Suicidal Corporation (Touchstone Books) [Paperback]

Paul H Weaver (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Weaver, "convinced that business is the innocent victim of the excesses of liberal government," left a job at Fortune to work in public affairs for Ford Motor Co. He discovered that "Ford was less a victim than a sponsor of the regulatory state that was crushing it." It was hard for him to accept that most large corporations were promoting policies with adverse effects on their own bottom lines. He reveals his disillusionment, problems he had explaining this to other neoconservatives, and recommendations for what corporations ought to be doing. A controversial work recommended for all business collections. Michael D. Kathman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Collegeville, Minn.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (February 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671675591
• ISBN-13: 978-0671675592
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,518,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are Corporations antithetical to a Free Market?, September 11, 2001

By 

Robert A. Williams "libertarian" (Oberlin, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Suicidal Corporation (Touchstone Books) (Paperback)

"The final reason why the United States might convert to capitalism is that Americans are highly sensitive to the flaws of the corporate state, which are many, and powerfully attracted to the moral virtues of capitalism, which are profound"p252.
When I read Weaver's seemingly paradoxical statement above, I viewed it as a puzzling contradiction. Was there not consensus that the American economic system is dominated by capitalism? Why does Weaver say the U.S. might convert to capitalism? When has there been any other economic system in America other than capitalism and what is that? Weaver revealed that it is the corporate state which is that alternative and entirely antithetical to capitalist society.
Weaver, a former professor at Harvard University, related how he came to confront some startling revelations concerning corporations and their relationship to free enterprise only after participant observation at the Ford Motor Company. After becoming an insider, Weaver learned how corporations really work:
"Corporatism accepts private ownership of business but sees economic life as a mainly institutional activity that occurs under a bureaucratic supervision rather than in a free marketplace. It likes oligopoly and mistrusts competition. It accepts representative democracy but sees political life as a process dominated by economic, ethnic, and other interest groups rather than with individual citizens...What I witnessed at Ford was corporatism up close and personal - the doctrine of raw business advantage as seen from the viewpoint of the intended beneficiary". p183
There is nothing else on the subject of corporations fronting behind the rhetoric of the free market with this ethnographic richness. Weaver uses rich ethnographic material and careful analysis to craft a clear picture of the anti-capitalist corporation. This book is equally revealing of the origins and history of the corporation - it is theoretically a creature of the state and therefore behaves like a bureaucracy rather than a market organization. In short, government and their corporations are the problem. Free enterprise is the solution.
This book belongs on the shelf with Berliner and Biddle's "The Manufactured Crisis" and Miller's "Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Politics Explained Clearly, March 11, 2008

By 

A. M. Schmidt (Philly, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Suicidal Corporation (Touchstone Books) (Paperback)

This book is a godsend for anyone who wants to understand American politics from 1980 to the present day. The author worked at Ford, in academia, the government, and saw all sides of how the process works. His basic conclusion is that the US economy is actually fascistic (government regulation with nominal private ownership) in nature. His analysis reveals people like Reagan are nominal defenders of limited government, (by extension conservatives are light-weight socialists).
The process he describes is one of business lobbying for anti-competitive policies, talking about competition, but at the last minute bad-mouthing everyone involved and letting the law pass. Businesses became so anti-capitalist not just out of malice, but by the nature of their business structure.
Though one can focus on the businesses themselves, he also chronicles the transition of American politics toward neo-conservatism (restrained fascism) and the ascension of people like Irving Kristol, the godfather of the movement. He predicts the next 25 years of American politics without laying any emphasis on it. A reader need only change the dates and places to see nothing has changed fundamentally.
He ends with a devastating analysis of Reagan, Reaganism, and conservatism, with their inadequacies for the modern world. But for all the bleakness, he leaves the reader with an 18 point agenda for real change and making the US competitive globally. Perhaps then, he hopes, the US will finally get the capitalism it deserves.