Redefining our traditional understanding of the New Deal, this book finally examines this pivotal American era through a sweeping international lens that juxtaposes a struggling democracy with enticing ideologies like Fascism and Communism. Historian Ira Katznelson asserts that, during the 1930s and 1940s, American democracy was rescued yet distorted by a unified band of southern lawmakers who safeguarded racial segregation as they built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power. --From publisher description

Defeated in the East and discredited in the West, Marxism has broken down as an ideology and as a guide to governance. But, for all its flaws, it remains an important tool for understanding and raising questions about key aspects of modern life. In Marxism and the City Ira Katznelson critically assesses the scholarship on cities that has developed within Marxism in the past quarter century to show how some of the most important weaknesses in Marxism as a social theory can be remedied by forcing it to engage seriously with cities and spatial concerns. He argues that such a Marxism still has a significant contribution to make to the discussion of such historical questions as the transition from feudalism to a world composed of capitalist economies and nation-states and the acquiescence of the western working classes to capitalism. Professor Katznelson demonstrates how a Marxism that embraces complexity and is open to engagement with other social-theoretical traditions can illuminate our understanding of cities and of the patterns of class and group formation that have characterized urban life in the West.