REIMAGINING AMERICA'S EXPERIMENT IN SELF-GOVERNANCE

Veblen reflects on the significance of business in the history and future of the United States.

In this sweeping survey of the role of business in shaping what author Veblen calls the “American Business Civilization,” the role of innovative, proactive, and philanthropic entrepreneurs takes center stage. Covering everything from “America’s business-savvy nation-builders,” who envisioned that a “commercial republic, constrained by rule-of-law” was the best vehicle to promote individualism, national wealth, and security, to the industrial titans of the early 20th century, the book emphasizes the interconnectivity between business and the American Dream. While acknowledging that America did not always live up to its lofty ideals, this distinctly pro-business revision of U.S. history is the focus of the first five chapters. The book’s second half (divided into two parts, “Imagining a Common-Sense Future for America” and “Revitalizing American Exceptionalism,” respectively) suggests that the individualism that has driven U.S. commercial success for centuries has been threatened by a wave of post-1960s collectivism that has “derailed” society. Only by restoring the centrality of businesspeople to our social order, per the book’s analysis, can the American government, society, and economy once again thrive. Per the book’s reading of post–World War II American history, the nation has been divided between believers of “American Individualism” (which it defines broadly as representative democracy) and those who instead prioritize the administrative state, from communists to Great Society liberals (who are lumped together under the umbrella term “Social Progressive Collectivism”).

While much of the book’s arguments mirror rhetoric that has been a staple among antiregulatory, pro-corporate sectors for decades, its teleological, determinist approach to history leaves much to be desired. When discussing America’s “founders,” for instance, the author ignores men like Patrick Henry and scores of anti-federalists (a term that does not appear once in its text) who wholeheartedly disagreed with the commerce-focused approach of men like Alexander Hamilton. Yeoman farmers—rather than urban entrepreneurs, bankers, and business elites—were far more important to the anti-federalist’s vision of America’s future; yet the nuanced, heated debates surrounding America’s founding are whitewashed in this book. Other historical takes will also leave readers scratching their heads. Its categorization of the Vietnam War as an example of “Collectivism” belies the conflict’s Cold War history. The biggest pro-war hawks were certainly not the Marxists and socialists that proliferated on college campuses, but anti-communists who saw the war as a critical front in efforts against communist collectivism. While historians will certainly take exception to many of the work’s takes, which are generally presented with few citations to the relevant literature, its narrative should be commended for generally avoiding the hyper-partisan, incendiary rhetoric commonplace in contemporary political analysis. Combined with the book’s more conservative takes on business are centrist critiques that target both the American right and left (from Proud Boys to Black Lives Matter). The book may not convince skeptics of its claims that business drives American progress, but it presents its argument in an engaging package that is full of textbox vignettes, charts, diagrams, and other visual elements.

A visually appealing, if often unsupported, case for the centrality of business to the U.S.