Abstract

"“David Rockefeller, Free Enterprise, and the Reform of Capitalism Abroad”"

Kwelina Thompson, Harvard Business School (kwelina.thompson@gmail.com)

In a speech promoting economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean, David Rockefeller, Chase Manhattan Bank executive, spoke of the need for businesses to take up “the battle of ideas” in the Caribbean. Rockefeller stressed that the world was increasingly “interdependent” and set out to deepen connections across a global business community. This would bring Rockefeller into the orbit of state leaders like Jamaican Prince Minister Edward Seaga and Governor of Puerto Rico, Carlos Romero Barceló as they sought to promote industrial development in their countries. According to Rockefeller, this network of executives, entrepreneurs, and financiers would be instrumental to reducing global inequalities. He remained convinced that private enterprise was the best vehicle for reforming capitalism in the late twentieth century.

Steeped in the logic of the Cold War, Rockefeller’s development work in Latin America and the Caribbean became a way to bring together politicians and entrepreneurs in small countries into greater contact and collaboration with American business leaders. This paper traces Rockefeller’s connections across borders and oceans as he took his vision of free market capitalism abroad. Rockefeller’s foreign policy work began with several initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Increasingly, Rockefeller found that his vision for a global and interdependent connection of executives that included executives as disparate as Curt Strand of Hilton International and William C. Norris of Control Data Corporation met structural challenges. Some of these challenges emerged in frictions between executives, each of whom had different development goals and interpretations of social responsibility, as well as frictions between executives and state leaders. Still, Rockefeller’s work as an executive and as a statesman offers an opportunity to think about capitalist transitions as they met with more global transitions in politics and business-government relations.