ABSTRACT
The illusion that capitalism is a system of private property was viewed as a deterrent to the solution of the economic tension and instability that enveloped the United States when Herbert Agar wrote this chapter. The United States, when Theodore Roosevelt became president, had a democratic form of government suitable to a nation of property-owners in which a majority of families had a real stake in the country. The friends of "normalcy", of course, were even further from facing the facts than were the Progressives. One error underlying American liberal thought is the belief that the United States is now engaged in a struggle to preserve a system of private property against the menace of communism. In fact the traditional American social order, which was based on the institution of private property, has already been largely supplanted by thoroughgoing capitalism.
