Brooks Adams – författare

In The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895), Adams presents his theory that historical events are determined by economic conditions.  While believing that economic concerns—trade and the accumulation of wealth, for example—provided a primary impetus for civilization, he also believed that, unchecked, they invariably led to collapse.

The author examines America’s reluctant rise to power and the United Kingdom’s subsequent decline. Exhibiting a Darwinian perspective on the hierarchy of nations, Adams analyzes how power, wealth, and war are related. He argues that trade is an even more powerful force than war, demonstrating his point through the example of sugar production. Adams strongly believed that America’s rise to world supremacy was both a blessing and a curse.

In this 1913 volume, Adams sets out the case for the necessity of the impartiality of law. Concerned about the dangers stemming from the great wealth and private power newly being created in America, he argues that the justice system can only be satisfactory when applied in an entirely egalitarian manner. Chapters include “The Collapse of Capitalistic Government,” “The Limitations of the Judicial Function,” “American Courts as Legislative Chambers,” “The Social Equilibrium,” and “Political Courts.”

In Adams’s first important historical work, published in 1887, the author argues that Puritan Massachusetts had once been a theocracy where there was no place for freedom of religion, speech, or opinion, and that succeeding generations had to struggle for these freedoms. The book also contains the first expression of Adams’s preoccupation with the relationship between historical events and economic conditions.