Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State

by Alan Dawley

In this new interpretation of the making of modern America, prize-winning historian Alan Dawley traces the group struggles involved in the nation’s rise to power. Probing the dynamics of social change, he explores tensions between industrial workers and corporate capitalists, Victorian moralists and New Women, native Protestants and Catholic immigrants. Thoughtful analysis and sparkling narrative combine to make this book a major challenge to earlier interpretations of the period.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, United States

558 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1991

Reviews

[Matthew Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a highly provocative and compelling read, while still being surprising even-handed. The author provides a combined social and political narrative to approach the history of the United States from 1890-1938. He frames it as the struggle of the liberal state to maintain legitimacy and consent in the face of its own contradictions and injustices. He raised important facts that made me reconsider certain political figures and social programs. For example, when I got to the section about the compromises in the second New Deal, I learned that Social Security is a compulsory insurance program based on a regressive payroll tax designed to leave corporate spoils untouched while borrowing from current wage-earners to give to the future unemployed. Even the name of the program is "social security" rather than social equality or social justice, which shows that the goal of the administration was to co-opt progressives and socialists into the liberal state to prevent socialist revolution. I found this to be outrageous. I also discovered events I had never known about, such as the deportation of 249 people to the Russia on The Buford between the first and second Palmer Raids based on their anarchist political beliefs, the expulsion of 5 duly elected socialists from the New York State legislature simply because they were socialists, and the fact that railroad tycoon Chauncey Depew gave a speech against anarchists and for "the rule of law" at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. The whole book made my blood even Redder, but it's balanced enough to provide perspective for readers of all political stripes.

[Tyler Malone · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the 1940s, Struggle For Justice pulls too many punches regarding socialism, but follows through with too many jabs at fascism. By that time in our history, tyranny had found ways to flourish on both sides on the political spectrum, but this book refuses to fully acknowledge that fact.