Reviews for The reconstruction of American liberalism, 1865-1914

The average rating for The reconstruction of American liberalism, 1865-1914 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-01 00:00:00 Lorne Tippit An enjoyable and intelligent summary of gilded age American liberal thought, focusing on questions of political economy. Essentially, Cohen sees American intellectuals meeting the challenges of left-wing pressure from freedmen, immigrants, indebted farmers, labor unions, etc by passing through laissez-faire to the anti-democratic administrative state, which would reduce mass input on policy and enervate social conflict through corporatist bargaining. Makes sense. Cohen by and large restricts her account to what these intellectuals said, but I would have preferred more context on whether any particular writer or movement had read the landscape appropriately, and the plausibility of the various solutions offered for, say, labor strife. To expand: Cohen has a distinct view, and sees the anti-democratic elitism of these liberal thinkers as foreclosing the possibility of producerist Jeffersonian-Jacksonian reform. Maybe so, but it would be helpful to think through a little what such reform would look like (the socialists trained in the German historical school who provide the only alternative discussed here don’t inspire a great deal of confidence). Or what about the railroads? Certainly they were to some degree a government project (through land grants etc) but to what extent did they need to be? Was there anything there besides rent-seeking? Ultimately there are broader question of bureaucracy and democracy involved (how to appropriately balance them) which I haven’t worked out satisfactorily in my own mind.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-10-14 00:00:00 Jeffrey Meals .