Research has long established strong links between neoliberal policies and increasing rates of inequality. Susan George, for instance, argued quite convincingly that increasing inequality stems from the neoliberal practices of placing public wealth into private hands, enforcing huge tax cuts for the rich and suppressing wages for average workers. And a recent study by psychology researchers shows that neoliberalism has resulted in both preferences and support for greater income inequality. Moreover, the study in question argues that the culprit for the impact on attitudes is “Thatcherism.” Indeed, most researchers place the origins of the neoliberal counterrevolution in the postwar era with the policies initiated by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the U.K. and the U.S., respectively.

However, a new book by the historian David N. Gibbs, titled, The Revolt of the Rich: How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide, contends that we should look to the administrations of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter in particular for setting up the foundations for the launching of the neoliberal counterrevolution in the United States. As such, as its author points out in this exclusive interview for Truthout, too much credit has been assigned to the Thatcher-Reagan duo for the end of the Keynesian social democratic approach to government and economics. As Gibbs says, “We should not whitewash Carter’s record” as he was “certainly no friend to the working class.” Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona.

C. J. Polychroniou: The first three decades of the postwar era were marked by substantial economic growth and shared prosperity. Indeed, income gains were evenly distributed and the gap between those high up on the income ladder and those at the middle and bottom did not experience much change. However, economic growth slowed down during the second half of the 1970s and the income gap widened, with the very top earners pulling much further ahead since — to the point that current inequality levels today are close to those observed during the Gilded Age. The general consensus is that neoliberal policies have been at the root of extreme inequality, and the major beneficiaries of these policies are indeed the dominant classes. Moreover, the conventional view is that the first wave of neoliberalism begins in the 1980s with Reaganomics and Thatcherism, but in your recently published book, The Revolt of the Rich, you argue that it was actually the Nixon administration that laid the groundwork for the shift to a conservative economic platform, and that it was the Carter administration in turn that ushered in the first wave of neoliberalism.

Can you briefly describe some of the actions that the Nixon administration took to build up political momentum for the advance of right-wing economics and what forces were involved in the rightward transformation of U.S. politics? And how did the labor movement and the progressive forces of the time respond to the rise of economic conservatism and the revolt of the rich?

David N. Gibbs: Richard Nixon aspired to be a transformational president, one who would overturn the regulated capitalism inherited from the New Deal, in favor of a free market revolution. He was influenced by the laissez faire worldview of the University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman, whom Nixon admired. Though Friedman never held any official position, he acted as an informal adviser to the administration. Associates of Friedman were appointed to key positions in the Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Justice, as well as the Council of Economic Advisors, often at the recommendation of Friedman himself. Their association with the presidency helped to elevate the prestige of Friedmanite economics, a prestige that endured long after Nixon left the scene.

To amplify Friedman’s message, Nixon relied on a rightist intellectual network, focused on the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a free market bastion. The president leaned on corporate........

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