ROOTS OF POWER

...Once the institutional sources of power are identified and society is resolved to act, the reduction of concentration, which formerly appeared impossible, becomes relatively easy...

...The munitions industry, dominated by a few giant corporations, has become the bedrock of prosperity...

...the power of the Archons will wither and economic freedom will revive...

...Moreover, since it is a revitalizing, health-promoting type of operation, its beneficent effects on the economy far outweigh the temporary and localized shock of its immediate accomplishment...

...Middle management is satisfied and subservient...

...Private property, the historic bulwark of resistance against usurpation of power, is attenuated almost to the point of extinction...

...Reviewed by Horace M. Gray Modern critics are now discovering, with shocked amazement, what prescient students of capitalism foretold a century ago—that, in the absence of effective public intervention to preserve the free market, competitive capitalism would gradually evolve into some form of highly concentrated, monopoly capitalism...

...The large corporation is silently dedicated to the restriction of free enterprise...

...Eventually its own excesses and the falsity of its pretensions arouse the latent hostility of public opinion to the point of action...

...Just below the Archons, in the stratified hierarchy of management, is the Baccalaureate Mass of middle management, who execute the orders received from on high...

...Make Social Security payments in constant dollars to protect retired people from inflation...

...Actually, if one examines carefully the institutional foundations of corporate power, the Archons are the "hollow men" of modern society...

...In Men Who Make Us Rich, he visualizes an economy in which a new kind of industrial elite is gaining unprecedented power and prestige...

...Establish a four-day work week...

...Even if these shortcomings be conceded, he deserves great credit for his perceptive insight into the nature, abuses, and dangers of unrestrained corporate power...

...He answers his own question: "Probably nowhere unless some suitable counterweight to the burgeoning influence and power of highly concentrated American industry can be devised...

...Those who sit in the seats of the mighty and preside over the destiny of this collective capitalism are termed Archons, after the ruling magistrates of ancient Greece...

...His main prescriptions "to neutralize the ill effects of the ascent of the Archon" are: Dissolve any corporation that controls more than twenty-five per cent of an industry...

...an extensive propaganda apparatus to influence public opinion, and governmental support through an elaborate array of privileges, protective devices, and subsidies...

...When these managers and anti-managers have sufficiently checkmated each other to achieve a stalemate of frustration, managerial consultants are called in from the outside to establish peace and get the organization off dead center...

...Public opinion and education are both corrupted by the massive propaganda apparatus of the Archons...

...Edward Ziegler clearly belongs in this latter group...

...Lastly, government, the ultimate resort of the people for protection against abuses of private power, has itself become a silent partner of Big Business, endowing it with protection, privileges, and subsidies, and depending on it for national defense and economic progress...

...When so much is known about the structure of concentrated power, what we need most is clinical diagnosis to identify the institutional roots, or sources, of this power, preparatory to excising the malignant growth from the body politic...

...The Archons are waited upon and advised by an esoteric cult of High Priests—the research scientists, engineers, and technologists...

...hence, his presentation leaves the reader perplexed as to what, if anything, can be done to avert the impending threat to "the basic structure of the Republic...

...When that time comes, as it invariably has in American history, the awesome power of the Archons will stand revealed for the artificial, parasitic thing it really is...

...Discourage the domestic mining of ores whose supply is limited...

...others, in revolt against "collective cap-- italism"—or "corporationism," or the "new mercantilism"—condemn it as exploitative, irresponsible, and inimical to human values and welfare...

...There is a real danger, however, that vivid description of awesome and seemingly irresistible power, if disassociated from careful diagnosis, may induce a mood of defeatism and paralyze the will to resist...

...They have broken, neutralized, or corrupted all the other power groups that singly or in combination might have resisted their drive for supreme power...

...A few deft surgical strokes—abolition of some privilege, dissolution of some combine, introduction of new competition, modification of some institution—will suffice to sever the roots which sustain and nourish the systems...

...Elderly people, a large and growing bloc in our society, are so obsessed by fear of inflation that they are easily beguiled and rendered politically impotent by the anti-inflationary pretensions of business leaders...

...Under these conditions, the Archons have attained almost total power...

...lower management is insecure and frightened by the prospect of functional obsolescence through automation...

...Private capitalism is dying fast, if it is not already dead, and its heir is collectivized capitalism...

...compulsory capital formation at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and small absentee investors...

...Where, the author asks, does America go from here...

...Before we can curb Caesar's power we must first answer the question posed by Cassius: "Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed that he has grown so great...

...Belated recognition of this fact, and of its potential dangers, has stimulated a lively debate over national policy toward concentrated economic power...

...They live in kingly style, thanks to lush salaries, bonuses, stock options, expense accounts, pensions, and the capital gains tax...

...There is no countervailing force in society capable of restraining the autocratic power of the Archons...

...Dramatic style and some poetic license should not be denied to a popular writer who seeks to arouse an indifferent and complacent public to a great social evil...

...Ziegler fails to answer this question satisfactorily...

...Some, affecting a contrived optimism, profess to find it natural, inevitable, efficient, and generally wholesome...

...The total number of these top executives, by Ziegler's reckoning, is about 5,000...

...separation of ownership from control...

...Management consists of two antithetical groups—those who solve problems and make decisions...

...Because democratic society has ignored this warning and failed to devise adequate restraints, this prophecy has now become a grim reality...

...The author's method may inadvertently have this effect...

...tight control over raw materials, production, investment, technology, markets, and prices...

...Still lower, in a great Sahara of Mediocrity, one finds the Feeble Clerks or Beadledom of Industry, engaged in paper shuffling, gauge watching, and busy work...

...and those who create problems and unmake decisions...

...they have imposed their economic will and their political orthodoxy on a great society...

...its very insecurity compels it to be ever more aggressive, demanding, and corrupt...

...Such power is grossly inefficient, oppressive, and arrogant...

...Redistribute income by drastic tax reforms...

...Had Ziegler explored these possibilities more fully he might have reached a more optimistic conclusion...

...Hostile critics may observe that Ziegler's indictment is overdrawn for dramatic effect, that the degree of concentration is exaggerated, that his analysis is unsystematic, and his remedies are inadequate...

...Revolutionary innovations, such as computers and electronic communications, have made it possible to centralize control and deciss ion-making to a degree heretofore regarded as impracticable...

...It is compounded of special privilege, force, deception, corruption of democratic institutions, and the indifference of a careless, complacent public...

...The system is characterized by a persistent cost-push inflation due to its economic inefficiency, the exhaustion of the natural resource base, and the excessive costs of maintaining the power structure...

...The power of organized labor has declined seriously and is destined to decline still farther as automation and disintegration of the labor force take their toll...

...To evade these increasing costs, however, collective capitalism has devised means to shift them to consumers and taxpayers...

...Their power, though outwardly formidable, is internally weak and precarious because, like the house built on sand, its base is unstable and insecure...

...This collective capitalism has evolved a new set of institutional arrangements specifically designed to serve its power interests: highly centralized management...