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Plutocratic Socialism
The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class
Imprint: Front Porch Republic Books
A proletarianized citizenry ruled by a class of insolent plutocrats is incompatible with the republican form of government established by the US Constitution. Without an effective majority of citizens who own property and whose character has been shaped by property ownership--a vibrant middle class--the Founders' Constitution will not survive. Our current age of Plutocratic Socialism is a specific manifestation of a pathology the Founders feared. Recovery must begin with a simple, yet profound, axiom: private property and political freedom stand or fall together.
Mark T. Mitchell is dean of academic affairs and professor of government at Patrick Henry College. He is the author of several books, including Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That Spawned America’s Social Justice Warriors and The Limits of Liberalism: Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom. He is the co-founder of Front Porch Republic.
“Our republic is faltering. The left pushes us into the dystopia of identity politics; the right talks incessantly of free markets and of tradition. Missing in the discussion is the one thing necessary to stabilize the American commercial republic: private property. No private property, no middle-class republic. Mark Mitchell has done us the invaluable service of reintroducing this crucial consideration into our debates about why America has lost her way and how to correct her course.”
—Joshua Mitchell, Georgetown University
“With clarity, grace, and erudition lightly worn, Mitchell takes aim at the mutually reinforcing pathologies, plutocracy and socialism, that are undermining the theory and practice of the middle-class republic. Mitchell demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that only a middle-class, multiracial republic of civic-minded property owners can save us from the unholy alliance of plutocratic masters and despotic woke ideologues. Bracing wisdom for our time.”
—Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption University, emeritus
“Hilaire Belloc called it ‘the servile state.’ Mark Mitchell offers the contemporary label ‘plutocratic socialism,’ meaning the union of big government and big business, now amplified by the corrupt ideology of ‘wokism.’ With fresh insight and power, Mitchell rehabilitates the case for building a middle-class democracy resting on property rights and self-imposed moral limits as the only way to build a truly free and progressive society. This is political philosophy at its urgent best.”
—Allan Carlson, author of The New Agrarian Mind
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