11/10/2014
Nowadays Americans just say yes to inequality and exploitation, argues this spirited history of anticapitalist sentiment in the United States. Historian Fraser (Every Man a Speculator) starts with an absorbing, vigorous account of class politics during the late 19th-century Gilded Age, a time of mass strikes, revolutionary agitation, utopian socialist yearnings and fierce denunciations of robber barons among workers, and violent repression and apocalyptic alarm among elites. He then contrasts that era with the post-Reagan “second Gilded Age,” when ordinary people have seen incomes erode, work hours lengthen, economic security dwindle, and corporations run riot, yet have uttered, he argues, hardly a peep of protest. Less focused than his remembrance of 19th-century resistance, Fraser’s take on modern acquiescence scolds capitalist ideologies and cultural tropes—the businessman as populist hero, consumerism as freedom itself—for imparting false consciousness. Many of his analyses, like his diagnosis of right-wing populism as a rebellion of “family capitalism,” are incisive, but he ignores important prosaic factors, like the disastrous record of 20th-century socialist economies, in the waning of utopian left-wing enthusiasm. Still, this is an excellent, very readable recreation of an authentically American form of working-class militancy and its eclipse. (Feb.)
The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
Narrated by Pete Larkin
Steve FraserUnabridged — 16 hours, 30 minutes
The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
Narrated by Pete Larkin
Steve FraserUnabridged — 16 hours, 30 minutes
Overview
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.
Editorial Reviews
"Fascinating."—NaomiKlein, New York Times BookReview (Editor's Choice)
"Fraser longs for the passion and force with which Americans of earlier generations attacked aggregated power."
—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
"Provocative....A perceptive reading of the current zeitgeist."—MichaelKazin, Slate
"Fraser offers a sweeping, forcefully argued comparison between, on the one hand, the economy, ideology, and politics of the first Gilded Age and, on the other, the contemporary political scene."—Kim Phillips-Fein, Atlantic
"Fraser is our preeminent historian of America as a capitalist civilization. No one is more attuned to the inner vibrations of our monied culture...[he writes] a prose of sinuous beauty."—Corey Robin, Salon
"Fraser is particularly passionate and penetrating in his analysis of our present state of submission and surrender."—JonWiener, Los Angeles Times
★ 01/01/2015
In this comparative history, Fraser (Every Man a Speculator; Labor Will Rule) contrasts the Gilded Age with post-Great Recession America and wonders why there hasn't been more protest against growing wealth disparity. The author explains how 19th-century industrialization caused immense social disruption. Resulting worker backlash, he writes, brought about the legislation and contractual agreements that both curbed capitalism's excesses and created prosperity for most Americans by the 1950s. Fraser takes a dystopian view of the last few decades when he says the export of jobs and investment eviscerated American industry, collapsed cities, shortened life expectancy, and created downward social mobility. He ascribes the general acceptance of the current economic order to factors including the media, consumer culture, job competition, an erosion of worker rights, declining unions, and the fragmentation of the working class. VERDICT Fraser's work shines as an angry but cogent denouncement of America's growing wealth disparity. It is highly recommended to all readers as a complement to Thomas Piketty's study of wealth inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. [See Prepub Alert, 8/11/14.]—Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
2014-12-07
Working men and women died for the eight-hour workday, and the thanks they get is the silence of lambs. It wasn't long ago, writes labor historian Fraser (Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life, 2005, etc.), that "the labor question" was a matter of incendiary discussion. The 19th century saw countless efforts, for instance, to create a balance of industrial and agricultural enterprise, many of them based on a post-Jeffersonian notion of empowered freeholders and independent producers. The market economy that emerged instead was likely to beget inequality and poverty, before "the antiseptic, mathematical language of risk assessment and probability analysis made that seem overly sentimental." Taking his narrative through the Jeffersonian era and the first Gilded Age to the present, Fraser charts a steady diminution of workers' rights and the value of labor. He can be a little heavy-handed, especially when pillorying Ronald Reagan: "the Great Communicator's reign…unleashed torrents of mercenary greed." Some readers may find this off-putting, but others, used to a diet of Chris Hedges, may well find it exhilarating instead. Fraser's careful analysis of the rise of the "rentier society" of that time helps make up for rhetorical excess, and especially useful is his look at how the anti-usury laws of old gave way to a time of financial deregulation, which allowed for an all-out assault on the wallets of those who lived on credit. And surely Fraser is right when he notes the damaging effects of false consciousness, as when even the labor movement insists on being seen as representing the middle class "in a studied aversion to using a social category—the working class—that fits it well but is now so stigmatized that it is better left buried." A welcome though overly broad-brushed excoriation of the age of the ascendant 1 percent.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170147458 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Audio |
| Publication date: | 02/17/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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