Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940

by James Livingston, Alan Trachtenberg (Foreword by)

Overview

The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he argues, in the fundamental reconstruction of selfhood, or subjectivity, that attends the advent of an 'age of surplus' under corporate auspices. From this standpoint, consumer culture represents a transition to a society in which identities as well as incomes are not necessarily derived from the possession of productive labor or property. From the same standpoint, pragmatism and literary naturalism become ways of accommodating the new forms of solidarity and subjectivity enabled by the emergence of corporate capitalism. So conceived, they become ways of articulating alternatives to modern, possessive individualism. Livingston argues accordingly that the flight from pragmatism led by Lewis Mumford was an attempt to refurbish a romantic version of modern, possessive individualism. This attempt still shapes our reading of pragmatism, Livingston claims, and will continue to do so until we understand that William James was not merely a well-meaning middleman between Charles Peirce and John Dewey and that James's pragmatism was both a working model of postmodern subjectivity and a novel critique of capitalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807863039
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/09/2000
Series:	Cultural Studies of the United States
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	424
Lexile:	1590L (what's this?)
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

James Livingston, professor of history at Rutgers University, is author of Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This is a remarkably compelling example of cross-disciplinary work. An expert in social and economic history, Livingston has reached deeply into the resources of literary and cultural theory to produce a new narrative and analytic frame for understanding the world we live in. This book will greatly reward all serious scholars and students of American culture.—Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh



Few books are as ambitious as James Livingston's study of the cultural revolution that, he persuasively demonstrates, took place in the United States . . . between 1890 and 1920. Livingston engages with boundless energy and intelligence technicalities of economic development, the nation's literary traditions, thorny philosophical questions, and finally debates about the most effective way to conduct cultural analysis.—Nineteenth-Century Prose



Provocative, polemical, scolding, prophetic, Livingston's book proposes a brilliant new interpretation of the origins and character of modernity in the United States. . . . An integrated work of criticism and history, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution raises a host of issues in the process of teaching its lessons, not least of which is its own example of cultural studies as history with an eye on the future.—Alan Trachtenberg, from the Foreword



This book ranks among those of first importance in the interpretation of modern American intellectual history, and because it is especially rich in relating intellectual history to economic, social, and cultural history, it is of similar importance in the interpretation of modern American civilization more broadly.—Martin J. Sklar, Bucknell University



James Livingston's new book brilliantly reanimates the vocabulary of American pragmatism and brings into new alignment America's greatest contribution in philosophy with our economic and social history.—Richard Poirier, Rutgers, The State University



With this book, James Livingston joins the very select company of Americanists who have successfully initiated a dialogue between economic and cultural history. He rethinks the transition from proprietary to corporate capitalism, and from producer to consumer society. . . . This is a dazzling, innovative interpretation—admirable in its sweep and fascinating in its details and local insights. Livingston writes memorably across a wide range of disciplines, and he does so without ever sacrificing complexity. A remarkable achievement.—Michael T. Gilmore, Brandeis University

Editorial Reviews

At the core of the book is an argument that takes a historical commonplace--which holds that between 1850 and 1940 the US underwent a revolutionary change from proprietary to corporate capitalism--and transvalues the lament this change evokes among intellectuals. The author asserts that this transition enlarged rather than diminished the realm of human freedom and that corporate capitalism actually entails the social death of the older capitalist order by shrinking the realm of necessity in personal life. He is no apologist for corporate capitalism, however, arguing that it gives birth to possibilities that will be its undoing. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

[Livingston's] discussions, often lengthy and learned, of marginalist economic theory, James's use of the term 'cash-value,' Lewis Mumford's misguided romanticism, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, and the New Woman are, quite simply, brilliant.—American Historical Review



[A] provocative juxtaposition of economic and intellectual history.—Journal of American History



Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution is an achievement of considerable sophistication and virtuosity. It is in some ways a pathbreaking cultural study, filled with boldly original arguments and provocative reinterpretations of familiar material.—Indiana Magazine of History

From the Publisher