Running Steel, Running America

The history of modern liberalism has been hotly debated in

contemporary politics and the academy. Here, Judith Stein uses

the steel industry--long considered fundamental to the U.S.

economy--to examine liberal policies and priorities after World

War II. In a provocative revision of postwar American history,

she argues that it was the primacy of foreign commitments and the

outdated economic policies of the state, more than the nation's

racial conflicts, that transformed American liberalism from the

powerful progressivism of the New Deal to the feeble policies of

the 1990s.

Stein skillfully integrates a number of narratives usually

treated in isolation--labor, civil rights, politics, business,

and foreign policy--while underscoring the state's focus on the

steel industry and its workers. By showing how those who

intervened in the industry treated such economic issues as free

trade and the globalization of steel production in isolation from

the social issues of the day--most notably civil rights and the

implementation of affirmative action--Stein advances a larger

argument about postwar liberalism. Liberal attempts to address

social inequalities without reference to the fundamental and

changing workings of the economy, she says, have led to the

foundering of the New Deal state.