David Huyssen. Progressive Inequality

For the better part of the last decade, as income inequality has grown ever more pronounced in the contemporary United States, commentators on the left side of the political spectrum have called for a new Progressive Era. Such appeals have invoked the early-twentieth-century reaction to the worst extremes of an earlier Gilded Age and that previous high point for Social Darwinism. In Progressive Inequality: Rich and Poor in New York, 1890–1920, historian David Huyssen frames his narrative in precisely those contemporary terms, but the result is a powerful and strikingly astute reading of the difficulties inherent in building a democratic politics attuned to class. By unpacking the internal contradictions of Progressive-era philanthropy and charity work, Huyssen alerts the reader to the ways in which differing experiences and understandings of class limited the possibility of meaningful reform 100 years ago. While Huyssen's subtitle offers up a deceptively clear chronology—1890–1920—the work itself defies any straightforward linear progression. More a series of vividly described set pieces across a quarter century of New York City's history, Huyssen brings to light long neglected episodes in the metropolitan past: colorful neighborhood pageants, violent transit strikes, over-staged Christmas galas, and contentious mass meetings. Some of the vignettes work more powerfully than others, but the method has a powerful payoff in Huyssen's evocative and nuanced reading of the shifting discourse and lived experience of class across turn-of-the-century Manhattan.

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