A brilliant, lucid narrative history of the conservative businessmen who fought to roll back the New Deal.
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan is the story of how a small group of American businessmen succeeded in building a political movement and changing the world. Long before the culture wars of the 1960s sparked the Republican backlash against cultural liberalism, these high-powered individuals actively resisted New Deal economics and sought to educate and organize their peers as a political force. They fund-raised, held conferences, supported sympathetic scholars and media outlets, founded institutes, fought unions, and recruited candidates for high office—all with the aim of rescuing America, and their profit margins, from the nanny state.
The winner of a prestigious academic award for her original research on this book, Kim Phillips-Fein recounts the little-known roles of men like W. C. Mullendore, an energy executive with a contagious and radical faith in the unfettered free market. Counted among his converts was Leonard Read, who would eventually found the influential Foundation for Economic Education with Jasper Crane of DuPont. Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, leaders of the “highbrow” Mont Pelerin Society, would go on to write the bibles of the conservative movement, as groups such as Spiritual Mobilization made early attempts to link Christianity with pro-business entrepreneurship. Familiar characters come to life here in new ways, as Phillips-Fein trains her critical eye on Barry Goldwater’s reputation as an anti-unionist and on Ronald Reagan’s political education doing public relations for General Electric.
Invisible Hands is essential to understanding the role of big and small business in American politics—and a blueprint for anyone who wants insight into the way in which money has been used to create political change. Phillips-Fein’s meticulous research and narrative gifts reveal the dramatic story of a pragmatic, step-by-step, check-by-check campaign to promote an ideological revolution, one that ultimately propelled conservative ideas to electoral triumph.
A brilliant, lucid narrative history of the conservative businessmen who fought to roll back the New Deal.
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan is the story of how a small group of American businessmen succeeded in building a political movement and changing the world. Long before the culture wars of the 1960s sparked the Republican backlash against cultural liberalism, these high-powered individuals actively resisted New Deal economics and sought to educate and organize their peers as a political force. They fund-raised, held conferences, supported sympathetic scholars and media outlets, founded institutes, fought unions, and recruited candidates for high office—all with the aim of rescuing America, and their profit margins, from the nanny state.
The winner of a prestigious academic award for her original research on this book, Kim Phillips-Fein recounts the little-known roles of men like W. C. Mullendore, an energy executive with a contagious and radical faith in the unfettered free market. Counted among his converts was Leonard Read, who would eventually found the influential Foundation for Economic Education with Jasper Crane of DuPont. Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, leaders of the “highbrow” Mont Pelerin Society, would go on to write the bibles of the conservative movement, as groups such as Spiritual Mobilization made early attempts to link Christianity with pro-business entrepreneurship. Familiar characters come to life here in new ways, as Phillips-Fein trains her critical eye on Barry Goldwater’s reputation as an anti-unionist and on Ronald Reagan’s political education doing public relations for General Electric.
Invisible Hands is essential to understanding the role of big and small business in American politics—and a blueprint for anyone who wants insight into the way in which money has been used to create political change. Phillips-Fein’s meticulous research and narrative gifts reveal the dramatic story of a pragmatic, step-by-step, check-by-check campaign to promote an ideological revolution, one that ultimately propelled conservative ideas to electoral triumph.
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