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The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order
From the end of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth, the United States experienced unprecedented structural change. Advances in communication and manufacturing technology brought about a revolution for major industries such as railroads, coal, and steel. The still-growing nation established economic, political, and cultural entanglements with forces overseas. Local strikes in manufacturing, urban transit, and construction placed labor issues front and center in political campaigns, legislative corridors, church pulpits, and newspapers of the era.
The Long Gilded Age considers the interlocking roles of politics, labor, and internationalism in the ideologies and institutions that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. Presenting a new twist on central themes of American labor and working-class history, Leon Fink examines how the American conceptualization of free labor played out in iconic industrial strikes, and how "freedom" in the workplace became overwhelmingly tilted toward individual property rights at the expense of larger community standards. He investigates the legal and intellectual centers of progressive thought, situating American policy actions within an international context. In particular, he traces the development of American socialism, which appealed to a young generation by virtue of its very un-American roots and influences.
The Long Gilded Age offers both a transnational and comparative look at a formative era in American political development, placing this tumultuous period within a worldwide confrontation between the capitalist marketplace and social transformation.
The Long Gilded Age considers the interlocking roles of politics, labor, and internationalism in the ideologies and institutions that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. Presenting a new twist on central themes of American labor and working-class history, Leon Fink examines how the American conceptualization of free labor played out in iconic industrial strikes, and how "freedom" in the workplace became overwhelmingly tilted toward individual property rights at the expense of larger community standards. He investigates the legal and intellectual centers of progressive thought, situating American policy actions within an international context. In particular, he traces the development of American socialism, which appealed to a young generation by virtue of its very un-American roots and influences.
The Long Gilded Age offers both a transnational and comparative look at a formative era in American political development, placing this tumultuous period within a worldwide confrontation between the capitalist marketplace and social transformation.
- GenresHistoryAmerican History
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 2, 2017
I started this before Trump's election and it seemed like a smart new synthesis of the old Gilded Age, with a focus various progressive, socialist, Christian, intellectual, and transatlantic threads that proposed alternate paths to the acquisitive individualism that gave rise to high handed corporate capitalism. Yes, Fink was giving us a useable past, reminding us of those alternate visions, those threads of resistance, those flawed but brave thinkers and doers. Progress still seemed possible. Now the book, or my old self, seem naively optimistic. The robbers barons are on top once again and they now own the airwaves, redefined morality, and undermined the universities. As for organized labor, it's not just flat on its back but about to be flayed–again. If there is an answer here, I missed it.
September 25, 2022
In this book Leon Fink breaks down the barrier between the periods typically called the
Gilded Age and the Progressive Era to present a continuous period of heightened labor-capital
conflict as new technologies and new trusts drove rapid industrial and urban expansion around
the turn of the twentieth century. The Long Gilded Age attempts to contextualize the American
labor movement as only one set of outcomes within a self-consciously international labor
movement playing out across the U.S., Europe, and the British dominions, and move beyond the
implicit assumptions of atomized and isolated national labor traditions present in most
exceptionalist histories of American labor in this period. In examining why this set of American
outcomes were distinct the author focuses not only on material conditions, but also the role of
culture and law, and how they shape the structures in which people operated and the kinds of
choices they made.
Most significantly, free labor ideology, coming out of abolitionism and to a lesser extent
Western expansion, provided the U.S. legal system with strong frameworks disadvantaging the
U.S. labor movement and made many workers skeptical of collective rights frameworks and of
operating in tandem with the state, such as mandatory arbitration arrangements which became
prominent in other countries during this era. Other countries had a stronger “corporate idiom” to
discuss collective rights mediated through the government, but the emancipatory origins of “free
labor” ideas and strong linkages to American ideas of individualistic rights gave these ideas
immense staying power even in the face of rising labor activism, morphing into ideas like the
“right to work” for strikebreakers.
Examining major strikes around the turn of the twentieth century and the eventual
opposition of much of the American labor movement to formal arbitration arrangements between
workers and business, the strategic decisions of labor leaders come to center stage.
Contemporary labor movements in other countries (particularly the U.K., Australia, and New
Zealand) are used as examples of the roads not taken by American labor, sometimes on grounds
as broad as whether unions ought to operate through state structures, and sometimes on grounds
as narrow as which kind of rail shipments the Pullman railroad strike should have targeted for
disruption.
Lastly, ideas from abroad shaped the course of the American movement. Socialist ideas
with a romantic foreign appeal drew a young generation of Americans into support for new
political movements and created a basis for community identity, even if the U.S. never
developed a durable labor party. Meanwhile, the modern university system, imported from
Germany, created the infrastructure for a new generation of professionalized social scientists and
policy experts whose work denaturalized conservative assumptions about the market, free will,
and the place of the state, and opened doors to a wave of social and economic reform policies,
Conservative pressure from the universities eventually limited the radicalism which these new
experts were free to express, giving them a limited window to pursue transformational ideas,
many of which would not reach fruition until the New Deal.
Gilded Age and the Progressive Era to present a continuous period of heightened labor-capital
conflict as new technologies and new trusts drove rapid industrial and urban expansion around
the turn of the twentieth century. The Long Gilded Age attempts to contextualize the American
labor movement as only one set of outcomes within a self-consciously international labor
movement playing out across the U.S., Europe, and the British dominions, and move beyond the
implicit assumptions of atomized and isolated national labor traditions present in most
exceptionalist histories of American labor in this period. In examining why this set of American
outcomes were distinct the author focuses not only on material conditions, but also the role of
culture and law, and how they shape the structures in which people operated and the kinds of
choices they made.
Most significantly, free labor ideology, coming out of abolitionism and to a lesser extent
Western expansion, provided the U.S. legal system with strong frameworks disadvantaging the
U.S. labor movement and made many workers skeptical of collective rights frameworks and of
operating in tandem with the state, such as mandatory arbitration arrangements which became
prominent in other countries during this era. Other countries had a stronger “corporate idiom” to
discuss collective rights mediated through the government, but the emancipatory origins of “free
labor” ideas and strong linkages to American ideas of individualistic rights gave these ideas
immense staying power even in the face of rising labor activism, morphing into ideas like the
“right to work” for strikebreakers.
Examining major strikes around the turn of the twentieth century and the eventual
opposition of much of the American labor movement to formal arbitration arrangements between
workers and business, the strategic decisions of labor leaders come to center stage.
Contemporary labor movements in other countries (particularly the U.K., Australia, and New
Zealand) are used as examples of the roads not taken by American labor, sometimes on grounds
as broad as whether unions ought to operate through state structures, and sometimes on grounds
as narrow as which kind of rail shipments the Pullman railroad strike should have targeted for
disruption.
Lastly, ideas from abroad shaped the course of the American movement. Socialist ideas
with a romantic foreign appeal drew a young generation of Americans into support for new
political movements and created a basis for community identity, even if the U.S. never
developed a durable labor party. Meanwhile, the modern university system, imported from
Germany, created the infrastructure for a new generation of professionalized social scientists and
policy experts whose work denaturalized conservative assumptions about the market, free will,
and the place of the state, and opened doors to a wave of social and economic reform policies,
Conservative pressure from the universities eventually limited the radicalism which these new
experts were free to express, giving them a limited window to pursue transformational ideas,
many of which would not reach fruition until the New Deal.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews