The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America. By Michael J. Thompson. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. xiv, 249 pp. $32.50, ISBN 978-0-231-14074-4.)

Abstract

Rooted in political science, The Politics of Inequality ambitiously attempts to synthesize the history of the idea of economic inequality in the United States and to use it to criticize current public policies. Michael J. Thompson argues that opposition to economic inequality began with the founding of the republic, continued through the rise of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century, and reached its apogee during the Progressive Era and New Deal. Recent policies, however, have reversed course and have come to promote economic inequality. Thompson writes that because this reversal runs counter to the past, “The importance of history and tradition for the present becomes clear … [and] serves as a way to rethink and reevaluate the social world of the present” (pp. 179–80). Thompson argues that at America's founding its thinkers were opposed to economic inequality and shaped policies to reduce or eliminate it. To the Founders and subsequent thinkers, economic inequality and political equality should not coexist. Political action during the early republic and laissez-faire policies in the nineteenth century reflected fears that inequality would re-create old world institutions and destroy equality of opportunity and, with it, democracy.