Larry Siedentop argues that the United States was the first country to achieve mature liberalism defining it, “Mature liberalism. In the third stage, increased social mobility and a greater sense of opportunity significantly erode pre-capitalist status differences and reduce (although by no means eliminating) the advantages deriving from inherited wealth” (Siede

Because the United States has not achieved mature liberalism, it remains in early liberalism. Siedentop defines this form of liberal capitalism, “Early liberalism. In the second stage, a significant gap remains between the formal liberalism now guaranteed by law and de facto inequalities of status and opportunity surviving from a pre-capitalist order and perpetuated by property rights” (Siedentop, 155). The American Civil War ended the analogous feudal state of slavery. But slavery left a distinct scar: the inequalities between black and white men both socially and economically. Although blacks were now free men legally, the actual freedom of blacks had not occurred and is still somewhat suppressed. Sociologists state, “A large share of black America remains involuntarily segregated, and because life chances are so decisively determined by where one lives, segregation is deeply implicated in the perpetuation of black poverty” (Massey in Higham, 103). Blacks did not and still do not have the social opportunity that whites had to purchase land in areas that would provide the proper education. Therefore they do not receive the skills needed to move upward economically and socially. This lack of opportunity which forces blacks into poor rural areas and central city ghettoes shows inequality perpetuated by property rights.

ntop, 155). He claims that the lack of a feudal past is what allowed mature liberalism to occur in the United States so easily (Siedentop, 155). Aspects of Siedentop’s argument are true. Yes, the lack of a feudal past helped to erode pre-capitalist status. However, the United States did have an even more oppressive system than feudalism, slavery. Although not feudal in the basic sense, slave ownership is reminiscent of ruling of lords over serfs. In slavery, plantation owners did not provide protection for their slaves, as lords often did for their serfs. The inequality left between slaves and masters was just as appalling, if not worse, as that left between serfs and lords. The lack of a feudal past, and adoption of capitalism does not solely imply that America is a holder of mature liberalism. The stain of inequality left by slavery decreased the chance for social mobility for over a century in the United States. Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed them, blacks were legally segregated from whites until the 1960s. Today, involuntary forms for segregation, due to discrimination, occur in Ameri

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