M.A. in English Literature Certificate in Modern Studies

“Lessons of Victory ” reveals the emergence of an influential and distinct American political economy in the middle of the twentieth century that was neither liberal nor conservative (in the common understanding of those terms). It was born in the post-World War II occupation governments in Germany and Japan and belonged to a group of men C. Wright Mills later identified as the “Power Elite, ” essentially a cadre of military, business and government leaders within Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inner circle. Their political economy sprang from the marriage of New Deal state-building and the realities of German and Japanese political culture and history. Ultimately called the “People’s Capitalism, ” it supported a muscular central government with broad capacities while nevertheless defining limits to its reach and remaining deeply suspicious of its totalitarian potential. The People’s Capitalism differed from both New Deal liberalism and the nascent conservatism of the 1940s and 1950s in its intense focus on government finance and the dangers of government induced inflation. Eisenhower and his circle felt that finance proved the key policy arena for (1) sustaining democratic support for the state and (2) setting the precise balance between statist and a free Grant Madsen Curriculum Vitae—2 society. Thus, finance played more than an economic role narrowly defined: first and foremost it supporte