Corporate liberalism

Corporate liberalism is a thesis in United States historiography and a tool for its open door imperialism in which the corporate elite become "both the chief beneficiaries of and the chief lobbyists for the supposedly anti-business regulations".[1] The idea is that both owners of corporations as well as high up government officials came together to become the class of elites. The elite class then conspires (or less maliciously, the system motivates the elite) to keep power away from the low or middle class. Presumably, to avoid the risk of revolution from the poor and powerless and to avoid the realization of class conflict, the elite have the working class pick sides in a mock conflict between business and state.[1][2]

One of the major influences was Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971). Ellis Hawley states that Berle:

became a leading articulator and shaper of what later scholars would call "Corporate liberalism." In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, [1932] he not only documented the rise of a managerial elite but set forth the possibility of its becoming a "neutral technocracy" imbued with an overriding sense of social responsibility and public trusteeship.[3]
  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Long was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Oglesby was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Ellis W. Hawley, "Berle, Adolph Augustus" in John A. Garraty, ed. Encyclopedia of American Biography (2nd ed. 1996) p. 94 online