O’Connor’s engaging survey of leading debates about political economy throughout American history helps to explain why many of us are oblivious to the role that the federal government necessarily plays in our market economy. Despite the enduring popular appeal of laissez-faire from the Jacksonian era to the present, the “American government cannot help but alter market outcomes, often significantly” (243). Echoing Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential analysis in Democracy in America (1835, 1840), O’Connor posits an ongoing tension between “liberty and equality,” the central concepts around which controversies over capitalism and democracy have pivoted in the history of American liberalism (244). As they “struggled to reconcile their commitment to the political sovereignty of the people with their equally fervent desire to ensure the integrity of markets and to protect private property,” Americans have perpetuated a tension that defies resolution and defines democratic capitalism.
O’Connor’s study begins with a Hamiltonian tradition of...