ABSTRACT
Most Americans are unaware of the enormous power that business and industrial interests exercise over American society and culture. This chapter focuses on how the goals of management differ from those of the workforce. Social relations in the workplace often seem to have nothing to do with the power of management and its attempt to implement its agenda. Advocates of democracy are thwarted by the invisibility of the political impact of power. Corporate power operates on a multitude of levels. In addition to information control, corporations have steadily increased their demands on local governments to create "good business climates". In conjunction with Frederick W. Taylor's scientific management, the business ideas promoted by Henry Ford produced the modernist economy. Fordism as the economic expression of modernism carried the torch of Western civilization, as it reflected the modernist faith in progress, technological development, and rationality.
