The Age of American Capitalism

Ages of American Capitalism:A History of the United States

In this book, Jonathan Levy divides the development of American capitalism from the time when British colonists settled in North America in the 17th century to the Great Depression in the 21st century into four eras: commerce, capital, control, and chaos, presenting a panoramic view of the evolution of the American economy.
In the commercial age, economic output and growth relied primarily on slave labor and were constrained by the natural environment, leading to a natural flow of investment into land and slaves. After the Civil War, slave capital was politically dismantled, ushering in the era of capital with the emergence of industrial capitalism. During this era of capital, massive industrial investment led to unprecedented increases in productivity, but speculative boom-bust credit cycles also recurred, leading to dramatic economic fluctuations that ultimately precipitated the Great Depression. To address this crisis, the government actively intervened, attempting to mitigate capitalism's instability, and even ended the Great Depression during World War II by investing in the military-industrial complex. However, the Cold War, opposition to state regulation, and economic crises also dominated this era. After 1980, with the deregulation of government, an era of chaos ensued, with capital abandoning physical structures and becoming more financialized, intangible, and leveraged. The unregulated financial sector expanded rapidly, but inequality also increased significantly, precipitating the Great Crash and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, American capitalism once again finds itself at a crossroads.
In addition to demographic trends, trade patterns, growth rates, energy systems, investment preferences, and productivity indicators, the author also looks at Thomas Jefferson's contempt for the British, Thoreau's moral critique of business and Herman Melville's response, labor violence movements, the persistence of white supremacy, 20th-century shopping malls, second-wave feminist critiques of marriage, the unbridled nature of much stock market speculation, Reagan's optimism about the market, and Obama's love-hate relationship with bankers.

2024-09-30

北京日报出版社

Ideal Country

118

9787547748350