American counterrevolutionary: Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and general electric, 1950-1960

The decade of the 1950s has long been seen as an epoch of consensus, especially regarding questions of political economy. As historian Godfrey Hodgson puts it, during the postwar period, "to dissent from the broad axioms" of agreement upon a liberal capitalism was "to proclaim oneself irresponsible or ignorant." During the postwar period, the argument goes, economic growth replaced class conflict. Serious ideological dissension gave way to interest-group pluralism mediated by a broker state. Corporate leaders accepted the power of labor unions, provided that they respected certain managerial prerogatives, while workers gave up their radical ambitions and acknowledged management's legitimate power. Allied against the common threat of the Soviet Union, Cold War liberals and "modern Republicans" alike could agree on the basic principles of the welfare state, anti-Communist unionism and Keynesian economics.