Sept. 15, 1998 Contact: Bob Brickhouse (804) 924-6856 HOW AMERICA CAME TO DOMINATE THE 20TH CENTURY The 20th century, now in its twilight, has been tagged as the "American century" ever since Time and Life publisher Henry Luce proclaimed it so in an editorial in 1941. In a broad new interpretation of America's 20th century rise to world power, to be published next month, a noted University of Virginia historian demonstrates how U.S. international dominance didn't simply result from World War II military victory and Europe's self destruction but had its foundations laid through far-reaching social-engineering strategies of an elite liberal group at the century's start. In "Why the American Century?" (University of Chicago Press), U.Va. history professor Olivier Zunz argues that much of America's international clout came from the creation of a science based economy and a large middle-class consumer-oriented "center," however flawed by discrimination it was. The creators were the managers, policy-makers and other professionals of a new partnership of government, corporations and research universities who devised and promoted new methods of mass social control, including advertising, polling and educational testing, Zunz writes. They promoted a social contract that stressed "abundance," democracy and consumerism and that made Americans feel they were morally justified to intervene on the world scene. Americans "constructed the necessary ideology of an 'American century'" long before "imposing it on a world recovering from the second world war," says Zunz, a French-born and -educated author of two previous highly praised studies of the United States' early 20th century development, "The Changing Face of Inequality" and "Making America Corporate." While historians of the last 30 years have focused important attention on inequalities and discrimination against minorities and women in American life and have argued that there are numerous viewpoints and models for viewing U.S. history, Zunz says he hopes to reconcile the many interpretations of the country's past century by drawing new attention to the significant role of this vast middle-class, conformist center defined by its buying behavior. And he argues that "we can learn much for our times" by understanding the successes and failures of the largely well- MORE 2 meaning policy-makers and social engineers who strove to create a strong center capable of major achievements. With a civil war behind them and new waves of immigrants entering, America began the new century "with two large but unfinished projects," Zunz says. The first was the creation of an industrial economy, which involved inventing technologies for exploiting America's natural resources, building a large industrial plant, relocating millions of workers to industrial centers, investing in research and devising organizational strategies to improve the ways Americans produced national and individual wealth. A new concept of production and everyday life was being created, based on assembly lines and consumerism. The second project Americans pursued at the start of the new century was expanding the scope of their democratic institutions. "Only white males benefitted fully from the democratic principles promoting individual freedom and self-government that had been written into the Constitution," Zunz points out, adding that progress to change this was painfully slow. Since the late 19th century, big business, government and the expanding sector of higher education had been building a partnership to manage American life, Zunz says. This newly created matrix of corporations, research universities, government agencies and foundations allowed producers and users of knowledge to interact fully for the first time in history. The partnership was firmly in place by the 1920s and has gained strength throughout the century. With new organizational techniques and principles of social order, the liberal elites who led these institutional sectors "positioned America for hegemony in a global mass society," Zunz says. The three-way partnership was "the prerequisite for the American century," for it was this reorganization of knowledge, not merely the power of capital accumulation, that gave Americans the means both to generate prosperity at home and expand their presence into the world, Zunz says. "As its size increased and its standard of living improved, the middle class became the hallmark of the 'American century,'" Zunz writes. Middle-class expansion became a national project, seen as the alternative to Marxism. Corporate executives, labor leaders and government officials collaborated in devising and backing mass consumption policies to turn the market to the service of the social contact. However, these "market solutions" had "keenly felt limitations," Zunz stresses. "Designed to respond best to the needs of an abstract average American, they bypassed individual or group aspirations" and "threatened to homogenize all citizens." Who were these elite social planners who created the American century? They were mostly white male "liberals" from many fields related to government, business, journalism, social science MORE 3 and education who believed in expert ability to generate wealth, in the need for social engineering and "in the possibilities of individual improvement," Zunz says. "They tolerated a high degree of inequality." They believed in the need to keep modern mass society democratic and to find a middle road between a totally free market and socialism. "They possessed a self-assurance that today's experts have largely lost and they articulated the ideals and practices we associate with the American century." Historians like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. writing in the 1950s and 1960s saw them as truly representative of the larger national vision. Schlesinger called their vision "the vital center." But this confident picture exploded in the 1960s when its deficiencies became all too clear, Zunz writes. Minorities, immigrants and women demanded fairness and the system's homogenizing approach proved far too abstract and mechanical. Zunz says his aim in examining "the center" is not to reinstate it "as a fixed place we all can visit comfortably but as a lost idea we need to reconstruct to understand our century." As the century closes, he says, and "as we find ourselves again in the midst of self-doubt," the early 20th century spirit of uncertainty and of searching for creative new paths "is more important for our times than the mechanized certainties of the mid-20th century." ### Olivier Zunz may be reached at (804) 924-6390. For a review copy of "Why the American Century?" contact University of Chicago Press at (773) 702 7897 or by fax at (773) 702-9756. Television reporters should contact the TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.