Forging Rivals
Race, Class, Law, and the Collapse of Postwar Liberalism

Forging Rivals tells the story of the rise and fall of postwar liberalism.

Reuel Schiller (Author)

9781107628335, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 March 2015

355 pages, 9 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.4 x 1.8 cm, 0.49 kg

'Schiller has written an important book about the decline of American liberalism over the late-twentieth century … This powerful story helps us understand the inherent tensions within liberalism when it comes to social justice.' Kevin Mattson, The Journal of American History

The three decades after the end of World War II saw the rise and fall of a particular version of liberalism in which the state committed itself to promoting a modest form of economic egalitarianism while simultaneously embracing ethnic, racial, and religious pluralism. But by the mid-1970s, postwar liberalism was in a shambles: while its commitment to pluralism remained, its economic policies had been abandoned, and the Democratic Party, its primary political vehicle, was collapsing. Schiller attributes this demise to the legal architecture of postwar liberalism, arguing that postwar liberalism's goals of advancing economic egalitarianism and promoting pluralism ultimately conflicted with each other. Through the use of specific historical examples, Schiller demonstrates that postwar liberalism was riddled with legal and institutional contradictions that undermined progressive politics in the mid-twentieth-century United States.

Introduction. Legal history and the death of postwar liberalism
1. Forging postwar liberalism
2. Ed Rainbow's problem
3. The phony commission
4. A tale of two propositions
5. 1966: a terrible year for George Johns
6. 'The day of the minstrel show is over'
7. Forging rivals, shattering liberalism.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Political ideologies [JPF], Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]