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The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class
This short book rewrites the history of modern American liberalism. It shows that what we think of liberalism today – the top and bottom coalition we associate with President Obama - began not with Progressivism or the New Deal but rather in the wake of the post-WWI disillusionment with American society. In the twenties, the first writers and thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted the hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and the right. The aim of liberalism’s foundational writers and thinkers such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis and H.L Mencken was to create an American aristocracy of sorts, to provide a sense of hierarchy and order associated with European statism.
Like communism, Fabianism, and fascism, modern liberalism, critical of both capitalism and democracy, was born of a new class of politically self-conscious intellectuals. They despised both the individual businessman's pursuit of profit and the conventional individual's pursuit of pleasure, both of which were made possible by the lineaments of the limited nineteenth-century state.
Temporarily waylaid by the heroism of the WWII generation, in the 1950s liberalism expressed itself as a critique of popular culture. It was precisely the success of elevating middle class culture that frightened foppish characters like Dwight Macdonald and Aldous Huxley, crucial influences on what was mistakenly called the New Left. There was no New Left in the 1960s, but there was a New Class which in the midst of Vietnam and race riots took up the priestly task of de-democratizing America in the name of administering newly developed rights
The neo-Mathusianism which emerged from the 60s was, unlike its eugenicist precursors, aimed not at the breeding habits of the lower classes but rather the buying habits of the middle class.
Today’s Barack Obama liberalism has displaced the old Main Street private sector middle class with a new middle class composed of public sector workers allied with crony capitalists and the country’s arbiters of style and taste.
Like communism, Fabianism, and fascism, modern liberalism, critical of both capitalism and democracy, was born of a new class of politically self-conscious intellectuals. They despised both the individual businessman's pursuit of profit and the conventional individual's pursuit of pleasure, both of which were made possible by the lineaments of the limited nineteenth-century state.
Temporarily waylaid by the heroism of the WWII generation, in the 1950s liberalism expressed itself as a critique of popular culture. It was precisely the success of elevating middle class culture that frightened foppish characters like Dwight Macdonald and Aldous Huxley, crucial influences on what was mistakenly called the New Left. There was no New Left in the 1960s, but there was a New Class which in the midst of Vietnam and race riots took up the priestly task of de-democratizing America in the name of administering newly developed rights
The neo-Mathusianism which emerged from the 60s was, unlike its eugenicist precursors, aimed not at the breeding habits of the lower classes but rather the buying habits of the middle class.
Today’s Barack Obama liberalism has displaced the old Main Street private sector middle class with a new middle class composed of public sector workers allied with crony capitalists and the country’s arbiters of style and taste.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
99 people are currently reading
495 people want to read
About the author
Fred Siegel
20 books17 followersFred Siegel was an American historian and conservative writer who was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank which focuses on urban policy and politics. He served as a professor of history and the humanities at Cooper Union and was a contributor to numerous publications, including The New York Post (where he had a weekly column), The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Commonweal, Tikkun, and Telos.
Siegel served as the political advisor to several political candidates in New York City, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. He was the author of several books, including The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life and The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America's Big Cities.
Siegel was the father of writer and editor Harry Siegel. Fred Siegel died from complications relating to a series of infections in Brooklyn, New York, on May 7, 2023, at the age of 78.
Siegel served as the political advisor to several political candidates in New York City, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. He was the author of several books, including The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life and The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America's Big Cities.
Siegel was the father of writer and editor Harry Siegel. Fred Siegel died from complications relating to a series of infections in Brooklyn, New York, on May 7, 2023, at the age of 78.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 1, 2014
It takes a while to undo your left leaning education
It appears when you come down to it, the elitists use government as a tool to control the masses. This book describes in detail, when the elites are happiest. When the middle class, kept in its place.
It appears when you come down to it, the elitists use government as a tool to control the masses. This book describes in detail, when the elites are happiest. When the middle class, kept in its place.
March 2, 2016
Not a bad recap of some of US political history. Primary focus is from about 1900 to 2000, with some lighter discussion of the recent. Relevant to today's controversies over inequality, wage stagnation, and distrust of establishment politicians from both parties, illegal immigration, etc. Current perspectives are not the theme of this this book at all. It is not a "how the democrats or republications are evil" rant.
September 15, 2016
A masterpiece of distortion, hyperbole, and historical malpractice. If you want a 200-page example of conservatism's bad faith when it comes to making reasonable, factually grounded arguments that don't violate basic rules of evidentiary support, causality, and objectivity, you can't do better than reading this ludicrous attempt at writing history.
June 4, 2015
A fantastic work outlining the history of modern American "progressivism". It is little noticed how different the authoritarian left today is from the New Deal working class liberals of the 50's and early 60's. Siegel captures the snobbery that is the basis of "progessivism" perfectly. An easy read.
September 13, 2017
Aight but dated
Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh six more words were required here.
Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh six more words were required here.
May 22, 2014
I liked this book because I learned a lot of the history behind liberalism.
March 29, 2024
While not perfectly flowing in its overall narrative, Democrat historian and policy wonk Siegel writes a prescient, relevant and a must read text for anyone who wants to understand modern American politics. The political liberal in this country evolved from 1914 under Wilson and WW 1, to FDR's New Deal coalition, to the New Left counterculture of the 60s and 70s, to the Clinton neoliberal middle class era, until today's Obama postmodern movement party that itself is a throwback to a Sinclair Lewis novel from the 1920s.
Written in 2013, Revolt explains greatly the Donald Trump 2016 Republican presidential victory and likely portends a future major political realignment based upon the rapidly changing status quo. American liberals or progressives hold contempt for the middle class, small towns, the rural voters, business in general and believe, as Rousseau did, the bourgeois American, constitutional model can never promote the greatest good of the country. ONLY a few highly educated and well trained or socialized aristocrats should lead the country.
Rule of law and true equality of all should be applied in theory and not in practice. The Constitution should be a symbol only, not actually applied. A more power centric authority in the government backed by liberal powerholders and wealthy are what is best. Yes, this approach is heavily Marxist and Communist in foundation but that should never be acknowledged as such.
While FDR, JFK, Ike, Carter and Clinton all used this approach by bringing in PhDs and wealthy benefactors, they all recognized the need to draw middle class voters and broad electoral support especially Truman and Clinton, and pushed policies that benefited most Americans.
However the current Democrat party led by Obama-linked Chicago bureaucrats/public unions, the major media, academic institutions and the VERY wealthy including international elites, will have difficulty in sustainable popular voter support with policies that hurt small and medium business, and alienate most with the hypocrisy of double standards. The current liberal Democrat is the radical the Frankfurt School espoused and the New Left clamored for despite decades of policy failures used at the State and municipal levels in Detroit or New York City in the 70s or California in the 2010s.
In other words, the Democrats today have become the American Republicans of old, the Tories of the 1880s Britain. Reading this book is a learning exercise. The larger and smaller political and social movements are covered enough to clarify. Whether HG Wells in the 1920s or Hollywood actors or pop singers today, all represent an elitist effort and propaganda movement to control American politics because liberals know "what's best for all."
The book's main argument is even more clear in 2024 as a US election cycle approaches and everything written years ago is still occurring today in an almost identical fashion. This is simply terrifying for the United States as a nation.
Highly recommend.
Written in 2013, Revolt explains greatly the Donald Trump 2016 Republican presidential victory and likely portends a future major political realignment based upon the rapidly changing status quo. American liberals or progressives hold contempt for the middle class, small towns, the rural voters, business in general and believe, as Rousseau did, the bourgeois American, constitutional model can never promote the greatest good of the country. ONLY a few highly educated and well trained or socialized aristocrats should lead the country.
Rule of law and true equality of all should be applied in theory and not in practice. The Constitution should be a symbol only, not actually applied. A more power centric authority in the government backed by liberal powerholders and wealthy are what is best. Yes, this approach is heavily Marxist and Communist in foundation but that should never be acknowledged as such.
While FDR, JFK, Ike, Carter and Clinton all used this approach by bringing in PhDs and wealthy benefactors, they all recognized the need to draw middle class voters and broad electoral support especially Truman and Clinton, and pushed policies that benefited most Americans.
However the current Democrat party led by Obama-linked Chicago bureaucrats/public unions, the major media, academic institutions and the VERY wealthy including international elites, will have difficulty in sustainable popular voter support with policies that hurt small and medium business, and alienate most with the hypocrisy of double standards. The current liberal Democrat is the radical the Frankfurt School espoused and the New Left clamored for despite decades of policy failures used at the State and municipal levels in Detroit or New York City in the 70s or California in the 2010s.
In other words, the Democrats today have become the American Republicans of old, the Tories of the 1880s Britain. Reading this book is a learning exercise. The larger and smaller political and social movements are covered enough to clarify. Whether HG Wells in the 1920s or Hollywood actors or pop singers today, all represent an elitist effort and propaganda movement to control American politics because liberals know "what's best for all."
The book's main argument is even more clear in 2024 as a US election cycle approaches and everything written years ago is still occurring today in an almost identical fashion. This is simply terrifying for the United States as a nation.
Highly recommend.
February 3, 2021
Sparing with friends and others over politics on social media is the modern day equivalent of sparing with friends, neighbors and strangers over politics in colonial taverns. We do so with the same passion but perhaps not always as politely given the inability of the person(s) with whom we spar to reach out and 'touch' us when passion overwhelms reason. However, because our virtual community taverns extend across the nation and indeed globally it's our reason that is more broadly on display. Therefore, Dr. Fred Siegel's 'The Revolt Against the Masses' is an important arrow in the quiver. His scholarship is superb, his narrative clear, his reasoning comprehensible. Siegel's book's greatest value isn't for the social tavern but rather for those discussions adults and grandparents have with their children and grandchildren about the world into which they are becoming adults themselves. One won't be discussing H.G. Wells' distain for the great unwashed, but parents and grandparents do discuss in context our culture which influences them as they develop their world views. Siegel's book exposes the subrosa, ideologies which heavily mold our culture.
November 3, 2024
Fred Siegel's The Revolt Against the Masses provides a more than adequate explanation as to why so much of the American white working and middle classes feel alienated from the Democratic Party and why that party, for the most part, long ago ceased to care.
Siegel presents the case that what is now called liberalism in the United States is rooted in the literary and academic circles that emerged during and after the First World War. Siegel argues that this liberalism is as much a vanguard movement as its Bolshevik and fascist contemporaries, with its contempt for the bourgeoisie almost equaling that of these ideologies.
Siegel presents the case that what is now called liberalism in the United States is rooted in the literary and academic circles that emerged during and after the First World War. Siegel argues that this liberalism is as much a vanguard movement as its Bolshevik and fascist contemporaries, with its contempt for the bourgeoisie almost equaling that of these ideologies.
January 16, 2025
"Disdain for democracy was an integral and enduring element of American liberalism."
This sentence pretty much sums up how liberals during the past century have viewed our country, and particularly the middle-class. This book goes through the development of the modern liberal and how their overall goal has been to emulate the Europeans, looking down on the middle class as uneducated, considering only those educated in in ivory towers of liberal higher education as those worthy of making decisions. Very informational.
This sentence pretty much sums up how liberals during the past century have viewed our country, and particularly the middle-class. This book goes through the development of the modern liberal and how their overall goal has been to emulate the Europeans, looking down on the middle class as uneducated, considering only those educated in in ivory towers of liberal higher education as those worthy of making decisions. Very informational.
March 3, 2021
A great perspective on progressives.
Read
August 11, 2021Rather than a review, I will record learnings or thoughts from place to place in this book, for my own edification, with no thought that others should bother reading my words. Pass by without regret.
I will not rate this or other books.
Finished reading and note that I understood more as its complex themes progressed into the era of my own political awareness. Other readings have not provided so much texture though compatible. . Fred Siegel provides a good deal of observation and builds a case that I can grasp and find persuasive.
The striking chord is that the "liberal" faction Siegel follows is a cohesive body only in its negatives. It demeans and it seeks power.
Earlier:
Randolph Bourne (p. 16...) is a romantic in the sense that Jonas Goldberg used the term elsewhere; like Rousseau, perhaps, in shorthand for the type that finds order and peace unbearable?
Bourne's social impulse is not allied with the hard work and inhibition required of civilization, but with the impulses of human nature.
I wonder if there is a division in the arguably universal 'social' spirit in human nature, between the Hayekian (or Misesian) conception of the great society -- one sort of social impulse built on cooperation of sovereign individuals limited by law -- and the romantic, often coercive social solidarity combined with a different sort of "individualism" in these social thinkers who would immerse their conscience and their responsibility in the commune while feeling free to act individually on every impulse.
Perhaps this is the very centre of the forever war that is political philosophy. Shall we each identify ourselves with these contrasting stages of human interaction? As always we may drift from one to another.
There are various forms of liberalism. I will read on with curiosity.
(I plan to edit all or any of this from time to time as it appears needed.)
I will not rate this or other books.
Finished reading and note that I understood more as its complex themes progressed into the era of my own political awareness. Other readings have not provided so much texture though compatible. . Fred Siegel provides a good deal of observation and builds a case that I can grasp and find persuasive.
The striking chord is that the "liberal" faction Siegel follows is a cohesive body only in its negatives. It demeans and it seeks power.
Earlier:
Randolph Bourne (p. 16...) is a romantic in the sense that Jonas Goldberg used the term elsewhere; like Rousseau, perhaps, in shorthand for the type that finds order and peace unbearable?
Bourne's social impulse is not allied with the hard work and inhibition required of civilization, but with the impulses of human nature.
I wonder if there is a division in the arguably universal 'social' spirit in human nature, between the Hayekian (or Misesian) conception of the great society -- one sort of social impulse built on cooperation of sovereign individuals limited by law -- and the romantic, often coercive social solidarity combined with a different sort of "individualism" in these social thinkers who would immerse their conscience and their responsibility in the commune while feeling free to act individually on every impulse.
Perhaps this is the very centre of the forever war that is political philosophy. Shall we each identify ourselves with these contrasting stages of human interaction? As always we may drift from one to another.
There are various forms of liberalism. I will read on with curiosity.
(I plan to edit all or any of this from time to time as it appears needed.)
August 10, 2016
Someone once remarked that, at heart, everyone is a New Deal liberal. That's a bit hyperbolic, but the fact is that all of the working and middle class whites who exited the democratic party from the Great Society onward- from Reagan democrats to tea-partiers- would have been moderate democrats up until the mid-1960s. So what happened and why did they leave? The standard answer is that they balked at being asked to share resources with minorities and fled to the suburbs, which I think is partially true. Fred Siegel, however, does a pretty good job of showing how the rise of "Gentry Liberals" mostly social scientists, lawyers, and academics, ended up ruining a good thing through a combination of contempt for the middle class and arrogant disdain for small town values, and social support networks like the rotary club,various lodges, and small businesses (as epitomized in the works of Sinclair Lewis).
So, considering Siegel is intelligent, and the case he makes is convincing, why am I giving this work a qualified review? The answer is simply that, while Siegel is in his element describing everything from, say, the tail of the New Deal to the Obama technocratic oligarchy, he is rudderless when trying to tie disparate elements of the Left together from former times. He places a lot of emphasis on H.G. Wells, crediting him with essentially restructuring America's perception of itself via his observations (a la De Tocqueville) of our flawed democracy, and I frankly don't think he does a good job with this thesis. Also, because so much ground is covered in the book, and so much history is recounted, the effort can't help but feel partial and abortive.
This is an okay foray for a mainstream conservative view of Gentry Liberalism and the "high-low" coalitions like that of mayor John Lindsay (perfected by the corrupt Obama machine and Clinton regime), but it also left a lot to be desired. For those seeking a Cliff's Notes version of a century of Leftism, from Utopian fantasy to the rise and entrenchment of Paul Gottfried's "managerial state," this might be a good place to start Those looking for more in depth research, look elsewhere.
So, considering Siegel is intelligent, and the case he makes is convincing, why am I giving this work a qualified review? The answer is simply that, while Siegel is in his element describing everything from, say, the tail of the New Deal to the Obama technocratic oligarchy, he is rudderless when trying to tie disparate elements of the Left together from former times. He places a lot of emphasis on H.G. Wells, crediting him with essentially restructuring America's perception of itself via his observations (a la De Tocqueville) of our flawed democracy, and I frankly don't think he does a good job with this thesis. Also, because so much ground is covered in the book, and so much history is recounted, the effort can't help but feel partial and abortive.
This is an okay foray for a mainstream conservative view of Gentry Liberalism and the "high-low" coalitions like that of mayor John Lindsay (perfected by the corrupt Obama machine and Clinton regime), but it also left a lot to be desired. For those seeking a Cliff's Notes version of a century of Leftism, from Utopian fantasy to the rise and entrenchment of Paul Gottfried's "managerial state," this might be a good place to start Those looking for more in depth research, look elsewhere.
September 10, 2014
Not sure about the validity of the historical references, but an interesting discussion.
August 9, 2017
Skimming and dipping into this polemic, it's pretty clear this isn't for me. Even if I'm sympathetic to his ideas, to some degree. Rating based on my skim.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews