CHAINS OF POWER

...Having established institutional determinism as a basic premise, Hamilton proceeds to demonstrate how, by a long process of gradual change, the old market order has been destroyed, the petty economy of the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries transmuted into the modern corporative system, the traditional antithesis between business and government broken down, free enterprise transformed from reality to myth, and the political boundaries of national states transcended by an international imperium of giant corporations...

...It is our intellectual commitment to the material values of Hamilton's "great economy" which forges the institutional chains that bind us...

...So much may be readily conceded without accepting institutional determinism as a general principle or abandoning the conviction that man is master of his destiny and capable of creating an institutional system in his own image...

...The "politics of industry" operates at many different levels but attains its highest and most creative forms in those sectors of the economy which are most completely organized under the aegis of Big Business...

...He does intimate, albeit vaguely, that there are "values" by which to shape choices even though over-all blueprints are impossible...

...Institutions and culture, then, exercise a determinative role in social evolution...

...For movement is the price of life...

...Such changes, however, come by stealth— unplanned, unwilled, even unnoticed —as men, in their endless striving, grasp the main chance, seize upon opportunities at hand, accommodate themselves to changing events, and meet situations with such expediencies as can be contrived...

...The spirit of "institutional inventiveness" is inherent in man's restless nature...

...The economy, no more than state, church, or university, can escape the context of the culture in which it is set...

...As the same problem arises and the same manner is repeated, they discover they have brought into being a folkway or formulated a policy or created an institution...

...In another, he traces the ancestry of the modern corporate giant back to the privileged company of the Tudors and the Stuarts...

...Within such a conceptual structure there is no indigenous force sufficiently powerful to overcome, at least in the short run, the determinative influence of existing institutions and, thus, to reshape the economic organization in accordance with some preconceived ideal of the good society...

...Organization Men," to use William H. Whyte's apt description...

...But how the political arts, which are also institutionally determined, can ever rise above their cultural context remains obscure...

...This mood of pessimism and resignation stems directly from the premise of institutional and cultural determinism...

...Within finite limits, the stream of development may be influenced slightly, but it is impossible to fashion an industrial system to any Utopian model...

...the myriad decisions made in response to expediency and ever changing circumstances lead into some unpredictable future beyond human control...

...The word "industry" is used as a synonym for the national economy—• the totality of all interrelated activities by which goods and services are produced...

...Cultural lag," to be sure, operates as a brake to retard the process of institutional change and such changes proceed slowly, frequently in the face of prolonged and bitter opposition...

...The lay reader may experience some difficulty in following the argument unless he comprehends the basic philosophy of the author, who is professor emeritus of the Yale Law School and a practicing attorney in Washington, D. C. The approach is explicitly "institutional," in the tradition of Veblen...

...Reviewed by Horace M. Gray TN this brilliantly written little book, the word "politics" is used in a lofty Aristotelian sense to stand "for the usages and traditions, for the arrangements and policies through which men are governed and through which men—usurping the function of the gods—attempt to shape destiny...

...He does suggest, belatedly and halfheartedly, that we should try to preserve competition, prevent mergers, reform the patent system, keep the spirit of enterprise alive, and direct industry toward welfare objectives...

...On this assumption economic power once concentrated becomes the dominant institution, which dictates public policy, frustrates institutional reform, and controls the direction of social change...

...In the end he concludes, without enthusiasm, that "for better or worse we are committed to the great economy...

...In one chapter, Hamilton shows how all efforts of government to regulate these great corporations have failed...

...The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings—i.e...

...nor can the state "take on the task of economic architecture...

...All available prescriptions—conscience, countervailing power, competition, regulation, anti-trust, dissolution—are either inadequate or impossible...

...Nothing much, then, can be done or hoped for "until the political arts reach a maturity they do not now possess...

...Institutional determinism is no more palatable or defensible than other forms of determinism—for example, Marx's class conflict or Schumpeter's technology...

...Even in the very long run, the process of institutional change follows no fixed course toward any certain objective...

...and establishment, no matter how firm its foundation, is at the mercy of moth and rust...

...So long as we worship power, accept the values of the system, and believe the current dogma that Big Business is natural, efficient, technologically necessary, and socially beneficent, we shall make no headway against economic concentration...

...Man cannot choose among alternative economic systems...

...Men meet situations which confront them with expediencies...

...In a third, he portrays dramatically the emergence of international business empires more powerful than national states...

...It impresses itself upon the emerging economy in pattern and problem...

...What is there to prevent it...

...Notwithstanding the keenness of the diagnosis, the conclusions are essentially pessimistic...

...But what these "values" are and by what means they may be attained, within the framework of his logical system, are not made clear...

...It is also true that institutions, or their vestigial remnants, may endure long after they have become obsolete, and the blighting effect of this residue may inhibit the effectiveness of the new institutions which have displaced them...

...There is really nothing, except a paralysis of will induced by a perverted sense of values...

...it may flicker low at times only to surge upward at other times in a great burst of creative energy...

...Myriad choices must forever be newly made, to cope with emergent problems, and these decisions will open up new vistas, but the economic organization will still reflect the prevailing institutions and culture...

...The author demonstrates how this creative spirit, impelled by the lust for profit and power, has fashioned a set of mar-velously contrived institutions for the concentration of economic power May not this same creative spirt finding the present system oppres, sive, and imbued with different values, devise a new set of economic institutions calculated to decentralize this power and to make the economy serve public rather than private interests...

...We can break these chains and free the spirit of institutional inventiveness only if we reject the spurious values of materialism and follow the star of social idealism...

...The spirit of business enterprise is like the wind, it goeth where it listeth...

...In any culture the cumulative impact of the past is not to be stayed...

...But these institutions undergo ceaseless change—"the heritage of idea and value, of usage and institution, must be passed along from generation to generation and must forever be newly adapted to the infinite variety of the changing circumstances of life...

...Since the roads to monopoly and entente cordiale are blocked by anti-trust laws, much of the "politics of industry" consists of unremitting efforts on the part of Big Business to frustrate or circumvent these laws for the sake of gain and industrial empire...

...One will scarcely find anywhere a more brilliant or perceptive analysis than Hamilton encompasses in these three short chapters...

...it too is a product of its history—"a part of all that it has met...

...and in time, manners, policies, and institutions come to make up the fabric of a culture...

...Here the old market order has been deposed in favor of corporate government, modified to some extent by state intervention...