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Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60
The post-World War II years in the United States were marked by the business community's efforts to discredit New Deal liberalism and undermine the power and legitimacy of organized labor. In Selling Free Enterprise , Elizabeth Fones-Wolf describes how conservative business leaders strove to reorient workers away from their loyalties to organized labor and government, teaching that prosperity could be achieved through reliance on individual initiative, increased productivity, and the protection of personal liberty. Based on research in a wide variety of business and labor sources, this detailed account shows how business permeated every aspect of American life, including factories, schools, churches, and community institutions.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 2, 2017
An insanely relevant work: how big business smashed down the US labor movement and pimped out the free enterprise orthodoxy that is still the veritable turd-lifeblood of American politics today.
There is much it inform and even surprise. The US emerged from WW2 very socialist and very much labor-focused. The Depression had made everyone realize that rich people might not have their best interest at heart and so they turned to the unions. After the war, big business was alarmed at all this talk of welfare and universal employment! What, labor leaders want to see how much we make so there can be fair wages?! Fuck that!
This book is about how they did precisely that. Spending millions on corporate advertising and propaganda, and milking all the bullshit fears about Communists taking over the world, and even linking capitalism and religion (no shit). If you want to know where it all started, folks, it's all right here. The frightening this is that this back and forth between hesitant wusses who won't just commit to making sure everyone is done right by the common weal and the shit-eating-grinning corporate ass-clowns very might well be the defining feature of America writ whole.
There is much it inform and even surprise. The US emerged from WW2 very socialist and very much labor-focused. The Depression had made everyone realize that rich people might not have their best interest at heart and so they turned to the unions. After the war, big business was alarmed at all this talk of welfare and universal employment! What, labor leaders want to see how much we make so there can be fair wages?! Fuck that!
This book is about how they did precisely that. Spending millions on corporate advertising and propaganda, and milking all the bullshit fears about Communists taking over the world, and even linking capitalism and religion (no shit). If you want to know where it all started, folks, it's all right here. The frightening this is that this back and forth between hesitant wusses who won't just commit to making sure everyone is done right by the common weal and the shit-eating-grinning corporate ass-clowns very might well be the defining feature of America writ whole.
July 23, 2021
Really stunning. This book is a towering achievement in real history.
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf takes us back to the immediate period after World War II, when business was running scared. It’s funny (and reassuring) to imagine a time when powerful corporations thought the country was completely getting away from them and they needed to change fast or they would lose their power and prestige to a strong, unified work force. If they felt that way once, it’s possible they can be made to feel that way again. This anxiety about business’s dwindling power and influence inspired an all out propaganda assault on the American public.
Preaching the free enterprise system’s centrality to the “American way of life,” and the amorphous values of freedom and individualism, business went to work to reshape public perceptions about capitalism. And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams!
As a modern person living in the world business helped create, it is stunning to see how manufactured our most unquestioned dominant ideologies really are. Fones-Wolf has example after example of how business set out to create an impression in the public mind and achieved their goals.
Labor tried valiantly to fight back, but even at the zenith of American union strength, did not have the resources that business could command to counteract the onslaught.
I found this book a challenging but exciting read. It was enlightening to see how little conservative goals change, even 75 years later. It was stimulating to dissect what anti-labor rhetoric looks like. Here we have a handy guide for countering some very tired critiques of unions and collective strength, if we are wise enough to learn.
A top flight book. I learned so much.
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf takes us back to the immediate period after World War II, when business was running scared. It’s funny (and reassuring) to imagine a time when powerful corporations thought the country was completely getting away from them and they needed to change fast or they would lose their power and prestige to a strong, unified work force. If they felt that way once, it’s possible they can be made to feel that way again. This anxiety about business’s dwindling power and influence inspired an all out propaganda assault on the American public.
Preaching the free enterprise system’s centrality to the “American way of life,” and the amorphous values of freedom and individualism, business went to work to reshape public perceptions about capitalism. And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams!
As a modern person living in the world business helped create, it is stunning to see how manufactured our most unquestioned dominant ideologies really are. Fones-Wolf has example after example of how business set out to create an impression in the public mind and achieved their goals.
Labor tried valiantly to fight back, but even at the zenith of American union strength, did not have the resources that business could command to counteract the onslaught.
I found this book a challenging but exciting read. It was enlightening to see how little conservative goals change, even 75 years later. It was stimulating to dissect what anti-labor rhetoric looks like. Here we have a handy guide for countering some very tired critiques of unions and collective strength, if we are wise enough to learn.
A top flight book. I learned so much.
September 4, 2013
THE ENGINEERS OF HUMAN SOULS
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf 1996 publication "Selling Free Enterprise" is a comprehensive look at the efforts of the business community, between 1945 and 1960, to marginalise organised labour and retard any further development of the progressive politics that gained ground during the period from the 1930's Depression through to the end of the war.
The result is a dense well sourced book that details the conflict, primarily between organised labour and the business associations, over the United States political-economic development. Other protaganists include religious organisations and the media who were to varying degrees subverted by the business community as part of their efforts to turn their "free enterprise" credo into the common wisdom that constrains debate and decisions about political-economic life in the United States. Organised Labour and others efforts to defend and extend the gains of the New Deal era are examined closely, and the author doesn't shy away from identifying those defeats that were far from inevitable, despite the cards stacked against them.
On the downside some may find Fones-Wolf's prose more than a little dry, certainly it is not a racy read, but she is nothing if not thorough end-notes to each chapter testify. On the context within which the events examined occurred, such as the first third of the Cold War and the period of political repression known as McCarthyism, Fones-Wolf is perhaps not as thorough as she might have been. Certainly the phenomena of McCarthyism during her period, and its role in creating a congenial environment for the advancing of businesses agenda, deserves a chapter in itself.
Despite these shortcomings the book is an interesting look at how the Business community fought to re-engineer the outlook of America in its own interests, and the efforts of Unions and others to block this development. Readers interested in McCarthyism can find a short and readable introduction in Ellen Schreckers "The Age of McCarthyism".
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf 1996 publication "Selling Free Enterprise" is a comprehensive look at the efforts of the business community, between 1945 and 1960, to marginalise organised labour and retard any further development of the progressive politics that gained ground during the period from the 1930's Depression through to the end of the war.
The result is a dense well sourced book that details the conflict, primarily between organised labour and the business associations, over the United States political-economic development. Other protaganists include religious organisations and the media who were to varying degrees subverted by the business community as part of their efforts to turn their "free enterprise" credo into the common wisdom that constrains debate and decisions about political-economic life in the United States. Organised Labour and others efforts to defend and extend the gains of the New Deal era are examined closely, and the author doesn't shy away from identifying those defeats that were far from inevitable, despite the cards stacked against them.
On the downside some may find Fones-Wolf's prose more than a little dry, certainly it is not a racy read, but she is nothing if not thorough end-notes to each chapter testify. On the context within which the events examined occurred, such as the first third of the Cold War and the period of political repression known as McCarthyism, Fones-Wolf is perhaps not as thorough as she might have been. Certainly the phenomena of McCarthyism during her period, and its role in creating a congenial environment for the advancing of businesses agenda, deserves a chapter in itself.
Despite these shortcomings the book is an interesting look at how the Business community fought to re-engineer the outlook of America in its own interests, and the efforts of Unions and others to block this development. Readers interested in McCarthyism can find a short and readable introduction in Ellen Schreckers "The Age of McCarthyism".
December 13, 2019
While the writing is rather dense, this is still an indispensable take on mid 20th-century capitalist culture clawing its way back to post-war prominence. That Ronald Reagan played his role as spokesman for the Restoration, and became its symbol of victory, underscores the continuity of this long, bitter class struggle.
We see here the true reasons for McCarthyism: just as Stalin's blood purges used fascism as excuse, so did the US business world misuse Communism in their muted civil war to reclaim Washington and city hall, the universities and mass media. Ms. Fones-Wolf raises an important point that "business humanism" - as well as name-calling and repression - was instrumental in rivaling unions for worker loyalty, and neutralizing community attitudes.
Yet I see another equally vital reason for the decline of unionism at this time: the rise of the suburb, sundering the urban working class community that made mass strike action viable. The suburban worker, rising to fight his way through rush hour traffic, surrounded (and isolated) by neighbors with totally different occupations and life histories, became an atomized cipher in the postwar world and thus powerless to meaningfully affect it. (Hence the rise of "postal rage" and mass shootings as ersatz outlet.) The anomie of the modern citizen of the "Western democracies" seems to have been consciously created by elites, to beat back their all-too-brief scare between the Depression and WW II.
This led to the alienation between liberalism and labor. Fones-Wolf touches on the origins of this split: its working class base eroding, liberalism turned to the civil rights movement; "culture issues" became the linchpin of intellectual progressivism. Workers left behind, in old factory towns or new developments, were lulled by a postwar boom economy into alliance with former enemies like Richard Nixon. The betrayal of "conservative labor" by its new "friends" has been the coup de grace of the struggle. Never again will labor - and possibly liberalism - enjoy such solid social power. The rear-guard scramble after the likes of Trump reveals the desperation and defeat that began in these years, here chronicled in depth.
We see here the true reasons for McCarthyism: just as Stalin's blood purges used fascism as excuse, so did the US business world misuse Communism in their muted civil war to reclaim Washington and city hall, the universities and mass media. Ms. Fones-Wolf raises an important point that "business humanism" - as well as name-calling and repression - was instrumental in rivaling unions for worker loyalty, and neutralizing community attitudes.
Yet I see another equally vital reason for the decline of unionism at this time: the rise of the suburb, sundering the urban working class community that made mass strike action viable. The suburban worker, rising to fight his way through rush hour traffic, surrounded (and isolated) by neighbors with totally different occupations and life histories, became an atomized cipher in the postwar world and thus powerless to meaningfully affect it. (Hence the rise of "postal rage" and mass shootings as ersatz outlet.) The anomie of the modern citizen of the "Western democracies" seems to have been consciously created by elites, to beat back their all-too-brief scare between the Depression and WW II.
This led to the alienation between liberalism and labor. Fones-Wolf touches on the origins of this split: its working class base eroding, liberalism turned to the civil rights movement; "culture issues" became the linchpin of intellectual progressivism. Workers left behind, in old factory towns or new developments, were lulled by a postwar boom economy into alliance with former enemies like Richard Nixon. The betrayal of "conservative labor" by its new "friends" has been the coup de grace of the struggle. Never again will labor - and possibly liberalism - enjoy such solid social power. The rear-guard scramble after the likes of Trump reveals the desperation and defeat that began in these years, here chronicled in depth.
August 16, 2026
A tough read for me, dense with acronyms and names of people and laws.
This book focuses on the years between 1945 - 1960 to analyse the tension and contention between Labor Unions and Industry Leaders in the US.
In a nutshell.
The Great Depression of 1929 had consolidated and expanded Labor Unions’ position in American society. In the 1930s Roosevelt’s New Deal Liberalism (his answer to the Great Depression), which consisted of Government-backed economic security (welfare state, financial reform, public works), gave legitimacy and power for organised labor, reliance on collective/ government solutions rather than individual initiative.
However, WWII and the scare of Communism aided Businesses to reframe the conversation and regain the upper hand over Labor Unions and Liberalism.
American society had yet to reach consensus on the relationship of Government to the economy.
Business America had the great intuition to associate the values of business with traditional American values: with emphasis on consumption, individualism, and material possessions. And it had the means to conduct extensive campaigns to promote its message, hence the title of the book “Selling Free Enterprise”.
The origin of Human Relations (HR) in the theory of management stems from the realisation of the influence informal work groups exerted over workers behaviour and productivity; a view that supplanted viewing workers as a source of labor driven by economic incentives. Thus companies ran many programs with the aim to influence workers votes, to improve loyalty and productivity and to reduce their participation in Labor Unions.
The late 40s saw the institution of corporate welfare. To business leaders, the free enterprise system adequately met security needs, making unnecessary any expansion of the welfare state and organised labor. Profit sharing, benefits, recreation and the integration of the family into the firm were building blocks of the corporate attempt to build company consciousness. These mechanisms often blended with those associated with human relations in linking workers to the company and free enterprise system.
Labor Unions fought, campaigned, organised. But simply did not have the same means (wealth and power) as Business Leaders. For example the CIO saw its budgets slashed from $500,000+ pre-war, to $12,500 per year. And rather than dismiss local community efforts, employers and corporate managers in the postwar era embarked on an aggressive campaign to shape a pro-business environment in the nation’s cities and small towns.
Business strategy in the community followed 2 intertwined paths: an aggressive PR effort (threatening the decline of American values, morals, and freedoms due to governments and labor’s attacks on the free enterprise system); and through community activities.
Business involvement with education traces back to the institution of public schools at the beginning of the 19th century: inculcating the general business values of hard work, industriousness, punctuality; which with time extended to higher education for scientific and engineering research and development , plus training of future management, emphasising principles of individualism and freedom.
The relationship between business and education cracked with the crisis of 1929, where businesses just pulled resources out of the education system without much reasoning. However in the 40s they came back strong, appreciating the importance of educating for capitalism.
Part of Business PR effort involved deepening relations with the clergy at community level; as corporate leaders recognised that religion could act as a conservative force in society. The NCC (National Council of Churches) endorsement of either businesses or labor’s values promised to confer legitimacy to them. The end result wasn’t as clear cut as in other spheres of influence.
This book maintains that the 50s were not an age of consensus, as often characterised by historians. Rather it was an age of deep rupture e.g.:
- 1954: 2 year investigation on Unions’ mismanagement of welfare and pension funds, that discovered evidence of such.
- 1957-/58: Right to work campaign (to ban requiring workers to join unions or pay dues as a condition of employment) de-facto limiting the power of Labor. Pitched as defence of individual rights, as opposed to anti-unionism.
American Society had to choose between Business and Labor, between Capitalism and Liberalism, between individualistic ethos and community values. And it did.
Born in the 80s, I have lived in a World where Business, Capitalism and the individualistic ethos are the leading ideology, however I now feel that humans have started to challenge this greedy foundation, re-opening the floor for a new ideological debate.
This book focuses on the years between 1945 - 1960 to analyse the tension and contention between Labor Unions and Industry Leaders in the US.
In a nutshell.
The Great Depression of 1929 had consolidated and expanded Labor Unions’ position in American society. In the 1930s Roosevelt’s New Deal Liberalism (his answer to the Great Depression), which consisted of Government-backed economic security (welfare state, financial reform, public works), gave legitimacy and power for organised labor, reliance on collective/ government solutions rather than individual initiative.
However, WWII and the scare of Communism aided Businesses to reframe the conversation and regain the upper hand over Labor Unions and Liberalism.
American society had yet to reach consensus on the relationship of Government to the economy.
Business America had the great intuition to associate the values of business with traditional American values: with emphasis on consumption, individualism, and material possessions. And it had the means to conduct extensive campaigns to promote its message, hence the title of the book “Selling Free Enterprise”.
The origin of Human Relations (HR) in the theory of management stems from the realisation of the influence informal work groups exerted over workers behaviour and productivity; a view that supplanted viewing workers as a source of labor driven by economic incentives. Thus companies ran many programs with the aim to influence workers votes, to improve loyalty and productivity and to reduce their participation in Labor Unions.
The late 40s saw the institution of corporate welfare. To business leaders, the free enterprise system adequately met security needs, making unnecessary any expansion of the welfare state and organised labor. Profit sharing, benefits, recreation and the integration of the family into the firm were building blocks of the corporate attempt to build company consciousness. These mechanisms often blended with those associated with human relations in linking workers to the company and free enterprise system.
Labor Unions fought, campaigned, organised. But simply did not have the same means (wealth and power) as Business Leaders. For example the CIO saw its budgets slashed from $500,000+ pre-war, to $12,500 per year. And rather than dismiss local community efforts, employers and corporate managers in the postwar era embarked on an aggressive campaign to shape a pro-business environment in the nation’s cities and small towns.
Business strategy in the community followed 2 intertwined paths: an aggressive PR effort (threatening the decline of American values, morals, and freedoms due to governments and labor’s attacks on the free enterprise system); and through community activities.
Business involvement with education traces back to the institution of public schools at the beginning of the 19th century: inculcating the general business values of hard work, industriousness, punctuality; which with time extended to higher education for scientific and engineering research and development , plus training of future management, emphasising principles of individualism and freedom.
The relationship between business and education cracked with the crisis of 1929, where businesses just pulled resources out of the education system without much reasoning. However in the 40s they came back strong, appreciating the importance of educating for capitalism.
Part of Business PR effort involved deepening relations with the clergy at community level; as corporate leaders recognised that religion could act as a conservative force in society. The NCC (National Council of Churches) endorsement of either businesses or labor’s values promised to confer legitimacy to them. The end result wasn’t as clear cut as in other spheres of influence.
This book maintains that the 50s were not an age of consensus, as often characterised by historians. Rather it was an age of deep rupture e.g.:
- 1954: 2 year investigation on Unions’ mismanagement of welfare and pension funds, that discovered evidence of such.
- 1957-/58: Right to work campaign (to ban requiring workers to join unions or pay dues as a condition of employment) de-facto limiting the power of Labor. Pitched as defence of individual rights, as opposed to anti-unionism.
American Society had to choose between Business and Labor, between Capitalism and Liberalism, between individualistic ethos and community values. And it did.
Born in the 80s, I have lived in a World where Business, Capitalism and the individualistic ethos are the leading ideology, however I now feel that humans have started to challenge this greedy foundation, re-opening the floor for a new ideological debate.
Read
March 21, 2021Eveyone should read.
May 2, 2007
This book made me proud to be part of a capitalist country and at the same time, it made me worry. The issues of labor in the history of the United States are passed through the lens of the employers in this mongraph. Filled with corporate strategy and methods to appease or remove the power of unions, this book provides the context for some hardcore debate on labor.
September 17, 2008
very thought-provoking...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews