Friendly Fascism by Bertram Myron Gross

Friendly Fascism by Bertram Myron Gross

A look at corporate authoritarianism that William Shirer called, the best thing I've ever seen on how America might go fascist democratically.

In 1980, US capitalist politics wore a nice-guy mask, a troubling disguise to cover up a creeping despotism in which the ultra-rich and corporate overseers were merging with a centralized state power in order to manage the populace. This immanent corporate authoritarianism threatened to subvert constitutional democracy. But unlike the violent and sudden usurpations that led to fascism in the days of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese empire builders, this new smiling American breed of fascism was gaining ground through gradual and silent infringements on the freedoms of the American people. First published over three decades ago, Friendly Fascism is uncannily predictive of the threats and realities of current political and economic power trends. Author Bertram Gross, a presidential adviser during the New Deal era, traces the history and logic of declining democracy in First World countries and pinpoints capitalist transnational growth and inappropriate responses to global crises as the sources of late 20th-century despotism in America. Gross issues ever-urgent warnings about what happens when big business and big government become bedfellows - chronic inflation, recurring recession, overt and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of the environment - and simultaneously proffers a practical shift of perspective that could help US citizens build a truer democracy. He imagines an America in which heroes are no longer needed and the leadership is a group of non-elitists who recognize the ignorance of the wise as well as the wisdom of the ignorant.

Gross, Bertram: - Bertram Myron Gross (1912 in Philadelphia - March 12, 1997 in Walnut Creek, California) was an American social scientist, Federal bureaucrat and Professor of Political Science at Hunter College (CUNY). He is known from his book 'Friendly Fascism' from 1980 and as primary author of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. Gross was born in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. in English and Philosophy, and his M.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. In the late 1940s, he started as a federal bureaucrat in Washington. From 1941 to 1945 he was a staff member of a number of Senate committees. Here he wrote the Roosevelt-Truman full employment bills of 1944 and 1945, which led to the Employment Act of 1946. From 1946 to 1952 he was executive secretary of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In the 1950s, he moved with his family to Israel, where he served as an economic advisor in the Prime Minister's Office and as a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, where he established their program in Public Administration. He returned to the United States in the 1960s and joined the faculty of Syracuse University in the Maxwell School. In 1961-62, he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto; and, in 1962-63, he was the Leatherbee Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. In 1970, Bertram Gross was president of the Society for General Systems Research. From 1970 to 1982 he was Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780896081499
ISBN 10	0896081494
Title	Friendly Fascism
Author	Bertram Myron Gross
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	South End Press
Year published	1999-07-01
Number of pages	410
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable