest is a competent history of the organized labor movement 1890-1920 that implies that it was the speed of dramatic societal shocks from the industrial revolution that contributed to labor movement more than just pure injustice/inequality that united the lower classes; The gilded age of 2015 has just been slow frog boiling for too long coming for people to have directly experienced any other way. This is just my understanding reading between the lines. And just like the 1890-1920's, the lower class has been divided by racial tension to distract them from the creeping plutocracy...
December 17, 2015
Why aren’t the majority of U.S. citizens rising up against their gradual (or not so gradual) impoverishment under the current economic system? That’s the question Steve Fraser sets out to answer in his book from earlier this year, “The Age of Acquiescence.”
It might look like an ill-timed question, given the surprising mass support for the Presidential campaign of self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders later in the year. But the impoverishment has been going on nearly fifty years now—why did it take so long to get even this much of a response?
It is especially puzzling when compared to the continual public revolts of the analogous period of “the long nineteenth century,” spanning from the early 1800s into the 1930s. That was the time when what Marx called “primitive capital accumulation” took place here—early capitalists wringing wealth out of everyone else to amass it in larger and larger business organizations.
The history of that earlier period has been well documented, but I fear it has largely faded from the public imagination. We are taught that capitalist corporations grew at the expense of family farmers, self-employed artisans and small business owners because of the production efficiencies of the division of labor and new technologies, but that is a very incomplete picture.
For one thing, it ignores how capitalists colluded with the government to derive wealth from the public assets. Mining, lumber and railroad companies received a lot more free or cheap land than homesteaders did—especially the railroads, which used their growing financial power to extract wealth from farmers trying to bring their products to market. For another thing, that picture is blind to how the early capitalists wrung wealth from human labor, first via slavery and indentured servitude, then by forcing desperate former farmers and artisans to work punishingly long hours for near-starvation wages.
People did not accept their dispossession lightly. There were cooperatives, mass strikes, opposition political parties, unions and other forms of organized resistance all throughout those difficult times. Any victories were hard won, and finally culminated in the New Deal’s political structures for protecting the public and taming the capitalist system.
Fraser started out wanting to retell that story, and in the first half of the book he does exactly that, and in a wonderfully lively and illuminating manner. The story was familiar to me, yet I found myself learning new things and gaining new perspectives as well as being enthralled with the vividness of his writing.
But, as he reveals in his Acknowledgements at the end of the book, he began to puzzle over the similarities and differences between that era and the one we are currently living through. For again the citizens are being dispossessed by a capitalist class, only this time without the public benefit of building more productive enterprises. Rather, wealth is now being amassed by stripping the nation of its productive capacities and reducing half the population into a debtor class. Yet the social and political responses, at least until very recently, have been relatively tame and ineffective. What gives?
Answering that question is the burden of the second half of this long but rewardingly insightful book. It is not a simple answer, but in teasing out the various aspects of it Fraser brings the situation into much clearer focus. He doesn’t present the story in a linear history, but a sketch of it would run as follows:
By the 1970s competition from abroad was squeezing the profits of U.S. corporations, so they began evading regulations, taxes and unions via the threat and reality of moving production from state to state and then out of country. By the Reagan years big business felt strong enough to stage a political counterattack on New Deal liberalism. When the partial dismantling of the New Deal wasn’t sufficient to protect profits, a new capitalist class turned from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism: the creation of new debt instruments; speculation in money, stocks, and real estate; buying, stripping down and reselling companies; and so forth.
The end result has been deindustrialization, stagnant wages, a reduced standard of living for the many and burgeoning wealth for the few—the oft-noted massive economic inequality of the present moment. Fraser first defends his contention that the masses have been (relatively) acquiescent in the unfolding of their undoing, and then deftly discusses some key reasons, among them:
• The myth that the financial entrepreneurs were purging the economy of inefficiencies
• A culture of self-identity through consumption versus your role in production
• The “fable” that free-agent workers are liberated rather than exploited
• The mutual abandonment of labor unions and the Democratic Party
• The targeting of “limousine liberals”—an alleged aloof class of alien values—as the enemy
Intertwined with all of these is Fraser’s primary explanation, which is that it is harder for us now to imagine a different world than the one we are presented with. In the “long 19th century” people still had the memory of a previous way of working and living, but not anymore. All we know now is the world we are living in, a world in which the marriage of government and Wall Street seems an inevitable feature of postindustrial capitalist society.
I am not sure this is completely true, as many of us in the gradually disappearing older generations still remember life under the New Deal dispensation from the 1940s through the 1960s. As Fraser himself notes, the dismantling of that arrangement has been vigorously contested in the political arena, although since the culture wars of the 1960s the Democratic Party has been hobbled in these fights by internal fractures. Perhaps Senator Sanders will revive the New Deal or even push beyond it into the terrain of democratic socialism, or perhaps not. But the historical experience of a different life is still there.
Whether that old flask will hold the new wine of 21st century global capitalism is questionable. Fraser has his doubts and so do I, but for a different reason. Technology is replacing labor at an escalating pace; what is New Deal liberalism or democratic socialism without an industrial labor force? (This is not pessimism, as I do think new visions of an alternative future may be emerging. For example, see my review of “The Zero Marginal Cost Society.”)
I recommend Fraser’s book as a thoughtful and thought-provoking exposition of where we’ve been, where we are, and how we got here. It was also a darn good read, although near the end there are a couple signs of flagging editorial attention. (The phrase “cri de coeur” is overused and a quote by Louise Day Hicks shows up twice.) It is also, in the end, inspirational—a needed reminder that people have risen up against oppressive social structures in the in the past, and thus are likely to do so again.
It might look like an ill-timed question, given the surprising mass support for the Presidential campaign of self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders later in the year. But the impoverishment has been going on nearly fifty years now—why did it take so long to get even this much of a response?
It is especially puzzling when compared to the continual public revolts of the analogous period of “the long nineteenth century,” spanning from the early 1800s into the 1930s. That was the time when what Marx called “primitive capital accumulation” took place here—early capitalists wringing wealth out of everyone else to amass it in larger and larger business organizations.
The history of that earlier period has been well documented, but I fear it has largely faded from the public imagination. We are taught that capitalist corporations grew at the expense of family farmers, self-employed artisans and small business owners because of the production efficiencies of the division of labor and new technologies, but that is a very incomplete picture.
For one thing, it ignores how capitalists colluded with the government to derive wealth from the public assets. Mining, lumber and railroad companies received a lot more free or cheap land than homesteaders did—especially the railroads, which used their growing financial power to extract wealth from farmers trying to bring their products to market. For another thing, that picture is blind to how the early capitalists wrung wealth from human labor, first via slavery and indentured servitude, then by forcing desperate former farmers and artisans to work punishingly long hours for near-starvation wages.
People did not accept their dispossession lightly. There were cooperatives, mass strikes, opposition political parties, unions and other forms of organized resistance all throughout those difficult times. Any victories were hard won, and finally culminated in the New Deal’s political structures for protecting the public and taming the capitalist system.
Fraser started out wanting to retell that story, and in the first half of the book he does exactly that, and in a wonderfully lively and illuminating manner. The story was familiar to me, yet I found myself learning new things and gaining new perspectives as well as being enthralled with the vividness of his writing.
But, as he reveals in his Acknowledgements at the end of the book, he began to puzzle over the similarities and differences between that era and the one we are currently living through. For again the citizens are being dispossessed by a capitalist class, only this time without the public benefit of building more productive enterprises. Rather, wealth is now being amassed by stripping the nation of its productive capacities and reducing half the population into a debtor class. Yet the social and political responses, at least until very recently, have been relatively tame and ineffective. What gives?
Answering that question is the burden of the second half of this long but rewardingly insightful book. It is not a simple answer, but in teasing out the various aspects of it Fraser brings the situation into much clearer focus. He doesn’t present the story in a linear history, but a sketch of it would run as follows:
By the 1970s competition from abroad was squeezing the profits of U.S. corporations, so they began evading regulations, taxes and unions via the threat and reality of moving production from state to state and then out of country. By the Reagan years big business felt strong enough to stage a political counterattack on New Deal liberalism. When the partial dismantling of the New Deal wasn’t sufficient to protect profits, a new capitalist class turned from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism: the creation of new debt instruments; speculation in money, stocks, and real estate; buying, stripping down and reselling companies; and so forth.
The end result has been deindustrialization, stagnant wages, a reduced standard of living for the many and burgeoning wealth for the few—the oft-noted massive economic inequality of the present moment. Fraser first defends his contention that the masses have been (relatively) acquiescent in the unfolding of their undoing, and then deftly discusses some key reasons, among them:
• The myth that the financial entrepreneurs were purging the economy of inefficiencies
• A culture of self-identity through consumption versus your role in production
• The “fable” that free-agent workers are liberated rather than exploited
• The mutual abandonment of labor unions and the Democratic Party
• The targeting of “limousine liberals”—an alleged aloof class of alien values—as the enemy
Intertwined with all of these is Fraser’s primary explanation, which is that it is harder for us now to imagine a different world than the one we are presented with. In the “long 19th century” people still had the memory of a previous way of working and living, but not anymore. All we know now is the world we are living in, a world in which the marriage of government and Wall Street seems an inevitable feature of postindustrial capitalist society.
I am not sure this is completely true, as many of us in the gradually disappearing older generations still remember life under the New Deal dispensation from the 1940s through the 1960s. As Fraser himself notes, the dismantling of that arrangement has been vigorously contested in the political arena, although since the culture wars of the 1960s the Democratic Party has been hobbled in these fights by internal fractures. Perhaps Senator Sanders will revive the New Deal or even push beyond it into the terrain of democratic socialism, or perhaps not. But the historical experience of a different life is still there.
Whether that old flask will hold the new wine of 21st century global capitalism is questionable. Fraser has his doubts and so do I, but for a different reason. Technology is replacing labor at an escalating pace; what is New Deal liberalism or democratic socialism without an industrial labor force? (This is not pessimism, as I do think new visions of an alternative future may be emerging. For example, see my review of “The Zero Marginal Cost Society.”)
I recommend Fraser’s book as a thoughtful and thought-provoking exposition of where we’ve been, where we are, and how we got here. It was also a darn good read, although near the end there are a couple signs of flagging editorial attention. (The phrase “cri de coeur” is overused and a quote by Louise Day Hicks shows up twice.) It is also, in the end, inspirational—a needed reminder that people have risen up against oppressive social structures in the in the past, and thus are likely to do so again.
July 22, 2020
Very little said with a whole lot of words. Industrialism was evil, but then deindustrialism is evil too. I really just don't get what the thesis is. People aren't organizing against wealth/power? Even in 2015 this book wouldn't have made sense, but in 2020 it's utter nonsense. Wish I had DNF'd this, kept holding out for some relevancy or overarching purpose but it never appeared.
October 6, 2019
So incredibly insightful and informative. A great history of the US economy, the US's relationship with labor, and the political ties to both. Highly recommend!
April 26, 2015
The first half of this book is a tour de force, a biting, outraged history of the rise of industrial capitalism in the US and the multitudes of organized resistance to that power that created an unceasing tension in the American landscape for more than 5 decades straight.
The second half is necessarily bleaker. Fraser appears to have succumbed to some of the fatalism he diagnoses in contemporary America's non-response to the unending corrosion of the working class and the wholesale destruction of the American economy. While I wish that Fraser had spent more time elucidating possible scenarios for breaking this acquiescence and I'd have welcomed even the most pie-in-the-sky imaginings of what a post-capitalist America might look like, that does not appear to be Fraser's project. This is a book of criticism. Praxis falls on us.
It's not a perfect argument, certainly, and Fraser has a habit of eliding facts, arguments, or whole historical currents when they don't suit his narrative. FOr example, he alludes often to the ways in which racism and traditional gender roles are essential tools in the fight against working class solidarity, but he spends next to no time looking at the way that those causes can and have been merged. His repeated reminder that even FDR, bastion of the system. warned against the "money changers in the temple" manages to ignore the rather obvious anti-semitism of FDR's rhetoric. And when he moves beyond the "long 19th century" and into the post-war years, his observations about the systematic destruction of the apparatus of resistance and the fascistic purging of the revolutionary vocabulary are sharp and incisive, but they also manage to completely ignore the ugly fact of Stalinist Russia, which must at least be addressed in any account of anti-capitalist resistance.
Still, the good outweighs the bad by a long shot, and one lesson of the book shines through bright and clear: our acquiescence is the result of a fatal failure of imagination. This many generations into global capitalism, we no can no longer even conceive of alternative ways of life, even though those ways of life dominated only a few generations ago.
The second half is necessarily bleaker. Fraser appears to have succumbed to some of the fatalism he diagnoses in contemporary America's non-response to the unending corrosion of the working class and the wholesale destruction of the American economy. While I wish that Fraser had spent more time elucidating possible scenarios for breaking this acquiescence and I'd have welcomed even the most pie-in-the-sky imaginings of what a post-capitalist America might look like, that does not appear to be Fraser's project. This is a book of criticism. Praxis falls on us.
It's not a perfect argument, certainly, and Fraser has a habit of eliding facts, arguments, or whole historical currents when they don't suit his narrative. FOr example, he alludes often to the ways in which racism and traditional gender roles are essential tools in the fight against working class solidarity, but he spends next to no time looking at the way that those causes can and have been merged. His repeated reminder that even FDR, bastion of the system. warned against the "money changers in the temple" manages to ignore the rather obvious anti-semitism of FDR's rhetoric. And when he moves beyond the "long 19th century" and into the post-war years, his observations about the systematic destruction of the apparatus of resistance and the fascistic purging of the revolutionary vocabulary are sharp and incisive, but they also manage to completely ignore the ugly fact of Stalinist Russia, which must at least be addressed in any account of anti-capitalist resistance.
Still, the good outweighs the bad by a long shot, and one lesson of the book shines through bright and clear: our acquiescence is the result of a fatal failure of imagination. This many generations into global capitalism, we no can no longer even conceive of alternative ways of life, even though those ways of life dominated only a few generations ago.
December 23, 2015
After reading this provocative, engaging, well researched book I can't decide whether to crawl in my bomb shelter and give up or start raging against the Acquiescence. Being an old boomer who was proactive in the 60's my inclination is to rage. My parents and their siblings, products of the "Great Depression", are dead. This book reiterated their situation, their trials. I remember their stories, their thrift. I also happen to live in an area that was/is the embodiment of the First Gilded Age. Pasadena CA. Home to railroad baron, Henry Huntington's massive estate and art collection. The wealthy folks who "wintered" in Pasadena. I have seen many labor unions collapse over the last couple of decades. Folks now have to cobble together a couple of jobs to make ends meet, or not. A number of large corporations and cities now use contract labor. (All the mess of benefits are no longer a worry.) Actual newspapers will disappear in a very short time. Few folks read anymore, or converse, or really give a shit. Scary times indeed. This book is a must read for those of you folks that still retain that ability! Can't give it enough stars. I shall give using my "voice" a go and see where it leads me.
I am reading this book again as it is so relevant. Great book. Worth the second read. Still Five Stars.
I am reading this book again as it is so relevant. Great book. Worth the second read. Still Five Stars.
August 5, 2015
I wanted this book to be great because I've been looking for an examination of the late 19th century culture of pro-labor protests and why we don't see the same kind of ground-level activism today (aside from the short-lived Occupy Wall Street).
Fraser does a credible job covering the history around the first Gilded Age, although at times he seems to take for granted a certain level of knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech is counted as one of the pivotal moments in what Fraser calls the long 19th century, but the author didn't provide a clear explanation of what this particular debate was really about. Still, I learned a lot from this half of the book and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an overview of this period of American history. Let's give it a grade of B.
The second half of the book covers the second Gilded Age from the Reagan years up to today. It's a mess and just disappointing, consisting of unorganized and seemingly endless grievances. If there's a central thesis about why there isn't a coherent backlash against the second Gilded Age, I couldn't find it. Sadly, this half of the book gets a D.
Fraser does a credible job covering the history around the first Gilded Age, although at times he seems to take for granted a certain level of knowledge on the part of the reader. For example, William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech is counted as one of the pivotal moments in what Fraser calls the long 19th century, but the author didn't provide a clear explanation of what this particular debate was really about. Still, I learned a lot from this half of the book and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an overview of this period of American history. Let's give it a grade of B.
The second half of the book covers the second Gilded Age from the Reagan years up to today. It's a mess and just disappointing, consisting of unorganized and seemingly endless grievances. If there's a central thesis about why there isn't a coherent backlash against the second Gilded Age, I couldn't find it. Sadly, this half of the book gets a D.
April 30, 2015
This is an unforgettably caustic read by a great despiser. Not to be missed.
"The ubiquity of market thinking has transformed combative political instincts into commercial or personalized ones or both. Environmental despoiling arouses righteous eating; cultural decay inspires charter schools; rebellion against work becomes work as a form of rebellion; old-form anti-clericalism morphs into the piety of the secular; the break with convention ends up as the politics of style; the cri de coeur against alienation surrenders to the triumph of the solitary; the marriage of political and cultural radicalism ends in divorce. Like a deadly plague irony spreads everywhere...What lends this thinking and behavior such tensile strength is its subterranean connection to the sense of personal liberation."
"The ubiquity of market thinking has transformed combative political instincts into commercial or personalized ones or both. Environmental despoiling arouses righteous eating; cultural decay inspires charter schools; rebellion against work becomes work as a form of rebellion; old-form anti-clericalism morphs into the piety of the secular; the break with convention ends up as the politics of style; the cri de coeur against alienation surrenders to the triumph of the solitary; the marriage of political and cultural radicalism ends in divorce. Like a deadly plague irony spreads everywhere...What lends this thinking and behavior such tensile strength is its subterranean connection to the sense of personal liberation."
July 31, 2015
What a depressing book. I'm glad I read it, because it has helped me understand just how it is that people really think that cutting taxes for the rich will benefit everyone, even though it is well demonstrated by this point that it does no such thing. It has helped me understand dozens of more aspects of just how American society has surrendered to the power of wealth, all the while trumpeting freedom. That's not to say that I understand all this shit, because I don't. There's just so much complexity. But every little bit helps. I found this book to be a difficult read, mostly because of the sheer amount of information, and as I've said before, history is not my forte. The author also writes in a very literary style, which means I had to look up a fair number of words. That's actually a good thing. I wish more people would read this and really get it. But I don't think it will happen.
April 24, 2017
In two parts - one on social/economic justice action during the Gilded Age, the other on the relative lack of such action, or even much focused public resentment of economic inequality in today's 'second Gilded Age' - Fraser outlines a number of patterns of thought, public policy, economic development, and public discourse that help explain the American public's acceptance and even celebration of the supremacy of the 1%. This was a slog at times. It could have used a good edit, both for length and for the author's occasionally rather florid prose. But I did take away several useful frames through which to view this issue. Wait for the Cliffs Notes.
October 25, 2015
How similar is the current U.S. economic situation with that of a century ago? You know, the Gilded Age, with its great disparity between rich and poor, the rise and ultimate fall of the stock market, the resulting home foreclosures, unemployment, business failures. It's a fascinating question, but if you're looking for a clear and succinct answer, it's not here. Sometimes the prose used in this book seems almost intentionally meant to obfuscate the points it is trying to make. It's not an easy read, but it does bring up some thought provoking facts.
October 20, 2015
This book sets out to answer a very interesting question: why did the Gilded Age produce a vigorous and often violent pushback from the populace while today's age of increasing inequality has only generated a few whimpers like the Occupy movement? The author has a lot of fascinating insights into this question, and I enjoyed reading about the differences and similarities between the two times. But the writing was a little overdone for me. It was an exhausting read at times.
October 13, 2016
A great read on where we came from and how it is we ended up as powerless and impoverished as we are increasingly becoming. Should be the standard American history text for all U.S. high school curriculums.
February 7, 2018
Sad account of how this resistance has shriveled and (all but) died in the USA. The New Gilded Age is in full swing, the owners of the government and practically all property and wealth, have unchallenged power over everyone else.
February 7, 2019
Didn't feel like it really taught me anything I didn't already know. Also jumped all over the place like a lot of books on contemporary political/social issues.
November 20, 2022
3.5 stars, leaning towards 4.
Steve Fraser contrasts the resistance put up by ordinary Americans during the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras with what he calls acquiescence in the neoliberal era. Effectively, as primitive accumulation displaced a society of artisans, yeoman farmers, and self-sufficient families, people turned to movements like populism, Georgism, and early labor unions such as the Knights of Labor. Like E.P. Thompson, George Orwell, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Christopher Lasch, Fraser highlights how these protest movements were rooted not only in financial anxiety but in the seeming demise of a way of life "disappearing into all the reservoirs of capital accumulation." (91). Like Lasch, he underlines how "attachments to immemorial traditions and ancient creeds ... were conjoined to creative methods of reconfiguring the future." (98) These movements showed up in actions such as mass strikes, which Fraser notes had the goal of fundamentally overturning an unequal order, not just of obtaining a raise here or there.
Fraser also explains how some captains of industry in turn harbored their own utopian visions of tamping down class conflict or living like European aristocrats. Beyond this, they employed force to crush strikes and linked homegrown anti-capitalism to foreign forces. Out of this back and forth (which could be better explained through the 1910s and 1920s) emerged the New Deal, which Fraser describes as a "civilized capitalism" (190) whose success pacified formerly rebellious groups and foreclosed more radical alternatives. Indeed, this was FDR's goal in many ways, as he sensed discontent brewing amidst the Great Depression. By addressing some of the worst abuses, the New Deal stole the show. (197)
Fraser skips ahead to the 1970s and 1980s at this point, explaining in the second part of the book how a few fables sustain a backdrop of acquiescence today. He should have spent more time explaining the 1950s and 1960s, but the argument proceeds. According to Fraser, these myths let us "perform a kind of mental cosmetic surgery on the ugliness of dispossession and decline, inequality and exploitation, refiguring them as good or virtuous or fated." (219) In the meantime, he argues that the economy has auto-cannibalized, leaving many Americans worse off. Jobs were shipped overseas and social mobility declined, yet people just seemed to accept the current order. This does mesh with the thesis in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, which I really ought to read.
Fraser's first myth is the notion of businessmen as populist crusaders upsetting the established players; this notion was aided by the democratization of finance and the idea of meritocracy. (282-85) For him, this canonizes business leaders in ways less likely to encourage resistance. Next, Fraser argues that mass consumerism eroded solidarity and turned Americans inward. (303) This is almost a conservative-sounding point, as it rests on the liquidation of "the anchorage of tradition ... the imagined and vivid intricacies of kinship." (315) This was easily one of my favorite chapters. Fraser next moves on to another of his myths, that of flexible capitalism, which he claims is actually a cover for precarity and new systems of control. (339) The gig economy does seem to support his claim, as does the rapid rise of technological surveillance.
Fraser then examines the demise of organized labor, although this doesn't fit cleanly into the myths discussed in this section. It felt important but not employed in the most effective way for his broader argument.
Fraser does see vestiges of the protest culture of old but misdirected through the Tea Party (and probably Trump too had this been written months later). For Fraser, this developed from the Limousine Liberal argument that made its way from Henry Ford to Charles Coughlin to George Wallace, an argument based on some collaboration between the elite and the downtrodden. Fraser rightfully rejects right-wing populism's punches downward. But he understands why people turn towards this revanchist populism, which for him upholds a false utopian ideal of capitalism. In the end, this too reflects acquiescence in often trying to get the government out of the way without addressing abuses in the business sphere. For Fraser, this seemingly comes from the mythology of neoliberalism.
Bernie's 2016 bid took off just *after* this book came out, so it makes sense that Fraser's final chapter addresses the right. I do wonder what he has to say about the somewhat ascendant left-wing, considering that Fraser writes from the left--well to my left in fact. Nevertheless, I see value in his contrasting Gilded Age resistance with modern acquiescence. There are some worthwhile insights along the way, although Fraser often gets sidetracked like an overly-passionate wild-haired college professor. He could have been more methodical in his organization, but it was an enjoyable read anyway and an adventure.
Steve Fraser contrasts the resistance put up by ordinary Americans during the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras with what he calls acquiescence in the neoliberal era. Effectively, as primitive accumulation displaced a society of artisans, yeoman farmers, and self-sufficient families, people turned to movements like populism, Georgism, and early labor unions such as the Knights of Labor. Like E.P. Thompson, George Orwell, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Christopher Lasch, Fraser highlights how these protest movements were rooted not only in financial anxiety but in the seeming demise of a way of life "disappearing into all the reservoirs of capital accumulation." (91). Like Lasch, he underlines how "attachments to immemorial traditions and ancient creeds ... were conjoined to creative methods of reconfiguring the future." (98) These movements showed up in actions such as mass strikes, which Fraser notes had the goal of fundamentally overturning an unequal order, not just of obtaining a raise here or there.
Fraser also explains how some captains of industry in turn harbored their own utopian visions of tamping down class conflict or living like European aristocrats. Beyond this, they employed force to crush strikes and linked homegrown anti-capitalism to foreign forces. Out of this back and forth (which could be better explained through the 1910s and 1920s) emerged the New Deal, which Fraser describes as a "civilized capitalism" (190) whose success pacified formerly rebellious groups and foreclosed more radical alternatives. Indeed, this was FDR's goal in many ways, as he sensed discontent brewing amidst the Great Depression. By addressing some of the worst abuses, the New Deal stole the show. (197)
Fraser skips ahead to the 1970s and 1980s at this point, explaining in the second part of the book how a few fables sustain a backdrop of acquiescence today. He should have spent more time explaining the 1950s and 1960s, but the argument proceeds. According to Fraser, these myths let us "perform a kind of mental cosmetic surgery on the ugliness of dispossession and decline, inequality and exploitation, refiguring them as good or virtuous or fated." (219) In the meantime, he argues that the economy has auto-cannibalized, leaving many Americans worse off. Jobs were shipped overseas and social mobility declined, yet people just seemed to accept the current order. This does mesh with the thesis in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, which I really ought to read.
Fraser's first myth is the notion of businessmen as populist crusaders upsetting the established players; this notion was aided by the democratization of finance and the idea of meritocracy. (282-85) For him, this canonizes business leaders in ways less likely to encourage resistance. Next, Fraser argues that mass consumerism eroded solidarity and turned Americans inward. (303) This is almost a conservative-sounding point, as it rests on the liquidation of "the anchorage of tradition ... the imagined and vivid intricacies of kinship." (315) This was easily one of my favorite chapters. Fraser next moves on to another of his myths, that of flexible capitalism, which he claims is actually a cover for precarity and new systems of control. (339) The gig economy does seem to support his claim, as does the rapid rise of technological surveillance.
Fraser then examines the demise of organized labor, although this doesn't fit cleanly into the myths discussed in this section. It felt important but not employed in the most effective way for his broader argument.
Fraser does see vestiges of the protest culture of old but misdirected through the Tea Party (and probably Trump too had this been written months later). For Fraser, this developed from the Limousine Liberal argument that made its way from Henry Ford to Charles Coughlin to George Wallace, an argument based on some collaboration between the elite and the downtrodden. Fraser rightfully rejects right-wing populism's punches downward. But he understands why people turn towards this revanchist populism, which for him upholds a false utopian ideal of capitalism. In the end, this too reflects acquiescence in often trying to get the government out of the way without addressing abuses in the business sphere. For Fraser, this seemingly comes from the mythology of neoliberalism.
Bernie's 2016 bid took off just *after* this book came out, so it makes sense that Fraser's final chapter addresses the right. I do wonder what he has to say about the somewhat ascendant left-wing, considering that Fraser writes from the left--well to my left in fact. Nevertheless, I see value in his contrasting Gilded Age resistance with modern acquiescence. There are some worthwhile insights along the way, although Fraser often gets sidetracked like an overly-passionate wild-haired college professor. He could have been more methodical in his organization, but it was an enjoyable read anyway and an adventure.
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