A lobby for capital

Amid the economic crisis of the 1970s, the leaders of large firms and trade associations in the United States created a lobbying force that profoundly shaped economic policy and launched a massive campaign to bring their pro-market political vision to the public square. This dissertation argues that that coalition--what I call "organized business"--was a crucial element in the changes in American public life that scholars commonly call the "rise of conservatism." My analysis reveals that the spread of economic libertarianism was deeply contested and far from automatic. I locate its appeal in the deliberate and self-conscious efforts of business leaders who actively used the country's economic travails--inflation, recession, energy crisis--to argue for a new vision of politics. Drawing on the archives of business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and, by special permission, the Business Roundtable, as well as the papers of presidents, legislators, and interest group activists, I analyze business's influence on economic policy. I also chart the ascent of a unified, pan-industry business "voice" in national politics during the 1970s, as well as its fragmentation and loss of cohesion by the mid-1980s. Convinced that voters who better understood and appreciated the capitalist system would in turn support pro-business legislation, business leaders inaugurated a broad-based campaign to improve the public's understanding of free enterprise. In case studies that document successful lobbying against labor and public interest legislation, I argue that business's triumphs came from its ability to reframe policy debates and blame the economic crisis on "big government" and the federal regulatory bureaucracy. Finally, I challenge scholarship that assumes a complete, coherent, and unproblematic "right turn" in American politics by tracing the fate of organized business during the Reagan years. My dissertation concludes that tensions between business's economic conservatism and the political realities of pluralistic democracy created cracks in business unity, as well as schisms between business leaders and other elements within the conservative movement. Nevertheless, organized business's experience with collective action fundamentally changed the vocabulary of American politics and the history of business-government relations.