The war replaced heroic entrepreneurs with a private-public technostructure

Evidence

Beneath the surface, however, the heat of war had transformed American capitalism at a molecular level, just as the heat of our fireplace had transformed iron into steel. By the war’s end, American capitalism was unrecognisable. Business and government had become profoundly entwined. Indeed, the revolving doors between government departments and corporations saw to it that the same crowd of mathematicians, scientists, analysts and professional managers populated them both. The heroic entrepreneur at the helm of the corporation and the democratically elected politician at the head of the government had both been usurped by this new private-public decision-making network, whose values and priorities – indeed its survival – boiled down to one thing: the survival and growth of the conglomerates now that the war, with its infinite demand for stuff and technologies, was over. Galbraith called this nexus the technostructure. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 146

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Galbraith’s ‘technostructure’ — an interpenetrating management class that superseded both the entrepreneur and the politician. Central term for the book’s later argument.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 146
• XREF: connects to: World War I dissolved the public-private boundary that protected capitalist property — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 112; War machines fuse political, military, and mercantile authority into one organization. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 129; The war economy handed Big Business guaranteed profits and immunity from competition — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 141 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• World War I dissolved the public-private boundary that protected capitalist property #expands (0.95) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 112
• The war economy handed Big Business guaranteed profits and immunity from competition #expands (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 141
• The war technostructure outsourced demand creation to the attention industry #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 150
• Wartime state intervention forced private property to bow to national-interest priorities #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 149
• War machines fuse political, military, and mercantile authority into one organization. #expands (0.85) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 129