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Podcast: New Books in Economics
Episode: Michael Dennis, "The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America: The Movement for Economic Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Description: One of the unfulfilled goals of the American left during the 1930s was that of an economy in which every American would enjoy the opportunity for gainful employment. In The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America: The Movement for Economic Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2021), Michael Dennis describes the origins of the movement, the efforts made to achieve it, and the factors that frustrated its realization. Dennis traces its beginnings to a progressive critique of industrial capitalism in the 1920s, which warned of the growing disparity between rising productivity and stagnant wages. During the Great Depression, groups from across the political left to...