Economic Power
Gray, Horace M.
public wants is at long last governed by public consensus/' and concentrated economic power "is moving forward toward greater responsibility at (historically considered) breakneck speed." At the...
...At the same time he concedes the possibility that such power may control society: "We shall control —or be controlled by—our power bearers...
...This theory of control is a ghost from the Bull Moose era of "pitiless publicity...
...These modern lords spiritual would possess no legal power, but their moral authority as shapers and directors of public opinion would, it is thought, suffice to hold the rapacious and irresponsible lords temporal (big business men) in check and compel them to perform their public duty...
...The lords spiritual could not, like their medieval predecessors, excommunicate wayward and intransigent lords temporal, and thus cut them off from both earthly allegiance and heavenly salvation, but they could, like Caesar's spirit, cry havoc and unleash the dogs of political retribution against them...
...He seeks a solution for the power problem within the restrictive confines of two indefensible economic assumptions: competition is obsolete, and concentration is necessary...
...Big business men, the lords temporal of our system, operate "the economic service-of-supply of the United States...
...Even if the latter escape subversion they are not likely to prove immune to the corruption of power...
...Berle's failure to find a satisfactory solution for the power problem, within this frame of reference, symbolizes one of the deep frustrations of our time...
...All his ingenuity and learning will not suffice to extricate him from this self-created prison...
...This dilemma can be resolved by demoting these freebooting lords temporal to the humble and innocuous status of non-statist civil servants, and by subjecting them to the superior moral authority of the lords spiritual, who, it is assumed, will "energize political action" whenever that becomes necessary to restrain modes of behavior which violate the public consensus...
...We don't need the ministrations of any lords spiritual...
...government, being dependent on them, cannot deny them the requisite power or veto its normal use because "a government cannot be perpetually at war with its service-of-supply...
...Second, there is no compelling necessity—economic or technological —for extreme concentration of economic power to get the world's work done or to meet modern needs...
...Aggressive power groups, through a vast propaganda apparatus and control of mass communications, shape public opinion and values to their own ends...
...they have even been known to subvert lords spiritual...
...they infiltrate politics and control government...
...By contrast, the modern concept of regulated competition under a regime of public law is humanistic, constructive, and viable...
...The "power bearers," on his premises, must inevitably control society because there is no effective force to oppose or to subordinate them—neither the discipline of competition nor the superior power of the democratic state...
...We permit the economic base of liberal society to be destroyed, we permit great concentrates of irresponsible private power to develop— in fact, actually subsidize them—and then speculate endlessly on how to control them, how to make them behave, how to neutralize their dangerous power...
...Berle's prescription is no better than his diagnosis—and that is faulty in important essentials...
...True democrats must say: "A plague on both your houses...
...In so doing, however, he uncovers a fatal flaw in his own argument...
...Third, concentrated economic power cannot be restrained by a public consensus activated by an elite corps of lords spiritual...
...what we need, as Lincoln advised, is to "disenthrall" ourselves from false notions...
...Society thus faces a cruel dilemma...
...These lords temporal, however, are socially irresponsible and, like their feudal counterparts, prone to place self-interest above public welfare...
...we will have neither lords temporal nor lords spiritual to rule over us...
...First, he rejects competition, but the thing he rejects is a Darwinian-Spencerian straw man— the law of the jungle, fit for animals, not men, and obsolete for 75 years...
...Lords spiritual are just as objectionable and irresponsible as lords temporal...
...it must of necessity grant to irresponsible private persons vast power which they are almost certain to abuse...
...In the power system thus conceived the post of honor is assigned to a small, elite corps of intellectuals, comparable to the lords spiritual of feudal times, who would serve as "keepers and developers of the public consensus...
...It will intervene only when the lords temporal, ignoring the admonitions of the lords spiritual and the values of the public consensus, get out of hand...
...The role of the political state is minimal and essentially negative...
...Rather, such concentration is a product of institutional mismanagement and unrestrained lust for power, and it can be corrected by appropriate institutional adjustments...
...Berle fancies that our great universities might appropriately serve as headquarters for these lords spiritual after the fashion of the great medieval universities...
...These quaint conceits, derived from medieval lore, are intriguing but wholely unrealistic...
...If they are to do so effectively they must possess and freely exercise great power in the organization and operation of industry...
...Trapped by these self-imposed limitations, and rejecting direct state action, he is foredoomed to hopeless seeking in a limbo of private pluralism where powerful lords temporal and fulminating lords spiritual, both irresponsible, contend for supreme power and for mastery of the public consensus...
...Berle directs his sharpest critical barbs at liberals, particularly at their attitude toward power and their economic policy prescriptions...
Vol. 24 • January 1960 • No. 1
