ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the American economy that has come to have the very greatest importance in accounting how the proletarian psyche has evolved. Even American capitalism puts tight fetters on the individual, even American capitalism cannot deny that it holds its workers in a condition of slavery, and even American capitalism has had periods of stagnation with all their destructive consequences for the worker. It is obvious that this is why the position of the working class to the problems of the future shape of the economy was bound to develop in a highly idiosyncratic manner. During one generation, therefore, two-and-a-half million people have been attracted to freedom from these eight states alone. That is about a fifth to a quarter of the entire number of American-born inhabitants of these states.
