Prisoners of the American Dream : Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class

A brilliant and comprehensive study of class struggle in the United States Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis’s brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world’s most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronald Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States. This comprehensive study of class struggle in America asks: Why has there never been a mass working class party in the U.S.? “One of the most uncompromising books about American political economy ever written—brilliant, provocative, and exhaustively researched.” —Village Voice Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis's brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world's most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronald Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States. Mike Davis’s brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world’s most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronald Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States. A brilliant and comprehensive study of class struggle in the United States Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Foreword Part One: Labor and American Politics 1. Why the American Working Class is Different 2. The Barren Marriage of American Labor and the Democratic Party 3. The Fall of the House of Labor Part Two: The Age of Reagan 4. The New Rightâ€TMs Road to Power 5. The Political Economy of Late Imperial America 6. Reaganomicsâ€TM Magical Mystery Tour 7. The Lesser Evil? The Left, the Democrats and 1984 Epilogue: Inventing the American Left Acknowledgements Notes Index