LIBERAL: ADOLF A. BERLE AND THE VISION OF AN AMERICAN ERA
Jordan A. Schwarz
New York: Free Press, 1987
550 pp., $24.95
Reviewing William Appleman William's Tragedy of American Diplomacy for the New York Times in 1959, Adolf A. Berle encountered his own name. Berle, according to Williams, was one of several "corporate agents" who had used government during the New Deal "to rationalize corporate development." Berle found much to admire in a book soon to become the bible of the New Left, but he dismissed Williams' characterization of himself out-of-hand. A generation later, in his new biography Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era, Jordan A. Schwarz has interpreted Berle's life in categories borrowed from William Appleman Williams. Schwarz writes that Berle was indeed a representative of "corporate liberalism," a prophet of corporate stabilization through government, and an architect of an American empire founded on economic preeminence. As historians, Williams and Schwarz actually have little in common except vocabulary. For Williams, "corporate liberalism" is a term freighted with normative significance. It is the name for a liberalism that masquerades as reform but in reality uses government to maintain the domination of large business corporations. For Jordan Schwarz, the phrase corporate liberalism is merely descriptive, implying no condemnation when invoked to explain Berle or the movements he served. Indeed, because Schwarz declines critically or analytically to assess the liberalism that Berle so aptly represented, his biography is a missed opportunity. But it is a useful book nonetheless, for Berle was a committed liberal who lived an interesting life and played a supporting role in great events of the twentieth century.
Berle's life was shaped in part by his father's disappointments. A second-generation German-American who left St. Louis to study at Harvard Divinity School, the elder Berle enjoyed a measure of influence in turn-of-the-century Boston as a Congregational minister committed to the social gospel. With less talent than ambition, the father never became the figure he had hoped and ultimately sought fulfillment through his children, especially his first son and namesake, Adolf Augustus, born in 1895. The father reared the son to be a child prodigy, educating him at home according to his own theories and exhorting him to live a "causative life." At fourteen Adolf A. Berle, Jr., entered Harvard as a freshman. At twenty-one he became the youngest person ever to graduate from Harvard Law School. Berle's brilliance was indeed fortunate, given his decided lack of personal magnetism. Slight of stature and narrow-shouldered, with a head too large for his body and an expression betraying smug self-satisfaction, Berle's arrogance, aggressiveness, and sharp tongue irritated people throughout his life. It helped, of course, that in 1927 he married an heiress who was willing to underwrite his public career and who was as enamored of Berle's brains as Berle was himself.
Embracing Global Liberalism
Berle early embraced liberalism as the foundation for an American foreign policy. A year after he left Harvard, the United States entered World War I, and Berle joined the Army. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was assigned to the Dominican Republic in February 1918 to facilitate sugar production by setting land titles.
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