Inequalities and the Progressive Era. Breakthroughs and Legacies Guillaume Vallet
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Inequalities and the Progressive Era. Breakthroughs and Legacies, by Guillaume Vallet (ed.), Published by Edward Elgar (advertised publication date 26 June 2020, hardcover) https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788972642/9781788972642.xml?rskey=7FnEFB&result=1
The American Progressive Era (1890-1920) is a key period in the history of American capitalism. Indeed, this period takes place in the context of the post-civil war and prolongs the ‘Gilded Age’, which corresponds to the industrial ‘take-off’ of the United States. The American Progressive Era was characterized by deep ambivalence, between economic and social progress on the one hand, and growing inequalities of different natures on the other. Concretely, this is a period dominated by monopolies, the development of financial capitalism, but also by the first concrete economic and social advances (market regulation, social laws, etc.). Likewise, the idea of progress aimed at developing the emancipation of individuals to build the American nation and democracy is coupled with a still marked segregation with regard to women or the black population. In the name of the collective progress of American society, sexism, racism and eugenics in particular are not always clearly condemned.
Consequently, in this particular context, several reformist thoughts emerge, notably by academics in the social sciences. The latter, trained for the most part in Germany with economists from the German Historical School (Knies, Conrad, Schmoller, Wagner in particular), offered to return to the United States with innovative ideas to promote the progress of American society. Academics like R.T. Ely and A. Small, for example, seek to use a multidisciplinary approach to define and implement new types of economic and social policies, especially involving state intervention. In other words, they consider that the construction of ‘reasonable’ capitalism is possible, ‘reasonable’ meaning for them the possibility of a third way between liberal capitalism and communism. Their intention is to succeed in fighting and mastering the inequalities resulting from the functioning of capitalism, in particular those which have their roots in the concentration of capital or in the dysfunctions of labor organizations.
But it is also important to understand that this Progressive Era fits itself into a particular phase of capitalism, marked by the second industrial revolution in many countries of the 'old continent', but also by the development of imperialism, colonialism and exacerbated nationalism. Consequently, other countries in the world are undergoing profound economic and social transformations which give birth to innovative thoughts, but also sometimes conservative on the issue of inequalities of various natures: economic, social, political, gender, ethnic. In this sense, the idea of an “American exceptionalism” sometimes put forward deserves to be questioned in the light of the economic and intellectual contexts of other countries.
Relying both on a multidisciplinary and multi-geographical basis (with authors from all parts of the world, thereby giving the book an international flavor), this book seeks to question and to characterize the broad concept of inequalities, such as but not limited to: inequalities of rights, inequalities of opportunity, inequalities in conditions, inequalities in situations, income and wealth inequalities, inequalities of race and gender. Similarly, the diversity of contributors makes it possible to show why the Progressive Era is a key period for addressing the treatment of inequalities, in the relevant fields in societies undergoing major changes: among others, inequalities between capital and labor, inequalities between men and women, urban / rural inequalities.
On the whole, beyond the peculiarity of each chapter, the book deals with crucial issues such as the relations between equality, liberty and justice. Likewise, the concept of individual and collective well-being is challenged in the different chapters of the book, tackling the issue of the philosophical meaning of the common good in the capitalism. For those reasons, the content of the book still rings true in today’s capitalism characterized by the sharp rise in equalities.
On the whole, this dual prism of analysis allows us to nourish contemporary debates regarding the treatment of inequalities, since capitalism and current societies are "between two eras", as in the time of the ‘Progressive Era’.