Papers presented by Richard John since 2019
2024 Providence, Rhode Island
"“Daniel Bell, Anti-Monopoly, and the Coming of Post-Industrial Society”"
Richard John, Columbia University
Abstract:
Social theorists have for over half a century posited that the United States evolved at some point in the mid-twentieth century from an industrial to a post-industrial stage. Perhaps the most influential theorist of “post-industrial society” was the sociologist Daniel Bell. Bell famously posited in Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) that in recent decades the United States had shifted from an industrial society (in which economic activity had been organized around games against fabricated nature) into a post-industrial society (in which economic activity took the form of games between people). This much is well known. What is less well known (and which was first documented by Howard Brick in his monograph by Bell) is that Bell had in the 1940s written a 250-page manuscript on the “monopoly state” in which he prefigured several of the arguments that he would later advance in Post-Industrial Society. Bell’s manuscript grew out of his editorship at New Leader—a socialist newspaper in which he wrote extensively on anti-monopoly themes during the Second World War (abetted in part by U. S. government officials eager to fight corruption). Among the many intriguing features of this manuscript is its historical analysis of the evolution of anti-monopoly thought. My paper uses Bell’s manuscript (and his New Leader editorials) as a springboard to consider the shifting meaning of anti-monopoly in 20th century U. S social thought; it is derived from my forthcoming book on U. S. anti-monopoly thought and practice, tentatively entitled “Exclusive: How Monopoly Imperiled America from the Boston Tea Party to Big Tech.”
2023 Detroit, MI, United States
"Frances Willard, Anti-Monopoly, and the Liquor Machine in Victorian America"
Richard John, Columbia University
Abstract:
Historical writing on anti-monopoly thought in the United States has been re-invigorated by the recent publication of two books by prominent journalists: Barry Lynn’s Liberty from All Masters and Matt Stoller’s Goliath. Each regard anti-monopoly as more-or-less synonymous with what might call the “anti-bigness” critique, a critique long associated with the Democratic party. In 2013, BHC regular Kenneth Lipartito published an essay on the “antimonopoly tradition” that reached a broadly similar conclusion. My paper reconstructs a related, yet quite distinct, anti-monopoly vision: the moral critique of the “liquor trust” that was developed with great sophistication by the late-nineteenth-century women’s rights reformer Francis Willard. Willard was no Democrat—yet in a series of essays that she published in the Union Signal, she articulated a critique of what she called the “liquor trust.” Willard’s critique emphasized the close relationship between whiskey distillers and the federal government— a byproduct of reliance of the U. S. treasury on a tax on distilled liquor. This critique can also be followed by consulting the publications of the Prohibition party—including its detailed party platforms—as well as a classic monograph on the late nineteenth-century Anti-Saloon League by former BHC president Austin Kerr. The recent publication by political scientist Lawrence Shrad Mark of Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition puts events in the United States in a global perspective. My paper contributes to this literature—making it part of the “transnational turn” in business history. It is drawn from my forthcoming history of anti-monopoly thought in the United States from the 1760s to the 1950s that is tentatively entitled “Bad Business: How Monopoly Imperiled America from the Boston Tea Party to Big Tech.”
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2022 Mexico City
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Richard John, Columbia University
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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina
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Richard John, Columbia University