State of the Field: A View from Abroad: Post-1968 U.S. History, the End of the New Deal Order, and Neoliberalism

Abstract

In the past twenty years, American historiography has produced a burgeoning body of scholarship dealing with the deep social, political, and cultural transformations of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Historical scholarship on American conservatism and U.S. political history established the highly productive line of research centered around the resurgence of conservatism cum neoliberalism and the “rise of the right” in the United States. The associated narratives have earlier been criticized for their simplifying dichotomy.1 Joining in this criticism, a group of historians recently called for a “new political history” to transcend the familiar “red-blue divide” and the long influential narratives of the rise of conservatism and the end of the New Deal order. Instead, historiography should investigate the deeper forms of consensus and longterm structures in the American polity by studying the various relationships between the twentieth century American state and its citizens in the capitalist and (later) globalized economy.2 Bruce Schulman, in this journal, characterized this trend as “Neo-Consensus History.” Rather than emphasizing social and political conflicts, increasing polarization, and ideological divides in U.S. politics and society since the end of the 1960s, this historiography underlines common attitudes and orientations across party lines, like the development of suburban attitudes and policy preferences, the expansion of the carceral state, and the embrace of neoliberal ideas and policies across the political spectrum. Focusing on consensus, it also emphasizes continuities rather than historical breaks and shifts.3 As a German historian who has dealt intensively with post-1968 U.S. history in the past ten years, I am rather ambivalent about the “neo-consensus” approach. It is my contention that if we flatten the concept of neoliberalism to free-market ideology and a capitalist consensus that has permeated the American political tradition regardless of party affiliations throughout the twentieth century, as suggested in Shaped by the State (2018), edited by Brent Cebul, Lily Geismer, and Mason B. Williams, we risk losing sight of the deep impact of State of the Field