Radical Hamilton - Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder with author Christian Parenti

Empathy Media Lab

“Workers increase their standard of living and increase their wages through the class struggle, but there's limits to what that can bear if the economy in which that class struggle is happening isn't growing and isn't producing surplus.”

Christian Parenti

Professor of Political Economy and Author of Radical Hamilton - Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder

Christian Parenti is Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, CUNY (City University of New York). His books include “Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder" (Verso 2020), "Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence" (2011); "The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq" (2004); "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror" (2002); and "Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis" (2000/second edition 2008). As a journalist he reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America for The Nation, Fortune, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and other publications.

Learn more at: https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/christian-parenti.

About Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder

A dramatic re-evaluation of the founding of the United States and the history of capitalism--In retelling the story of the radical Alexander Hamilton, Parenti rewrites the history of early America and the global economy. For much of the twentieth century, Hamilton—sometimes seen as the bad boy of the founding fathers or portrayed as the patron saint of bankers—was out of fashion. In contrast his rival Thomas Jefferson, the patrician democrat and slave owner who feared government overreach, was claimed by all. But more recently, Hamilton has become a subject of serious interest again.

He was a contradictory mix: a tough soldier, austere workaholic, exacting bureaucrat, sexual libertine, glory-obsessed romantic with suicidal tendencies—and pioneer of industrialisation. As Parenti argues, we have yet to fully appreciate Hamilton as the primary architect of American capitalism and the developmental state. In exploring his life and work, Parenti rediscovers this gadfly as a pathbreaking political thinker and institution builder. In this vivid portrait, Hamilton emerges as a singularly important historical figure: a thinker and politico who laid the foundation for America’s ascent to global supremacy and mass industrialization—for better or worse.

You can buy Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder from your favorite bookseller.

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