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Truth Sandwiches: The Powell Kleptocracy Memo [1]
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Date: 2023-03-19
I should mention that Friedman had one good idea, that of replacing the maze of bureaucratic and demeaning welfare programs with a Guaranteed Basic Income. Nixon tried to get Republicans interested, but they weren’t having any. Of course, if they had tried it, they would have set the Basic Income level far below the poverty line. We will come back to this idea here, at some point.
Lewis F. Powell Jr.
x The corporate takeover of American politics was rapid and ruthless.
In the 1970s, I watched as thousands of corporate lobbyists descended on Washington. Fast forward to today, and lobbying has become a $3.7 billion dollar industry.
It all began with the Powell Memo. pic.twitter.com/3JXNz6Kmql — Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 18, 2023
This name, “neoliberal”, is based on an outdated meaning of “Liberal”, for “Free Market”, Laissez-Faire, anti-Smithian economics and finance. This usage is still current in some other countries.
Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Nader as the chief antagonist of American business. Powell urged conservatives to undertake a sustained media-outreach program, including funding neoliberal scholars, publishing books, papers, popular magazines, and scholarly journals, and influencing public opinion.[24][25]
Still, Powell was not all bad.
Contents of the Memo
This is a précis of the memo. I give links to the full document, in facsimile and text, below.
Business is under attack, not only by fringe socialists, but by respectable analysts and commentators. Ralph Nader is the worst.
Media, especially TV, are complicit.
Business was at that time ignoring the problem.
In all fairness, it must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it. What specifically should be done? The first essential — a prerequisite to any effective action — is for businessmen to confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management. The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival — survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people.
The campus is the most dynamic source of this problem. He singled out Yale for teaching bright young men to despise American politics and economics.
This has been seen as the opening salvo in the Culture War, leading to charges of propaganda and “Wokeism”.
The Chamber of Commerce should assemble staffs of scholars and speakers, analyze textbooks, demand equal time on campuses, demand “balanced” faculty, monitor TV, other media, and journals, and target high schools.
Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of “lobbyist” for the business point of view before Congressional committees.
Left-wing organizations such as labor unions and the ACLU dominate in the courts.
Activate the 20 million stockholders.
The heads of national labor organizations…have been respected — where it counts the most — by politicians, on the campus, and among the media. The threat to the enterprise system is not merely a matter of economics. It also is a threat to individual freedom. We in America already have moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism, as the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. In some areas, such regulation and control already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labor, and indeed of the public generally. But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer.
What a snowflake, preaching what blinkered delusion!
Impact
Wikipedia again
Further Reading
Indivisible Truth Brigade
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