Corporate liberalism is a thesis in US historiography. Its principal text is James Weinstein's The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State. Other historians who advocate similar theories of US history include Gabriel Kolko, Martin Sklar, and Murray N. Rothbard.
The thesis of corporate liberalism has similarities with the ideas of the organizational synthesis school of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Samuel P. Hays, Robert Wiebe, and Louis Galambos.
Nor should Weinstein's idea of corporate liberalism be confused with Ellis W. Hawley's use of the term. Daniel T. Rodgers noted that Hawley's use of "corporate liberalism" was more a description of liberal corporatism than anything else.
Famous quotes containing the words corporate and/or liberalism:
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)
“There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one’s good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)