Illusions Of Progress

Today, the word "neoliberal" is used to describe an epochal shift toward market-oriented governance begun in the 1970s. Yet the roots of many of neoliberalism's policy tools can be traced to the ideas and practices of mid-twentieth-century liberalism. In Illusions of Progress, Brent Cebul chronicles the rise of what he terms "supply-side liberalism," a powerful and enduring orientation toward politics and the economy, race and poverty, that united local chambers of commerce, liberal policymakers and economists, and urban and rural economic planners. Beginning in the late 1930s, New Dealers tied expansive aspirations for social and, later, racial progress to a variety of economic development initiatives. In communities across the country, otherwise conservative business elites administered liberal public works, urban redevelopment, and housing programs. But by binding national visions of progress to the local interests of capital, liberals often entrenched the very inequalities of power and opportunity they imagined their programs solving. When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty--which prioritized direct partnerships with poor and racially marginalized citizens--businesspeople, Republicans, and soon, a rising generation of New Democrats sought to rein in its seeming excesses by reinventing and redeploying many of the policy tools and commitments pioneered on liberalism's supply side: public-private partnerships, market-oriented solutions, fiscal "realism," and, above all, subsidies for business-led growth now promised to blunt, and perhaps ultimately replace, programs for poor and marginalized Americans. In this wide-ranging book, Brent Cebul illuminates the often-overlooked structures of governance, markets, and public debt through which America's warring political ideologies have been expressed and transformed. From Washington, D.C. to the declining Rustbelt and emerging Sunbelt and back again, Illusions of Progress reveals the centrality of public and private forms of profit that have defined the enduring boundaries of American politics, opportunity, and inequality-- in an era of liberal ascendance and an age of neoliberal retrenchment.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

Georges Sorel "argues that the idea of progress formed an essential part of the justification and defense of the rising administrative classes in France at the time of progressive ideology that has insured the Revolution." -- Jacket.

We live under the illusion of progress: as long as GDP is going up and prices stay low, we accept poverty and pollution as unfortunate but inevitable byproducts of a successful economy. How did we all get duped into believing the fairytale of economics? In The Progress Illusion, Jon Erickson charts the rise of the economic worldview and its infiltration into our daily lives as a theory of everything. Drawing on his experience as a young economist inoculated in the go-go 1980's era of "greed is good," Erickson shows how flawed economic thinking shaped our politics and determined the course of American public policy. While the history of economics is dismal indeed, Erickson is part of a vigorous reform effort grounded in the realities of life on a finite planet. Crafting a new economic story, he shows, is the first step toward turning away from endless growth and towards enduring prosperity.

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

Sustainability standards, their systems, role and impact -- VSS at a crossroads -- Is there any future perspective for VSS and what might it look like?

By the author of the best-selling Straw Dogs, this book is a characteristically trenchant and unflinchingly clear-sighted collection of reflections on our contemporary lot. Whether writing about the future of our species on this planet, the folly of our faith in technological progress, or the self-deceptions of the liberal establishment, John Gray dares to be heretical like few other thinkers today.