Business Organized as Power: The New Imperium in Imperio

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alpheus T. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
Welfare Society ◽  
Industrial Civilization ◽  
University Officials ◽  
The Welfare State

President Truman's stubborn determination to build on the New Deal's embattled foundations an imposing edifice called the Welfare State is stirring the business community and its spokesmen to renewed and outwardly bold hostilities. This present outcry for “welfare,” it seems, is not what it used to be: “The irresponsible clamor of the mob for bread and circuses.” “Welfare” is now recognized as “a justifiable demand, consonant with the necessities of social evolution,” and in keeping with our political tradition. The old jungle economy, at long last, must be discarded. All this is now cheerfully conceded. But whose responsibility is it to bring order out of chaos, whose business is it to formulate and administer the welfare program? There is the rub. Certainly not government's, business leaders assert, for ultimately that would spell not a glorious welfare society but an inglorious welfare state. This ignominious prelude to statism, to totalitarianism, to despotism, must be avoided at all cost. That is why certain publicists, ex-New Dealers, industrial leaders and university officials are alerting the business community to a fresh responsibility, the unique venture of capitalism today—“the greatest opportunity in the world,” Russell Davenport calls it, and peculiarly the concern of Free Enterprise.Harvard's Business School Dean, Donald K. David, also points ominously at “The Danger of Drifting,” and sharply differentiates between “freedom to” and “freedom from,” between “equality of opportunity and equality of results,” etc., etc. These refinements are important, Dean David decides, because in them lies the crucial difference between welfare society (which he approves) and welfare state (which he deplores). How easy it is, he warns, to drift into the lethal arms of the welfare state. To foil the octopus of welfare, businessmen must be vigilant and aggressive. “Responsibility for this program,” Dean David concludes, “is going to be placed in the hands of the businessman, because we have, whether some people like it or not, an industrial civilization; and the businessman, whether he likes it or not, has to assume new responsibilities.”

When Business Is Not “Businesslike”

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
World War ◽  
Initial Resistance ◽  
Conservative Coalition

This chapter explores the initial resistance to the PAC concept within the business community and among conservatives more generally in the 1940s and 1950s. Though major business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and United States Chamber of Commerce had not entirely ignored elections to this point, they concentrated their energies following World War II on lobbying and publicity campaigns promoting “free enterprise,” while criticizing labor and liberal PACs as coercive, collectivist, and antidemocratic. They also placed faith in the “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats to protect their interests, reflecting their strong belief that both parties should and could promote business aims. As fears grew that labor had successfully “infiltrated” the Democratic Party, however, conservative activists urged business groups to be “businesslike” and respond to labor electioneering in kind. Business leaders thus began to contemplate a partisan electoral counterstrategy centered on the Republican Party.

Assaulting the Citadel

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-143
Author(s):  
John W. Compton
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
National Council ◽  
Religious Support ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Government Aid ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Council Of Churches

This chapter tells the story of how J. Howard Pew and a band of conservative activists attempted to infiltrate the National Council of Churches with the aim of undermining religious support for the welfare state. As with many odd pairings, financial considerations helped bring the parties together. The courtship began when the NCC’s architects hatched the idea of a National Lay Committee—a body of prominent laymen and women that would help the Council keep its finger on the pulse of lay opinion while also boosting the Council’s budget. From Pew’s perspective, the Lay Committee offered a potential backdoor into the citadel of the Social Gospel. The NCC needed money, and he was willing and able to supply it. In return, he asked only that the Council cease issuing pronouncements in favor of government aid to the less fortunate and instead transform itself into a champion of the free-enterprise system. The plan sounded simple enough on paper, yet it ultimately failed to accomplish its principal objective of prompting the NCC to abandon its commitment to a robust social welfare state. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was a group of prominent business leaders, not the alleged communists in the ranks of the clergy, who led the opposition to Pew’s short-lived Lay Committee.

The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960

1983 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Executive Branch ◽  
Eisenhower Administration ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Truman Administration ◽  
Advisory Council ◽  
American Business ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Advertising Council ◽  
The New Deal

From its inception in the 1940s the Advertising Council was part of a broad, loosely coordinated campaign by American business leaders to contain the anticorporate liberalism of the 1930s and to refashion the character of the New Deal State. In this campaign the Council generally aligned itself with the more liberal wing of the business community, usually identified with the newly organized Committee for Economic Development (CED), rather than with the older and more conservative National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Like the CED, the Advertising Council often espoused a “corporatist” ideology which emphasized cooperation between business and government; and like the Business Advisory Council, the National Petroleum Council, and other quasi-public corporatist bodies, it sought to establish close, reciprocal relationships with the executive branch. The Council enthusiastically supported the new foreign and national security policies of the Truman Administration, but strongly opposed its domestic programs. By contrast, the Council supported both the foreign and domestic policies of the Eisenhower Administration, and helped promote the administration's economic programs in a series of major advertising campaigns. Through its millions of “public service” advertisements, the Council sought to promote an image of advertising as a responsible and civic-spirited industry, of the U.S. economy as a uniquely productive system of free enterprise, and of America as a dynamic, classless, and benignly consensual society.

Business, Anti-Communism, and the Welfare State, 1945–1958

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Doody
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Corporate Managers ◽  
Price Controls ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Modern Welfare State ◽  
The Government ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter focuses on the Detroit business community's opposition to the growth of the government. These men made little distinction between the New Deal, Socialism, and Communism. The former, they argued, would ultimately lead to the latter. As a result, Detroit businessmen during the late 1940s and 1950s carried out a campaign to check state power. They targeted labor, particularly the United Automobile Workers (UAW), in this fight because they saw the union as one of the greatest advocates of an expanded welfare state. Like other conservatives, these men were anti-Communists. Their hostility to Communism was inextricably linked to their perception that free enterprise, as they understood it, was threatened by an expanding welfare state. Corporate managers discussed such issues as social security, unemployment insurance, and peacetime price controls—all measures they saw as part of the “march toward socialism or collectivism” and that labor-liberals believed were key to creating a modern welfare state.

scholarly journals Between Business and Academia in Postwar Britain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Rollings
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Economic Literacy ◽  
World War ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
Economic Advice ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines the attitudes of three neoliberal business economists about the welfare state in postwar Britain. The three—John Jewkes, Arthur Shenfield, and Barry Bracewell-Milnes—had some degree of economic literacy, and each was active in neoliberal circles and critical of Britain’s welfare state in the 1960s along typical neoliberal lines. Significantly, all three provided economic advice at the heart of the British business community. This illustrates three main points. First, neoliberals were not as isolated before the 1970s as commonly presented and had good links with parts of the business community. Second, the focus on the intellectuals in the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) distorts our understanding of the organization and the dissemination of its ideas. Third, we need to be aware of the growing number of business economists in Britain and other advanced economies after World War II and the role that they played.

Welfare State and Welfare Society

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geraint Parry
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Welfare Society ◽  
Legitimacy Crisis ◽  
The Welfare State

‘CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?’, THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER was reported to have replied to a question concerning the alleged crisis in sterling. In the case of the welfare state it might seem that the appropriate response would be ‘Which crisis? ’ since there are several on the menu - fiscal crisis, legitimacy crisis, crisis of ungovernability . Left, Right and Centre have become convinced that there is a crisis. This is after a period of history which had seen an unprecedented rise in the standard of living of the vast majority of the population living in what are normally regarded as welfare states.

scholarly journals Idleness: Energizing the Danish Welfare State

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Health Care Intervention ◽  
Welfare Society ◽  
Elderly Health ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Welfare State

This article appropriates the concept of energy in order to analyze the interaction between the Danish welfare state and the category of citizens referred to among social workers and health professionals as “passive citizens.” While passivity might commonly be seen as mere inactivity—a certain non-action beyond the unfolding of social life—this article argues that in the Danish welfare society, the opposite is the case. In fact, in this context various forms of passivity have become the object of concerted political and media attention and the general schism between energy and passivity has become part of a public discourse on elderly health care and aging. By examining the way health care professionals talk about passive senior citizens in terms of a lack of energy, this article shows how, in a wider sense, passivity is framed as a particular problem that can be overcome through the right health care intervention. I argue that energy and passivity have become of key interest to the Danish welfare state in managing its aging population and that the attempt to activate the passive citizen in fact energizes the welfare state.

The Welfare Society and the Welfare State

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Pedro Hespanha ◽  
Claudino Ferreira ◽  
Sílvia Portugal
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Society ◽  
The Welfare State
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