Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class. London and New York: Verso, 1986. xx + 320 pp. - Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Trade Unionism. London and New York: Verso, 1988. xxi + 346 pp.

1989 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 112-119
Author(s):  
Nelson Lichtenstein
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mike Davis ◽  
The U.S ◽  
American Trade

The Not-So-Strange Birth of the Modern American State: A Comment on James A. Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America”

2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Novak
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

James Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America” takes up one of the most interesting and important interpretive questions in the history of American political economy. What explains the dramatic transformation in liberal ideology and governance between 1877 and 1937 that carried the United States from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism? That question has preoccupied legions of historians, political-economists, and legal scholars (as well as politicians and ideologues) at least since Hughes himself opened the October 1935 Term of the U.S. Supreme Court in a brand new building and amid a rising chorus of constitutional criticism. Henretta, wisely in my opinion, looks to law, particularly public law, for new insights into that great transformation. But, of course, the challenge in using legal history to answer such a question is the enormous increase in the actual policy output of courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies in this period. Trying to synthesize the complex changes in “law-in-action” in the fiercely contested forums of turn-of-the-century America sometimes seems the historical-sociological equivalent of attempting to empty the sea with a slotted spoon. Like any good social scientist, Henretta responds to the impossibility of surveying the whole by taking a sample. Through a case-study of the ideas, political reforms, and legal opinions of Charles Evans Hughes, particularly as governor of New York and associate and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Henretta offers us in microcosm the story of the revolution (or rather several revolutions) in modern American governance.

scholarly journals Nation Dreaming: A Consideration of the American Dream in Poland, the U.S., and among Polish Americans

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Sandra L. Hanson ◽  
John K. White
Keyword(s):  
American Dream ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Status Mobility ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The U.S

This paper examines the cooperation and influences between Poland and the U.S on their respective dreams, including the influence of the American Dream on Polish Americans and their potential distinctness from those who remain in Poland. Attitudes involving the American Dream that are examined include beliefs about freedom, liberty, democracy, getting ahead, status/mobility, and inequality. Although scholars have compared these belief systems across countries, there has been no distinct focus on Poland and the U.S., and those who immigrate between these countries. A conceptual framework that combines the American Dream, American exceptionalism, and beliefs about inequality guides the research. Data from the General Social Survey and the World Values Survey are used to answer the research questions. Findings show that Polish Americans agree with other Americans on a majority of items measuring elements of the American Dream. However, Americans and Poles have significantly different opinions on each of the American Dream items. Usually, (but not always) it is Americans who are more supportive of the American Dream. When considering the three groups, Polish Americans, Americans, and Poles, our conclusions suggest a trend where Polish Americans are a hybrid of other Americans and Poles when it comes to their views on the Dream. However, the differences often run in the direction that Polish Americans’ views are more like other Americans and distinct from Poles. Conclusions and implications are provided within the historical context of the long history of cooperation between the U.S. and Poland in fights for freedom and democracy.

Freedom as Accumulation

Black Market ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 17-48
Author(s):  
Aaron Carico
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Court Case ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Supreme Court Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Systems Analysis ◽  
Southern Country ◽  
The U.S

This chapter reassembles the immediate and concrete history of abolition after 1865, from the counter of the Southern country store to the international trade in cotton, as it sorts out the mechanisms of law and arrangements of political economy that chaperoned the tremendous value incarnated in slaves across the gulf of the Civil War. It explains how citizenship for the formerly enslaved was tethered to the racialization of debt and how the legal relations of formal abolition were actually economic relations of credit. This chapter analyzes the legal history of the Fourteenth Amendment and the interlocking forms of theft it enabled, from Southern sharecropping to New York corporations, from the Freedman’s Bank to the U.S. national debt, showing how liberalism is enmeshed with colonialism. Through a landmark Supreme Court case in 1897, this chapter describes how the personhood of the freed enabled the white accumulation of finance capital through global cotton markets, engaging with the theories of Giovanni Arrighi and world-systems analysis.

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