SOCIAL DARWINISM, INEQUALITY, AND THE “FREE” MARKET, 1877-1914

Between Reconstruction and the start of World War I, the meaning of economic freedom was fiercely debated in the United States. Should the laws of supply and demand prevail even if it meant some groups grew richer and others poorer? What was the role of the federal government in providing relief from poverty, unemployment, and extreme socioeconomic inequality? This lecture explores a fundamental moment in which Americans of all ideological stripes attempted to frame debates about what liberty looked like in a capitalist society—debates that continue more than a century later when neoliberalism, an updated form of unregulated capitalism, enjoys broad consensus.