1930s planning consensus elevated bureaucracies and the M-form over individual entrepreneurship

Evidence

Schumpeter pointed to the decline of a particular class of entrepreneurs. This reflected a change in the structure of global capitalism, and especially American capitalism, in the 1930s and 1940s. Partly as a result of the advance of socialist planning and the ideological conflict between socialism and capitalism, there was a growing consensus around large-scale, macroeconomic management and planning. Expanding bureaucracies in both the public and the private sector undermined the previous role of individual entrepreneurship and family firms, which Schumpeter had originally led to expect society to become more entrepreneurial. At the microeconomic level, the modernization theme was mirrored by the new theory of the firm in the discipline of management and economics. Replacing the individualism of entrepreneurship, scholars pointed to the largescale organizational dimension and complex management requirements of the multi-divisional business organization, or what Alfred Chandler in 1962 called the “M form.” In line with a view to the distribution of responsibility, the secret of economic progress lay not in individualism and entrepreneurship but in management coordination and the cooperation of employees. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 271

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s map of the pre-neoliberal consensus that austerity doctrine later reacted against; the Chandler M-form belongs in that counter-history. — connects to: The entrepreneurship agenda required actively reshaping state and corporate institutions, not leaving individuals alone — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 309; Corporate capitalism arose from a long decline of entrepreneurial and proletarian phases; A distinct managerial class merged government and corporate power within capitalism — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 902 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• A distinct managerial class merged government and corporate power within capitalism #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 902
• Coase’s transaction-cost theory undermined the belief in bureaucratic planning efficiency #contradicts (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 461
• Corporate capitalism arose from a long decline of entrepreneurial and proletarian phases #corroborates (0.75)
• Monopoly pricing and planning emerged from US capital centralization since 1900 #corroborates (0.72) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 803