I believe the most fundamental problems we face can be ultimately traced to the erroneous economic theories that have gained ascendance in the past 40 years. Jerome A Paris copied verbatim two days ago a diary from another blog about this question,
Industrial Capitalism vs Financial Capitalism (by techno)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
But, even that excellent diary fails in addressing the lost history of American economic development. The free market, laissaz faire economics taught in American universities today are complete falsehoods. The U.S. economy was NOT originally based on Adam Smith. And if we are ever going to stop and turn back the onslaught of conservative extremists, we must truly understand our own history as a nation. Below you will find a reading list of original material on early U.S. economic development. I also recommend the following book (emphasis is mine):
Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry
by Lawrence A. Peskin
http://www.press.jhu.edu/...
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, $49.95
Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:
By establishing manufactories among us, we erect an additional barrier against the encroachments of tyranny. A people who are entirely dependant upon the foreigners for food or clothes, must always be subject to them.
-BENJAMIN RUSH, 1775
Although much has been written about the "industrial revolution," we rarely read about industrial revolutionaries. This absence reflects the preoccupation of the two dominant twentieth-century economic paradigms with forces rather than humans when explaining economic change. Marx described the teleological march of history from stage to stage and finally to revolution, while Adam Smith glorified the impersonal decisions of the invisible hand. Consequently, both Marxism and classical economics tended to focus on social structures rather than the behavior of individual humans, behavior they largely understood as being determined by economic preconditions. Where these schools violently disagreed was on the nature of the moral-political results of industrial capitalism (whether positive or exploitative) rather than on its origins. Instead of examining broad macroeconomic trends and their results, this book deviates from both paradigms by intensively examining the thoughts and activities of Americans who promoted industrialization. These individuals were active well before Marx was born, and most were either ignorant of or unimpressed by Adam Smith. Unaware of the impersonal economic forces of modern social "science," these promoters hoped and believed that human beings could manufacture a new economy merely by convincing others that change was necessary. It would be foolish to suggest that they alone manufactured economic revolution, but it would also be foolish to attempt to understand the historical and cultural context of American industrialization without examining what they said and did.
In speeches, petitions, books, newspaper articles, club meetings, and coffee-house conversations, they fervently discussed the need for large-scale American manufacturing a half-century before the Boston Associates built their first factory. Historians have known about these words for a long time, but in their rush to debate the effects of industrialization, neither Marxists nor liberals showed much interest in them. Those few who lingered on the causes of industrialization usually dismissed the words as mere rhetoric, dwelling instead on the deeds of entrepreneurs or innovators working on what one noted scholar called the "frontiers of change."1 This frontier analogy, implying hearty pioneering individuals leaving the comfortable confines of an older economy to strive bravely into uncharted markets is, however, not particularly apt. For by the time the entrepreneurs began building factories in significant numbers, the manufacturing promoters had already outlined the contours of the new economy. They did so not as individual risk takers but as groups, societies, and associations that met together to discuss economic change, to disseminate pro-manufacturing literature, to lobby for government support of early manufacturing efforts, and to create small experimental manufacturing projects.
These groups launched a discourse about manufacturing that would continue for decades. In calling for economic independence to complement political independence, the words of manufacturing's promoters intellectually linked the two most important upheavals in the new nation: the American Revolution and industrialization.
Before I lose this again, here is an outline for a course on American System Economics I wrote in the early 1990s. There is NO discussion of this material, only a listing of suggested readings.
AMERICAN SYSTEM ECONOMICS
Being a Repudiation of Adam Smith and Free Trade and a Restoration of the Principles Of Political Economy Elaborated In the State Papers of First Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton
- GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ
A. "Society and Economy" (1671)
- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
A. "A Modest Inquiry Into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" (March 1739)
B. "Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among
the British Plantations in America" (1743)
C. "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind
and the Peopling of Countries" (1751)
D. "The Albany Plan of Union" (1754)
E. Essay on how to raise wage rates in Europe
Works of Benjamin Franklin.....................E 302 .F82 1840
The Works of Benjamin Franklin.................E 302 .F82 1904
The Writings of Benjamin Franklin..............E 302 .F82 1907
Papers of Benjamin Franklin....................E 302 .F82 1959
- WASHINGTON IRVING
A. Excerpts from Life of Washington relating the
period leading up to the Annapolis Convention for
improving internal navigation, and the Constitutional
Convention of 1789
- JAMES WILSON
A. "Considerations on the Power to Establish the Bank of North America"
(September 1785?)
The Works of James Wilson......................JK 171 .W6 1896
- JAMES MADISON
A. The Federalist Papers, Number 14...........KF 4515 .F4 1981
- ALEXANDER HAMILTON
A. The Federalist Papers, Numbers 11, 12, 13, and
15..........................................KF 4515 .F4 1981
(Number 11 is the first known explicit mention of an
`American System')
B. 1st "Report on the Public Credit" (January 1790)
C. "Report on a National Bank" (December 1790)
D. "Report on Manufactures" (December 1791)
Works of Alexander Hamilton....................E 302 .H22
The Works of Alexander Hamilton
(Constitutional Edition).........................E 302 .H23
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton...............E 302 .H247
- GEORGE WASHINGTON
A. "Farewell Address to Congress" (December 7, 1796)
7.5. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
A. 1806 speech founding the Republican Party is the
second known explicit mention of an `American
`System'
- MATHEW CAREY
A. "Preface", "Of the Wealth Of Nations", and other
excerpts. from Addresses of the Philadelphia Society
for the Promotion of National Industry.........
HF 1754 .C3445 1974
B. "Desultory Reflections on the Ruinous Consequences
of a Non-Renewal of the Charter of the Bank of
the United States" (April 1816), Essays On Banking.........
HG 2613 .P53 C28 1972
C. "To the Directors of the Bank of The Bank of the United States"
(June 1819)
- FRIEDRICH LIST
A. "Outlines of American Political Economy" (1827)
Grundlinien Einer Politischen Okonomie Und Andere
Beitrage Der Amerikanischen Zeit,
1825-1832...............HB 165 .L7 V.2
B. The National System of Political Economy
- HENRY CLAY
A. "On Internal Improvements" -Speech delivered in the U.S. House
of Representatives, March 13, 1818
B. "In Defence of the American System" -Speech delivered in the U.S.
Senate, February 2, 3, & 6, 1832
The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay............E 377.8 .C5926 1857
The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay............E 337.8 .C5926
- HENRY CAREY
A. The Harmony of Interests: Commercial, Manufacturing, and
Agricultural (1851)
B. "The Currency Question" (February 1865)
C. "Reconstruction: Industrial, Financial, and Political" (1867)
D. Letter to President Grant: "Failure of Revenue
Tariff and Other Subjects" (December 10, 1868)
- ABRAHAM LINCOLN
A. "Fragments of a Tariff Discussion" (December 1, 1847)
B. "Speech in the United States House of Representatives on Internal
Improvements" (June 20, 1848)
C. "First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions" (April 6, 1858)
D. "Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee,
Wisconsin" (September 30, 1859)
Other possibilities include:
TENCH COXE
WILLIAM `PIG IRON' KELLEY
WILLIAM MCKINLEY (introduction to Tariff section of Henry Clay's works)
WAR PRODUCTION BOARD on Douglas MacArthur's 1920s studies on industrial
mobilization