MAGA Wants to End Capitalism as We Know It
Its goal is to eject the managerial corporation from its central role in the heart of the US economy.
A blueprint for disrupting American capitalism.
Photographer: Dominic Gwinn/AFP/Getty Images
Corporate America is learning the truth of Winston Churchill’s warning about the appetite of crocodiles. Trump’s tariffs on friendly countries, which were reaffirmed yesterday, will be only the beginning of his assault on the pillars of post-war prosperity. Some of the most influential people in Trump world are determined to go even further and deconstruct the great workhorse of American capitalism: the publicly owned and professionally managed corporation.
The managerial corporation emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century when entrepreneurs hired professional managers to boost business efficiency and sold shares to the general public to raise corporate capital. The great historian of the corporation Alfred Chandler argued that the managerial company complemented the invisible hand of the market with the visible hand of management, thereby moving it to the center of the US economy, particularly during the long postwar boom, and providing a global template for countries that wanted to imitate America’s economic success.