Running Steel, Running America : Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism

Description

The history of modern liberalism has been hotly debated incontemporary politics and the academy. Here, Judith Stein usesthe steel industry-long considered fundamental to the U.S. economy-to examine liberal policies and priorities after WorldWar II. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, she argues that it was the primacy of foreign commitments and theoutdated economic policies of the state, more than the nation'sracial conflicts, that transformed American liberalism from thepowerful progressivism of the New Deal to the feeble policies ofthe 1990s. Stein skillfully integrates a number of narratives usuallytreated in isolation-labor, civil rights, politics, business, and foreign policy-while underscoring the state's focus on thesteel industry and its workers. By showing how those whointervened in the industry treated such economic issues as freetrade and the globalization of steel production in isolation fromthe social issues of the day-most notably civil rights and theimplementation of affirmative action-Stein advances a largerargument about postwar liberalism. Liberal attempts to addresssocial inequalities without reference to the fundamental andchanging workings of the economy, she says, have led to thefoundering of the New Deal state. Running Steel Running America Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Chapter One: The Politics of Steel Fundamentalism: The Long 1950s Chapter Two: Birmingham Before and After King: Racial Change in Steel Chapter Three: The Strange Career of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Segregation of Racial and Economic Policies Chapter Four: Title VII in the Mills, Agencies, and Courts: Theories and Practices Chapter Five: Tales of Lackawanna and Sparrows Point: Implementing the Kerner Commission Report Chapter Six: Litigation Is Everything: The Nixon Years Chapter Seven: The Limits of Fair Employment: The Consent Decrees and the Economic Crisis of the 1970s Chapte Eight: U.S. Foreign and Domestic Policies in Steel: The Creation of Conflict, 1945–1974 Chapter Nine: The Locomotive Loses Power: Jimmy Carter’s Industrial and Trade Policies Chapter Ten: An Industrial Policy for Steel? The Decline of the Democratic Party Chapter Eleven: Steel Is Not So Fundamental: The Reagan Reconstruction and Contemporary America Conclusion: Steel and the History of Postwar America Notes Index