Insurgent America

A 1935 tract by Alfred M. Bingham — co-editor of Common Sense and son of the Yale explorer-senator Hiram Bingham — arguing that the decisive political force of the Depression era was not a proletariat but a squeezed middle class, and that its revolt would set the terms of whatever replaced laissez-faire. It is a period document of the American left’s attempt to find a class base other than the industrial worker.

Why it’s on the list: It sits in Marxism and Collective Psychology as the American case: what happens to a class-based theory of politics in a country whose insurgent class was the middle one.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Marxism and Collective Psychology. Shared on X on March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 211-entry transcription, with the four parts and sixteen sub-sections, is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this card came from.
• Capitalism — the order the book takes to be ending.
• Socialism — the alternative the middle-class revolt was expected to serve or defeat.