♪ this week on "moyers & company" -- >> the american promise has always been upward mobility. we are living through a period of increasingly frequent downward mobility. i think people recognize that the economy is run by and for the 1% if you will. and i think that can only go on so long without there being more and more outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle, class warfare. >> announcer: funding is provided by -- anne gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy. carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. the ford foundation, working

with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. the herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the kohlberg foundation. barbara g. fleischman. and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. >> welcome. what happened in washington over the past several days sent me back a century in time to the gilded age when senators and representatives were owned by wall street and big business and did the bidding of their monied masters by passing favorable laws that increased their already fabulous wealth. we have just watched the senate

and the house aided and abetted by president obama reward financial interests that poured almost half a billion dollars into the midterm elections. they did it by slipping into the omnibus spending bill signed by the president a provision permitting wall street to resume the predatory practice of sticking the taxpayer with the bill if the gambles failed and this provision was drafted by the huge banking conglomerate citigroup. lo and behold, the citigroup language turns up in the final bill almost word for word. what's more, republican and democratic leaders in congress again with a wink from the president sealed the grip of pluto krats with another provision tucked away in the same bill. it allows big donors to contribute up to $1.5 million to

political party committees in a single election cycle. as one of the robber barons explained, we're the rich, we own america. we got it, god knows how, but question intend to keep it. which brings me to this new book on the gilded age then and know by historian steve frazier. his title, the age of acquiescence will be publisheder in year. he's a scholar of american history who shuttles among the centuries comparing our past to our present. steve frazier, welcome. >> thank you very much for having me. >> it's become something of a cliche to say that we're living in the second gilded age. are we? >> yeah. i think we are living in the second gilded age. it's similar to what went on in the first gilded age. >> give me a working everyday

definition of the description of first gilded age. >> okay, the first gilded age was given over to very conspicuous displays of wealth. it was a corrupt age, profoundly corrupt. when mark twain writes "the gilded age" that's what he's talking about, crony capitalism, the kind that we are all too familiar with in our own times. it was also known for extreme inequality. great gulfs in the wealth. >> people at the bottom were paying the price for it. >> the people were paying the price. it wasn't nearly that poverty live alongside great wealth. it's that poverty was being created by great wealth. and that was a stunning shock to people living back then and caused them to rise up in rebellion. something that also distinguishes our second gilded age from our first. we have the same inequality. even more severe measures of

inequality today and have had for the last 30 years. we do not have that enormous resistance to that -- to that social fact of life. that we had during the first gilded age. >> all right. why? >> i think one of the reasons is that people lival -- living in 1890, for them industrial capitalism and the technological revolution the market was new. it was shocking and it was disrupting all kinds of traditional ways of life. in fact, threatening to put those ways of life out of existence. whether as an independent farmer, as a handy craftsman or as a peasant from sicily or other ways of life would be existentially threatened by the new capitalist order of things. so they summoned up kind of political will and the political

imagination to say it need -- it means we are not feted to live this way. so you had the variety of forms so we can establish a different kind of society. a socialist society. where the variety of alternatives, because we're long removed from that time. people coming of age in the last 30 or 40 years think of -- we live in a kind of windowless room of a kind of capitalist society to which there can be no alternative. kind of technodeterminism which governs the way we view things. the market is the beginning and end of life so far as we have been instruct and the media have reiterated over and over again. but that's one big reason -- >> what about the fact that we over the period after the first gilded age we did create a basic safety net of fragile and sometimes shredded safety net, but do they not feel as

oppressed by the industrial machine rolling over them? >> well, let me answer that in a couple of ways. first of all, i think it's important for everyone to remember that safety net was created -- it wouldn't have existed were people not ready to get their backs up, to stand up against that darwinian, ruthless, relentless capitalism of the first gilded age. it wasn't simply because a series of elite reformers decided to invent a safety net. that was the outcome of bitter and very violent struggle lasting over two generations. and they struggled hard. maybe to transcend the order that they were living in and if they didn't accomplish that what they did accomplish was to civilize capitalism. that's the safety net you're talking about. that protect people against the worst vicissitudes of the free market and then something happened in our own time. first of all, beginning some time in say the 1970s, the whole industrial order came under

assault. america could no longer compete abroad and industries began to fold up. we have the phenomenon of the industrialization. it had given rise to the powerful labor movement, a labor movement which champions the material needs of those working in some particular shop or factory, but was the champion of that safety net in general. for all working people, whether that was struggling for health care or minimum wages or social security, pensions, so on. that labor movement began to die with the deindustrial saix of the -- deindustrialization of the country. on the '80s, there was a renegade sea dog of capitalism at war with capitalism. i'm talking about the michael milkens who came on the scene,

they went to war against what they thought of as a kind ofs ofify ed, sclerotic bureaucracies that was responsible for the inability to compete abroad. they began to systematically dismantle the industrial -- those leveraged buyouts, began to dismantel that industrial order, the kind of dominant economy we live in today. >> and an economy of great speculation, of great rewards for handful of people who get rich, but make -- don't necessarily make life better for everyone else. >> exactly right. when you look at that civilized capitalism that lasted say from the new deal through the 1970s, a half century, you see the come prex of -- compression of what once had been that wide gulf in income and distribution of wealth. because of that safety net, because of progressive taxation, then the scissors moved in the opposite direction in the reign

of capitalism. that's the destruction of the safety net. the destruction of unions is very demobilizing. it robs them of the arm achur to fight back. people are being put upon, sometimes they fight back, sometimes they don't. people faced violent opposition in the first gilded age and yet found the will and -- to collectively fight back. we're living in a time now where a lot conspires against that. >> are you saying that people are not fighting back because they're not afraid or what? >> we underestimate the degree to which the policy of fear operates in our society, in our economy. if you're living -- look at us now. the dominant form of employment or what's becoming the dominant form of employment in our economy today is contingent casual, precarious labor. without any protections, no security at the job. no fringe benefits.

you're at the mercy of your employer and an economy that's in chronic flux. pensions have been stripped away. the social safety net has been shredded to a very significant degree. when you're faced with that kind of situation, naturally you have to think twice about whether you're going to fight back. >> what about this notion of, you know, i'm individual, i'm standing against the wave of history. i may have hard luck, i may be oppressed, but i can reinvent myself. that fable of american life is very powerful. >> it's very powerful. >> the business is infatuated -- >> yeah, every man will be a speculator and make it rich and do it on his own. that's a key thing. how do you get collective resistance in everyone dreams instead of their own individual ascent into wealth and power, and so that it's kind of like a

fable of democratic capitalism. that's capitalism as a democracy of the audacious who make it on their own, when in fact most people are headed in the opposite direction. it allows people in real life is highly -- is tied to this highly impermanent, unstable economy. think of that as a good thing, as a form of freedom. i'm going to reinvent myself. okay, i can't count on my employer to hire me on any permanent basis. i can't count on that kind of envelope of fringe benefits that's going to protect me and my family. good. i'm going to reinvent myself as the kind of freelancing, free agent, you know, minijamie dimon. this became persuasive to a certain segment of our population. it is also part of the fables of freedom that i think have conduced to acquiescence. >> fables of freedom? >> yes. yes. one of them is this notion of

free agent that he's out there, and he's going to reinvent himself. another fable of freedom is an old one, but it's new and telling life in our time. that is the fable that you can escape and be free privately through consumer culture. that's the pathway to liberation. and that has always offered itself up all through the 20th century as a way of escape. i don't mean to minimize the importance of material well-being for people and the need for -- to live a civilized life, to have what you need to live a civilized life. but we have advanced way beyond that. we deal in fantasy, to an extreme degree. very hard to resist this, because the media -- you know, all the various forms presents an image of the country in which we're all supposed to respect, admire and strive for, which is at variance with the underlying social and economic reality that

millions upon millions of people live. we're fascinated by the glitz, the glamour, the high-tech. we think of our country as a consummately prosperous one. even while every social industry indicates the opposite. that we're actually undergoing a process -- we are a developed country underdeveloping. because what does development mean? first of all, if it doesn't mean -- how is the general population faring? what is the measure of their well-being? and if we look at stagnant declining real wages, if we look at families that can no longer support themselves without multiple jobs, without both spouses working, if we look at college -- college students deeply in debt in order to in theory get that degree with promises and that's an illusory promise to some degree, some upward mobility, it's that immediate idea that the media does not portray.

>> how has the theory changed since the days of carnegie and rockefeller and the great industrialists of that period and today? >> i think during the first gilded ages, people called the robber barons, who are held in great suspicion. their motives were doubted. they seemed to behaving in ways that violated the notions of economic justice, of religious propriety. they seemed to be placing money before all else. they were buying supreme court justices, they were buying senators and so on. they somed -- seemed to be an imminent threat to the birth right of the democratic revolution. a reach -- in our second gilded age, are far less frequently thought to be guilty of that and on the contrary as the champions of the free market are thought to be our wise men.

our savants. >> even though the free market fails time -- >> time and again, right. >> here's an irony to me. in the recent midterm elections, exit polls showed that 63% of the voters believe that the economy works only for the wealthy. only 32% believe that the economy includes every day people and yet look at how the vote went. >> yeah. >> who the victors were. >> there could be nothing more telling than we are living in the acquiescent moment, those kind of statistics and those kind of statistics have been around for a long time. on the one hand, both political parties have run the republicans more swiftly than the democrats have run far away from the kind of social programs, welfare programs, infrastructure investments, progressive taxation. for fear that they would offend the right, the very powerful and

vocal right in american life. >> you talk about the vocal right. there's a powerful movement that seems to like the way that the country is going, that this is the way it ought to be. and that occupy wall street and steve frazier and others, they just represent a -- the malcontents of a system that is really working for them. >> yes. it is the consummate all embracing expression of the triumph of the free market ideology as the synonym for freedom. in other words, it used to be you could talk about freedom and the free market as distinct notions. now and for some time since the age of reagan, free market and freedom are conflated. they're completely married to each other and we have as a culture bought into that idea. it's part of what i mean when i say the attenuating of any

alternatives. >> is there any vision of an alternative society to the financial capitalism that's driving us? >> very little. the labor movement itself offers no such alternative. it is trying to defend its own very precarious existence. and defend its shrinking numbers. making valiant efforts to convince other unorganized working people that it might be to their immediate advantage to join the labor movement. but there's no alternative vision of a different kind of society. let me give you an interesting example to me anyway. when the cold war first broke out and we faced the soviet union, the -- what we depicted ourselves as the free world as we all know, and that as a slave empire, whatever you want to call it. but we talked very little about capitalism. we talked about freedom and the free world, but not so much about capitalism. why? because the country had emerged out of the depression.

people were still very skeptical about whether it could indeed serve the general welfare. >> it failed, that's what led to -- >> in a dramatic way. it ruined millions of lives. when we say freedom, we mean capitalism and that's an indication of how we have been -- you know, there's a philosopher that language is a house of beings, where we live. if you're living in a language that's being denuded by the furniture, you're homeless. you have no way to challenge even when you're faced with wholesale larceny, i mean on the part of the major banking institutions. let's call a spade a spade. and yet, we lack the kind of

linguistic wherewithal. which is much more, it's spiritual to confront it. >> you just said that the capitalism failed in the 1920s, led to the great depression, twice in my lifetime. not your lifetime. but twice, capitalism has failed and yet it's back up on its feet and not only back on its feet, but leading the race. just a matter of time before the economy returns to previous highs and capitalism will prove once again it's resilient, it's overly triumphant? >> in some sense that's indisputabl indisputable. but the system may reproduce itself at some higher level, but not necessarily at the level it once achieved. it may reproduce itself at a lower level. that's what the recovery that's happening today is about. most of the jobs that are being created are low-wage jobs. most of the forms are contingent are spreading from one economic sector to another. the social safety net continues

to fray. our public amenities continue to decay. our infrastructure is a scandal when compared to western europe. scandalously decaying and in ruins. so business profit's good, and employment back up a bit. yes. true. but lower levels of life. >> not business profits, they're at an all-time high. >> but if they can lower their cost, if you can operate what many businesses do outside the boundaries of the law, whether there's the wage and however law, if those bureaucracies have been stripped bare so they can't enforce them even if they wanted to, you look at a society that's recovering, but recovering at some lower level of life for most people. that's why the media says, president obama says what's the problem, the economy is getting

better and people persist and say, no, it's not really. they don't seem to believe the statistics and the headlines. there's good reason for that, because for many, many millions of people, life is really not improving. >> so is what's happening today historical inevitability or like the first gilded age class war? >> i think it's -- it's class war that hasn't broken out yet as widely as it may. i think people are increasingly fed up. they recognize that the economy and the political system is run by and foreign -- and for the 1% if you will. that their voices are not being heard. i think that can only go on so long without there being more and more outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle, class warfare. we live out in acquiescent times but you never know what's percolating or simmering or whatever the right word beneath the surface of things. i often say to people, i know i've said it to you in the past. if you took a picture of america

1932 -- >> a snapshot. >> a snapshot of america, 1932. >> hoover is president. >> hoover is president. the country is in the depths of the great depression, it is horrible. millions and millions of people are unemployed, evicted from their homes, losing their farms, et cetera. and the picture will reflect that despair, nothing happening, fear haunts the landscape. take that same snapshot two years later, 1934, and it's a different country. and it's a different country not because franklin roosevelt is president. he's part of that story, but it's because suddenly millions of people are mobilizing all over the place. there's a labor movement, there's people aiding their neighbors when they get evicted, stopping that, or gathering up the furniture on the sidewalk and putting it back in apartment. there are farmers out in the great plains dumping milk on the highways in order to preserve

the price of milk. there are rent strikes going on all over the place. new labor farmer parties forming in wisconsin and in minnesota and elsewhere. the country is electric with social activity. and a new ethos of social solidarity. something nobody would have predicted in 1932. so you never know. >> the book "the age of acquiescence." steve frazier, thank you for being with me. >> thank you for having me. and our website, there's more about the gilded age including an excerpt from the treason of the senate. an expose that locks the country a century ago.

david graham phillips condemned campaign contributors as the interest. he said they were vastly more dangerous than an invading army for they manipulate the prosperity, produced by all, so that it heaps up riches on the few. same old story then and now. that's at bill moyers.com. see you there and see you here next time. >> don't wait a week to get more moyers. visit bill moyers.com or the exclusive blogs, essays and video features. >> announcer: funding is provided by -- anne gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy. carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in

education, democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. the herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the kohlberg foundation. barbara g. fleischman. and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company.

>> next on "newsroom." bumpy road for services from uber to fly wheel, disruptive technologies changing transportation and sparking lawsuits. coverage california, reaching out to insure 2 million more in the state. plus founder of the webby awards and impact of technology in our lives. >> the key thing is that we have created. i think we need to feel like we have more agency in how we use it.