Dr. Kim Phillips-Phillips-Fein’s’ book, “Invisible Hands; The Businessman’s Crusade against the New Deal”, traces the conservative intellectual movement and that of American business with their repeated response towards the Federal government’s intrusion into American capitalism from the 1930s through the end of the Reagan era. The author provides a chronological and succinct methodology detailing many historical precedents and incidents where American business had attempted to counter the effect of the US government’s over-reach. The “Invisible Hands” is a play on Adam Smith’s “an invisible hand” in his book “The Wealth of Nations.”
While Dr. Phillips-Phillips-Fein, in her book chronicles the numerous American businessmen’s response to the Federal government, however, she does not succinctly notes (in my opinion) that the Federal government even when challenged by American business firm still…show more content… Phillips-Fein traces how the ideas intersected, often unsuccessfully, with business leaders. This amazing variety of competing and cooperatively cooperating groups was a general opposition to government intervention on the grounds that as Hayek pronounced as “….the submission to the impersonal and seemingly irrational forces of the market is preferable to submission to an equally uncontrollable and therefore arbitrary power of another man.”
Understanding the origins of the “New Deal” crusade is difficult for Phillips-Fein. She does not try to offer a definition or an explanation on the fear of government from business. She notes that Roosevelt posed no real and creditable threat to capitalism. Therefore; the extremes of fear and rage against FDR provoked from the business community seem basically irrational to him. The author does not understand the psychological impact dealt to the American business class due to the NRA Blue
