The Political and Economic Impact of Current Criticisms of Business

The issues explored in this article were discussed with members of the Legal, Political, and Social Environment of Business section of the Schools of Business Administration, University of California at Berkeley.

Most assessments tend to overly exaggerate the political significance of hostility to business. The most extreme analysis is perhaps The Powell Memorandum, a confidential memo submitted to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, August 23, 1971. More typical is the statement by Rockefeller David that “American business is facing its most severe public disfavor since the 1930's … recent attacks … differ from those of the past in at least three major ways—in focus, in ultimate aim and in scope.” Rockefeller David , “The Role of Business in an Era of Growing Accountability,” Looking Ahead, April 1972, p. 1.

For a scholarly treatment of this phenomenon, see Edelman , The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1964).

For an analysis of consumer legislation which convincingly argues that most of the legislation passed between 1960 and 1970 actually does not threaten the economic interests of business, see Nadel Mark , The Politics of Consumer Protection (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1971), Chapter 6. This view is confirmed in a study by Weiss E. B. , A Critique of Consumerism (New York: Doyle, Dane Bernbach, Inc., 1970). See also Gellen Martin , “The Making of a Pollution-Industrial Complex,” Ramparts (May 1970) pp. 22–27.

The best-known statement of this perspective is Mintz M. Cohen J. , America Inc. (New York: Dial Press, 1971). See also Green Mark , ed., The Monopoly Makers (New York: Grossman, 1973).

See Scherer F. M. , Industrial Market Structure and Economic Performance (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1970).

The businesses implicated in the two major business-government scandals of the Nixon administration, the milk producers and ITT, succinctly illustrate this argument. The former function is an industry that is a textbook case of perfect competition. It is unlikely that the political power of doctors has been adversely affected by the absence of concentration in their industry.

For a more extended discussion and analysis of this development, see Vogel David , “The Corporation as Government: Dilemmas and Challenges,” Polity (forthcoming).

The most articulate statements of this position were made in the context of “Campaign GM.” See Moore Philip , “What's Good for the Country is Good for GM,” Washington Monthly (December 1970), pp. 10–18, and Schwartz Donald E. , “Towards New Corporate Goals: Coexistence with Society,” Georgetown Law Review (1971), pp. 57–104.

Hofstadter Richard , “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?” in Cheit Earl (ed.), The Business Establishment (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp. 125–161.

See Cochran Thomas C. , “Business as an American Institution,” The American Business System (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 1–12, for an excellent analysis of this phenomenon. For poll data that confirm Americans' continued fears about the power of business—even during periods when business is enjoying an unusually high degree of public approval—see Fisher Burton R. Withey Stephen B. , Big Business as the People See It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1951).

For a discussion of the high value that progressives placed on “efficiency,” see McConnell Grant , Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), pp. 30–50. See also Hays Samuel P. , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (New York: Atheneum, 1974).

See, for example, Mason Edward S. , “Introduction,” in Mason Edward S. (ed.), The Corporation in Modern Society (New York: Atheneum, 1966), pp. 1–24, and Abrams Richard , “Legal Change and the Legitimacy of the Corporation in America,” Stanford Law Review (April 1972), pp. 765–777.

The most influential statement of this position is Mishan E. , Technology and Growth (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967). I am indebted to Reinhard Bendix of the Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, for helping me clarify the ideological significance of this perception.

The attitudes of the citizens of Colorado, a state that has the opportunity to substantially increase its rate of growth, are particularly striking. At a meeting of the residents of Aspen a few years ago, the mayor informed an advance man for the Safeway supermarket chain: “Sir, you see in this room individuals of every persuasion—far right reactionaries and extreme leftists and everything between. There is only one thing which unites us: You are our enemy.” Quoted in Griffen Winthrop , “An Eco-Freak for Governor?” New York Times Magazine (27 October 1974), p. 39.

See Minnear Thomas Taylor James Ahmed Sadrudin , “Ecologically Concerned Consumers: Who Are They?” Journal of Marketing (April 1974), pp. 20–24.

Thus an article on the environment in The Review of Radical Political Economics concludes, “What is so ironic is that socialism, once thought to be the keystone for economic growth and development—and therefore of greatest necessity in the third world—is more a necessity in the advanced capitalist countries where material economic growth has been too rapid.” England Richard Bluestone Barry , “Ecology and Class Conflict,” (Fall-Winter 1971), p. 52.

Hurst James Willard , The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States, 1780–1970 (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970).