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Liberal: World: 2 Liberalism: 0
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14201 |
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BOOK WORLD
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7 / 1988 |
3,962 Words |
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Allen Matusow
Allen Matusow is the author of The Unravelling of America: A
History of Liberalism in the 1960s and Farm Policies and
Politics in the Truman Years. He is The William Gaines Twyman
Professor of History and Dean of Humanities at Rice
University. |
LIBERAL: ADOLF A. BERLE AND THE VISION OF AN AMERICAN ERA
Jordan A. Schwarz
New York: Free Press, 1987
550 pp., $24.95
Reviewing William Appleman William's Tragedy of American Diplomacy for the New York Times in 1959, Adolf A. Berle encountered his own name. Berle, according to Williams, was one of several "corporate agents" who had used government during the New Deal "to rationalize corporate development." Berle found much to admire in a book soon to become the bible of the New Left, but he dismissed Williams' characterization of himself out-of-hand. A generation later, in his new biography Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era, Jordan A. Schwarz has interpreted Berle's life in categories borrowed from William Appleman Williams. Schwarz writes that Berle was indeed a representative of "corporate liberalism," a prophet of corporate stabilization through government, and an architect of an American empire founded on economic preeminence. As historians, Williams and Schwarz actually have little in common except vocabulary. For Williams, "corporate liberalism" is a term freighted with normative significance. It is the name for a liberalism that masquerades as reform but in reality uses government to maintain the domination of large business corporations. For Jordan Schwarz, the phrase corporate liberalism is merely descriptive, implying no condemnation when invoked to explain Berle or the movements he served. Indeed, because Schwarz declines critically or analytically to assess the liberalism that Berle so aptly represented, his biography is a missed opportunity. But it is a useful book nonetheless, for Berle was a committed liberal who lived an interesting
... (1996 of 24483 Characters)
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