Challenges of Power
Gray, Horace M.
Challenges of Power PRIVATE POWER AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, by Grant McConnell. Alfred A. Knopf. 368 pp. $4.85. Reviewed by Horace M. Gray J AMES MADISON feared that organized private...
...Grant McConnell, however, con cludes in Private Power and Ameri can Democracy that this' Madisonian vision has escaped us...
...The result is a unification of politi cal and economic power&mdash...
...Thus, he sought to reconcile the conflicting demands of public and pri vate interests and to insure the su premacy of the democratic state over private combinations...
...Alfred A. Knopf...
...It was a noble conception, idealistic and, as he thought, practical...
...He would reassert the primacy of public interests and values...
...He would separate public from private power, where the two are now fused, and reestablish public power on a more formal basis...
...The latter, being specialized, selfish, and materialistic, and based on narrow constituencies, tend to be reactionary and anti-democratic...
...it has arrogated to itself certain functions of the state...
...These prescriptions are admirable, in terms of the Madisonian model, but irrelevant for the major problem of our time, which is corporate rather than associational power...
...and it is almost wholly immune from the Madisonian remedies suggested...
...The basic flaw in McConnell's analysis is his failure to distinguish clearly between these two forms of power...
...Liberal democrats must understand that the advancing corporative state is rapidly closing all such escape hatches...
...The traditional concept of public interest has ceased to be mean ingful...
...In an ef fort to prevent this he devised an in genious compromise whereby private groups, while enjoying freedom of as sociation, would be precluded from encroaching on the public interest by an intricate system of checks and bal ances operating within a Federal sys tem...
...McConnell would solve the problem by creating a broader, better informed, and more unified national constituency dedicated to the advancement of the democratic ideals of liberty and equality...
...Nevertheless, his analysis of this "peculiar" institution is scanty and his prescriptions unrealistic...
...idealistic public values are downgraded to the level of selfish, materialistic private values...
...Government, having given hostages to fortune in the form of privileges and alienation of sovereignty, is powerless, either to resist further private aggressions or to act for the general good...
...The key to these improvements is a broad and effective national con stituency...
...McConnell is aware of this difficulty, for he concedes that the corporation presents "a peculiar problem," that it is "untypical of associations," and that its existence "does not accord with long standing conceptions of political organization...
...First, he clings to the Madisonian formula, though he concedes its limited applicability...
...the compul sive force and authority of the state has been joined to the informal and social power of private groups...
...This impotence endangers liberty and democracy, which can thrive only where a broadly based constituency generates a national consensus superior to any combination of private interests...
...Rather, private power has become uni fied and autonomous...
...This would be the special responsibility of the national parties, the President, and the national government...
...that the system of checks and balances has not worked...
...Challenges of Power PRIVATE POWER AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, by Grant McConnell...
...McConnell, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, argues that private power has not re mained weak, localized, and fragmen tal, nor has the power of one inter est group been adequately restrained by the countervailing power of others...
...it has infiltrated key agencies of government and bent them to its service...
...This last point is made explicit in his chapter on "the Progressive Legacy...
...Third, he entertains an aversion to institutional reformers, whose efforts only make matters worse...
...He would discontinue the fatal policy of alienating public power to purchase the acquiescence or cooperation of private interests...
...This failure stems from certain predilections of the author...
...In the end, private values supplant public, values as the goals of policy...
...McConnell sees little hope for democracy under extreme pluralism, with its clamorous pressure groups and government reduced to the status of an arbiter among them...
...If any readers of The Progressive find this attack on their political heritage offensive, they may properly retort that the Progressive reformers, despite their shortcomings and lack of sophistication, at least recognized the privileged corporation as a "peculiar" and sinister institution, and struggled manfully to bring it under public control...
...Reviewed by Horace M. Gray J AMES MADISON feared that organized private interests, or "factions," might subvert the democratic state...
...This development is full of grave dangers...
...Corporate power is a far greater menace to democracy than associational power...
...This is more than can be said for those modern liberals who evade the issue of corporate power and abjure institutional reform...
...it is now regarded as a fic tion or myth, while private interest is the only reality...
...Second, following A. A. Berle, he accepts corporate power as natural, inevitable, and immutable—the product of evolution and necessity...
Vol. 31 • March 1967 • No. 3
