A Bold Creed for Modern Capitalism
WHERE is the real radical, the real revolutionary, to be found in the U.S. today?'' asked American Trucking Associations President Neil J. Curry last week. His answer: "Behind the desk of any business establishment." Twenty-five years ago the claim would have sounded absurd. It still seems so to many businessmen. In his own mirror, the average U.S. businessman sees an unyielding and uncompromising conservative face; yet he has been largely responsible for the dynamic forward drive of the U.S. economy that has had a revolutionary effect on American life. As the businessman has helped to sustain economic stability and translate it into human progress, he has assisted in a more sweeping democratization of society than dreamers dared prophesy a quarter-century ago.
In the process, conservatism has undergone as dramatic a transformation as the evolution of the 175-m.p.h. biplane into the 2,000-m.p.h. rocket aircraft. Through the Committee for Economic Development, the National Planning Association and scores of other groups, businessmen and educators are boldly charting economic and social policies that project conservatism's new look. Increasingly, its prophets are finding the word '"conservatism" inadequate to describe the aims and achievements of present-day capitalism. Eager sponsors have proffered a dozen new labels: capitalism with a conscience, enlightened conservatism, people's capitalism, etc. But still the most widely accepted name is "The New Conservatism."
A parade of books and magazine articles has offered the new gospel in a dozen different shadings. It is already under attack by critics such as New Dealing Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.. who calls it ''a romantic nostalgia'' for the feudal class system. But as the presidential vote showed this month, conservatism is no longer a narrow economic viewpoint but a political philosophy with vast popular appeal. As Du Pont President Crawford H. Greenewalt pointed out, more segments of the population than ever participate in U.S. business, as employees, stockholders or owners, identifying themselves with the new capitalism in the process. Says he: ''Politically, we are becoming a nation of conservatives in the sense that more and more people have moved into an economic status where they have something to conserve."
Businessmen have trouble defining the new conservatism because it represents a departure from dogma, from the rigid principles and prejudices of classic conservatism. As Yale Economist Henry C. wrote, those who voted for "an other four years of conservatism" this month were endorsing "something felt, rather than clearly seen. Conservatism is an attitude, an approach, more than a specific set of doctrines. Its specific policies must change with the times—anything else would be ossification, not conservatism. And conservatism must flow from convictions if it is to be more than defense of vested interests."