ABSTRACT
The present organization and management of the American economy are also in defiance of the rules — rules that derive their ultimate authority from men of such Newtonian stature as Bentham, Ricardo and Adam Smith. The favorable performance of the American economy in the years following World War II was a fact. There were some two million farm families, many of them in southern Appalachians, who continued to live in primitive and anonymous squalor not surpassed in any country west of Turkey. That the success of the economy in years following World War II was accompanied by deep uneasiness is a point that need hardly be labored. Undoubtedly the uneasiness was greatest among businessmen. The American government and the American economy were both behaving in brazen defiance of their rules. If their rules had been binding, they would already have suffered severely. The conservative, who had already had two decades of New and Fair Deals would already have been dispossessed.
