Abstract

This article assesses the long-term political and economic consequences of antibusiness attitudes and behavior of the public in the United States. The current wave of public hostility toward the American business corporation has generated considerable discussion within both the academic and business communities. For the most part, however, writers on the changing social environment of business have made little attempt to systematically categorize the voluminous antibusiness literature of the previous decade. Assessing the long-term political significance of antibusiness attitudes and behavior at any given point in time is a hazardous enterprise. Nevertheless, such an effort is important, as it imposes an order on the chaos of everyday political events and thus provides the basis for more informed political analysis and debate. In order to assess the likelihood of increased public control of the decisions of privately owned, profit-making institutions in the United States, it is useful to divide recent criticisms of business into three broad categories: challenges to the performance of business, the power of business, and the purpose of business.