******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
*Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America* Nancy MacLean clip - In a moment of high political and ideological tension, it is not surprising that Nancy MacLean’s new book, *Democracy in Chains*, might strike a nerve with the public: the book offers a close account of the early years of one particular strand of right-wing economics scholarship. And after the events of this past weekend, when white supremacy returned to the very grounds of the University of Virginia where a large chunk of MacLean’s story takes place, interest in what MacLean has to say will likely grow. As well it should, because MacLean’s account explains what happened in Charlottesville at two different but related levels. More concretely, the University of Virginia's status as a bastion of white supremacy and white-supremacist-validating scholarship is exactly what was at issue both during the period MacLean writes about it and today, and at a greater remove, the long gestation period of the current upsurge of white supremacist and anti-democratic sentiment is exactly her book’s foremost subject and concern. By taking aim at the legacy of James M. Buchanan, the Nobel Prize–winning economist whose scholarship and political philosophy reverberate through the conservative movement to this day, MacLean’s book has pitched intellectual historians such as herself against Buchanan’s academic heirs, to whom she ascribes complicity in a long political devolution. While a few nonaligned scholars have entered the fray, the debate has so far largely been drawn along ideological and disciplinary lines. This is unfortunate because MacLean uncovers a crucial history in her book, one that economists especially need to grapple with. http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-book-explains-charlottesville _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
