ASSAULT ON GIANTISM
Gray, Horace M.
Assault on Giantism Giant Corporations: Challenge to Freedom, by Theodore K. Quinn. Exposition Press. 198 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Horace M. Gray REPORTING a recent anti-trust hearing before a...
...He says flatly to business people that "if in their hearts materialistic efficiency is their goal and their (£od, then intellectually they are com-inunists whether or not they know if Qiunn sees, little, if any, &fference_ organizationally between Russian economic totalitarianism and the totalitarianism of giant corporations...
...Both subordinate the individual and subject him to their power-concentrated purpose and super-organization...
...Quinn and a few professors...
...The principal influence, he finds, "is our acceptance of the trend toward materialistic giantism as inevitable...
...Like its predecessor, his new book will create alarm among the mercenaries of big business and their academic auxiliaries from the camp of economic determinism...
...If we do the giant corporation will operate as an instrument to change "the organization of society away from democracy toward the material, totalitarian state...
...By contrast, giantism, notwithstanding its power and productivity, is neither intelligent, creative, or socially efficient...
...It governs by force, intimidation, decep-ion, and corruption...
...These shallow and tricky gentry are the arch corrupters and enemies of democracy...
...Because its purposes are selfish and ignoble the giant corporation can never be socially responsible or beneficent...
...Drawing on his experience as a big business executive, his knowledge of economic organization, and his insight into both democratic and Marxian theory, the author analyzes the factors which have impaired our traditional faith in economic individualism and paralyzed the social will to defend economic freedom...
...But he speaks with remarkable clarity, courage, and honesty...
...Monopoly capitalism relies on the Marxian dialectic of inevitability just as firmly as does Communism...
...Quinn's sharpest barbs are directed at the "painters," or hucksters, who would deceive the people into believing otherwise...
...Reviewed by Horace M. Gray REPORTING a recent anti-trust hearing before a Congressional Committee one journalist observed, somewhat cynically, that the case against monopoly was presented "by Mr...
...The ultimate source of all efficiency is the creativeness of free men...
...TTie quest for power, ease, and security in super-organization devaluates, belittles and loses the individual...
...Because he believes so firmly in the humanistic, democratic tradition and thinks it in jeopardy, Quinn writes with emotional intensity, sometimes with anger...
...Excluding Congressional appearances, this book is Quinn's second foray against the "new monsterism," "acromegaly," "super-giantism," or "the white-painted elephant" of corporate Bigness, to use his dramatic terminology...
...its inner compulsions require it to suppress economic freedom and to exploit the community...
...What an ironic commentary on the demoralized state of current opinion —only a corporal's guard can be mustered in defense of a cherished American tradition and in opposition to one of the greatest evils of modern industrial society...
...Determinists, pharisees of objectivity and realism, and sycophants of power will scarcely approve his ideas...
...His first attack was Giant Business: Threat to Democracy...
...These professional defenders of concentrated economic power will recognize in Quinn a well-informed and courageous opponent whose trenchant criticism challenges corporate domination of our society...
...Technicians, concerned with operational and procedural questions, will regard the policy prescriptions as deficient and imperfectly elaborated, even though pointed in the right direction...
...the true measure of economic efficiency is human welfare...
...The practical question is "whether or not we choose to accept the doctrine of inevitability...
...Having demolished the myth of inevitability, Quinn attacks with equal vigor the collateral myths of efficiency and social responsibility created by the "painters of the white elephant," commonly known as hucksters, whose function in the corporative state is to gild the lily by the arts of propaganda- Democracy, he says, is "humanly, wholesomely, creatively and socially efficient...
...Those who cherish economic freedom and seek to preserve it from the deadly encroachment of corporate giantism will derive inspiration, understanding, and new courage from Quinn's penetrating analysis...
Vol. 20 • July 1956 • No. 7
