The Nation - 30.03.2020

30 The Nation. March 30, 2020

Berle believed that this development
could be used to benefit society as a whole.
His very influential acquaintance Franklin
D. Roosevelt, the 1932 Democratic pres-
idential nominee, agreed: Since corporate
managers’ compensation came in the form
of salaries, they could be persuaded to act
in socially responsible ways that oligarchs
would not. In one of modern liberalism’s
most famous speeches, given before the
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco,
Roosevelt proposed a new “economic
constitutional order” to restrain business
and protect workers that came to include
old-age pensions, bank deposit insurance,
health and unemployment insurance, and
regulations holding financial speculation in
check. In short, a New Deal.

T

he paradigmatic moment of the new,
more humane economy that Berle
envisioned came in 1950, when the
United Auto Workers and Gener-
al Motors inked a remarkable set-
tlement giving factory workers automatic
quarterly cost-of-living increases, and
company-provided health insurance and
pensions. The Treaty of Detroit, as it
became known, soon served as a national
model. Within 15 years (as one learns in
Matt Stoller’s Goliath, another excellent
new book on the history of corporations),

the percentage of Americans with surgical

coverage went from 36 to 72 percent, and

the reasons for it were Berle’s reasons. As

he put it in a 1954 book, “Mid- twentieth-

century capitalism has been given the pow-

er and the means of more or less planned

economy, in which decisions are or at least

can be taken in the light of their probable

effect on the whole community.”

And why not? Blue-chip, market-defining

firms were stable, perennially profitable,

and practically impervious to economic

downturns and so could afford to spread

the wealth around. Without imperious oli-

garchs watching their every move or impe-

rious shareholders threatening to pull out if

eye-popping returns weren’t posted every

quarter, managers could afford to think of

the long-term well-being of everyone. It

wasn’t their money, after all, and the agency

of shareholders was so limited as to make

opposition nearly inconceivable.

Examining this period, Lemann shows

that the situation described above did not

exist only because owners were so numer-

ous and dispersed. Another product of

Berle’s influence had made Wall Street fi-

nance decorous and staid: the passage of the

Glass-Steagall Act in 1933, which barred

commercial banks from underwriting or

dealing in securities and so greatly reined

in the sort of dangerous, hyper leveraged

speculation that caused the financial system

to crash in 1929. Now a small set of regu-

lated investment firms handled the nation’s

stock and bond offerings (Morgan Stanley,

which broke off from J.P. Morgan for this

very purpose, handled 25 percent alone by

1936), and American finance became a far

more stable part of the US economy, almost

more feudal than capitalist. This was partly

for purely cultural reasons. It was the sole

preserve of starchy old WASPs.

When a firm like General Motors re-

quired a chunk of outside capital (which

was rare), a GM executive or two—

relatively low-level ones—would meet with

a Morgan Stanley partner, who would then

convene the other partners and decide how

to raise it: stocks or bonds? How many

shares? How much per share? There was

no competition; “no other banking firm,”

Lemann explains, “could try to become

the underwriter of that issue because the

SEC could review only one firm’s request

at a time.” Then they would decide, also

unilaterally, which of the lesser firms would

get to sell it and how much of the profit

would trickle down to these syndicate part-

ners, and the availability of the new stock

or bond would be announced in a stark,

simple display ad in The Wall Street Journal

called a tombstone, which was often en-

closed and put on one’s desk as a souvenir.

The Excavation

My 8-yr-old daughter is teaching me

how to live with myself

after 34yrs in this body I can finally

split myself in two & marvel that now I pass

the Bechdel test.

What I’ve let men scavenge—

my collarbones, femurs, the fleshy pads

of my inner thighs, bitemarks

butterflying from the clotted cream

that cornmeal death has made

of my skin—has given

way to blood

poisoning. I haven’t done much but get dumped

by one & tell the other to stop raping

me when I’m dreamcumming

& he finally after 13yrs together & a year

of divorce

understands a sleeping body moaning

is not consent. & while he’s had to learn

truths he should’ve learned as a boy

I too chart a map to my unlearning.

I rewatch the filmstrips of my girlhood

with my girl & she covers her face at kissy scenes

& very practically, very kindly but firmly

lifecoaches the girls/women

You are worth so much more than you know

& finally I hear from the gift of my womb

what my mother never

taught me. My daughter transforms the desert

of my memory—peels the spines