cover image Tyranny in America: Capitalism and National Decay

Tyranny in America: Capitalism and National Decay

Neal Wood. Verso, $22 (152pp) ISBN 978-1-85984-572-1

Unrestrained and dramatically self-righteousness, Wood's book is a forceful yet ultimately hollow diatribe against what the author casts as the evils of America's longstanding relationship with capitalism. Wood's position towards America and its economic system is evident from the opening chapter, which engages in the type of muddled generalization and moral certitude that mark much of this book. The Canadian author begins by declaring that""it should be understood from the outset that many Americans...seem so self-centered, so isolated from the rest of the world, so captivated by their dominant consumer culture and so in thrall to capitalist ideology, that they lack any perspective on what is happening to them, their society and their polity."" He then goes on to reconstruct capitalism's ascent through history. A retired professor of political science, Wood emphasizes how an""absolutely amazing inversion of values"" led economic theorists to view""avarice,"" or self-interest, as a sound basis for social unity, and how the public, which once viewed elections as a stepping stone to tyranny, came to see democracy as the only safe form of government. Parts of this swift history are carefully and usefully detailed. But when Wood moves on to contend that advanced capitalism has formed a tyranny""even more total than totalitarianism's old tyranny...of death marches and concentration camps,"" his tendency to indulge in hyperbolic aphorism and strained analogy undermines many of his central arguments. It soon becomes clear that, in Wood's eyes, American culture and politics consist of little more than violence, consumerism,""brutal atomism""""banal mindlessness"" and""burgeoning and unprecedented inequality."" Despite the number of chilling statistics that he presents, Wood nonetheless appears to write from the condescending view point of a man wagging his finger from on top of a hill, rather than from the position of someone who is looking to change the world in which he lives. Readers who are looking for a more productive analysis of the deficiencies of capitalism would be better served by David Shipler's The Working Poor.