Back to capitalism

The effort by Republican businessmen to roll back the New Deal, and its link to modern conservatism

Barry Goldwater, July 4, 1963. The Republican candidate for president the next year, he typified the libertarian brand of conservatism that arose in the mid-60s. (''Invisible hands''/Arizona historical Foundation)

INVISIBLE HANDS: The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan
By Kim Phillips-Fein
Norton, 356 pp., illustrated, $26.95

People who read books about obscure aspects of political history, and especially those who spend their time reading newspaper reviews of such books, are clearly not cut from the common cloth. One might suppose, then, that you who are reading these words might revel in learning who bankrolled the Foundation for Economic Education or how a certain William Mullendore felt about the tepid reception given his speech to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in 1938.

If that's what floats your boat, you'll probably love this book.

And if you think American conservatism is nothing more than a cabal of the super-rich standing athwart history (William F. Buckley Jr.'s description of his role in life) in defense of the right to amass wealth without interference by nosy feds, you'll certainly love the book, for such folks populate these pages just as they did the counterrevolution against Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s and '50s.

There is some truth to this "invisible hands" theory, and what there is of it is richly detailed in these pages.Still . . ..

In the world of the academy, the ability to mine the possibly important but undeniably arcane is the chief requirement to earning the Merit Badge of True Scholarship. Kim Phillips-Fein, a professor at New York University's Gallatin School, has achieved that goal; her PhD dissertation, on which "Invisible Hands" is based, won Columbia University's prestigious Bancroft Dissertation Award. It is also true, however, that the academic world sometimes puts more emphasis on the mere amassing of data than on whether one has drawn the right conclusions. And that is where this otherwise fascinating book falls short.

When the author wrote her award-winning thesis, it was described in In These Times (she's a contributing editor) as a report on "the business backlash against the New Deal." So where did this book - one that attempts to draw a straight line from Jasper Crane to Ronald Reagan - come from?

The author is a historian, and what she set out to write was the story of a specific political moment: the attempt by a group of businessmen to restore the primacy of pre-New Deal capitalism following World War II. That is a goal she achieved with skill. Along the way, however, her aim somehow shifted. After presenting a compelling and readable story of resistance to the new economic order, she then attempts to convince her readers that modern conservatism is the intellectual legacy of a few disgruntled country clubbers whose main complaint is Fearsome Franklin.

Certainly conservatism owes much to the deep pockets of those who picked up the tab for the think tanks and journals that have fleshed out policies to fit the ideological premise. Like the left, the right has had the benefit of the largesse of the wealthy.

To her credit, Phillips-Fein acknowledges, without passing judgment, the role of these early funders of the backlash against New Deal expansionism. She does, however, attempt to buttress her argument by devoting too much space to some trivial participants in this drama: nearly seven pages, for example, to a short-lived pseudo-religious entity called Spiritual Mobilization, and five full pages to the broadcast fulminations of Clarence Manion.

Here's the problem. Phillips-Fein is caught in a time warp. The brand of conservatism that arose in the mid-1960s was not primarily based on economics. It was, rather, a more libertarian kind of movement, more akin to John Locke and 18th-century European liberals than to British conservatives (Churchill, for example) or the postwar anti-New Dealers. The author takes appropriate note of the rise of two prominent transplanted Austrian economists - Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek - both described as "conservatives," but in fact their primary focus was on economic "liberty," and Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize, refused to call himself a conservative. In 1964, Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for president, said the most important question to ask of any legislation was whether it advanced liberty. And that was the theme of his party platform.

It is not that "Invisible Hands" (a clever title, by the way) misses the boat. Manufacturing and business organizations contributed to conservative candidates, and they still do, just as they mobilize to pass or defeat legislation that can help or harm them. And conservatives have always had a belief that too much regulation is counterproductive; that is not a result of prodding by fat cats but part of a preference for smaller, and constitutionally limited, government. To point to the financial support of businessmen and conclude that they have driven the wagon is to reverse the roles.

Toward the book's conclusion, Phillips-Fein attempts to put things back in perspective, taking note of the diminished impact of the so-called invisible hands and acknowledging that many other factors have long been at play in the conservative drama. And, in doing so, she provides a conclusion that is more in keeping with the facts.

Let me be fair. If I were to read this book on the assumption that its title provided an accurate description of its contents, I would be displeased, for the subtitle - "The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan" - is a considerable stretch. There is, in fact, no single ideological line connecting the New Deal protesters of the 1940s to Ronald Reagan. But if you pick up the book not for political truth but for an interesting bit of history, much like reading about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Panama Canal, you'll find it worth the price of admission.

Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman, now teaches at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of "Reclaiming Conservatism."