Anomalies and Continuities: Positivism and Historicism on Inequality

Abstract

The idea of a “new gilded age” depends on a model of history in which the tension between inequality and solidarity takes the form of a binary oscillation (often resting on a positivist social scientific form of reasoning), in turn creating the appearance of basic similarity between separate unequal periods. Under this view, however, it is difficult to make sense of the fundamentally different origins of inequality prevailing in 1890 and 2010. Instead, this article argues, historians ought to treat history cumulatively—that is, historically—finding the origins of inequality not in the previous unequal period, but in the previous solidaristic period, and tracing the connections between one period and another rather than viewing them as ideal-typical opposites.

“The Long Progressive Era”: A Roundtable on After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia’s New York by Elisabeth Israels Perry

“…A variation on this question, posed frequently by political scientists, is "why have so few women emerged as visible political leaders?" Perry's answer is twofold: "men kept women out" and "women kept themselves out" (2).…”

“…As Melanie indicates, Perry suggested two explanations for this invisibility: "men kept women out" of the spotlight, and "women kept themselves out" (2). But perhaps Perry's research evinces a third explanation as well: erasure.…”

“…In these pages in 2020, Gabriel Winant argued for the value of viewing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era within the larger chronology of capitalism-as stages in a longer arc of inequalities that extend from the early nineteenth century to the present day. 2 He emphasized the importance of seeing the New Deal within that longer arc. Our conversations added to that insight.…”

Political contestation and the Second Great Divergence

“…No other commonly used periodizing device is so unabashedly pejorative. Skeptics includeEdwards (2009),John (2009),Bensel (2009) andWinant (2020). For a quantitative critique of the common assumption that income inequality was, in fact, increasing in the late nineteenth century-an assumption widely held by the many historians and journalists who refer to the 1877-1900 period as the first "Gilded Age"-seeCook (2020).17 One target of this critique has been fin de siècle U. S. investigative journalism.…”

“…No historian of the period doubts that something consequential happened. For this reason, this transformation would seem to be worth more than a passing mention in a historical analysis of wealth inequality (Chandler, 1977; Gordon, 2016; Hughes, 1989; Lears, 2009; McCloskey, 2016; Winant, 2020). It generated, after all, a great deal of wealth.…”