The very real communist threat in the period from the 1930s to the 1960s facilitated the class compromise between capital and labor that sustained the New Deal order. The disappearance of that threat between 1989 and 1991 facilitated the scuttling of that compromise and the triumph of the neoliberal order.

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was a major neoliberal victory. It freed radio and television stations from an obligation to present news that strove for objectivity and balance. It made possible the rise of a new generation of radio “shock jockeys” whose strategy was to cultivate audiences with provocative and one-sided commentary. It launched

Ronald Reagan convinced many Americans that joining his political crusade would unshackle the economy from regulation and make them free. He framed that freedom as every American’s birthright; the pursuit of that freedom, he told his followers, was the reason the American Revolution had been fought, the reason the American nation had come into

Fascism and Nazism can be understood as radical right responses to communism’s rise.

Reagan’s genius was to hang a giant scarlet letter around the neck of the federal government, identifying it as a tyrannical force that had violated the freedoms Americans regarded as their birthright: to worship God in public; to hire the employees they desired; to live among people of their own race; and to send their children to the neighborhood

The true test of a political order, I have been suggesting, is when the opposition acquiesces to an order’s ideological and policy imperatives. Clinton facilitated that acquiescence. From 1994 forward, he became the Democratic Eisenhower, America’s neoliberal president par excellence.

Across the 1990s alone, China’s exports quintupled, making its manufacturing sector a critical part of global supply chains. World trade in manufactured goods doubled in the 1990s and doubled again in the 2000s.

The unknowability and unpredictability of the future explain why Hayek had set his face so determinedly against the planned economy. Humans could only plan for what they already knew; they could not plan for what was not yet knowable.52 Cultivation of what Hayek called “spontaneity” was, in his eyes, the only way to prepare for the unknowable

In sections that resonated powerfully with black readers, Alexander showed how the punishments of those imprisoned never really ended, even years after the imprisoned had served their time. Those released from jail were obligated to report their convictions and jail sentences to potential employers, thereby costing them access to jobs. In many