Social Inequality, Economic Decline, and Plutocracy

This book aims to further an understanding of present day America by exploring counter-hegemony to the rule of capital and offering guidelines for strategizing change proceeding from the dialectic of What Is and What Ought to Be. The author analyzes neoliberal global order and its political expressions through discussions of the dominance of finance capital in the late twentieth century, the triumph of ideology, the closing of avenues to reform, the problem of the captive state, and a sociological analysis of rule by “divide and conquer.” The book concludes with a look at the history of movement politics in culture, arts, economics, and politics. It resounds with a hope that challenges to hegemony can use many paths to change, of which the electoral path is but one of many fronts, in the long-term struggle for radical reform.

“This is a book from the 1960s in the sense that the author explicitly reclaims that period in the United States as one of revolt and subversion of accepted knowledge. … The book will be useful to students in the United States looking to get a basic radical education on the workings of the system. It is very readable and accessible so it should definitely be read by students and activists.” (Ronaldo Munck, Capital & Class, Vol. 42 (1), February, 2018)“Dale Johnson has provided us with what amounts to a textbook on contemporary international capitalism and how to fight it. The book represents a lifetime of engaged scholarship, and given its macro-level approach, makes a unique contribution to our understanding of world events.” (Martin Oppenheimer, New Politics, newpol.org, October, 2017)

Dale L. Johnson is a retired sociologist living in Costa Rica and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Rutgers University, USA. This book was inspired by his view of the deteriorating situation in the United States and his roots as a 1960s student activist and young critical sociologist. He is the author of seven books and numerous articles in journals.