Recent events-the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and efforts to increase the minimum wage, among others-have driven a tremendous surge of interest in the political power of business. Capital Gains collects some of the most innovative new work in the field. The chapters explore the influence of business on American politics in the twentieth century at the federal, state, and municipal levels. From corporate spending on city governments in the 1920s to business support for public universities in the postwar period, and from business opposition to the Vietnam War to the corporate embrace of civil rights, the contributors reveal an often surprising portrait of the nation's economic elite.
Contrary to popular mythology, business leaders have not always been libertarian or rigidly devoted to market fundamentalism. Before, during, and after the New Deal, important parts of the business world sought instead to try to shape what the state could accomplish and to make sure that government grew in ways that were favorable to them. Appealing to historians working in the fields of business history, political history, and the history of capitalism, these essays highlight the causes, character, and consequences of business activism and underscore the centrality of business to any full understanding of the politics of the twentieth century-and today.

Contributors: Daniel Amsterdam, Brent Cebul, Jennifer Delton, Tami Friedman, Eric Hintz, Richard R. John, Pamela Walker Laird, Kim Phillips-Fein, Laura Phillips Sawyer, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Eric Smith, Jason Scott Smith, Mark R. Wilson.

Preface
-Kim Phillips-Fein

Introduction. Adversarial Relations? Business and Politics in Twentieth-Century America
-Richard R. John

PART I. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA AND THE 1920s
Chapter 1. Trade Associations, State Building, and the Sherman Act: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1912-25
-Laura Phillips Sawyer
Chapter 2. Toward a Civic Welfare State: Business and City Building in the 1920s
-Daniel Amsterdam

PART II. THE NEW DEAL AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Chapter 3. The "Monopoly" Hearings, Its Critics, and the Limits of Patent Reform in the New Deal
-Eric S. Hintz
Chapter 4. Farewell to Progressivism: The Second World War and the Privatization of the "Military-Industrial Complex"
-Mark R. Wilson
Chapter 5. Beyond the New Deal: Thomas K. McCraw and the Political Economy of Capitalism
-Richard R. John and Jason Scott Smith

PART III. THE POSTWAR ERA: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 6. "Free Enterprise" or Federal Aid? The Business Response to Economic Restructuring in the Long 1950s
-Tami J. Friedman
Chapter 7. "They Were the Moving Spirits": Business and Supply-Side Liberalism in the Postwar South
-Brent Cebul
Chapter 8. A Fraught Partnership: Business and the Public University Since the Second World War
-Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

PART IV. THE POSTWAR ERA: LIBERALISM AND ITS CRITICS
Chapter 9. The Triumph of Social Responsibility in the National Association of Manufacturers in the 1950s
-Jennifer Delton
Chapter 10. "What Would Peace in Vietnam Mean for You as an Investor?" Business Executives and the Antiwar Movement, 1967-75
-Eric R. Smith
Chapter 11. Entangled: Civil Rights in Corporate America Since 1964
-Pamela Walker Laird

Notes
Contributors
Index

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