Search

The ideology of self-help and free enterprise has had as one of its consequences the fact that businessmen and other citizens have come to take for granted a host of ancillary services on which their enterprises depend, whether these be the law courts or fire departments or the customs offices on the one hand, or many "private" activities on the other hand which provide advice, maintenance, and other supports to a Durkheimian "organic" division of labor. To be sure, uneasiness as to whether one is really a self-made man may be an element in the attraction of radical right-wing thought for some corporate businessmen who are dimly aware that they are not as independent as their frontier outlook would demand of them; certainly, they do their best to conceal from themselves the support they derive from the governmental and corporate infrastructure. Such men in their civic capacities are apt to demand asceticism from governmental and other nonprofit institutions, while being themselves not at all reluctant to accept the perquisites of what they regard as their personal achievements, and in their corporate capacity to dress their institutions with the luxurious trappings of success, such as handsome modem air-conditioned buildings, college-educated and "charming" receptionists, and all other conceivable appurtenances for making the doing of business pleasant and at times even expeditious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]