The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale.

1970 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 935
Author(s):  
Harvey E. Goldberg ◽  
Richard Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Horatio Alger

The Boudoir Tales of Horatio Alger, Jr.

1976 ◽  
Vol X (1) ◽  
pp. 215-226
Author(s):  
Gary F. Scharnhorst
Keyword(s):  
Horatio Alger

Stockholm Noir: Neoliberalism and Gangsterism in Easy Money

2015 ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Michael Tapper
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Social Success ◽  
German Sociologist ◽  
Horatio Alger ◽  
Common Lands ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

The gangster story is a warped Horatio Alger tale. Carl Freedman notes that it connects to the mystery of the origins of capitalism in what Karl Marx called ‘primitive accumulation’, the consciously repressed history about how common lands and natural resources were privatised and how companies, backed up by national armed forces, plundered non-European continents of their riches. The greedy and ruthless gangster’s rise to social success is but a small-scale reflection of the genocides and the violent redistribution of wealth that gave birth to modern-day capitalism. Gangsterism is also the ultimate expression of what the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies called Gesellschaft. While his other key concept Gemeinschaft describes the ‘natural’ personal relations and values often found in rural communities, Gesellschaft stands for the ‘constructed’ impersonal relations through business and formal interaction that characterise life in the urban capitalist era. As national identity became a central issue in twentieth-century Europe – Fascism being the most extreme ideological project – gangsters and other social, legal and moral transgressors were often defined in popular culture as an alien intrusion of an otherwise idyllic Gemeinschaft.

American Entrepreneurs and the Horatio Alger Myth

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Sarachek
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American Business ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Horatio Alger ◽  
General Business

Since 1925 a number of scholars have conducted studies of the general business elite in America. Their studies have concluded that the American business elite has been predominantly native born, urban, better educated than the general population, and has originated disproportionately from higher economic classes. These conclusions are not surprising. It might have been surprising if the business elite were found to have emerged predominantly from the poor and less educated, and the immigrant, farm or working-class populations. Such origins would infer a rapid displacement of elite members, the possibility of rapid and massive disaggregation of family fortunes, and the loss of family aggrandizement as a motivating consideration in the minds of aspiring businessmen. This, however, was apparently not the case.

scholarly journals The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse.

1995 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 1236
Author(s):  
Scott A. Sandage ◽  
Carol Nackenoff
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Horatio Alger
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document