Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Ideals and Political Realities Since World War II

Using a series of case studies from the reconstruction of post-war West Germany to the struggle against apartheid, Fink shows how American liberals joined global allies in pursuit of an expansive democratic vision. Even as liberal internationalism enjoyed some significant success, it also stumbled against both domestic opponents and its own blindness to contradictions in capitalist development and the limits of national political solutions.  Today’s progressive policy makers, he suggests, would do well to apply these lessons.   

Leon Fink is distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and senior resident scholar at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.   A leading authority on U.S. and global labor topics, his opinion pieces have appeared in the Washington Post, Dissent, The Daily Beast, and In These Times.  Long-time editor of the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, his many books include The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order (2014).

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University and the National History Center) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partners (the George Washington University History Department and the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest) for their continued support.