World War II fused American business and government into a shared managerial elite

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: Introduces the technostructure term that frames the book’s argument about what preceded platform capital.
• XREF: Links to Galbraith’s The New Industrial State and to earlier chapters establishing the war economy. — connects to: Wartime government sponsorship guaranteed profits, markets, and R&D for American business — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 141; A distinct managerial class merged government and corporate power within capitalism — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 902; The war economy handed Big Business guaranteed profits and immunity from competition — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 141 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• A distinct managerial class merged government and corporate power within capitalism #corroborates (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 902
• Wartime government sponsorship guaranteed profits, markets, and R&D for American business #corroborates (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 141
• The war economy handed Big Business guaranteed profits and immunity from competition #corroborates (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 141
• The New Deal functioned as a rehearsal for wartime economic management #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 139
• World War II resolved the Depression-era demand problem and launched American Fordist expansion #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 37