WHO WE ARE

A history book focuses on American economic and scientific development through the mid-19th century.

Though centered on early United States history, this work’s purpose lies in reexamining contemporary problems related to endless war, economic inequality, and social unrest through the lens of American thinkers and leaders of yore. Like Chaitkin’s previous two books, including George Bush, the Unauthorized Biography (1992), this volume is a harsh indictment of today’s “Anglo-American Establishment” that rejected the U.S.’s historic embrace of protectionist and nationalist economic policies for free trade and globalism. As an activist formerly involved with Lyndon LaRouche’s eclectic political movement, the author has been a long-standing opponent of America’s deindustrialization and move toward "cheap labor," which he sees as leading to "systemic collapse." Though much of the book’s rhetoric against global elites and in favor of nationalism echoes the messages of Donald Trump’s America First movement, the 45th president takes a back seat to Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Clay. To Chaitkin, Franklin’s embrace of nationalism and scientific development led not only to innovations like the steam engine that transformed America’s economic system, but also spurred England’s Industrial Revolution. Central to the work’s intriguing thesis is that Adam Smith’s brand of unregulated capitalism and Marx’s communist theory represent a false dichotomy, as Americans like Hamilton and Clay pointed citizens to a third option that blended a nationalist brand of economics that embraced tariffs with a strong federal government that actively pushed for fiscal progress through a national bank. Not all of the Founding Fathers receive adulation in this eloquent series opener. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, is labeled an “anti-Nationalist,” and Southern oligarchs are lambasted for both supporting slavery and seeking to maintain an antiquated socio-economic order more akin to “medieval feudalism” than Franklin’s vibrant, innovative republic. While this book is a captivating read based on sound primary source research, there is not much engagement with contemporary historical scholarship, such as Edward Baptist’s thesis on the importance of slavery to the development of America’s economy. Similarly, many economists may also bristle at the volume’s idealization of early-19th-century economics as a model for the present.

A well-written, if limited, account of early American progress.