The age of acquiescence : the life and death of American resistance to organized wealth and power / Steve Fraser.

"A groundbreaking investigation of how and why, from the 18th century to the present day, American resistance to our ruling elites has vanished. From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? THE AGE OF ACQUIESCENCE seeks to solve that mystery. Steve Fraser's account of national transformation brilliantly examines the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts to protect the democratic commonwealth, and the great surrender to today's delusional fables of freedom and the politics of fear. Effervescent and razorsharp, THE AGE OF ACQUIESCENCE will be one of the most provocative and talked-about books of the year"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-452) and index.

pt. I: Class warfare in America: the long nineteenth century : Progress ; Progress, poverty, and primitive accumulation ; Premonitions ; The second civil war: in the countryside ; The second civil war: on the industrial frontier ; Myth and history ; The end of socialism -- pt. II: Desire and fear in the second Gilded Age : Back to the future: the political economy of auto-cannibalism ; Fables of acquiescence: the businessman as populist hero ; Fables of freedom: Brand X ; Wages of freedom: the fable of the free agent ; Journey to nowhere: the eclipse of the labor movement ; Improbable rebels: the folklore of limousine liberalism ; Conclusion: Exit by the rear doors.