American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620–1877 (Historical Materialism Book Series), The

Short Listed for the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Unable to analyze the dynamics of specific forms of social labour in the antebellum U.S., most historians of the US Civil War have ignored its deep social roots. To search out these roots, Post applies the theoretical insights from the transition debates to the historical literature on the U.S. to produce a new analysis of the origins of American capitalism.