War Collectivism: Power, Business, and the Intellectual Class in World War I

More than any other single period, World War I was the critical watershed for the American business system. It was a "war collectivism," a totally planned economy run largely by big-business interest through the instrumentality of the central government, which served as the model, the precedent, and the inspiration for state corporate capitalism for the remainder of the century.

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Paperback, 134 pages, ISBN: 9781610162500
These essays appear together for the first time as War Collectivism.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• War Collectivism in World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
• World War I as Fulfillment:
• Power and the Intellectuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
• Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
• Piestism and Prohibition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
• Women at War and at the Polls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
• Savings Our Boys from Alcohol and Vice . . . . . . . . . .74
• The New Republic Collectivists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83
• Economics in Service of the State:
• The Empiricism of Richard T. Ely. . . . . . . . . . . . . .94
• Economics in Service of the State:
• Government and Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104
• Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127

War Collectivism in World War I
This is reprinted from A New History of Leviathan, Ronald Radosh and Murray N. Rothbard, eds. (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1972), pp. 66– 110.

World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals
1 An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a Pacific Institute Conference on “Crisis and Leviathan,” at Menlo Park, Calif., October 1986. It appeared in print in the Journal of Libertarian Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter, 1989). It was reprinted in John V. Denson, ed., The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997). The title of this paper is borrowed from the pioneering last chapter of James Weinstein’s excellent work, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900–1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). The last chapter is entitled, “War as Fulfillment.”