On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

The American Dream meant social mobility. Rather than promising more land forever, it offered a sense of unpredictable but possible social advancement on the present territory of the United States. Mobility was no longer about families settling down on land but about new generations creating new kinds of lives. In this conception, the permeable borders were those of social classes. In the American Dream, society was fluid, subject to achievement by individuals over the course of a single life. Unlike historical estates, such as the peasantry or the nobility, the middle class was defined not by ancestry or vocation but by life. Entering the middle class was not only about individual Americans achieving a certain level of prosperity but about the general possibility that everyone could live unpredictably and end up somewhere new. Children would not be stuck in the estate or profession of their elders, as in previous centuries, nor caught in a race or class mobilization, as in the Nazi or Soviet regimes. Although sometimes presented as the natural result of capitalism, the American Dream depended on social policies developed after the capitalist collapse of the Great Depression. It lasted until its origins were forgotten and capitalism itself was enthroned as the lone source of freedom. That happened in the 1980s. During that decade, the west European and American responses to the postimperial age diverged (though Britain was more like the United States, and Canada was more l...