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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Commercial Republic: America's Enduring Debate over Democratic Capitalism

Commercial Republic: America's Enduring Debate over Democratic Capitalism

O'Connor, Mike

Hardcover

Series: American Political Thought

General Political ScienceGeneral United States History

ISBN10: 0700619712
ISBN13: 9780700619719
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: May 28 2014
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.30
Height: 1.20 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
As recently as 2008, when Presidents Bush and Obama acted to bail out the nation's crashing banks and failing auto companies, the perennial objection erupted anew: government has no business in . . . business. Mike O'Connor argues in this book that those who cite history to decry government economic intervention are invoking a tradition that simply does not exist. In a cogent and timely take on this ongoing and increasingly contentious debate, O'Connor uses deftly drawn historical analyses of major political and economic developments to puncture the abiding myth that business once operated apart from government. From its founding to the present day, our commercial republic has always mixed--and battled over the proper balance of--politics and economics.

Contesting the claim that the modern-day libertarian conception of U.S. political economy represents the natural American economic philosophy, O'Connor demonstrates that this perspective has served historically as only one among many. Beginning with the early national debate over the economic plans proposed by Alexander Hamilton, continuing through the legal construction of the corporation in the Gilded Age and the New Deal commitment to full employment, and concluding with contemporary concerns over lowering taxes, this book demonstrates how the debate over government intervention in the economy has illuminated the possibilities and limits of American democratic capitalism.

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