Tracing a seismic shift in American social thought, Jeffrey Sklansky offers a new synthesis of the intellectual transformation entailed in the rise of industrial capitalism.

For a century after Independence, the dominant American understanding of selfhood and society came from the tradition of political economy, which defined freedom and equality in terms of ownership of the means of self-employment. However, the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Large landowners and industrialists claimed the right to rule as...

What should serve as money, who should control its creation and circulation, and according to what rules? For more than two hundred years, the "money question" shaped American social thought, becoming a central subject of political debate and class conflict. Sovereign of the Market reveals how and why this happened.

Jeffrey Sklansky's wide-ranging study comprises three chronological parts devoted to major episodes in the career of the money question. First, the fight over the innovation of paper money in colonial New England. Second, the battle over the development of commercial...