The “Liberal Tradition” and American Racism

In 1955, Louis Hartz argued that the United States had been founded as a “liberal society” which unconsciously embraced the precepts of John Locke, in ways that dominated all other political perspectives throughout American history. Recent analysts of that thesis have focused on the relationship of this “liberal tradition” to American racial inequalities. How and why have both liberalism and racism grown so abundantly in the American political garden? This chapter reviews five types of responses: racism as an anomaly in American liberal society; the unity of American racism and liberalism; the existence of multiple liberalisms, some racist, some not; views seeing liberalism and racism as strongly symbiotic; and more contingent symbiotic accounts. None of these positions dominates modern scholarship. Together they define a vital research agenda.

Workers’ Rights

This chapter examines the campaigns to add labor rights to state constitutions. The quintessential arguments about America's exceptional liberalism and its uniquely negative-rights culture have focused on the labor movement, which Louis Hartz has argued was a participant in—rather than a rival of—the dominant economic and ideological regime. The chapter first considers the labor provisions of state constitutions before discussing the ways that labor leaders and organizations influenced the drafting of new constitutions and amendments to existing constitutions. It then explains how labor rights were created not only to overturn particular court decisions, but also to preempt possible litigation. It also shows how labor organizations used constitutional rights to dictate state legislatures what they had to do while simultaneously telling courts what they could not do. The chapter demonstrates that, even in the area of labor regulation, Americans have successfully pursued the creation of positive rights.

ONCE MORE BEYOND CONSENSUS: THE “TRANSNATIONAL TURN” AND AMERICAN LIBERAL NATIONALISM

“It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies,” Richard Hofstadter famously wrote, “but to be one.” Defining that “American ideology” or “American creed” obsessed scholars of the consensus era, who celebrated (and occasionally lamented) Americans’ allegiance to a limited liberal vocabulary of rights, freedoms, and markets. The cultural transformations begun in the 1960s seemed to question the very idea of a unitary culture or creed, but some historians responded by exploring alternative ideological founding myths to the liberal consensus. Over the ensuing decades scholars mounted formidable efforts to support republicanism or millennial Christianity as challengers, but liberalism proved a resilient foe. And it seemed to have contemporary history on its side: during the Reagan revolution of the century's final decades the classic liberal combination of scaled-down government and free markets carried the day as Americans’ ideal if not their reality. The Lockean liberal tradition that Louis Hartz described a half-century earlier still appeared the only game in town, although scholars continued to argue over its terms, history, and boundaries.

Alfred Chandler: His Vision and Achievement

How do we measure Alfred Chandler's achievement? What forces shaped his vision? What is his place in the pantheon of historians and social scientists? Might he rank with sociologists such as Talcott Parsons or even Max Weber? Economists such as Kenneth Arrow or even Joseph Schumpeter? With political scientists such as Louis Hartz, Robert Dahl, and Seymour Martin Lipset? It's too early to make these kinds of judgments, but some answers are certainly possible about his place among historians.

Storybook Truths about America

Fifty years ago Louis Hartz set out to tell the “storybook truth” about America. Despite being almost risibly dense, The Liberal Tradition in America neatly captures the popular folklore – this is what you might hear at the Chamber of Commerce. Meanwhile, academics are often flatly contemptuous: Hartz mangled history, muffed quotations, and did not bother with rules of evidence. Even so, for better and for worse, his version of an all-American fable lives on as an enigmatic, controversial, and enduring political science classic.