Political economy : a critique of American society / Scott G. McNall.

It is a premise of this book that things are not as they seem, and, furthermore, that what we experience is unique in the sense that there is an explanation. Alienation, loneliness, inflation, unemployment, are not inevitable. It is not inevitable that our cities should be frantic by day and unsafe after dark. It is not inevitable that people should lose their ability to trust one another, should merely exchange one pattern of domination for another among sexes, classes, generations. People increasingly take for granted much of what they experience because they cannot understand why it is happening to them, cannot see that public action very often solve private problems. By showing that our situation is unique to one moment in human history, that it has been created by human activity, we hope to suggest that people can act in concert to create new orders of their own choosing. Informed action grows from informed theory. It is the purpose of this work to provide an understanding of modern, capital society—its inner dynamic, its logic, its contradictions—so that people can begin to understand their own biographies. Its purpose is to educate in the most fundamental sense—to create self-conscious actors who use their awareness to take action.