A History of Capitalism: The Role of Business in Shaping the American Economy

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“Ethical Markets highly recommends this webinar sponsored by our partner the American Sustainable Business Council.

~Hazel Henderson, Editor“

A History of Capitalism: The Role of Business in Shaping the American Economy

A Timely Discussion with Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse,
American History Professor at the
University of North Carolina
October 17th, 1:00pm ET

Today’s debates about the extent of government involvement in the economy are peculiar to our modern culture of capitalism. In advance of ASBC’s Dec 10-11 Making Capitalism Work For All’ Summit, we thought it would be valuable to examine the role of business in shaping our capitalist economy.

Throughout American history, from the mercantile and agricultural economy of our nation’s founding through the rise of mass industrialization in the 19th century to today, the interests of capital and the interests of the state have been firmly united. Only in the first half of the 20th century did social reform movements emerge to urge a more equitable distribution of the growing economic bounty that industrial society wrought.

Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the peak of that reform movement, American capitalism achieved something historically unusual: widely (but far from universally) shared prosperity and a contraction between the extremes of wealth and poverty. Yet the rapid growth—in technological advance, productivity, and quality of life improvements—of the previous hundred years began to slow in the 1970s. American capitalism then became a contest to reallocate not bounty but shrinking material resources in a globalizing economy. Government through regulatory policy grew more powerful, but so did business by investing in elections, creating powerful trade associations and hiring lobbyists. . You can learn more, by attending the Dec 10-11 Making Capitalism Work For All’ Summit.

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In the political sphere, policy debates in the final decade of the 20th century cleaved over who was to blame for the end of rapid, postwar economic growth: calcified, monopolistic hoarders of capital or the unproductive, innovation-squashing regulatory state. Amid this economic stagnation and political intransigence, inequality grows and discontent festers, with volatile consequences. Global capitalism in the 21st century is undergoing a tumultuous revolution with many calling on business to actively better society.

Now, ten years after Citizens United and the rise of Occupy, it’s clear that the key question of how the American political economy works is less about “how much government” but rather “for whom does government work.” Join us for a timely discussion.

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Dr. Waterhouse is the author of The Land of Enterprise (2017) and Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA.

He will be speaking at ASBC’s ‘Making Capitalism Work For All’ Summit, December 10-11, in Washington, D.C. Learn more here.