Social Darwinists to tech bros: tracing the long fight against equality in US

The historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth “self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America. Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk “emerging as a trillionaire very much on people’s minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger about what this portends”. Related: ‘People are picking the dumbest fights’: the tortured history of America’s culture wars “It’s always hard to know what’s going to be happening when you have written a book,” she said. “But I think those questions about economic equality and the impact of extreme levels of economic hierarchy and concentration, and the questions, ‘Can you still have a democracy any longer? What are the ways that you can counter that? What alternate visions are there if you want to live in a world that’s not characterized that way?’, are present.” Phillips-Fein studies conservatism and “questions about capitalism and democracy”. Her first book, Invisible Hands, was a study of businessmen who fought the New Deal of the 1930s. Her second, Fear City, about the New York economic crisis of the 1970s, was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Hers is a major voice. It’s also unique. Not many books start with founder John Adams and end with Peter Thiel of Palantir, Musk’s fellow techno-fascist. Might such company seem unfair on Adams, the Boston lawyer who was part of a great revolution but feared what was unleashed? “I hope this comes through,” Phillips-Fein said. “Adams is very different from [steel magnate] Andrew Carnegie and [Yale professor] William Graham Sumner and the late 19th-century social Darwinists, and the pro-slavery advocates. He’s also definitely very different from people w…