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Two Cheers!
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14515 |
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BOOK WORLD
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3 / 1988 |
7,097 Words |
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Fred L. Smith, Jr.
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Great crises will surely come again, as they have from time to time throughout all human history. When they do, government will almost certainly gain new powers over economic and social affairs.... For those who cherish individual liberty and a free society, the prospect is deeply disheartening.
--Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan
Joseph Schumpeter once asked the question--"Would capitalism survive?" His answer--"Probably not." Schumpeter believed that many factors mitigated against the survival of a free market economy. Among various debilitating factors, he listed the loss of political and social support for this system that he believed would likely accompany the emergence of the modern corporation. He also noted that capitalism encouraged the emergence of an intellectual class that would prove inherently hostile to its survival. Finally, Schumpeter believed that capitalism was a rationalizing force that would eventually destroy the ideological and moral underpinnings vital to its survival.
History bears out Schumpeter's pessimism. As Robert Higgs notes in his insightful book, every crisis of the last hundred years has ratcheted upward the power of government over the economy. Power continues to gravitate from business to political centers, from the world of voluntary agreements to that of coercive mandates. America, in terms made famous by Frederick Hayek, has traveled far along The Road to Serfdom.
A free society is not stable. There is always a tension between those groups now enjoying power and prestige and the emerging forces of change. The status quo forces always seek to preserve the old regime, using political means to that end. Since politicians naturally respond to the visible present rather than the promised future, politics generally supports the past against the future. The historic result is that the conditions for a free society have rarely been met and even more rarely sustained for any length of time. Only unusual conditions--an open frontier, strong restraints on government, commitment by significant groups of intellectual and moral leaders to decentralization and free markets, a vigorous and independent business sector, a growing and diverse population, rapid technological change, war or some other chronic disruption undermining the status quo--have permitted the dynamism that is necessary (but of course not sufficient) for a free society.
Paul H. Weaver's The Suicidal Corporation: How Big Business Fails America addresses one aspect of this question by asking whether the corporation has played a positive role in the war for economic freedom. As his title suggests, Weaver believes it has not. Weaver sees corporate America as too quick to seek political entitlements and too slow to combat government attempts to cripple its independence. Based on his experiences at Ford Motor and a review of recent economic history, Weaver develops this theory in the first two parts of the book. His concluding section argues that the political-economic climate has changed and that the corporation should, indeed must, assume a more responsible role in defending our free enterprise system.
Weaver sketches his theories in broad brush and there is much to quarrel with in the details. His indignation and his limited research into other periods and other companies lead
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