This paper presents a critique of the claim in Gregory Hooks' Forging the Military-Industrial Complex (1991) that the industrial mobilization for Word War II led to autonomy for the Pentagon. It argues instead that a coalition of corporate leaders and military officers dominated decision-making on industrial mobilization, despite opposition from a New Deal, liberal/labor coalition rooted in unions, universities, government appointments, and the mass media. It criticizes the state autonomy theory group for adopting a style of theorizing that relies almost exclusively on secondary sources in making new and controversial claims.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Albrecht, Stephen, and Michael Locker (eds.). 1981. CDE Stock Ownership Directory No. 5. Fortune500. New York: Corporate Data Exchange, Inc.
2.
Allen, Michael P.1974. "The Structure of Interorganizational Elite Cooptation: Interlocking Corporate Directorates." American Sociological Review39:393-406.
3.
. 1978. "Economic Interest Groups and the Corporate Elite Structure ." Social Science Quarterly58:597-615.
4.
. 1982. "The Identification of Interlock Groups in Large Corporate Networks: Convergent Validation Using Divergent Techniques." Social Networks4:349-366.
5.
Bernstein, Barton.1965. "The Removal of War Production Board Controls on Business, 1944-1946." Business History Review39:243-260.
6.
_________. 1967. "The Debate on Industrial Reconversion: The Protection of Oligopoly and Military Control of the Economy." American Journal of Economics and Sociology26:159-172.
7.
Block, Fred.1977. The Origins of International Economic Disorder . Berkeley: University of California Press.
8.
Blum, Albert A.1972. "Roosevelt, the M-Day Plans, and the Military-Industrial Complex" Military Affairs34:44-46.
9.
Blum, John.1976. V Was For V'cctory. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
10.
Brigante, John.1950. The Feasibility Dispute. Washington, DC: Committee on Public Administration Cases.
11.
Campbell, Levin.1946. The Industry-Ordnance Team. New York : Harcourt Brace.
12.
Catton, Bruce.1948. The War Lords of Washington. New York : Harcourt Brace.
13.
Connery, Robert.1951. The Navy and Industrial Mobilization in World War II. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
14.
Domhoff, G. William.1967. Who Rules America?Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
15.
. 1968. "The Power Elites and Its Critics." Pp. 251-278 in G. William Domhoff and Hoyt B. Ballard (eds.), C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite . Boston: Beacon Press.
16.
________. 1970. The Higher Circles. New York : Random House.
17.
_______. 1983. Who Rules America Now?Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
18.
________. 1990. The Power Elite and the State. Hawthorne, NY: Adline de Gruyter.
19.
_________. 1991a. "State Autonomy and New Deal Agricultural Policy: Another Empirical Attack on a Theoretical Delusion." Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association , Irving, California, April 11-14.
20.
. 1991b. "Class, Power, and Parties During the New Deal: A Critique of Skocpol's Theory of State Autonomy." Berkeley Journal of Sociology36:1-49.
21.
Durr, Clifford.1952. "The Defense Plant Corporation" Pp. 290-311 in Harold Stein (ed.), Public Administration and Policy Development . New York: Harcourt Brace.
22.
Eakins, David.1969. "Business Planners and America's Postwar Expansion." Pp. 143-171 in David Horowitz (ed.), Corporations and the Cold War. New York: Monthly Review Press.
23.
Feagin, Joe, and Kelly Riddell.1990. "The State, Capitalism, and World War II: The U. S. Case." Armed Forces & Society17:53-79.
24.
Freudenthal, Elsbeth. [1940] 1968. "The Aviation Business in the 1930s" Reprinted as pp. 75-115 in G. R. Simonson (ed.), The History of the American Aircraft Industry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968.
25.
Goldthorpe, John.1991. "The Uses of History in Sociology: Reflections on Some Recent Tendencies." British Journal of Sociology42:211-230.
26.
Hamilton, Richard.1975. Restraining Myths. New York : Wiley & Sons.
27.
Hammond, Paul.1961. Organizing for Defense. Princeton : Princeton University Press.
28.
Hooks, Gregory.1990. "From an Autonomous to a Captured StateAgency: The Decline of the New Deal in Agriculture ." American Sociological Review55:29-43.
29.
. 1991. Forging the Military-Industrial Complex: World War II's Battle of the Potomac. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
30.
Huntington, Samuel.1961. The Common Defense. New York : Columbia University Press.
31.
Janeway, Eliot.1951. The Struggle for Survival. New Haven : Yale University Press.
32.
Janowitz, Morris.1960. The Professional Soldier. New York : The Free Press.
33.
Johnson, Stephen.1976. "How the West Was Won: Last Shootout for the Yankee-Cowboy Theory." Insurgent Sociologist6:61-93.
34.
Kaplan, A.D.H.1944. Liquidation of War Production. New York: McGraw-Hill.
35.
Kofsky, Frank.1992. "The Truth Was Expendable: The Truman Administration, the Aircraft Industry, and the War Scare of 1948." Unpublished Manuscript. Department of History, California State University, Sacramento.
36.
Koistinen, Paul.1973. "Mobilizing the World War II Economy: Labor and the Industrial-Military Alliance." Pacific Historical Review42:443-478.
37.
Krasner, Stephen.1978. Defending the National Interest. Princeton : Princeton University Press.
38.
Leffler, Melvyn.1992.A Preponderance of Power. Stanford : Stanford University Press.
39.
Lieberson, Stanley.1971. "An Empirical Study of Military-Industrial Linkages ." American Journal of Sociology76:562-584.
40.
Lynch, David.1946. The Concentration of Economic Power. New York: Columbia University Press.
41.
Millett, John.1954. The Army Service Forces: The Organization and Role of The Army Service Forces. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.
42.
Mills, C. Wright.1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
43.
Mingos, Howard. [1930] 1968. "Birth of An Industry" Reprinted as pp. 25-69 in G. R. Simonson (ed.), The History of the American Aircraft Industry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968.
44.
Mintz, Beth, and Michael Schwartz .1985. The Power Structure of American Business. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
45.
Mizruchi, Mark.1982. The Structure of the American Corporate Network 1904-1974 . Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications .
46.
Peltason, Jack.1952. "The Reconversion Controversy" Pp. 217-283 in Harold Stein (ed.), Public Administration and Policy Development . New York: Harcourt Brace.
47.
Polenberg, Richard.1972. War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
48.
Rae, John.1968. Climb to Greatness. Cambridge : MIT Press.
49.
Rochester, Anna.1936. Rulers of America. New York : International Publishers.
50.
Salzman, Harold, and G. William Domhoff .1983. "Nonprofit Organizations and the Corporate Community." Social Science History7:205-216.
51.
Schwarz, Jordan.1981. The Speculator: Bernard M Baruch in Washington , 1917-1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
52.
Shoup, Laurence, and William Minter.1977. Imperial Brain Trust. New York: Monthly Review Press.
53.
Sitterson, J. Carlyle.1946. Development of the Reconversion Policies of the War Production Board, April 1943 to January 1945. Special Study No. 15. Washington, DC: U.S. Civilian Production Administration.
54.
Skocpol, Theda.1979. States and Social Revolution. New York : Cambridge University Press.
55.
. 1980. "Political Responses to Capitalist Crisis: Neo-Marxist Theories of the State and the Case of the New Deal." Politics and Society10:155-202.
56.
. 1984. "Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology" Pp. 356-391 in Theda Skocpol (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
57.
Skowronek, Stephen.1982. Building a New American State. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
58.
Smith, Jean.1990. Lucius D. Clay. New York: Henry Holt.
59.
Smith, R. Elbertson.1959. The Anny and Economic Mobilization. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.
60.
Somers, Herman Miles.1950. Presidential Agency: The Office of the War Mobilization and Reconversion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
61.
Sonquist, John, and Thomas Koenig.1975. "Interlocking Directorates in the Top U. S. Corporations ." Insurgent Sociologist5:196-229.
62.
Stone, I.F.1942. Business As Usual. New York : Modern Age Books.
63.
Sweezy, Paul.1952. "Interest Groups in the American Economy." Pp. 158-188 in Paul Sweezy (ed.), The Present As History. New York: Monthly Review Press.
64.
U. S. Bureau of the Budget.1946. The United States at War. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Budget.
65.
U. S. Civilian Production Administration.1947. Industrial Mobilization for War: History of the War Production Board and Predecessor Agencies, 1940-1945. Washington, DC: U.S. Civilian Production Administration.
66.
White, Gerald.1980. Billions for Defense. University, AL : University of Alabama Press.
