Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-07T12:12:32.059Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Discovery and Study of a “Corporate Liberalism”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Ellis W. Hawley
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Iowa
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

Once the story of modern America seemed relatively simple. On one side stood a business elite defending a market system to which it owed its power and position. On the other stood the “common man,” economically weak but politically capable of forging tools that could alter the workings of market discipline. And between them, waxing and waning in response to “reform” and “counter-reform,” stood the aggregation of political tools that the “common man” had been able to forge. Such was the story told in “liberal” history; and with reversed heroes and villains, the same story was told in “conservative” history. Both assumed a business-government dichotomy, and both ignored or slighted those aspects of modern America that could not be fitted into it.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1978