Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History

Conventional stories about American history, its origins and unfolding, do not feature capitalism. Other tales about the country’s history usually take priority. If capitalism figures at all, it is to foreground opportunity, entrepreneurial vigour, material abundance, and the seven-league boots of manifest destiny. Conflict may rear its unseemly face-but only episodically, as a kind of alien or aberrant detour off the main road of America’s exceptional career in world history. Instances of serious social discord, when they draw notice, are transcended-a course correction that allows the utopian project to resume.

In this collection of essays, Steve Fraser corrects the record, rewriting the arc of the American saga with capitalism and class conflict centre-stage and mounting a serious challenge to the consoling fantasy of American exceptionalism. Working through the central concepts of political economics-unemployment and risk, unfree labour and household debt-he demonstrates that class is a deeply structuring feature of American political life, and an invaluable heuristic for reading American politics in the longue duree.