Reply #39: Remembering the Moment Our CEO's Dug in [View All]

[Demeter]

http://www.truth-out.org/remembering-moment-our-ceos-dug/1315319786

Forty years ago, U.S. corporate honchos saw their power ebbing away. So they did what corporate honchos always do. They asked for a memo....The writer of this memorable memo, Richmond attorney Lewis Powell, would later go on to national prominence as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. But Lewis Powell, back in August 1971, had no national general public presence.

Powell did have widespread respect within elite corporate circles. A former American Bar Association president, he served on top corporate boards — and had friends in pivotal places, like Eugene Sydnor, a mover and shaker at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Powell and Sydnor, notes corporate watchdog Charlie Cray, shared a sense of impending doom. The American “free enterprise system,” they feared, faced an existential crisis. The enemies of that system would surely triumph — unless business mobilized, as never before, to meet the threat.

The Chamber’s Sydnor asked Powell for a memo that outlined what the Chamber could do to jumpstart a crusade to save free enterprise. Powell’s confidential August 23, 1971 response did just that....