An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States - Softcover

Beard, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765804573 ISBN 13: 9780765804570

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

In his piercing introduction to An Economic Interpretation the author wrote that “whoever leaves economic pressures out of history or out of discussion of public questions is in mortal peril of substituting mythology for reality.” It was Beard’s view that the founding fathers, especially Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, never made such a miscalculation. Indeed, these statesmen placed themselves among the great practitioners of all ages and gave instructions to succeeding generations in the art of government by their vigorous deployment of classical political economy.

In this new printing of a major classic in American historiography, Louis Filler provides a sense of the person behind the book, the background that enabled Beard to move well beyond the shibboleths of the second decade of the twentieth century. While the controversies over Beard’s book have quieted, the issues which it raised have hardly abated. Indeed, one can say that just about every major work in the politics and economics of the American nation must contend with Beard’s classic work. Beard’s work rests on an examination of primary documents: land and slave owners, geographic distribution of money, ownership of public securities, the specific condition of those who were disenfranchised as well as those who were in charge of the nascent American economy.

The great merit of Beard’s work is that despite its incendiary potential, he himself viewed An Economic Interpretation in coldly analytical terms, seeing such a position as giving comfort to neither revolutionaries nor reactionaries. Attacked by Marxists for being too mechanical, and by conservatives as being blind to the moral purposes of the framers of the constitution, the work continues to exercise a tremendous influence on all concerned. The fact that Beard wrote with a scalpel-like precision that gripped the attention of those in power no less than the common man is, it should be added, no small element in the enduring forces of this work.

About this title

About the Author:

Louis Filler (1911-1998) was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Bristol and taught as a visiting professor in literature and history departments from the City University of New York to the University of California, San Francisco. His books include the classic Muckrakers, best-selling Crusade Against Slavery, Dictionary of American Social Reform, Unknown, Edwin Markham, Dictionary of American Conservatism, Vanguards and Followers, Distinguished Shades: Americans Whose Lives Live On,and Abolition and Social Justice in the Era of Reform, among many others, as well as biographies of Randolph Bourne and David Graham Phillips.

Review:

"Here again is the original constitutional skeptic to remind Americans that our republic's authors had not only intellects but interests. Charles Beard set out to jolt his contemporaries out of their pious admiration of the constitution's framers. His economic interpretation remains a lively, surprisingly humorous and sharp-witted analysis of the nation's beginnings. Reading it today, the book aims a keen and pointed thrust at the originalism of our own age." (Professor Eric Rauchway, University of California Davis Department of History)

"One hundred years after it first appeared, Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution still commands our attention as a classic of historical scholarship -- not because every view Beard put forward has stood the test of time but because the questions he raised about the intersections of economic and political power are just as relevant today as when he wrote." (Professor Eric Foner, Columbia University Department of History)

"This is the book that started us all on the journey to understanding the complex motives and conflicting interests that shaped our constitution. 100 years after its publication, it still has the power to excite and exasperate, to stir fierce debate and to inspire new interpretations." (Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History, Emerita, Baruch College & The Graduate Center, CUNY)

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0765804573
• ISBN 13: 9780765804570
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 364