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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 - 7 of 7 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.
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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 - 7 of 7 reviews