In his confidential memorandum, “Attack on
American Free Enterprise System,” Lewis Powell, later to be a justice on the
U.S. Supreme Court, wrote in 1971 that the “leftists” were launching a frontal
assault on the “free enterprise system,” “capitalism,” or the “profit system.”
Powell saw this as an attack on rather than a defending of the “American
political system of democracy under the rule of law.” That the corporate
profit-interest might be a threat to “one person one vote” apparently did not
occur to the future Justice. Rather, what is good for GM he presumed must be
good for American democracy. Moreover, both, he presumes, are consistent with,
or perhaps even foundational for, American values.
The full essay is at "On the Political Power of Capitalism."
