The Power Structure Of American Business

Mintz and Schwartz offer a fascinating tour of the corporate world. Through an intensive study of interlocking corporate directorates, they show that for the first time in American history the loan making and stock purchasing and selling powers are concentrated in the same hands: the leadership of major financial firms. Their detailed descriptions of corporate case histories include the forced ouster of Howard Hughes from TWA in the late fifties as a result of lenders' pressure; the collapse of Chrysler in the late seventies owing to banks' refusal to provide further capital infusions; and the very different "rescues" of Pan American Airlines and Braniff Airlines by bank intervention in the seventies.

Mintz and Schwartz offer a fascinating tour of the corporate world. Through an intensive study of interlocking corporate directorates, they show that for the first time in American history the loan making and stock purchasing and selling powers are concentrated in the same hands: the leadership of major financial firms. Their detailed descriptions of corporate case histories include the forced ouster of Howard Hughes from TWA in the late fifties as a result of lenders' pressure; the collapse of Chrysler in the late seventies owing to banks' refusal to provide further capital infusions; and the very different "rescues" of Pan American Airlines and Braniff Airlines by bank intervention in the seventies.

Most people believe that large corporations wield enormous political power when they lobby for policies as a cohesive bloc. With this controversial book, Mark A. Smith sets conventional wisdom on its head. In a systematic analysis of postwar lawmaking, Smith reveals that business loses in legislative battles unless it has public backing. This surprising conclusion holds because the types of issues that lead businesses to band together—such as tax rates, air pollution, and product liability—also receive the most media attention. The ensuing debates give citizens the information they need to hold their representatives accountable and make elections a choice between contrasting policy programs. Rather than succumbing to corporate America, Smith argues, representatives paradoxically become more responsive to their constituents when facing a united corporate front. Corporations gain the most influence over legislation when they work with organizations such as think tanks to shape Americans' beliefs about what government should and should not do.

In what ways do the actions and economic behavior of today's multinational corporations resemble the functioning and processes of the old command economics of the Soviet Union? By ignoring questions about power relations in markets, mainstream neoclassically-oriented economists conclude that there are no significant power structures operating in market systems to control allocation and distribution. This book argues to the contrary that there are fundamental and systemic power structures - monopoly, access to information or finance, employer power, etc. - at work in market economies, which affects their ability to achieve real "competition" in much the same way as state-controlled, command economies hinder business activities. Thus, for example, the biggest firms at the hubs of financial "networks" wield a kind of "shaping power" upon large numbers of relatively autonomous firms, not only upon those that belong to the networks but also on the many firms outside them that are also affected.

Using case studies as evidence, this book argues that a major obstacle to the enactment of desirable social legislation in the US, particularly on such issues as national health insurance and the Family and Medical Leave Act, is the uncompromising opposition of most business lobbying

This volume presents a network of social power, indicating that theories inspired by C.Wright Mills are far more accurate views about power in America than those of Mills's opponents.Dr. Domhoff shows how and why coalitions within the power elite have involved themselves in such policy issues as the Social Security Act (1935) and the Employment Act (1946), and how the National Labor Relations Act (1935) could pass against the opposition of every major corporation. The book descri bes how experts worked closely with the power elite in shaping the plansfor a post-World War II world economic order, in good part realized during the past 30 years. Arguments are advanced that the fat cats who support the Democrats cannot be understood in terms of narrow self-interest, and that moderate conservatives dominated policy-making under Reagan.