Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: American Jews in an Age of Conservatism
- 1 Jews and the Making of the Cosmopolitan Culture
- 2 The Premature Jewish Neoconservatives
- 3 Forgotten Jewish Godfathers
- 4 The Liberal Civil War
- 5 The Modernization of American Conservatism
- 6 The Liberal Meltdown
- 7 The Rise of the Neoconservatives
- 8 Neoconservatives and the Reagan Revolution
- 9 Nicaragua: The Cold War Comes to This Hemisphere
- 10 Irving Kristol and a New Vision of Capitalism
- 11 The Neoconservative Assault on the Counterculture
- 12 Jews and the Christian Right
- 13 Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
10 - Irving Kristol and a New Vision of Capitalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: American Jews in an Age of Conservatism
- 1 Jews and the Making of the Cosmopolitan Culture
- 2 The Premature Jewish Neoconservatives
- 3 Forgotten Jewish Godfathers
- 4 The Liberal Civil War
- 5 The Modernization of American Conservatism
- 6 The Liberal Meltdown
- 7 The Rise of the Neoconservatives
- 8 Neoconservatives and the Reagan Revolution
- 9 Nicaragua: The Cold War Comes to This Hemisphere
- 10 Irving Kristol and a New Vision of Capitalism
- 11 The Neoconservative Assault on the Counterculture
- 12 Jews and the Christian Right
- 13 Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
Summary
As the neocons in and outside the Reagan administration began to strengthen the nation's resolve in confronting the Soviet Union, Irving Kristol and other neocons were searching for a new social/economic vision. In liberal circles, free markets had few friends. Some critics characterized capitalism as rapacious and dehumanizing. Statism was so strong that even President Nixon had sought to interfere with the national economy by imposing wage and price controls. “We're all Keynesians now,” Nixon said in 1971, referring to the British economic theorist whose admirers argued that government was responsible not only for regulating modern capitalism but also for playing a leading role in guiding and stimulating the economy.
Kristol's thinking was more nuanced. He recognized the pitfalls of run-away capitalism but saw great strengths in a system that, in his college days, he had denounced. His World War II stint in the army had convinced him that socialism was plain stupidity. As early as 1957, he wrote in Commentary, partly tongue-in-check, that it was time to say a good word for the Horatio Alger novels. “The moral of these stories,” he said “is that even if one is born very poor, one can still end up rich and successful if one is good-looking, intelligent, healthy, diligent, ambitious and extremely lucky. I can think of no truer sociological observation.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Neoconservative RevolutionJewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy, pp. 177 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005