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Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60 (History of Communication)

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Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf (Author)
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Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 7 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0252064395
ISBN-10: 0252064399
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Product Details

  • Series: History of Communication
  • Paperback: 344 pages
  • Publisher: University of Illinois Press (January 1, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0252064399
  • ISBN-13: 978-0252064395
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsCorporate Power
By Douglas E Champiny on September 30, 2000
Format: Paperback
A wonderful and well researched study of the origins of corporate power in America. It began with the Big Business reaction towards the gains made by the American labor movement in the 30s with the FLSA. That reaction was embodied in the most anti-labor law passed in the history of America, the 1947 Taft/Hartley Law. This is a must read for all labor activists out there. The book goes into the strategies and propaganda used then to sway the American people against organized labor. Many of the strategies of the past are still used today by American Business and this book will help you recognize them, answer them and effectively rebut them.
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5.0 out of 5 starsImportant contribution to understanding the US
By Ken McCarthy on August 13, 2002
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This book was recently strongly endorsed by Noam Chomsky and for good reason. There is an extreme scarcity of books that address the mechanics of propaganda in the US. For people interested in the details of how the US became the most propagandized society on earth, this book is an invaluable resource.
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4.0 out of 5 starsThe true origins of McCarthyism
By R. L. Huff on September 28, 2012
Format: Paperback
I agree with reviewer Wood that the writing is rather dense, but this is an indispensible take on mid 20th-century capitalist culture clawing its way back to post-war prominence. That Ronald Reagan played his role as spokesman for the Restoration, and became its symbol of victory, underscores the continuity of this long, bitter class struggle.

We see here the true reasons for McCarthyism: just as Stalin's blood purges used fascism as excuse, so did the US business world misuse Communism in their muted civil war to reclaim Washington and city hall, the universities and mass media. Ms. Fones-Wolf raises an important point that "business humanism" - as well as name-calling and repression - was instrumental in rivaling unions for worker loyalty, and neutralizing community attitudes. Yet I see another equally vital reason for the decline of unionism at this time: the rise of the suburb, sundering the urban working class community that made mass strike action viable. The suburban worker, rising to fight his way through rush hour traffic, surrounded by neighbors with totally different occupations and life histories, became an atomized cipher in the postwar world and thus powerless to meaningfully affect it. (Hence the rise of "postal rage" as ersatz outlet.) The anomie of the modern citizen of the "Western democracies" seems to have been consciously created by elites, to beat back their all-too-brief scare between the Depression and WW II.

This led to the alienation between liberalism and labor. Fones-Wolf touches on the origins of this split: its working class base eroding, liberalism turned to the civil rights movement; "culture issues" became the linchpin of intellectual progressivism.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsCan't put it down.
By Rich Barber on February 28, 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a great book. The Business Class in America will stop at nothing when it comes to the war on America's workers. Turn on the radio today and you can hear the same BS right wing propaganda from 50 years ago. Americans need to wake up.
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