Friday, February 14, 2014

Alexander Hamilton: Economic Fascist?

That's the conclusion of Virgle Glenn Wilhite in his book Founders of American Economic Thought and Policy.  Wilhite's book was published in 1958 and is an attempt to introduce the reader to the economic thought and policy advocacy of various thinkers  from Ben Franklin and Hamilton to lesser known Albert Gallatin and Pelatiah Webster.  Near the end of the final chapter, in which Wilhite attempts to classify various early American thinkers according to their economic thought he provides a rather radical judgement on the economic thought and policy of Hamilton.  He writes:

Alexander Hamilton was a nationalist and a mercantilist. His thought contains strong traces of the sort of political and economic doctrines characteristic  of modern Italian Fascism and pre-World War II German National Socialism (Wilhite, p. 426).

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