BOOKS
481
Nor does any novelty or special cogency in the interpretative scheme
seem to justify the book. The bulk is written in terms of class·struggle
postulates. Indeed, the point of view is close to a mechanistic economic
determinism. So far as the general interpretation goes, in spite of minor
and sometimes clarifying changes there doesn't seem to be much advance
over the Beards, whose influence is apparent.
But it is the last chapter, "Was American Capitalism a Success?" an
eight and a half page projection beyond the closing of the story in 1900,
that is most astounding. The very question which titles the chapter is
ridiculous in terms of Hacker's own method. Success for whom and for
what? Nevertheless, Hacker finds that "In the light of the analysis I have
pursued through these pages, it seems to me that to raise the question is to
answer it." Yes, yes, a thousand times yes: "that capitalism was a success."
Following industrial capitalism, says the last chapter, comes finance·
capitalism. Then, in the 1930's, "the New Deal launched on its way state
capitalism in the United States." The aims of New Deal state capitalism
are: "To halt large-scale business and banking failure, to prevent agricul–
tural bankruptcy, to take in the slack created by the decline of foreign
markets, and to alleviate human distress, protect small-property ownership,
create work, and guarantee social security to unemployables." This quota·
tion is not from the Democratic National Committee, but from the afore–
said last chapter. And wonderful days are ahead for New Deal state capi·
talism. "The idea of egalitarianism" is woven "into the warp and woof of
our tradition." ". . . the tradition of the Enlightenment, cite American
Revolution, Jeffersonianism, Old Radical Republicanism, Populism. This
is the American tradition: and I firmly believe it will make us economi–
~ally
secure and keep us politically free."
Such twaddle from one who aims to write scientific history is absurd
enough from any point of view. But in Hacker's new book, which spends
424 pages giving an economic, class-struggle interpretation of United
States history, proving that this "tradition" he suddenly appeals to never
made serious headway against the development of major economic forces,
it
is bewildering. Every social and political struggle and program that
arose before 1900 he immediately reduces to the specific economic inter·
ests of specific classes. History, evidently, changed spots when Roosevelt
took it over. The nation, after 150 years of exploitation, fraud, enrichment
of the few and impoverishment of the many (see Hacker,
op. cit.)
becomes
one happy family under Roosevelt's fatherly eye.
Hacker has a right to conclude a history book at 1900. But he has no
right to present a theory and method of historical analysis whose applica·
tion stops at 1900. The last chapter raises doubts about the seriousness of
the entire work. Or, perhaps-particularly when we recall the surely
ambiguous title,
The Triumph of American Capitalism-it
shows a new
kind of seriousness, one not so distant as it first seemed from Lewis Mum–
ford, Archibald MacLeish, Dorothy Thompson, Waldo Frank and all the
university presidents.
]AMES BURNHAM
