INVISIBLE HANDS BY KIM PHILLIPS-FEIN

Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips-Fein

Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips-Fein

Author's Purpose of writing the book

The purpose of Kim Phillips-Fein in writing the book was to describe how the conservative movement was able to become a major political influence during the latter half of the twentieth century. However, the work shows the difficulty of characterizing such a diverse grouping into one central ideology. Phillips-Fein seems to frame this ideology into a definition of laissez faire opposition to liberal and New Deal meddling in American business. As historian Alan Brinkley has pointed out in his essay, “The Problem of American Conservatism”, political ideologies often do not fall into simply defined categories, as the groups that espouse such ideas often reflect contradictory and divergent views that happen to coalesce during historical periods to promote a political vision on the national stage.

Subsequently, the same can be said of any so-called ideology, liberal, socialist, etc, each equally confusing and difficult to pin down and label as a single movement. Unfortunately, the author uses the term conservative ideology to define the efforts of ordinary businessmen, who worked for more than forty years to undo the system of labor unions, federal social welfare programs, and government regulation of the economy that came into existence during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. Perhaps the re-titling of the book in paperback edition gives a better idea of what the author is trying to impart to the reader.

Representation of a new interpretation on the time period from a historical or economic viewpoint

Yes, the book represents the new interpretation on the current era from a historical viewpoint of Adam Smith regarding the invisible hands which is a popular term in the field of economics. Kim Phillips-Fein chronicles the origins of the conservative movement from the New Deal to its apex in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In this work the author argues that the modern conservative movement was a backlash to the liberal agenda embodied by the New Deal. She further argues that this backlash was largely created by a handful of conservative businessmen who were mostly invisible to the public, but built a political movement through the creation of think tanks and business networks to “crusade” against state capitalism and an anti-business government programs.

Indeed the title, Invisible Hands, is a play on Adam Smith's idea of “an invisible hand” in The Wealth of Nations. As the author states towards the end of the book, conservative business activists: “…were convinced that the free market had the ability to create economic abundance and moral order simultaneously—that its invisible hand would punish the indolent and reward the entrepreneurs.” In this work, the conservative movement devisers, the invisible hands, were whole-heartedly committed to the ideal of laissez faire capitalism and sought to organize a political movement against the liberalism espoused by proponents of the New Deal.

The invisible hand is a metaphor that expresses the self-regulating capacity in economics of the free ...