Since it came up in another thread I thought it'd be useful to quote W.E.B. Du Bois on the American Dream. This is from Black Reconstruction in America:
"Behind this extraordinary industrial development, as justification in the minds of men, lay what we may call the great American Assumption, which up to the time of the Civil War, was held more or less explicitly by practically all Americans. The American Assumption was that wealth is mainly the result of its owner’s effort and that any average worker can by thrift become a capitalist. The curious thing about this assumption was that while it was not true, it was undoubtedly more nearly true in America from 1820 to 1860 than in any other contemporary land. It was not true and not recognized as true during Colonial times; but with the opening of the West and the expanding industry of the twenties, and coincident with the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, it was a fact that often a poor white man in America by thrift and saving could obtain land and capital; and by intelligence and good luck he could become a small capitalist and even a rich man; and conversely a careless spendthrift though rich might become a pauper, since hereditary safeguards for property had little legal sanction.
Thus arose the philosophy of “shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves,” on which the American theory of compensated democracy was built. It asked simply, in eighteenth century accents, freedom from government interference with individual ventures, and a voice in the selection of government officials. The continued freedom of economic opportunity and ever possible increase of industrial income, it took for granted. This attitude was back of the adoption of universal suffrage, the disappearance of compulsory military service and imprisonment for debt, which characterized Jacksonian democracy. The American Assumption was contemporary with the Cotton Kingdom, which was its most sinister contradiction. The new captains of industry in the North were largely risen from the laboring class and thus living proof of the ease of capitalistic accumulation. The validity of the American Assumption ceased with the Civil War, but its tradition lasted down to the day of the Great Depression, when it died with a great wail of despair, not so much from bread lines and soup kitchens, as from poor and thrifty bank depositors and small investors."
#AmericanDream #WEBDuBois #Reconstruction #BlackReconstructionInAmerica
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