ABSTRACT
Every social order requires a legitimating theory. This principle may be particularly true when the social order has undergone a profound upheaval, as was the case in American society in the years following the Civil War. This chapter suggests that the perpetuation of an outmoded precapitalist ideological justification for private property must be seen as one of the intellectual triumphs of laissez-faire conservatism. It has become a central part of the legitimating ideology of the newly emergent corporate capitalism. The great triumph of the new laissez-faire conservatism was its success in carrying the laissez-faire theory over into the age of corporate capitalism and in persuading the courts, in particular, to treat corporations as if they were simply ordinary individuals. The question that begins to emerge is whether corporate capitalism is contradictory on the level of its cultural tensions rather than on the basis of the economic contradictions theorized by Marx.
