“More than any other single period, World War I was the critical watershed for the American business system.”
—Murray N. Rothbard
November’s offering is War Collectivism: Power, Business, and the Intellectual Class in World War I, the story of how the First World War transformed the American economy and laid the foundations of the modern interventionist state.
World War I is typically remembered as a temporary crisis that required unprecedented government control over American industry. But as Rothbard demonstrates, this centralization of economic power was not exactly imposed on an unwilling business community or confined to the years the country was at war.
In fact, some of America’s most powerful business interests enthusiastically embraced the new system. Government-directed economic planning offered major corporations an opportunity to immunize themselves from market competition, secure lucrative government contracts, and establish government-backed industry cartels.
They found willing allies among Progressive intellectuals, who saw the mobilization for war as an opportunity to advance toward their ideal society, one run by experts and that put the supposed national interest before everything else. So big business, Progressive intellectuals, and the federal government forged a powerful new alliance during the Great War.
In War Collectivism Rothbard describes how the wartime experiment became a model for the expansion of government intervention in the decades that followed, especially during the New Deal. What had been justified as an extraordinary response to a national crisis became the blueprint for the suffocating political and economic order that we still live under today.
This is more than a history of America’s involvement in World War I. It is an important examination of how political and economic power became intertwined in ways that continue to shape our daily lives.
War Collectivism is more than a history of America’s involvement in World War I. It is an important examination of how political and economic power became intertwined in ways that continue to shape our daily lives.
Understanding how that system took shape is essential to understanding how it might be dismantled.
Get your free copy by November 30. And look for our next Rothbard giveaway on December 1.
For domestic customers who wish to order more than five copies, click here to order your free copies and only pay shipping fees.
